(GQ? GD? The Pit? First it was a book then a TV show so I suppose this belongs in CS but I won’t be surprised if it’s moved.)
I never read the book but saw the first episode of PBS’s version of Guns, Germs, and Steel. I didn’t bother with the second or third episodes. Listening to the narrator and the people on this board I was expecting Diamond’s hypotheses to be original, insightful, and controversial. Instead they are patently obvious and nothing new. White folk have more cargo because they won the lottery of life and come from an area with more and more easily exploited resources, including easily stored grain, and fewer wasting diseases? Duh!
I’m currently reading it. The prose is a little turgid and I’m not sure I buy all of his contentions (for example, several African tribes domesticated cattle and cows) but so far I am enjoying it. He basically suggests that the descendants of American Indians ate the horses & camels (!) that migrated from Asia. Still trying to get my head around the book as a whole so I’m not sure I can really debate with you at the moment.
There is a bit more to it than that. Try reading the book…THEN if you think its a no brainer come back and make a thread on why you think that way and we can talk about it.
Also, please search this board for threads on it - you can get a sense for what people take exception to in the book. In some cases, it has less to do with his main hypothesis than how he attempts to back it up - also, some folks feel that in citing the natives of Papua/New Guinea the ways that he does he ends up refuting his own claims (I think that is a fundamental mistinterpretation of his statements).
But, I agree with the others - read the book and read up on line, then share with us your thoughts.
The issue is a bit more complicated than all that.
It all comes down to one basic question: Why did the people from Europe and the area surrounding the Mediterranean take over the world, rather than, say, the Polynesians, the Mayans, the Zulu, etc.?
The old Eurocentric answer was that somehow Caucasians were superior to all other races, were blessed by God, or what have you. But Diamond’s more compelling hypothesis is that the cause for the state of the world was based on geography alone.
Yes, more easily exploited resources, yes more easily stored grain. But also:
More easily domesticated large animals, which gives you
a steady source of protein
powerful work animals
platforms for waging war (i.e., chariots and mounted horsemen)
and, most importantly, constant exposure to contagious diseases
See, many of the diseases that plague human beings have jumped to human beings from herding animals. These diseases are often terribly virulent. So agricultural societies go through horrible crucibles of being being ravaged by such diseases, but then large numbers of the survivors and their descendents have greater immunity. When they go out into the world and spread these germs to the previously unexposed (a la the American Indians), the previously unexposed population is virtually destroyed. Smallpox and Measles won the West, with the Colt .45 playing a much smaller role.
The Eurasians also wound up with
grains that were not only storable but
grains that could be transplanted across a huge landmass (Eurasia) simply because of Eurasia’s East-West configuration. The winter-summer-rain-drought periods are the same across this expanse, allowing easy transplantation, whereas crops domesticated in other parts of the world (as in the Americas, with a North-South orientation) face greatly different winter-summer-rain-drought periods as you head north or south across the temperate and tropic zones.
There’s more, but that’s some of the more interesting points.
For people who’ve both read the book and seen the show, is the show an accurate depiction of Diamond’s thesis? I realize the book probably covers a lot of details the show can’t, but overall is it faithful? Are their any glaring omissions?
Right now, I’m kinda with dropzone. He didn’t explain why Europe became the global power, but rather why New Guinea and the Native Americans didn’t. And most of the reasons were fairly obvious. But why did Europe do so much better than China or India? Why within Europe did certain countries prosper and others decline? Why did the center of power shift from Meditterranean states to Atlantic states?
I’m curious if the book goes into these details, but my reading list is pretty full right now.
I agree with the OP that the book was unsatisfying, but for other reasons.
In particular, it seems totally obvious to me, and not at all surprising, that people from a large landmass are going to be more likely to “advance” than people from a smaller one. The really interesting question, however, is why it was Western Europe instead of China, India, Russia, Turkey, or any other part of Eurasia that had such a huge explosion of technology and power.
Did you actualy read the book? Because this summary makes it look as if you didn’t.
It wasn’t large land mass vs. small. The Americas ain’t chump change in terms of land mass. But the Ameruicas are primarily north/south, while Eurasias is east/west, making it far, far more likely to spread plants and the animals that feed on them across large areas.
Eurasia also had many more domesticated species than the Americas duid, and this helped in many ways – increasing population, increasing technology (because of the musclepoweer of animals), and in a great many other ways, including, paradoxically, the development of a pool of diseases the Americans weren’t ready to cope with.
There’s a great deal more, which a single post won’t do justice to. Diamond has syncretized a lot of detailsd from other writers and integrated it into an interesting whole (including my favorite anthropologist, Marvin Harris). The conclusions of Harris and others are by no means obvious, and neither are the results Diamond has built out of them.
Is that “(!)” supposed to indicate surprise that there were camels in the New World? There are actually twice as many camelid species in the western hemisphere than in the east–they’re called llamas.
What I found interesting was that EVEN if the various Indians killed every European they saw, they were still were doomed as a people because of the diseases, that the Europeans brought and they had no defense against.
Diamond seems to know that quite well. He even goes on to say in the book that Llamas were never used the same way in the Americas as the Camels in Africa and Asia, certainly not for farming or riding or pulling carts.
Actually, there was quite a great deal of cultural diffusion if you consider that the Great Plains, basically a single, grass-based ecosystem, is LARGER than Europe that doesn’t really wash. Had the same same effort been made to domesticate the bison as was made to domesticate cattle, which are no less skittish and untameable in their wild forms, in Eurasia you would have a large draft animal fully capable of busting sod. Add in the maize that was already being grown and mineral resources that are close to the surface and the Mississippian people could have done even better than they did. So why didn’t they?
Okay, I’ve changed my mind. Diamond is full of it and maybe I should read his book so I can laugh at him from a position of knowledge. It’s just so hard on the other people in the house when I start yelling at books. “You said WHAT?!?!?” “Did you pull that out of your ass?” “How the hell did you get published?”
Spot on with respect to my thoughts as well. Everything started in the Fertile Crescent. Diamond even admits that the European plant and animal species of importance all came from the Fertile Crescent. So using the same logic of a “huge head start,” why doesn’t the Fertile Crescent/North African portion of the world dominate Europe, Asia, and Australia today?
It’s also interesting with respect to places like Afghanistan. You often hear of the opposite of Diamond’s theory, that the harsh, difficult places to live are very difficult to invade and dominate, because: 1) the resources are poor, you can’t live off the land; and 2) the natives are “tougher” and more used to the harsh environment. I suppose Diamond would just say (or may have said) that with respect to places like Australia and Africa, the Europeans simply cherry-picked the more habitable places to take over, and left the deserts to the natives.
It’s just so hard on the other people in the house when I start yelling at books. “You said WHAT?!?!?” “Did you pull that out of your ass?” “How the hell did you get published?”