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''Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies'' is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond , professor of Physiology at UCLA . In 1998 it won a Pulitzer Prize and the Aventis Prize For Best Science Book . A Documentary based on the book was broadcast on PBS in July, 2005 , produced by the National Geographic Society . According to the author, an alternative title would be: "A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years". But the book is not merely an account of the past; it attempts to explain why Eurasia n civilization, as a whole, has survived and conquered others, while refuting the belief that Eurasian Hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual or moral superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various Positive Feedback Loops . Synopsis Prologue The prologue to the book opens with an account of Diamond's conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and technology between Yali's people and the Europeans who dominated the land for 200 years, differences that neither of them considered due to any superiority of Europeans. Yali asked, using the local term "cargo" for inventions and manufactured goods, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" Diamond found that he had no good answer. He says that the same sort of question seems to apply elsewhere: "People of Eurasia n origin... dominate the world in wealth and power." Other peoples, having thrown off colonial domination, lag in wealth and power. Still others, he says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists." (p. 15) He says that, unable to find a satisfactory explanation from the best-known accounts of history, he decided to make his own investigation. Before stating his main argument, Diamond considers three possible Criticisms of his investigation. These are covered in detail in Responses To Criticism . The theory outlined Before anyone developed agriculture, people lived as Hunter-gatherer s, as some still do. Diamond argues that Eurasian Civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity. That is, Civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence, but is more like a house of cards, each level dependent upon the levels below it. Specifically, the key to civilization is Agriculture . The keys to agriculture are domesticable Plant and Animal species for food and work. The demands for Domesticability of an animal species are particularly stringent. Diamond identifies six criteria including the animal being sufficiently docile, gregarious, willing to breed in captivity and having a social dominance hierarchy. Though not stated explicitly, his theories are similar to that of Cultural Ecology . Transition ''GGS'' argues that Cities require an ample supply of food and thus depend on agriculture. As farmers do the work of providing food, others are free to pursue other functions, such as mining and literacy. (''see Division Of Labour '') Essential to the transition from hunter-gatherer to city-dwelling agrarian societies was the presence of ''large'' Domesticable animals, raised for meat, work, and long-distance communication. Diamond identifies a mere 14 domesticated species world wide. The 5 most important ( Cow , Horse , Sheep , Goat , and Pig ) are all native to Eurasia . Of the remaining 9, only two (the Llama and Guinea Pig both of South America ) are indigenous to a land outside the temperate region of Eurasia. None of the 14 is native to Africa , and African species such as the zebra, antelope, cape buffalo and African elephant proved to be too difficult to domesticate (although some could be tamed, they could not easily be bred in captivity) The Holocene Extinction Event eliminated many of the candidate species, and Diamond Argues that the pattern of extinction is more severe on continents where humans arrived later and with more devastating hunting techniques. Smaller domesticable animals such as Dog s, Cat s, Chicken s, and Guinea Pig s may be valuable in various ways to an agricultural society, but will not be adequate in themselves to sustain large-scale agrarian society. An important example is that larger animals such as cows and horses could plow land, this allowed for much greater crop productivity and the ability to farm a much wider variety of land and soil types that would be impossible to work by human power. Geography Diamond also explains how geography shaped Human Migration , not simply by making travel difficult (particularly by Latitude ), but by how climates affect where domesticable animals can easily travel and where crops can ideally grow easily due to the sun. Modern humans are believed to have developed in the southern region of the Africa n continent, at one time or another (see Out Of Africa Theory ). The Sahara kept people from migrating north to the Fertile Crescent , until later when the Nile River valley became accommodating. Diamond continues to explain the story of human development up to the modern era, through the rapid development of technology, and its dire consequences on hunter-gathering cultures around the world. Germs In the later context of the European-American Conquest Of The Americas , 95 percent of the indigenous populations are believed to have been Killed Off By Diseases unwittingly brought by the Europeans. How was it then that disease native to the American continents did not kill off Europeans? Diamond points out that the combined effect of the increased population densities supported by agriculture, and of close human proximity to domesticated animals leading to animal diseases infecting humans, resulted in European societies acquiring a much richer collection of dangerous pathogens to which European peoples had acquired immunity through Natural Selection (see the Black Death and other epidemics) during a longer time than was the case for Native American Hunter-gatherers and farmers. He mentions the tropical diseases (mainly Malaria ) that limited European penetration into Africa as an exception. Criticism Some people criticize the argument of the book as derivative of the work of such Cultural Evolution ists as Leslie White , Julian Steward , and Esther Boserup , who analyzed the relationship between agriculture and economic and political growth; and such historians as William McNeill and Alfred Crosby , who analyzed the relationship between agriculture, European expansion, and disease. Criticism of Eurocentrism and determinism Others have criticized the book as an example of Environmental Determinism in the service of Eurocentrism . The charge is neither that the book claims any essential superiority of Europe an civilization or culture, nor that the book claims any inherent superiority of some European race. These critics assert that the problem with earlier cultural and racial explanations of European superiority (explanations that Diamond rejects) is not just that their explanations are wrong, but that what they are trying to explain — European superiority — is itself a Western myth. Although Diamond explicitly argues against European cultural or racial superiority, the charge is that his own argument serves many of the same functions as nineteenth century European claims to cultural or racial superiority, by suggesting that Europeans were destined to rule the globe. Diamond Anticipates This Criticism in the first point in his introduction. Specifically, some argue that:
Instead, these critics argue that European ascendancy was far from inevitable, but rather a result of complex political and economic forces that cannot be reduced to environment, and likely a temporary phenomenon. For a review of these criticisms, see the geographer James M. Blaut 's '' Eight Eurocentric Historians ''. Specific criticisms Some historians have questioned some of the specific propositions Diamond marshals to prove his case on grounds of fact and/or plausibility. For example:
Controversial claims In addition to the central thesis, Professor Diamond includes related (and sometimes Controversial ) observations:
Responses to criticism Anticipation of criticism Before stating his main argument, Diamond considers three possible Criticisms of his investigation (p. 17):
Response to criticism of Eurocentrism and determinism With regard to the question of whether or not there has been some sort of competition that has been "won and lost", Diamond asserts, in the third sentence of the prologue, that "the literate societies with metal tools have Conquered or Exterminated the other societies." It is possible that this defines the "competition" that Diamond attempts to explain, and that being conquered is a definite loss, even if not final or absolute. He says that in some cases (such as China ) "absorbing the invader" is a long-term strategy for cultural survival that has proven successful, but in other cases – Aztec civilization for instance – the Combination Of Germs And Cultural Shock has wiped out the colonized culture. Diamond cites analysts who predict the ‘supremacy’ of Asia in the 21st Century , and says that he doesn’t dispute the claim that the current hegemony of Europe (and its Colonies ) is "temporary". With regard to the fact that non-European peoples have contributed (often involuntarily) to European society, Diamond does not deny this; he writes that he is in fact concerned with exactly this: explaining facts like why Europeans Enslaved Africans and not vice versa. With regard to changes since 1500 AD in the power of southwest Asia compared with Europe, Diamond does touch on this in his conclusion, he says for example that SW Asia's intense agriculture damaged the environment, encouraged desertification, and hurt soil fertility. He argues that because central China has fewer geographical barriers (i.e. mountain ranges or bodies of water) than Europe, China was unified relatively early in its history (see Qin Dynasty ), and that political homogeneity led to stagnation. Indeed, it is a matter of historical record that, circa 1500, during the Ming Dynasty , China's naval superiority over anything Europeans could field was terminated in a single political decision; in a Europe fragmented into hundreds of kingdoms and nation-states, no such authority existed. He also says that India on the other hand may have been too fragmented for a monumental rise in power similar to Europe's. In fact, many attempts were made to ban technologies such as firearms, but only in politically unified and isolated nations (such as Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate ) were such bans successful. Still, it is true that the book is mostly concerned with developments from prehistory up to about 1500 AD. Furthermore, Diamond's arguments are rather broad, and mostly argue that ''Eurasia'' (as opposed to Europe) would inevitably be dominant. Diamond has answered the critique of historical counterexamples (in differing growth rates unrelated to material endowments) by claiming that these cases represent short-term growth over (at most) fifty year time windows. In the case of rapidly expanding economies (such as the " East Asian Tigers ") the rapid growth is usually explained (in Economics ) as one country " Catching-up " to the rest, through trade and technological transfer (which would have been very difficult between continents in the pre-1500 period the book concentrates on). Instances of civilizations stagnating or being conquered despite having access to superior resources than their neighbours are mentioned several times in this book; in Professor Diamond’s view these reversals of fortune support his thesis, providing a mechanism for the spread of cultural dynamism and technology within continents but not (until the " Age Of Exploration ") between them. (His later work, '' Collapse ,'' tied environment and the fate of individual civilizations together more closely, but in ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' his argument is made at the continental level, rather than the level of specific societies.) Finally, Diamond's view is undoubtedly largely "deterministic" in that it argues that Eurasian dominance was inevitable, or at least very likely (sometimes called " Geographical Determinism "). Nevertheless, Diamond explicitly asks (on page 17) whether this inevitability would "justify the domination", and whether it renders futile modern attempts to "change the outcome". He denies that it does because the effects of proven environmental determinism could be easily nullified by contemporary transport and communication, whereas the effects of proven racial determinism might be used to justify genocide. Response to criticism of theory of history In the epilogue Diamond discusses "The future of human history as a science", pre-empting the criticism that he fails to understand what history is about by defining what he thinks part of it should be. He contrasts various styles of historical interpretation, and compares these to the practice of other academics who call themselves " Scientists ". He says he is "optimistic that historical studies of human societies can be pursued as scientifically as studies of dinosaurs". See also
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::- this is a more extensive discussion of the effects of geography on comparative Chinese and European development than is allowed in the final section of Professor Diamond's book, and predates it by sixteen years. |