Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond
 The prologue opens with an account of Diamond's conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and technology between Yali's people and the Europeans who dominated the land for 200 years, differences that neither of them considered due to any genetic superiority of Europeans. Yali asked, using the local term "cargo" for inventions and manufactured goods, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" (p.&nbsp;14) Diamond realized the same question seemed to apply elsewhere: "People of Eurasian origin... dominate the world in wealth and power." Other peoples, after having thrown off colonial domination, still lag in wealth and power. Still others, he says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists." (p.&nbsp;15) The peoples of other continents (Sub-Saharan Africans, Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans, and the original inhabitants of tropical Southeast Asia) have been largely conquered, displaced and in some extreme cases – referring to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians and South Africa's indigenous Khoisan peoples – largely exterminated by farm-based societies such as Eurasians and Bantu. He believes this is due to the societies' military and political advantages, stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the last Ice Age. He proposes explanations to account for such disproportionate distributions of power and achievements. The book's title is a reference to the means by which farm-based societies conquered populations of other areas and maintained dominance, despite sometimes being vastly out-numbered&nbsp;– superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns); Eurasian diseases weakened and reduced local populations, who had no immunity, making it easier to maintain control over them (germs), and centralized government promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel). The book uses geography to show how Europeans developed such superior military technology, and how Europeans and Asians developed some immunity to diseases which spread among them, while epidemics of them devastated the indigenous populations in the Americas after European contact. Eurasia was the beneficiary of favorable geographic, climatic and environmental characteristics, particularly after the last Ice Age about 13,000–15,000 years ago. Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions. In our earliest societies, humans lived as hunter-gatherers. The first step towards civilization is the move from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, with the domestication and farming of wild crops and animals. Agricultural production leads to food surpluses, which supports sedentary societies, specialization of craft, rapid population growth, and specialization of labor. Large societies tend to develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which may lead in turn to the organization of nation states and empires. Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the greater availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, Eurasia had the best collection of plants and animals suitable for domestication&nbsp;– barley, two varieties of wheat and three protein-rich pulses for food; flax for textiles; goats, sheep and cattle provided meat, leather, glue (by boiling the hooves and bones) and, in the case of sheep, wool. As early Middle Eastern civilizations began to trade, they found additional useful animals in adjacent territories, most notably horses and donkeys for use in transport. In contrast, Native American farmers had to struggle to develop maize as a useful food from its probable wild ancestor, teosinte; moreover, it provides few nutrients and must be planted one by one&nbsp;– an extremely cumbersome task. Eurasians had wheat and barley, which are high in fiber and nutrients and can be sown en masse with just a toss of the hand. They generated food surpluses which supported greater population growth. Such growth led to larger workforces and more inventors, artisans, etc. Grains can also be stored for longer periods of time unlike tropical crops such as bananas. Eurasia as a whole domesticated 13 species of large animals (over 100&nbsp;lb / 44&nbsp;kg); South America just one (counting the llama and alpaca as breeds within the same species); the rest of the world none at all. Diamond describes the small number of domesticated species (14 out of 148 "candidates") as an instance of the Anna Karenina principle: many promising species have just one of several significant difficulties that prevent domestication. Sub-Saharan Africans had mostly wild mammals, whereas Eurasians chanced to have the most docile large animals on the planet: horses and camels that are easily tamed for human transport; but their biological relatives zebras and onagers are untameable; and although African elephants can be tamed, it is very difficult to breed them in captivity; goats and sheep for hides, clothing, and cheese; cows for milk; bullocks for tilling fields and transport; and benign animals such as pigs and chickens. Africans, developing alongside large mammals, had available lions, leopards etc. Diamond points out that the only animals useful for human survival and purposes in New Guinea came from the East Asian mainland when they were transplanted during the Austronesian settlement some 4,000–5,000 years ago. Eurasia's large landmass and long east-west distance increased these advantages. Its large area provided it with more plant and animal species suitable for domestication, and allowed its people to exchange both innovations and diseases. Its East-West orientation allowed breeds domesticated in one part of the continent to be used elsewhere through similarities in climate and the cycle of seasons. In contrast, Australia suffered from a lack of useful animals due to extinction, probably by human hunting, shortly after the end of the Pleistocene. The Americas had difficulty adapting crops domesticated at one latitude for use at other latitudes (and, in North America, adapting crops from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the other). Africa was fragmented by its extreme variations in climate from North to South: plants and animals that flourished in one area never reached other areas where they could have flourished, because they could not survive the intervening environment. Europe was the ultimate beneficiary of Eurasia's East-West orientation: in the first millennium BC, the Mediterranean areas of Europe adopted the Middle East's animals, plants, and agricultural techniques; in the first millennium AD, the rest of Europe followed suit. The plentiful supply of food and the dense populations that it supported made division of labor possible. The rise of non-farming specialists such as craftsmen and scribes accelerated economic growth and technological progress. These economic and technological advantages eventually enabled Europeans to conquer the peoples of the other continents in recent centuries by using the "Guns" and "Steel" of the book's title. Eurasia's dense populations, high levels of trade, and living in close proximity to livestock resulted in widespread transmission of diseases, including from animals to humans. Natural selection forced Eurasians to develop immunity to a wide range of pathogens. When Europeans made contact with America, European diseases (to which they had no immunity) ravaged the indigenous American population, rather than the other way around (the "trade" in diseases was a little more balanced in Africa and southern Asia: endemic malaria and yellow fever made these regions notorious as the "white man's grave"; and syphilis may have spread in the opposite directionThe origin of syphilis is still debated. Some researchers think it was known to Hippocrates: Others think it was brought from the Americas by Columbus and his successors: ). The European diseases&nbsp;– the "Germs" of the book's title&nbsp;– decimated indigenous populations so that relatively small numbers of Europeans could maintain their dominance. Guns, Germs, and Steel also offers a very brief explanation of why western European societies, rather than other powers such as China, have been the dominant colonizers. * Other advanced cultures developed in areas whose geography was conducive to large, monolithic, isolated empires. In these conditions policies of technological and social stagnation could persist&nbsp;– until Europeans arrived. China was a very notable example; in 1432, a new Emperor outlawed the building of ocean-going ships, in which China was the world leader at the time. * Europe's geography favored balkanization into smaller, closer, nation-states, as its many natural barriers (mountains, rivers) provide defensible borders. As a result, governments that suppressed economic and technological progress soon corrected their mistakes or were out-competed relatively quickly. As an example of this national Darwinism, Diamond offers the disappearance of the counter-progressive Polish regime. He argues that geographical factors created the conditions for more rapid internal superpower change (Spain succeeded by France and then by England) than was possible elsewhere in Eurasia. Diamond examined European dominance in more detail with further examples in a later article.