Saket Vora

I heard about this extraordinary book earlier this spring from my friend Mike Lee, who told me about its interesting premise and the quality in which the material was presented. Over the course of the semester, I heard mention of it by more people and felt it would be a worthy book to tackle first this summer. After all, I had never taken an anthropology or history course in college, and the last time I studied biology was in the 9th grade of high school.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is written by Dr. Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA. Dr. Diamond has had many years of field experience in Polynesia (New Guinea in particular) and elsewhere around the world. The book attempts to answer a strikingly fundamental question about ‘how things became the way they are’ (to borrow a theme from the excellent book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn). How did it come to be that the people of Europe and Asia (Eurasia) to dominate the world so thoroughly in technology and economy? Why, despite being the birthplace of Homo sapiens, is so much of Africa devastatingly poor and unstable. How is it that the Spaniards and Englishmen who first arrived in the New World brandished fire-arms, steel armor and weaponry, while the natives they found still fought with spears and bows & arrows? It is such an intriguing question to ask and explore!

Some people before have attributed Eurasian’s dominance, particularly that of Europe, to such factors such as the mental or biological superiority of the Caucasian race or Judeo-Christian tradition. Dr. Diamond reaches farther back into human history and convincingly presents the case that environmental and geographical differences between the habitats of people around the world, already in place thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, instead explain ‘how things came to be’. This explanation may seem un-interesting on the surface, but the strength of Guns, Germs, and Steel is the lucid and powerful presentation of information that was often a great surprise to me. Also, Dr. Diamond writes with a very comfortable style; the book’s language features a good example of how presenting information need not be a dry and textbookish exercise.

The book first covers the basics of how and when the human species began spreading out of Africa and across the continents. The next main area concerns plant domestication and the resulting effects and consequences of domesticating plants. It is hear that many of the eye-opening facts begin to occur. One finds that the Fertile Crescent naturally featured an enormous variety of critical plants that were suitable for domestication while the other continents had poor native selections. Despite the amazing farm productivity of the American heartland, one realizes that all those successful plants were not domesticated in the US. With a dearth of suitable or worthwhile plants available for domestication, early human societies naturally sought hunter-gatherer lifestyles that better matched the environmental and geographical characteristics of their surroundings. Dr. Diamond also discusses what advances can be had once a sedentary lifestyle that produces an excess of food is reached (specialization of labor, cities, writing, etc.).

The book then goes on to discuss animal domestication. Once again, I was startled to learn about this. Diamond goes over what qualities make for a large animal suitable for domestication. Native to Eurasia were horses, goats, cows, and sheep. Despite the vivid images of Indian horsemen on the Great Plains, horses nor goats nor cows nor sheep existed natively in North America! In South America, the alpaca or llama was somewhat available, but none of the large common domesticated animals that Eurasia had. In Africa, despite its image as the big game continent, actually has a very poor selection of large animals that are suitable for domestication. Without these animals, early human populations could not utilize them as a source of power in tilling fields, operating machinery, or obtaining milk and other ingredients. Such animals were critical steps in helping to establish civilizations. In addition, nearly all the major human diseases have first cousins in the animal kingdom. As animal domestication began and humans went into more close contact with the animals, outbreaks of mutated diseases afflicted human populations but also resulted in immunities to them. Having been dealt an environmental hand sorely lacking in available animals for domestication, the peoples of other continents had less avenues to develop the kind of resistance and immunity to these diseases than the Europeans so thus the widepread dying of the Native American populations to disease.

For those interested in the historical development of gun and steel technology, do not be fooled by the book’s title; neither topic is explored with the except of a paragraph mentioning gunpowder’s origin in medieval China. Plants, Animals, and Germs might be a more suitable title. Regardless, Diamond goes on to explore a few more ways how geography has affected the course of human history. A particularly illuminating example is when he contrasts the human empires of China versus Europe. The geography of China allowed for easier conquest by a single group, so as a result what we consider modern China actually became unified in the 2nd century B.C. The European continent however, with its mountain ranges, lengthy coastline and several peninsulas, and rivers allowed for a variety of empires to form and reign over smaller geographical areas, thus the French, Spanish, Italian, English, Prussian, etc. empires that continously fought each other for control. While China’s early unification might have aided it in conquering adjacent lands, it was also a disadvantage. In Europe, the actions of a single emperor or society based upon short-term political, monetary, or social goals did little to prevent a new idea from being hatched at all. Diamond mentions the roll-out of electric lighting in England as an example. The gas companies in England at the time enjoyed their street lighting contracts. When the electric street lighting system was introduced as an alternative, they lobbied aggressively against it to protect their interests. Other European countries that lacked a powerful gas company lobby adopted electric street lighting. Once it was implemented, more and more societies across Europe started using it too and finally the climate in England became receptive to electric street lighting. One could replace ‘electric street lighting’ with a multitude of other ideas, innovations, and advances and the idea is equally valid. On the other hand, if the government of an enormous unified country decides on a course of action based on similar personal, financial, or political short-term factors, there are no nearby alternatives where that idea could prove itself. Diamond mentions an instance when an incumbent Chinese regime was associated with massive shipbuilding efforts was defeated by an opposition party. The opposition party, eager to show its differences with the incumbent, took an anti-shipbuilding stance, and once in power dismantled the shipyards. As a result, China no longer had the means to continue innovating and improving ship designs and technology. It’s interesting what can be both strengths and disadvantages.

My edition of the book included a 2003 afterword by Diamond. I was interested to see how people in the business, political, and organizational research fields have expanded on the ideas presented in this book. In furthering exploring the difference that the diversity of societies in Europe created a climate that was arguably better for cultivating innovation across the continent, businesses are looking into how they can best organize their various divisions and groups to emulate the same idea. How much should a single company march in lock-stop? If separate divisions are given more autonomy, maybe they can generate better more efficient processes that can then spread to other divisions. It’s very interesting. My sister was showing me her history book and how it actually mentioned why the agricultural revolution happened in the Fertile Crecent due to a high number of viable candidates that naturally grew there. This book was published in 2004, and when I looked in the references section of the chapter, I saw Guns, Germs, and Steel listed there. So the ideas of this book are already entering the textbook literature.

I highly recommend this book to everyone, regardless of your field of study, your background, or your profession. Enjoy it.