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| :"An alternate title would be: <cite>A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years</cite>." - Jared Diamond | :"An alternate title would be: <cite>A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years</cite>." - Jared Diamond | ||
| With '''Guns, Germs and Steel,''' Diamond says, he attempts to answer a simple assumption which still pervasive in western culture, namely: <cite>Western civilisation, as a whole, has survived and conquered others, because ''it'' is inherently superior.<cite> The implication of this line of thinking usually explain differences in cultural development as evidence of ] being a valid distinction. | With '''Guns, Germs and Steel,''' Diamond says, he attempts to answer a simple assumption which still pervasive in western culture, namely: <cite>Western civilisation, as a whole, has survived and conquered others, because ''it'' is inherently superior.</cite> The implication of this line of thinking usually explain differences in cultural development as evidence of ] being a valid distinction. | ||
| Diamond disagrees with this, and in common language, argues that the power and technology gaps dividing human societies developed not from cultural or racial differences, but from differing advantages present in different geography and resources. | Diamond disagrees with this, and in common language, argues that the power and technology gaps dividing human societies developed not from cultural or racial differences, but from differing advantages present in different geography and resources. | ||
Revision as of 06:01, 3 January 2003
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of antropology at UCLA. It won the Pulitzer Prize for 1998.
- "An alternate title would be: A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years." - Jared Diamond
With Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond says, he attempts to answer a simple assumption which still pervasive in western culture, namely: Western civilisation, as a whole, has survived and conquered others, because it is inherently superior. The implication of this line of thinking usually explain differences in cultural development as evidence of race being a valid distinction.
Diamond disagrees with this, and in common language, argues that the power and technology gaps dividing human societies developed not from cultural or racial differences, but from differing advantages present in different geography and resources.
Synopsis
Before anyone developed agriculture, people lived as hunter-gatherers, as some to this day sill do.
Diamond argues that European civilisation, and its people are distinct from other people in the world only in that Europe has a cultivated civilization. Civilization, he explains, is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity.
The key to civilization is agriculture. The keys to agriculture are domesticable animals for work, and temperate climate. The domesticability of an animal species requires that six criteria are met.
Diamond clearly argues that civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence, but is more like a stack of cards, each level dependent upon the levels below it.
Transition
GGS explains that cities are based on agriculture - to provide an ample supply of food. As farmers do the work of providing food, others are free to pursue other functions, such as mining, and literacy.
And making the change from hunter-gatherer to city-dwelling agrarian societies depended entirely on the presence of domesticable animals, of which, 13 come from the Eurasian continent region.
Of all the domesticable species in the world, only one comes from outside the temperate region of Eurasia, which extends nearly uninterrupted from eastern Europe to Asia. Only the Llama of South America is indigenous to lands outside of the temperate region of Eurasia. There are no domesticable animals native to Africa.
Geography
Diamond also explains how geography shapes human migration, not simply by making travel difficult, (particularly by longitude), but by how climates affect where domesticable animals can easily travel and where crops can ideally grow.
Modern humans are believed to have developed in the southern region of theafrican continent, at one time or another. This is sometimes refered to as the Out of Africa theory. It was the ] desert that is believed to have kept people from migrating north to the fertile crescent, until later when the Nile river valley became accomodating.
Some peoples, such as the Aborigines of Australia, are believed to have been early emmigrants from Africa, leaving by boat.
Diamond continues to explain the story of human development up to the modern era, through the rapid development of technology, and its dire conseequences on hunter-gathering cultures around the world.
Germs
In the later context of the European-American conquest of the Americas, 90 percent of the indigenous populations are believed to have been killed-off by diseases brought by the Europeans.
How was it then that diseases native to the American continents did not kill off Europeans? Diamond points out that the domestication of animals allowed Europeans close contact with animals and their native diseases, developing an immunity, while the Native American hunter-gatherers, did not.
Sources:
- Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Company, March 1997. ISBN 0393038912
- ABC Radio Transcripts: Why Societies Collapse: Jared Diamond at Princeton University http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s707591.htm
- James M. Blaut: Eight Eurocentric Historians. The Guilford Press, New York, 2000. ISBN 1572305916