This book sets out to answer the question that most people have thought about once or twice, but quickly dismiss because they are afraid of where their intuitions take them. The question is, why did certain civilizations advance into “civilized” modern cultures while others seemed to have gotten left behind in the stone age. Why does the UN exist in the same timeline as people who are still hunting with stone weapons? What might intuition say? Probably some form of “manifest destiny”. Well, that sort of thinking is thankfully inappropriate in our current discourse, but this self-censorship kills the question before a reasoned and viable alternative is presented. Therefore, due to the fear of your probably racist intuitions, you don’t spend enough time to see how they could possibly be wrong, you just ignore them like your aunt with the bad breath and close hugs. Well, Jared Diamond wants to give you some reasons you can look at that aunt with bad breath and show her the door.
Summary
We start with the statement that there are in fact huge differences between when certain cultures started doing things like food production and herding. We then look for possible explanations for these differences. Diamond makes a compelling case that is closely tied to the title Guns, Germs, and Steel. He didn’t work in Agriculture into the title, I think he should have. If you stop and think about it, almost all technology requires food production. Agriculture exponentially increases the amount of food that comes out of a square acre. It also helps that this food usually doesn’t try to run away or migrate. Now that you don’t have to follow seasonal patterns that means you can own more things than you can carry on your back. I digress, but food is important! So why might the Eurasian peoples have done agriculture first? One of Diamond’s compelling theories involves the actual shape of the continents themselves. The Eurasian continent is wider than it is taller, and vice versa for the Americas, and Africa. This means the climate is fairly similar in France and China, but differs tremendously from Mexico to Canada. This in turn means that domesticated plants had a harder time taking root (pun intended) in the varied climates of the Americas vs the relatively similar climate of Eurasia. Secondly, animal domestication. It turns out there are very few animals that make sense to domesticate. Large carnivores will probably eat you, a mouse is kinda gross, so that really only leaves you a handful of options. Especially since most of the other large animals were killed by your literal caveman ancestors….and the Younger Dryas impact you’re welcome, Randal Carlsen. So, guess who wins the cosmic domesticable animal raffle prize….. Eurasia. In all the Americas you ended up with only Turkey and Llamas, cute but worthless. In Australia, it’s even worse. To me the rest of the book is unnecessary. I may be way off base, but it seems patently obvious. Agriculture allowed more people per square foot. More people per square foot meant more fights. More fights meant factions. Factions means organization. Organization means centralization of power. Centralization of power is equivalent to centralization of resources. Centralization of resources creates an aristocracy. Aristocracy have time. Time allows for creativity to do things that didn’t matter before. This opens the door for changing the world with inventions like the wheel, gun powder etc. One neat side effect of animal domestication was disease. If you are of Eurasia descent, you can thank the thousands of ancestors who died developing your immunity.
Thoughts
I have not checked out the critical reception of this book, but I imagine it has ruffled a few feathers by his opiniated stance on various things that are currently hotly debated. Overall, an enjoyable read that seem to make a lot of sense. The end of the book he says people will call him a “geographic determinist” and that he is under valuing human creativity. To me “geographic determinism” seems obvious. If you don’t think so, you should play Sid Meir’s Civilization. I think in order to support the next Einstein or Edison, you have to have enough food stored so they aren’t having to constantly hunt rabbits.
Sapiens- A Brief History of Humankind