Book Review: Guns, germs and steel

I read 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers' a few years ago (actually because some guy in the Interchange (ESL) book said it was easiest to read in a foreign country). In it, Paul Kennedy explained the reasons for the course history took over the last 500 years. Specifically, he described two main forms of power, economic and military and the need for a careful balance of the two. It was not an easy read for me but large portions of it were interesting and convinced me to research further.

A much easier read was Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. The two works are similar in that they try to answer why some nations and peoples have been more successful than others. Diamond's book, though, finishes where Kennedy's starts and starts ten thousand or more years ago.

The first subject Diamond discusses is that he is not interested in racial arguements. Over the past few hundred years, Europeans have been more successful, but not because they are white or special. Indeed, he suggests that, on average, the New Guineans may be more intelligent than Caucasians.

He gave three criteria for a region's success. availability of suitable agricultural crops, availability of suitable livestock, and the general axis of the continent. The latter affects the spread of agricultural crops and technological information.

The first two surprised me but he explained his reasoning clearly. Very few plants are all that useful as food items for humans. Many of the best ones were originally found in the Mid-East. I think that's right, he describes it as the Fertile Crescent. Few large mammals are useful for human transportation or farm power either. Most such animals (horses, sheep, cattle) were found...you guessed it, in the Fertile Crescent.

The axis arguement was harder for me to swallow. North and South America are relatively narrow, east-west and the north-south axis is not useful for transferring argiculture nor ideas. The Fertile Crescent is part of Euroasia, the largest continuous east-west space. The central idea of same latitude/same climate is a good start but hard for me to accept. The east-west axis in Canada or the US is about 3000 km, more than most tribesmen or neolithic travellers would think of going. It took me a while to accept that different cultures could cycle information East and west without much travel by individuals. Next, his examples of north/south obstacles seemed solid and believable. The desert region of Mexico and the so very-narrow bottleneck of Panama prevented Northern temperate crops from reaching Sourthern temperate regions and South American pack animals (llamas) from reaching the north.

The examples I connected with best were his island examples. His descriptions of various Polenesian islands and their measurable differences were compelling and showed real differential success.

It's time read his next book, 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed' which covers similar ground but from more of an environmental perspective.