Why Societies Fall Edition

Guns, Germs, And Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond

A few years ago I read a book about Poland and when I was done with it all I could think of was one thing: location means everything if a country is to thrive. It goes without saying that I love living in America but I would probably feel very differently about it if I was wedged in between Russia and Germany, or lived in a place that was the stomping grounds for the Huns and Nazis during their reigns of terror and rise to power. America is sandwiched in between Canada and Mexico–two countries with mostly benign histories and a world of differences in terms of climates and topology. Conversely, Poland sits within a crossroads that countries throughout history have looked to annex and/or destroy. One thing I never thought of, though, is this: while America benefitted from its geographical location and Europe was always undergoing a constant upheaval, why did Europe wind up conquering America (both North and South) and not the other way around?

In Guns, Germs, And Steel, Jared Diamond attempts to answer that very question and others: why did Europe and Asia conquer the world and not the other way around? Why didn’t Africa conquer Europe? Why didn’t Australia conquer South America or Asia? Why did Asia, which had such a technological advantage over Europe for so long, eventually falter? One of the first things Diamond points out is that history is typically very racist in its explanations (i.e.-the Europeans conquered the world because the rest of the world were colored savages when they arrived) and it is refreshing to see up front that idea rightfully discredited. We have a tendency to believe, at minimum, in an abstract sense, that the Eurasians were able to conquer the New World with such ease was because the New World inhabitants (Indians, Polynesians, nomadic hunter-gatherers, and the various peoples that splintered from any combination of the three) were simple savages with simple tools and could not fight against the more established navies and armies of Eurasian countries. To be sure, there is some truth to the weapons-deficiency argument but it does not fully explain why only one hundred Europeans were able to overthrow a Peruvian government of many thousands in essentially one day. Were the Europeans that much more awesome in the art of war? Not necessarily. How were they able to conquer countries in which they were completely outnumbered? It is simple: it was because of farming and large domesticated animals.

As Diamond points out throughout the book, the “Fertile Crescent” (shown here with ancient names denoted) allowed the earliest humans the luxury of having the greatest amount of large fertile crops (this area had the largest indigent species of wheat, barley, and sorghum) to be domesticated and the greatest concentration of large animals that could eventually be domesticated. In the entire history of mankind up to this point, we have only been able to domesticate a handful of large animals (cow, ox, horse, goat, etc.) and almost all of them come from this area of the world. What does this have to do with overthrowing foreign societies? Living in areas where you can farm and domesticate animals and, in turn, have your newly domesticated animals do most of the hard labor on your behalf (an ox that can plow a field) means that you will become sedentary, have a family, build a house, and, eventually, select a government to help with the running of your village while also working with and being cognizant of other villages’ needs. Most importantly, too, is that large groups of people living together also become immune to germs that will invariably begin to spread once sedentary areas become more dense. Seen in this context, it becomes very simple to see why nation upon nation of hunter-gatherers and tropical peoples who could care less about politics and working with others to improve upon technical innovations were trampled under foot with relative ease.

Needless to say, this book is a must-read and I could probably write a 12,000 word review about it if left unchecked (I could go on and on about the chapters about how the axes of the continents and climate played a huge hand in stunting growth throughout most of the world but I’ll resist). It is an eye-opening experience to read how succinctly (the book is under five hundred pages yet its scope is thirteen thousand years) Diamond points out of the natural advantages given to the areas within and surrounding the Fertile Crescent area and how this played a huge role in the development of the modern world. My only real complaints about the book are the points in which linguistics is brought up (which is not a lot, but still) and that Diamond over-refers to animal and plant domestication. Regarding the first point, linguistics, to me, is something that is hard for me to identify with; it tended to make me yawn more than normal when reading it. The latter point was more of an annoyance as Diamond repeatedly references domestication even into the later chapters after his point was already adequately made.

All in all, if you are someone who is curious about or enjoys reading about world history and how our humble beginnings as modern humans began this book will most likely be nothing less than brilliant and fascinating. Behind all of Diamond’s desire to teach the reader what he knows by writing this book is a background goal of making academia hip to the point that history can have its own niche as a legitimate science, working in conjunction with archaeologists, anthropologists, and scientists. The scope of this book is huge and, naturally, there are some flaws with such an undertaking but it is ultimately an incredible journey that does not require you to be a professor. This is the kind of the book that could be viewed in the future as genuinely groundbreaking, a smaller scale Origin Of Species of the late twentieth century.

And, like any truly great history book, it reminds you once again that we humans sometimes give ourselves to much credit for our advancements as sometimes it is simply location, location, location that is the key.