Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. Pulitzer Prize Winner.
My Takeaways
- Geography is the most important factor for determining a society’s trajectory.
- All people are created equal, but all continents aren’t. Global inequality today and through history has nothing to do with some societies being smarter or more industrious than others, but everything to do with the initial starting conditions of their continent.
- Domesticable crops and animals, as well as geography that favored species spreading and trade, gave some early civilizations a huge advantage. This led to food surpluses and population growth, which reinforced each other in a feedback loop as societies got more specialized. This specialization led to more advanced technology and more organized political structures.
Should You Read it?
Yes!!. This is one of the best books I’ve read all year. It combines history, linguistics, biology, genetics, archaeology, epidemiology, military science, philosophy of science, statistics, and anthropology to construct a compelling lens with which to see world history. It’s incredibly well-written and organized, making it a joy to read.
Ultimate Causes
The overarching question of the book is “Why were Europeans able to conquer the Native Americans, and not the other way around?” The obvious answer (what the author calls the “proximate cause”) is that Europeans had guns to fight with, germs to kill unsuspecting populations, and more advanced technology like steel. But why did societies like the Spanish have these things while societies like the Inca didn’t?
Many people over the centuries have explained this by saying that the Europeans were somehow “better” than Native Americans. More industrious, more intelligent, more adaptable to change. Jared Diamond rejects these racist and surface level arguments and keeps asking “why?”, trying to get to an “ultimate cause” for why societies develop at different rates.
His insistence on digging for the ultimate cause is inspiring. His chain of questions goes something like this:
Q: Why did Europeans have guns, germs, and steel and the Native Americans didn’t?
A: Because Europeans had large, specialized societies with sophisticated political structures.
Q: Why did Europeans have large, specialized societies with sophisticated political structures?
A: Because they had food surpluses.
Q: Why did Europeans have food surpluses but the Native Americans didn’t?
A: Because there were more domesticable plant and animal species in Europe and Asia.
Q: Why were there were more domesticable plant and animal species in Europe and Asia?
A: Because there were more wild species, and the east-west axis of the continent allowed for more species spreading and trade.
In other words, the ultimate root of inequality in the world is that plants and animals were distributed unequally, and that the continents are different shapes. The author stops here, claiming this is the “ultimate factor” in the trajectory of human societies. In other words, inequality is somehow “baked in” to the planet itself. Let’s go a step further than Diamond did:
Q: Why is inequality baked into the planet itself?
A: ????
I have a hard time answering this from a non-theist, materialistic point of view. The distribution of domesticable plants and animals and the shapes of the continents just were. But it gets even more depressing–no matter how woke you are, no matter how much you fight for the rights of the oppressed, you’re still fighting against a planet (universe, even) which is inherently unfair and unequal. How can we even talk about “natural rights” if the natural world itself has created so much unfairness?1
But from a Christian perspective, the answer to our question is found in Genesis 3:17 in a passage called “The Curse”, which happens after humanity rebels against God (“The Fall”):
Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
In other words, not only is the relationship between God and humanity broken, but the relationship between humanity and the planet itself is also completely broken. No wonder not all plants are easy to domesticate and that some regions don’t have a lot. No wonder that most animals aren’t suitable for breeding for work or food. No wonder that the very shape of the continents aren’t always amenable for widespread trade and species propagation.2 Our rebellion against God ruined everything–even our planet’s ecology and geography. The root causes of global inequality that Diamond convincingly defends using rigorous science and history are direct applications of Genesis 3.
From a Christian perspective, inequality isn’t “baked into” the planet itself, but is a direct result of our rebellion against God at a societal and personal level. And while we strive to reverse some of the effects of the Fall while on Earth, we wait in hope for the One who will make all things new–plants, animals, and even the shapes of the continents.
and animals in Europe and Asia imply some sort of divine favor towards those peoples. See Jesus’ comments about disasters in Luke 13:1-5.