I finally read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. When the book first came out it had not been on my reading list even though several acquaintances recommended it. Since then I have seen it referenced in many other books and felt I finally had to get around to reading it. I am glad I did. Although in many ways there is no new research or information in the book, Diamond does take information that I had come across before and analyze it in a different way. Whether or not his theory is correct, he has made me look at history and human development in a new way and in that sense his book is successful.
Before reading the book I had encountered various criticisms, one of the most frequent being that Diamond reduces all of human history to geography without giving any weight to cultural, political, and religious differences between peoples. To a certain extent this is true, but it is in fact a gross simplification and misreading. I am not sure, after reading this book that Diamond would say that these differences do not matter, but that they really do not affect his major premise.
The book is focused more on the differences in human development from our primitive state to our modern state, and why those changes developed primarily among peoples on the Eurasian continent rather than among those elsewhere. It is most definitely not concerned with the reasons that, once the march of technology had begun, it was Europe as opposed to Asia or the Middle East that conquered the rest of the world. This book is not, for the most part interested in historical development during the time of recorded history, but how we got to that time. In that sense, this book is not really a study of history but more of a work of cultural environmentalism or environmental anthropology.
Looked at in that narrow sense, which is actually the broader time span of human history, but probably the least interesting in terms of modern historical development, Diamond probably makes a reasonable point when he asserts that the differences that lead up to the development of modern human history can be broken down into four basic factors:
1. Availability of potential plants and animals for domestication, leading humans to settle down into static communities rather than nomadic bands.
2. The orientation of continental axis to facilitate the spread of agriculture and information across the same or similar latitude.
3. Transfer of knowledge between groups of people, again made easier by differences of weather and terrain.
4. Population size, which is again based on the first premise as settled groups of people who can feed themselves are more inclined to larger populations than nomadic bands who must search for food.
The book contains a wealth of materials supporting these theses and it is for the most part excellently presented. The book is not at all a difficult read, at times downright chatty, and this could be described as a strong point (readable) or weak point as these chatty conversational sections tend to reveal more of Diamond’s biases and often lapse into cliches. In fact what I believe makes the book so successful is that it is for the most part readable and has managed to take the theory of geographic determinacy to a much wider audience. As I said previously, the information presented is not new, I have encountered most of the facts before, and even the theory behind it is not new either. But the book presents the facts and a rather grand overreaching theory in a new, mostly cohesive, way that has obviously reached many and caught public attention at a time when it was receptive to this information, even if not always in agreement.
Lastly I want to address the issue of political correctness which has certainly been leveled at Diamond. Yes the book has a bias. It is true it does not give a full rounded view of human history, but that is not really its aim. Yes it argues that the differences in the development of society, at least until the beginnings of the modern age of statehood and technology, were completely rooted in outside factors, not issues of intelligence or race. In fact Diamond argues that all peoples and races are essentially equal intelligence and who ended up on top at least started out as a question of geography. In fact some of his arguments about intelligence and society could be easily taken up by proponents of either side of the race/intelligence debate.
Aside from making the reader think about human development, society, and how we got here, assuming that in darkest prehistory we all started out equal on an unequal playing field, the book also reminds us that we are still not that different from our more “primitive” ancestors and reminds us that human history if full of the violent and brutish overpowering the naive, uninformed, and non-violent. He reminds us that true genius is a rare thing in human history and accidents of human geography, human development, cultural development and technology all shape whether innovations are accepted and incorporated into a culture or lost. Having a larger population increases the chance of innovation, as does technology itself, but only the structure and veneer of society itself keeps us from falling back on our natures. Human societies that forget these basic lessons do so at their own peril.
Although it is not Diamond’s point, the lions are always at the gate.
