A Scholarly Work
Guns, Germs and Steel - The Fates of Human Societies written by Jared Diamond and published by Penguin Random House in 1998 is a brief history of evolution of human civilization. Before we delve into the specifics of the book, we must introduce the author Jared Diamond, for he is one of the prolific author writing on evolution, human history. He is professor of Geography at UCLA and won Pulitzer Prize for this book. In order to explore the evolutionary process deeper he studied anthropology, biology, genetics, linguistics, ecology and history. His scholarship leaves an indelible mark which is evident in the book.
The book revolves around the quest of the author to find answer as to why human development proceeded at such different rates in different continents and societies. What factors have caused this differential rate of evolution where even nearly placed societies experienced different growth trajectory. He spent 33 years in New Guinea for understanding the society. He specialises in the study of bird evolution, which he has studied in South America, southern Africa, Indonesia, Australia, and lastly New Guinea.
The book which starts with prologue of his discussion with native Guinean Yali leads to main body of the book which is divided into 4 parts on different themes:
Part 1 titled from Eden to Cajamarca: consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 provides a overview of human evolution and history, extending from our divergence from apes, around 7 million years ago, till the end of the last Ice Age. The author discusses what is civilisation and its contexts and what the term "rise of civilization" means. It turns out that human development in some parts of the globe got way ahead as compared to others. Chapter 2 explores effects of continental environments on history over the past 13,000 years, by briefly examining effects of island environments. When ancestral Polynesians spread into the Pacific around 3,200 years ago, they encountered islands differing greatly in their environments.
The third chapter introduces us to conquest of South America by Europeans. The capture of Inca emperor, Atahuallpa, in the presence of his whole army, by Francisco Pizarro of Spain and his tiny army at Cajamarca. The author identifies factors like germs (yes! a prime factor), horses, political organization and technology (especially ships and weapons). The author has done threadbare analysis and its a revealing one. He writes, "Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population. The most populous and highly organized native societies of North America, the Mississippian chiefdoms, disappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600s, even before Europeans themselves made their first settlement on the Mississippi River. A smallpox epidemic in 1713 was the biggest single step in the destruction of South Africa's native San people by European settlers. Soon after the British settlement of Sydney in 1788, the first of the epidemics that decimated Aboriginal Australians began. A well-documented example from Pacific islands is the epidemic that swept over Fiji in 1806, brought by a few European sailors who struggled ashore from the wreck of the ship Argo. Similar epidemics marked the histories of Tonga, Hawaii, and other Pacific islands. I do not mean to imply, however, that the role of disease in history was confined to paving the way for European expansion."
Part 2 "The Rise and Spread of Food Production" discusses how organised agriculture led to rise of nation states and bureaucracies. Chapter 4 sketches how food production—that is, the growing of food by agriculture or herding, instead of the hunting and gathering of wild food. But it varied around the globe. In Chapter 5, peoples in some parts of the world developed food production by themselves; some other peoples acquired it in prehistoric times from those independent centers. Chapter 6 discusses factors driving the shift from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle toward food production.
Part 3 discusses, the evolution of germs characteristic of dense human populations. It points that far more Native Americans and other non-Eurasian peoples were killed by Eurasian germs than by guns or weapons. the author has pointed recent molecular biological studies hint linking germs to the rise of food production in Europe as copared to America. Also food production led to writing, which made sapiens as unique in animal world. Writing has evolved de novo only a few times in human history, in areas that had been the earliest sites of the rise of food production in their respective regions. By enabling farmers to generate food surpluses, food production permitted farming societies to support full-time craft specialists who did not grow their own food and developed technologies. Besides sustaining scribes and inventors, food production also enabled farmers to support politicians. It also led to the rise of chiefs, kings, and bureaucrats. Such bureaucracies were essential for governing large population, armies and organizing wars of conquest.
Part 4 titled "Around the World in Five Chapters," In chapters 16-19 the author discusses the polynesian Islands and nearby Australia and how the conquest shaped the both society, China, Africa. He discusses Africa in detail in How Africa became Black and a case for Bantu tribe expansion destroying Khoisan tribe which was more in number.
The Epilogue, entitled "The Future of Human History as a Science," the author identifies 4 set of environmental factors for differecnes in response as:
The first set consists of continental differences in the wild plant and animal species available as starting materials for domestication. A second set of factors consists of those affecting rates of diffusion and migration, which differed greatly among continents. They were most rapid in Eurasia, because of its east-west major axis and its relatively modest ecological and geographical barriers. A third set of factors influencing diffusion between continents, which may also help build up a local pool of domesticates and technology. Ease of intercontinental diffusion has varied, because some continents are more isolated than others. Within the last 6,000 years it has been easiest from Eurasia to sub-Saharan Africa, supplying most of Africa's species of livestock.
The fourth and last set of factors consists of continental differences in area or total population size. A larger area or population means more potential inventors, more competing societies, more innovations available to adopt—and more pressure to adopt and retain innovations, because societies failing to do so will tend to be eliminated by competing societies.
He mentions that "One can think of other individuals whose idiosyncrasies apparently influenced history as did Hitler's: Alexander the Great, Augustus, Buddha, Christ, Lenin, Martin Luther, the Inca emperor Pachacuti, Mohammed, William the Conqueror, and the Zulu king Shaka, to name a few. To what extent did each really change events, as opposed to "just" happening to be the right person in the right place at the right time? At the one extreme is the view of the historian Thomas Carlyle: "Universal history, the history of what man [sic] has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here."
The book is a treasure. It is full of new insights and how the relationship evolved between different factors in different manner in different geographies. Though all the chapters are connected to the central theme of evolution but you can read any chapter and it'll offer a complete picture of the aspect dealt in.
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