# 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' - This is controversial? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 26, 2005, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248 "2005-07-26T16:35:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/41 "2005-07-27T07:51:11Z")
> [@Bearflag70](#): > > QUESTION: Why would Europeans kick ass in tropical America but suck ass in tropical Africa? Europeans didn’t kick any more ass in tropical America did they? There was never a truly permanent European colony set up in tropical America. There were any number of get-rich-quick schemes and military bases with associated European governors but no European colonies. That is precisely comparable to the European experience in tropical Africa excluding (arguably) Cape Town and Jo’burg (and those two cities are barely tropical). Compare that to temperate America where there were countless European colonies established, and most prospered. Even genetically the Europeans never prospered in tropical America. As you pointed out most native tropical Americans were killed. That meant that the European entrepreneurs and military made up a relatively massive amount of the genetics of the area. And yet it would be all but impossible to find someone in tropical America who had only or even primarily European blood. The Europeans have been genetically swamped. There may be relatively more European genetic legacy in tropical America than in Africa but that’s solely because they started with less competing non-European genetic material. Compare that to temperate America or Australia where European genes dominate convincingly. I can’t see in what way Europeans were any more successful in tropical America than in tropical Africa. They never dominated either location genetically. Although a higher starting base and more favourable disease resistance led to slightly better results in the Americas it is in no way comparable to European genetic impact in temperate America or temperate Australia. The cultural, economic and military successes of Europeans seems to be equivalent in both tropical Africa and Tropical America, although once again a smaller and more fragile local population probably made the effect somewhat greater in the Americas. Can I ask you in what way you believe that Europeans dominated the Americas that they didn’t dominate Africa that can’t be explained simply because the Americas had a much smaller and resultantly culturally impoverished population? ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/42 "2005-07-27T12:04:40Z")
Wheat usually self-fertilizes, but will also sometimetimes cross-fertilize. Maybe corn will not do the later without help. All I know there is a difference between corn and wheat. (corn is more different form its wild ancestor than what, but I was thinking of a another differenece) Brian ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/43 "2005-07-27T12:19:27Z")
> [@](#): > > Quote: > Originally Posted by N9IWP > factoid: > Corn, unlike wheat, needs human help to germanate. > > What does this mean? I know that I can plant several varieties of maize and they will all germinate without scarification etc. What help does it need that wheat doesn’t? Corn is, to quote a Scientific American article on it from a few decades back, “a biological monstrosity”. I don’t think it needs human help to germinate, but modern people-eaten corn contains huge numbers of kernels stuck close together and easy to eat, hundreds to a “cob”. Look at the natural-living ancestor – it has perhaps six “kernels” stuck onto something you’d only call a “cob” because it holds all the kernels. Human breeding and cultivation produced modern corn, brede to be useful to humans. “real” corn doesn’t have problems dropping off its cob and doesn’t drop ridiculous numbers of kernels to compete pointlessly with each other for precious resources. I’m not sure that modern corn would survive in the wild. ---
**Author:** ![LateComer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5ac83/32.png) [@LateComer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LateComer)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/44 "2005-07-27T13:05:28Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Even genetically the Europeans never prospered in tropical America. As you pointed out most native tropical Americans were killed. That meant that the European entrepreneurs and military made up a relatively massive amount of the genetics of the area. **And yet it would be all but impossible to find someone in tropical America who had only or even primarily European blood**. The Europeans have been genetically swamped. There may be relatively more European genetic legacy in tropical America than in Africa but that’s solely because they started with less competing non-European genetic material. Compare that to temperate America or Australia where European genes dominate convincingly. Bolding mine. This statement confuses me. Are not the Spanish and Portuguese European and do these ethnicities not dominate Central and South America? Did you mean just British and not European? Please explain. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/45 "2005-07-27T13:06:56Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > That is precisely comparable to the European experience in tropical Africa excluding (arguably) Cape Town and Jo’burg (and those two cities are barely tropical). Cape Town isn’t remotely tropical. We have a lovely Mediterranean climate, very suitable for European crops. Our biggest crops are wheat, grapes and fruit like apples, pears etc. Jo’burg benefits from high altitude, lessening the effect of its latitude somewhat. Also, it’s only really been a city worth speaking of since late Victorian times, way after any wave of colonisation was over. I just have one thing to add: **dropzone** , the thesis of GG&S may not be controversial to _you_ or most 'dopers, but it’s certainly a kick up the arse for all the mouthbreathing Europhiles and white supremacists out there. there may be more of them than you think - anyone who uses the term “those people” or “lesser races”, f’rex ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/46 "2005-07-27T13:12:39Z")
> [@LateComer](#): > > Bolding mine. This statement confuses me. Are not the Spanish and Portuguese European and do these ethnicities not dominate Central and South America? Did you mean just British and not European? Please explain. The Spanish and Portugese may be european, but very few of the poeple at the top in Latin America are pureblood Spanish/Portugese anymore. This especially holds true for the more tropical bits like Brazil. Large amounts of Indian and African inheritance, hell, in Brazil there’s probably just as much Japanese as Portugese by now. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/47 "2005-07-27T13:27:50Z")
> [@Bearflag70](#): > > In Episode 2, he explained how the Europeans kicked ass against the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas in the Americas. One of the contibuting factors was that the European germs spreas to the Natives, but not the other way around. The reason most germs spread one-way is that Europeans had enhanced immune systems because they had been domesticating animals in close quarters for ages. No mention was made of Europeans setbacks due to American germs. > > Fast forward to Episode 3. He says the Europeans landed in South Africa and prospered. Then, they moved north and eventually hit the tropics. The Europeans, their crops, and their animals couldn’t hack the tropics. One huge reason is tropical germ malaria. > > QUESTION: Why would Europeans kick ass in tropical America but suck ass in tropical Africa? Central Africa is where early hominids evolved, and where other closely related primates live. Mesoamerica isn’t. Thus, it’s hardly surprising that the former would have a bigger pool of local diseases to which humans are susceptible. Eurasian populations had more disease resistance than most others because of their trade and domestic animals, but they were semi-isolated from the central African disease pool (and thus got clobbered by it when they did try moving in). ---
**Author:** ![SlyFrog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@SlyFrog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlyFrog)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/48 "2005-07-27T14:11:24Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Diamond did address that. In brief his hypothesis is that the properity of the fertile crescent was almost exclusively built on floodplain cultivation. The rest of the region has mostly shallow, fragile soils with limited rainfall. The area could only ever support a few larger concentrated population centres on the best floodplains. Those population centres became essentially city states that controlled the surrounding subsistence farmers and grazers. Even though the floodplain states were often forged into empires the civilisations were always entirely dependent on the floodplains. Being so concentrated made them extremely vulnerable to military overthrow, disease and natural disaster. In contrast when Europe finally managed to get agricutural civilisations they were dispersed. Almost every square mile could support a self-sustaining kingdom. That made military overthrow of systems extremely difficult and prolonged forcing cultural/technological integration. > > As a result when the Romans conquered the region that had been Babylon/Medo-Persia etc. they destroyed the culture entirely by controlling the floodplain cities. In contrast when several waves of people invaded Rome the capital and culture simply dispersed. > > I can?t see any flaw in that reasoning nor can I see how Diamond glossed over it. Floodplain cultivation was ideal for forcing the adoption of agriculture and civilisation, but once it was a perfected lifestyle the dispersed agriculture allowed by fertile and wet European conditions gave it a huge advantage. Thus the fertile crescent dominated in the early stages but wained rapidly due to its specific vulnerabilities as Europe took off. First of all, I’ll confess that I do not have a good memory of him writing that in the book, which may mean that it is time to go reread it. That being said, Diamond covers (if I recall) about 11,000 years of history. Only in the last 500-1,000 have the Europeans really taken off. It seems odd to me that the “head start” would keep the Middle East in play as a great power (even through the Ottoman Empire) for 10,000 years, but then suddenly (in terms of overall time) the natural climate of Europe and its fertile and wet conditions would make the difference in a short span of time. > [@Blake](#): > > Diamond doesn?t say that though. > > Whether an area becomes a great power base doesn?t just depend on it being defensible. It needs to be defensible but it also needs excess resources to allow it to project its culture onto its neighbours. That?s what it all hinges on really. 20 miles underground is highly defensible but it lacks any exploitable resources and so no one even lives there. Desert or mountain regions have enough resources to permit existence, but not enough to permit the inhabitants to project their influence. > > Whether anyone could or would want to invade such areas is rather moot. In the case of Afghanistan for example everyone form Alexander to Victoria has wanted to control it because it controls a vital trade and military route. But that didn?t make Afghanistan a great power, not did the Afghanis ability to resists invasion because they lacked the resources to ever control anyone else?s territory. That wasn’t my point. I think there is a difference between dominating and ability to resist domination. And to my understanding, the Afghanis have resisted invasions in part because of their lack of resources and greater adaptability to the hostile and resource poor climate they live in. ---
**Author:** ![lno](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a8b319/32.png) [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/49 "2005-07-27T14:18:06Z")
“The Americas had corn - therefore his argument about food production is bull!” Paraphrased, of course. pp 356-357 of _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, where Diamond recaps the data he has presented and begins to weave it together: > [@](#): > > …It is striking that the areas of Native America without food production included what today, after Europeans’ arrival, are some of the most productive farmlands and pastures of both North and South America: the Pacific states of the Unites States, Canada’s wheat belt, the pampas of Argentina, and the Mediterranean zone of Chile. The former absence of food production in these lands was due entirely to their local paucity of domesticable wild animals and plants, and to geographic and ecological barriers that prevented the crops and the few domestic animal species of other parts of the Americas from arriving. These lands became productive not only for European settlers but also, in some cases, for Native Americans, as soon as Europeans introduced suitable domestic animals and crops. … These examples demonstrate that the sole missing ingredient required to sustain food production in large areas of the Americas were domestic animals and crops themselves. > > In those parts of the Americas that did support Native American agriculture, it was constrained by five major disadvantages vis-à-vis Eurasian agriculture: widespread dependence on protein-poor corn, instead of Eurasia’s diverse and protein-rich cereals; hand planting of individual seeds, instead of broadcast sowing; tilling by hand instead of plowing by animals, which enables one person to cultivate a much larger area, and which also permits cultivation of some fertile but tough soils and sods that are difficult to till by hand (such as those of the North American Great Plains); lack of animal manuring to increase soil fertility; and just human muscle power, instead of animal power, for agricultural tasks such as threshing, grinding, and irrigation. These differences suggest that Eurasian agriculture as of 1492 may have yielded on the average more calories and protein per person-hour of labor than Native American agriculture did. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/50 "2005-07-27T14:27:41Z")
> [@SlyFrog](#): > > First of all, I’ll confess that I do not have a good memory of him writing that in the book, which may mean that it is time to go reread it. That being said, Diamond covers (if I recall) about 11,000 years of history. Only in the last 500-1,000 have the Europeans really taken off. It seems odd to me that the “head start” would keep the Middle East in play as a great power (even through the Ottoman Empire) for 10,000 years, but then suddenly (in terms of overall time) the natural climate of Europe and its fertile and wet conditions would make the difference in a short span of time. Actually, his thesis was the complete opposite. His basic premise was that nearly all the factors that lead to european success were already there by the end of the ice age and many far before that. A sufficiently smart alien civilisation visiting earth at 11,000BC would be able to predict, due to purely geographical factors, the inevitability of europe dominating the globe. This, in essense was what was so startling about his thesis and what makes it so controversial. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/51 "2005-07-27T15:18:40Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > …One word for you, my friend: Corn. Grown from Chile in the south to Illinois and Nebraska in the north and in some mighty different conditions, from desert to slashed and burned jungle. Diamond is clearly full of it there. However, for corn to spread from the temperate regions in South America to the temperate regions in North America (or vice versa), it has to pass through the equatorial regions. Every time a culture may have tried to move corn north-south, they had to cope with differing day-night cycles and climates. Eurasian grains, however, could spread largely east-west, with similar day-night cycles and less-radical latitude changes. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/52 "2005-07-27T15:19:33Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > …but the point to remember is that few if any scientists actually ascribe the mass extinctions solely or primarily to hunting. This is countered by a paraphrase of Diamond: > [@Shalmanese](#): > > The cause of the great megafauna extinction of Australia and North America was due to humans hunting them. This is still debated by some academics but I think the general consensus was that he was correct. But in addition to epidemics and hunting and, specifically, the particularly wasteful hunting methods of the early Americans, like setting fires to drive entire herds off cliffs\*, there were also the sudden (in geological and evolutionary terms) ecological changes from the retreating glaciers. But yeah, I already admitted I need to read the book. > [@Shalmanese](#): > > Could you please give a brief summary of your qualifications? I’m not being snarky, it would be easier framing arguments if we knew exactly what level you were approaching them from. If you really are an expert in the areas he’s discussed, then of course your going to be annoyed. No snark read into it and I was excessively huffy. Just a BA in Anthropology and Archeology from a second-tier state school but I like to think that puts my expertise, while nowhere closer to that of, say, **CalMeacham** , still a bit above that of a schlub off the street. - - Don’tcha just laugh when you hear people go on about how American Indians are “one with nature” and “the original environmentalists?” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/53 "2005-07-27T15:27:41Z")
> [@](#): > > No snark read into it and I was excessively huffy. Just a BA in Anthropology and Archeology from a second-tier state school but I like to think that puts my expertise, while nowhere closer to that of, say, CalMeacham, still a bit above that of a schlub off the street. Aaaaah! Many thanks for the compliment, but I’m not sure I deserve it. To tell the truth, I think _I’m_ just a Schlub off the street in these matters. Just a _well-read_ schlub off th street. I’ve got degrees in physics and engineering, which doesn’t really qualify me to pronounce on matters anthropological and archaeological. Although I have been doing so, for years. My defense is that I try to back it up with cites. And God knows, this Board won’t let you get away with less than that. ---
**Author:** ![SlyFrog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@SlyFrog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlyFrog)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/54 "2005-07-27T15:39:50Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Actually, his thesis was the complete opposite. His basic premise was that nearly all the factors that lead to european success were already there by the end of the ice age and many far before that. A sufficiently smart alien civilisation visiting earth at 11,000BC would be able to predict, due to purely geographical factors, the inevitability of europe dominating the globe. This, in essense was what was so startling about his thesis and what makes it so controversial. You are no longer reading what I am writing. I understand his thesis. I am not an idiot. What you wrote has nothing to do with what I wrote. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/55 "2005-07-27T16:03:21Z")
> [@robby](#): > > However, for corn to spread from the temperate regions in South America to the temperate regions in North America (or vice versa), it has to pass through the equatorial regions. Every time a culture may have tried to move corn north-south, they had to cope with differing day-night cycles and climates. Actually, it spread north and south from southern Mexico and, except in the furthest south regions, didn’t need to pass through the equator and, even then, it spread along the cool, tropical highlands that connect North and South Amerca so the climate was not that much different from one terminus to the other. Its spread may not have been as fast as wheat’s but it managed. Diamond’s statement on “widespread dependence on protein-poor corn” does not take into account the other crops being grown, especially beans and squashes, or the technique of soaking corn in lye to remove its seed coat and, incidentally, improve its nutritional value. Many early Americans ate a more balanced diet than their European contemporaries. I really do have to investigate why nobody domesticated the bison. I’ve seen some tame ones that people can even ride. Imagine what you could have if somebody started the process a couple thousand years ago. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > I’ve got degrees in physics and engineering, which doesn’t really qualify me to pronounce on matters anthropological and archaeological. What’s funny is that I’m the one working as an engineer and you’re the one with the books on ancient history! ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/56 "2005-07-27T16:33:07Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > I really do have to investigate why nobody domesticated the bison. I’ve seen some tame ones that people can even ride. Imagine what you could have if somebody started the process a couple thousand years ago.What’s funny is that I’m the one working as an engineer and you’re the one with the books on ancient history! Diamond goes into this. If I remember correctly, it has something to do with bison not being a herdable creature. He notes that even today, with modern technology, there have been no successful attempts at large scale, economic ranching of bison, kangaroo, emu etc. They still remain largely novelty meats. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/57 "2005-07-27T16:53:04Z")
Not a herdable creature? BISON?!?!?! How did he explain them covering the landscape, then? Were vast herds of bison coincidental gatherings? “Oh, hi, Bob. Wasn’t expecting to see you here. Looks like everybody showed up. Word must’ve got around about the good grazing here.” Anyway, I’m thinking of them more as draft animals than as a food source, though using your dogs to keep a small herd in line should be doable. ---
**Author:** ![LateComer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5ac83/32.png) [@LateComer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LateComer)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/58 "2005-07-27T17:00:18Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Not a herdable creature? BISON?!?!?! How did he explain them covering the landscape, then? Were vast herds of bison coincidental gatherings? “Oh, hi, Bob. Wasn’t expecting to see you here. Looks like everybody showed up. Word must’ve got around about the good grazing here.” > > Anyway, I’m thinking of them more as draft animals than as a food source, though using your dogs to keep a small herd in line should be doable. They’re herd creatures, but there are a lot of other factors which make an animal domesticatable. According to Diamond, bison are too surly to be domesticated despite their similarity to cows in other ways. Think of Zebras which have never been domesticated though they look and act a lot like horses. Diamond talks a lot about this issue. Large cats, hippos, elephants, there are a lot of large animals which could not be domesticated. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/59 "2005-07-27T17:03:15Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > It may not be surprising to you that that the island of Borneo didn’t dominate the world while the island of Britain did, but it has been a great mystery to many people for many centuries. > > I suspect the answer is not as simple as you suggest. Borneo matched Britain in terms of size, resources, population, foreign trade etc at various times in history, so why was it in any way obvious that Borneo wouldn’t be as advanced as Britain? Perhaps Borneo was a bad example. I wasn’t really looking for an actual literal island, just an example of some place out of the way. It is DEFINITELY clear to me that the more isolated from the rest of humanity any place is, the less likely it is to end up “advanced”. That’s a relatively trivial observation. I’d guess, without knowing much about southeast Asian geography, that Borneo is much more isolated from the mainland than Britain. A better analogue to Britain would be Japan. I also note that two people in this thread, commenting about China vs. Europe, have said exactly opposite things. One said that China has NOT been less advanced than Europe, with the industrial revolution just being a random blip, and the other saying that the greater geographic diversity, leading to multiple competing nations, led to Europe’s advancement. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248/60 "2005-07-27T17:16:43Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Diamond goes into this. If I remember correctly, it has something to do with bison not being a herdable creature. He notes that even today, with modern technology, there have been no successful attempts at large scale, economic ranching of bison, kangaroo, emu etc. They still remain largely novelty meats. This is one of the areas he’s wrong. There is large scale, economic ranching of bison. Thing is, they’re only just barely domesticated. The usual criterion is control over breeding, and in the case of bison, you just get the hell out of the way at that time of year. The only way to control which animals breed with which is to put them into seperate herds. But you don’t _want_ to have ten small herds of a bull and a dozen cows, because the bulls are lazy if there aren’t other bulls around to threaten them. So by and large, the bison are left to figure out the breeding stuff on their own. I think that in time the idea that the bison isn’t domesticable will be proven laughable. They’ve all the necessary features, particularly the hierarchical social structure, and they aren’t as surly as all that. (Not that I’d fancy being confined in a small pen with a bull, mind you, but the same could be said of many _Bos taurus_ bulls.) I really don’t know how you’d go about domesticating them if you weren’t already growing crops, though, and there wasn’t much overlap between bison range and sedentary agriculture in North America. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-germs-and-steel-this-is-controversial/314248.md?page=4)