Guns, Germ & Steel - why some cultures succeed - maybe...

How did it happen that the Spaniard Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa instead of Atahualpa sailing to Europe and capturing King Charles I of Spain? Why did some societies have the upper hand in the conquest adventure while others were the losers?

Jared Diamond attempts to answer those questions in his engaging book - "Guns, Germ and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies". Diamond, a biologist, began wondering about those questions while studying historical bird migration patterns in New Guinea. He lived among hunter-gatherer societies and observed that they were on average at least as intelligent as Europeans or Americans. A local politician asked how Europeans were able to dominate his people.

This sparked a study of the archaeology and biology of the march of human history from our East African hunter-gatherer ancestors to the present sprawling cities of the world. He takes a scientific approach: using archaeology, paleontology, historical climatology and geology he highlights the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals as the driving forces behind a "Great Leap Forward" enabling the progress of cultural evolution.

Eurasia – and especially the area historically known as the Fertile Crescent in southwestern Asia (present-day Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey) – had all the components for successful agriculture: suitable climate and soil, and wild plants that could be turned into the early crops. These early crops developed because of mutations that were maybe bad for the propagation of the plants by themselves, but good for people. These mutations included pea pods that did not pop open to enhance the spread of peas but stayed closed allowing humans to harvest the protein-rich parts of the plant.

The area also saw the beginning of the domestication of animals. Why there and not at home in Africa? The answer is that Eurasia was the home of several of the most important big animals (Diamond identifies 14 species, divided up into a “Major 5 and Minor 9”) that could be domesticated. Animals such as wild boars, sheep and the now extinct aurochs – ancestor of today’s cows and oxen – are generally herbivorous, and of a temperament and hardiness that allowed our ancestors begin to use them for food and transportation.

On the other hand, Africa, Australia and the Americas were not abundant in docile animals. Rhinos, hippos, giraffes and zebras have yet to be domesticated. They startle easily, don’t imprint on a pack or herd leader (which can be replaced by a human) and/or are generally difficult or dangerous. The same is true of kangaroos. Only the ancestor of the llama and alpaca was a candidate in the Americas.

The twin developments of agriculture and animal domestication gave the residents of the Eurasian landmass a head start in creating settlements, villages, cities, states and empires. People in villages and cities can support a non-food producing (or hunting and gathering) class: artists and craftsmen, clergy, bureaucrats and warriors. Those classes in turn create food storage devices, rituals, laws, writing and weapons. The Fertile Crescent was home to this first cultural and technological explosion.

The advances in crops, domestic animals and population density gave rise to another factor in Eurasian dominance: epidemic diseases. People who have critters living closely among them develop diseases that jump species – witness today’s problems with avian flu. Some humans have genetic mutations enabling them to develop immunities; some do not. Those who do, live to pass those genes on. Eurasian societies developed those immunities.

We are now familiar with the role disease played in the colonizing of Africa, the Americas and Australia. Diseases that European explorers were immune to devastated the societies and states in those areas. That paved the way for the conquest and enslavement of those peoples. However, the role that disease played in weakening “native” populations in the Americas is controversial: many historians maintain that disease was secondary to genocide, especially during the Spanish era of expansion in the New World.

That brings us back to the question of why Atahualpa was the loser and not Charles I. Diamond maintains that Charles and his people had an overwhelming head start. “Guns, Germs and Steel” is a “page-turner” of a book that helps explain why.

And of course, the victors write the history books…

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