Thoughts on Guns, Germs & Steel

I loved this book. One of the most timely and informative reads I have had in a really long time.

The idea is that Jared Diamond (the author) goes into how nations, cultures and economies have developed over the past thousands of years. He asks why it was Europe that settled into the Americas as opposed to the other way around. He looks into why they had so much success in their settlings and dives into different geographical regions throughout the world, looking at the reasons that they developed in the ways that they did.

There’s of course lots of dispute over how human beings came to exist in the first place, but he basically looks from hunter/gatherer onwards. Why certain cultures moved from hunter/gatherers into full fledged economies significantly faster than others and the impact that had on globalization.

As I have been traveling around South America, exploring a new place, the timing was awesome. I was able to connect what I have been seeing and the experiences that I have been having with what Diamond talked about.

Key points

Food

Diamond first makes a claim that the availability of food played a huge resource in the growth of cultures. In areas without many native plants or animals that were ripe for consumption and/or domestication, finding food was more difficult. That limited the growth of societies.

It makes sense. In some places, cows were native. That meant the people living there had cows easily at their disposal from the onset. Not only is that a huge food resource, but they could use cows to carry items from one place to another. They could also domesticate them, breeding cows specifically for the use of consumption.

In another place that only had gazelle’s on the contrary, they would have had to be hunted for food. For a variety of reasons not worth getting into, gazelle’s couldn’t have been domesticated. That meant people in those areas had to hunt them.

In hunter/gatherer tribes, they moved around based on the season and the frequency of the animals in the area. This meant that families could only have children at a certain rate. Moving around, the mother would have to carry around the child until they reached the age of being able to get along themselves (Diamond says about age 4). That meant families could only have children every 4 years. Plus, it was harder to find food. That meant families were less willing to have many children.

In a culture where cows were domesticated, on the other hand, it would be much easier to have many children. There is more food to go around and people began to be able to stay in one place. It was a logical next step to domesticate the animal and breed it for consumption to make eating and finding/managing food easier.

This can all be applied to plant species as well. In certain regions, crops like wheat and barley were native. That gave people high-quality grains to grow and eat from.

Those cultures tended to develop more quickly for those reasons, primarily, among a few others.

Sharing of resources

People ended up in various areas throughout the world for a variety of reasons. If we take as a given that there were cultures in present-day England, France, Portugal and also Ecuador, Argentina, Peru (for example), the amount that those cultures were able to meet and share resources with one another played a huge role.

If two cultures could meet without having a war, then they could introduce each other to new technologies, animals and crops. Although cows might be native to one place, they can be brought to another. It is just that someone has to get them there.

What helped Europe grow so quickly was the ease in which societies could interact. Due to the horizontal axis that the continent sits on, the climates between the areas is not drastically different. That made trekking across the continent easier and safer. Plus, Europe had domesticated animals that could provide transportation.

In South America and Africa, on the other hand, the climates differ drastically. Due to the north/south axis that they are run on (I don’t exactly understand the climate implications, but it’s a thing), the regions varied significantly. To go from one area in Africa that was desert-like to another that was very tropical was a very challenging journey. Add in the lack of domesticated animals to help with the travels and those cultures did not interact. That meant they could not share resources and innovations.

Adapting cultures

As population sizes began to increase, there became a need to change societal structures. In a community of 200, everyone knows everyone and people are not going to kill one another. When that reaches 2000, on the other hand, what is stopping one person from killing another for resources? That is a super over-simplified reason for the emergence of structures. People could become punished by the culture.

As these societies grew, there was less of a need for each person to make their own food. It, instead, made more economical sense to have a few people produce the food and trade goods. In small economies, trading goods is easy, but it becomes much more challenging with more people. That created central governments to disperse money.

Then those grew and people came into power, there was corruption and rebellion and religion to control people and many other factors.

A big conclusion, though, is that in these larger societies, people had more free time to do other things, and central currency was created which put an emphasis on wealth.

Conquering

Eventually, countries became large enough that they had incentives to go explore and build more societies for complex reasons. Due to European countries’ size, they were the ones to go explore the Americas. They had adapted to diseases, and it was that as well as their advanced technology that allowed small groups like Pizarro’s to tackle huge empires like the Incas.

Viewing history through this lens

I am just touching the surface on Diamond’s ideas and what he got into throughout this book.

It made me realize, though, that history can be seen as a science. We can make hypothesis about why things happened the way that they did and then go look for evidence to support those hypothesis. We have these test-cases from history to use as evidence and try and find causes.

Although there are people who would oppose what Diamond has to say, his arguments felt very valid. It lead me to conclude that a large part of the growth of societies up until this point were a matter of the resources we started with and the clear economic/personal incentives at each stage along the way.

I don’t know enough history to start super far back, but we had all of these societies in different parts of the world at some point. They were too primitive to have advanced technology or ways of living, so they needed to find their own food and shelter.

The obvious options for food were plants and animals. They needed that food ASAP, so they tried the plants near them and learned what was poisinous and what was not. Then they figured out how they could grow those plants for more food. They ate animals as meat, and might have also enjoyed the taste. That put an emphasis on the only way to eat animals at the time: hunting.

Then certain cultures found animals that could be domesticated. It was easier and there was more available food by breeding these animals together and keeping them within close distance as opposed to always having to go out and kill them. Plus, the animals could eliminate other tasks they did not want to do. They might have needed to bring water to and from places. If an animal could help, it would save them energy and they would not need to eat as much to survive.

In other cultures, though, animals could not be domesticated. It meant they had to continue to hunt and gather until something changed.

Over time, gaps were built between cultures. Then, when cultures began interacted with each other, maybe because certain people wanted more space and land, maybe because the government wanted more places for food, and any other incentives that existed at the time, there were issues.

People died, people were taken advantage of, there was slave trade and all of these things.

The cultures separated so drastically not because of intelligence or factors we could write off to racism. Rather due to their conditions.

I recently spent a few days in the jungle in Ecuador where people live more primitively. They are definitely not less smart than us. They just know different things. They could not operate a computer the same way that I could or approach writing an article in the same way. That is only beacuse I have had practice, though.

It is the same way that I have no idea what I’m doing as I’m walking through the jungle. I don’t know how to avoid wild animals, look for signs that the weather is about to turn or construct houses that will not break down. It is a matter of culture.

It makes me realize that everyone has the same capacity (more or less) when they are born. The cultures they are born into, though, define how they spend their time. Whether they develop expertise in navigation and cooking or in learning to jump through hoops to get into college.

This is of course, extremely over simplified, and Diamond wrote a 400 page book that really only scratched the surface, signifying that there is so much involved.

Great book, though, would highly recommend if you’re ready to learn about this :)

Thoughts on this review/the book in general? Comment or send me a note :)

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