Guns, Germs and Steel Category: Anthropology By: Jared Diamond (JD) This Bookthought is by Thoughtpiece.com, editor RM, done in 2008 based on the paperback published 1997 General Bookthoughts: The central topic is an analysis of how and why societies managed to develop at a complex level in different parts of the world over the last many thousand years. There was likely a bias to view these differences at a biological level up until this book was released, which now clearly shows that advances in societies were because of continental environments. Specifically societies grew because of their ability to generate excess food which allowed them to remain in one place. This allowed the advance of technology, creation of centralised politics etc. The ability to create excess food happened around 8500BC in areas that were prone to it the domesticable wild plant and animal species essential for that rise of agriculture were distributed very unevenly over the continents. There were nine such small areas scattered around the earth which all became home to agriculture and the early inhabitants of those homelands thereby gained a head start toward developing guns, germs and steel. The languages and genes of those homeland inhabitants, as well as their livestock, crops, technologies, and writing systems, became dominant in the ancient and modern world. Broadly, the thesis of this book has been backed up by work done by archaeologists, geneticists, linguists etc. It is a Pulitzer prize winner, for good reason. Enjoy! About this document: Thoughtpiece.com is a website run by passionate readers. These bookthoughts are a combination of what we consider the original author s message to be, with some original comments or questions of our own. There are times where it makes more sense to copy the original author s text verbatim, in which instances we use inverted commas to highlight them. These bookthoughts are in bullet point form, with emphasis on content rather than on perfecting the prose. Whilst our goal is to extract the key messages of each book as accurately as we can, we recognise that, on occasion, we may interpret the original author s message inaccurately. We hope that you will let us know of any such errors by visiting the feedback section of our website on www.thoughtpiece.com/contactus and we will endeavour to correct them promptly. Happy Reading!
Specific Bookthoughts: - Dates and context: Homo erectus (more than an ape, but less than a man) evolved by 1.7m years ago. Use of stone tools predates that, being about 2.5m years ago. Almost all of our history, over about 7m years ago when apes broke into different populations, was in Africa (where are nearest ancestors remain chimps and gorillas). It seems that the upright posture started around 4m years ago. Homo erectus seemed to be the first man who made it beyond Africa (Java man fossil record found). The earliest unquestioned evidence for humans in Europe was 500,000 years ago. These recent fossils (500,000 years ago) were far more like humans than homo erectus and are in fact classified as homo sapiens (although they were still different to modern man). At this stage there were no humans in Australia (needed a boat) or the Americas (needed to arrive in Siberia first). At this stage (still 500,000 years ago, the population of Africa/W. Eurasia (Homosapien) diverged from East Asian (Neanderthals). Both species could only make crude stone tools, whilst only being able to bring down easy prey (not buffalos, pigs, couldn t even catch fish etc) - showing they were not fully human. About 50,000 years ago, JD calls it the Great Leap Forward where archaeologists started finding refined stone tools, refined bone tools (even harpoons and needles), jewellery, artworks (statues, musical instruments) along with skeletal remains of their owners, the Cro Magnons ( biologically and behaviourally modern humans ). This ability to kill at a distance was a major step forward as was the ability to sew (make ropes, make housing, make clothes for cold climates etc). JD argues in his other book, the Third Chimpanzee, that the Great Leap Forward was as a result of the voice box. It seems most of the developments in the Great Leap Forward took place in Africa. Armed with these new weapons and abilities, about 40,000 years ago, the CroMagnons entered Europe and within a few thousand years there were no more Neanderthals (seems they were either killed by infection or superior weaponry and organisation/brain power). There is almost no evidence for cross breeding between Cro Magnons and Neanderthals. Given the most recent ice age ended 11,000 years ago, Neanderthals and Cro Magnons lived through them. Ice Ages tie up lots of water, causing sea levels to drop, which aided the Cro Magnons in reaching places like the Indonesian islands. But to reach Australia/New Guinea required some form of sea transport because of the deep gulleys between SE Asia and Australia. It seems about 43,000 years ago that Cro Magnons made it to Australia by boat. This only left two continents to explore North and South America. It seems this happened between 14,000 and 35,000 years ago (probably via the Bering land bridge). As with conquering other continents, many of the docile animals ended up going extinct (because they had not evolved with humans). Some argue that these extinctions coincided with the ice age of 11,000 years ago, but that does not explain these animals surviving other ice ages ( 22 previous Ice Ages ). The settlement of the rest of the world s islands did not happen until modern times (Greek Islands 8500-4000BC, Caribbean 4000BC, Some Polynesian islands 1200BC to 1000AD, Madagascar 300-800AD, Iceland 800 AD. - The biggest population shift of modern times has been the colonization of the New World by Europeans, and the resulting conquest, numerical reduction, or complete disappearance of most groups of Native Americans. What JD is referring to is both when Christopher Columbus discovered the Caribbean Islands in 1492 and when the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro conquered the Incas in South America in 1532. He points out that guns played a minor role it was the role of steel in the form of swords, shields and armour that trumped the Inca s wooden clubs. The Spanish also had horses, giving them speed, protection and height (horses appear to
have been domesticated in 4000BC). This all added to the Spanish superiority because they were vastly outnumbered. The Incas were also weakened by disease, initially bought over by earlier Spaniards. Notably, the Spaniards had writing and the Incas did not, which helped explain why the Spaniards were invading South America and not the other way around. Implied in this story and others is that many of the benefits of technology and organisation first came to the Europeans (guns, germs and steel). This is explained by the abundance of food in Europe (domesticable crops and livestock) which creates an excess, which helps create technological advances (like writing, weaponry, sewing, building, farming implements etc.) - Carbon dating: Radioactive carbon 14 (a tiny component of carbon) decays slowly into an isotope Nitrogen 14 9and carbon is a common building block of life making it widely available). Once and animal or plant dies, half its carbon 14 decays into carbon 12 every 5700 years. This ratio is used for carbon dating. There are potential errors in this method (rates of decay aren t always that accurate), so they calibrate the rates of decay by trying to compare the specimen to other specimens in the area (like an old tree that has rings each year where its ratios can be assessed accurately and compared with ratio of the specimen). - Notably, food production rose in five key areas Fertile Crescent, China, MesoAmerica (near Panama), the Andes and Eastern USA and all fall within a common latitude on the globe. Fertile crescent shows earliest progress, about 8000BC where evidence exists for both plant and animal domestication. China is almost as early, but the Americas showed evidence for domestication only 6000 years later. The Fertile Crescent had most domesticable plants and animals which explains why initial complicated settlements were found there. - So what caused people to adopt farming over hunter gathering? As JD points out, creating a complex society (i.e. farming, sedentary), the society was far more robust than the poorly organised hunter gatherers and quickly displaced them where there was a conflict (hunter gatherers also thrived where the climate or geography was too extreme for farming). Where there was no competition, hunter gathering lasted a lot longer. In essence hunter gatherers had two choices be displaced by food producers or become food producers. - In order to become crop farmers, there needed to be a domestication of wild plant species. Many of the wild plant species needed to be transformed in order to become edible or more edible this happened via a process of natural selection (mostly by humans selecting for bigger, sweeter, no bitterness, no poisons etc.). Besides visual selection, there were also other factors like how the plants reproduced. Good examples of changes from wild to domesticable: Almonds were originally deadly poisonous, wild peas germinate via a mutant gene that causes the pod to explode and scatter the seeds (but this doesn t help if you want to harvest them and eat them!), wild wheat and barley seeds also grow on the top of a stalk that shatters, domestic peas are ten times heavier than wild ones, wild apples are one inch in diameter vs. Farmed ones of three inches, corn cobs were originally half an inch long vs. Over six inches now etc. - And animals? Remember, animals offer some interesting advantages they can plough, produce milk, carry items, provide meat (often immediately when plants can take time), fertilizer, leather, cavalry option, wool etc. But, as JD points out, they can and do spread germs. By far the most important animals were the cow, sheep, goat, pig and horse (there were others like dogs, rabbits, birds etc. but they were less useful). It is also worth noting that many of these species changed in size (cows, pigs and sheep became smaller under domestication and their brain sizes and sense organs decreased as their need to escape wild predators decreased). The Ancient Fourteen is a broader grouping of domesticated animals (includes ancestors of camels, donkey, reindeer etc).
South America had only one (the ancestor of the Llama). North America, Australia and Sub Saharan Africa had none at all (quite ironic given people go to Africa now to view animals) while 13 of the 14 ancestors were found in Eurasia. (Mammals have been central to the establishment of societies. The Late Pleistocene extinctions hit Australia and the Americas far more than Eurasia or Africa. Eurasia was by far the best off.) - An often ill forgotten fact that JD reminds us of is that the axes of the continents play a large role in the settlement of communities. Americas span 9000m N/S but only 3000m E/W. Africa is similar, where as Eurasia is very much E/W in terms of its layout. Food production spreads E/W to maintain climate. To some extent, the same applies for things like inventions (e.g. the wheel spread E/W quickly in Eurasia and writing in the Fertile Crescent. Links are less obvious, buy as crops spread, they create technologies by building communities around them). Spreading N/W is far more difficult because crops depend on climate. - A further advantage to farmers over hunter gatherers is their exposure to germs, via their farm animals (clearly a short term disadvantage!). JD gives a nice background to microbes in pages 198-199 which explains the apparent paradox that a microbe will enter a body but then cause it to get sick or even die (what use is a dead host?). As it turns out, there are very good explanations as to why we sneeze, vomit, have diarrhoea, cough have open genital sores etc. because they help broadcast the germ. Of course, death of a host is not a good consequence unless the germ has been able to spread successfully before the death (say with cholera, you may die from dehydration caused by diarrhoea - but before you die you will likely have infected the water supply with lots of microbes). For infectious diseases that cause widespread death, they tend to have four major characteristics they spread quickly and easily, they are acute meaning they cause death (or you recover) very quickly, if you recover you develop antibodies making you immune for a long time and they tend to be limited to human beings. Animals tend to carry the closest related pathogens to some of these diseases indicating a first cause (measles, TB and smallpox all from cattle). Germs clearly helped the Europeans (far more native Americans died from germs than in battle) in their conquest of the new world (it seems that not a single major killer reached Europe from the Americas ). Good examples of germs helping Europeans: Cortes landed in Mexico in 1519 with 600 Spaniards, but defeated many millions Aztecs (besides the better battle equipment of the Spaniards, the epidemic of smallpox killed half the Aztecs. A hundred years later, Mexico s population was at 1.6m, down from 20m). Pizarro had a similar story arrived with 168men vs. The Incas with millions. Fortunately for Pizarro, smallpox had already taken its toll which resulted in the emperor dying and the throne being left vacant. This caused a civil war which meant Pizarro exploited. The one way transmission of germs seemed to apply in the Americas, but not in Asia, Africa, New Guinea and Indonesia. Here we found Malaria, Cholera, Yellow Fever. This caused obvious delays to their colonisation delays of about 400 years. - Writing was an important contributor to societal development. Seemingly it only arose independently in the Fertile Crescent, Mexico and probably China because those were the first areas where food production emerged in their respective hemispheres. Needless to say, writing is one example of many inventions that occurred as a result of excess food supplies (as JD points out, the absolute size of the population statistically creates more inventors and technology). Excess food seems to benefit society in three ways: first it creates seasonal labour requirements which frees up labour for other efforts, like going to war or building public works, second it enables the creation of food surpluses which permits excess like feeding scribes, elites,
craftspeople, bureaucrats etc, third it allows people to adopt sedentary living which is a prerequisite for building a complex society.