Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs And Steel - 1999.pdf
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Diamond, Jared,
Guns, Germs and Steel: A short
history of everybody for the last 13,000 years
. 1997 my
own book scans preserved
In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jared Diamond argues that
both geography and the environment played major roles in
determining the shape of the modern world. This argument runs
counter to the usual theories that cite biology as the crucial factor.
Diamond claims that the cultures that were first able to domesticate
plants and animals were then able to develop writing skills, as well as
make advances in the creation of government, technology, weaponry,
and immunity to disease
Prologue: Yali's Question: The regionally
differing courses of history
13
Ch. 1 Up to the Starting Line: What happened on all
the continents before 11,000 B.C.? 35
Ch. 2 A Natural Experiment of History: How
geography molded societies on Polynesian islands
53
Ch. 3 Collision at Cajamarca: Why the Inca emperor
Atahuallpa did not capture King Charles I of Spain
67
Ch. 4
Farmer Power: The roots of guns, germs, and
steel
85
Ch. 5 History's Haves and Have-Nots: Geographic
differences in the onset of food production
93
Ch. 6
To Farm or Not to Farm: Causes of the spread
of food production
104
Ch. 7 How to Make an Almond: The unconscious
development of ancient crops
114
Ch. 8 Apples or Indians: Why did peoples of some
regions fail to domesticate plants? 131
Ch. 9 Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna
Karenina Principle: Why were most big wild mammal species never
domesticated?
157
Ch. 10 Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes: Why did
food production spread at different rates on different continents?
176
Ch. 11
Lethal Gift of Livestock: The evolution of
germs
195
Ch. 12
Blueprints and Borrowed Letters: The
evolution of writing
215
Ch. 13
Necessity's Mother: The evolution of
technology
239
Ch. 14 From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy: The
evolution of government and religion
265
Ch. 15
Yali's People: The histories of Australia and
New Guinea
295
Ch. 16
How China became Chinese: The history of
East Asia
322
Ch. 17 Speedboat to Polynesia: The history of the
Austronesian expansion
334
Ch. 18 Hemispheres Colliding: The histories of
Eurasia and the Americas compared
354
Ch. 19
How Africa became Black: The history of
Africa
376
Epilogue: The Future of Human History as a
Science
403
Acknowledgments
427
Further Readings
429
Credits
459
Index
461
P R E F A C E
WHY
Is
WORLD
HISTORY
LIKE
AN
ONION
?
THIS BOOK ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE A SHORT HISTORY OF EVERY
body
for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating the book is: Why
did history unfold differently on different continents? In case this
question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are
about to read a racist treatise, you aren't; as you will see, the answers
to the question don't involve human racial differences at all. The book's
emphasis is on the search for ultimate explanations, and on pushing back
the chain of historical causation as far as possible.
Most books that set out to recount world history concentrate on
histories of literate Eurasia and North African societies. Native societies
of other parts of the world—sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Island
Southeast Asia, Australia, New Guinea, the Pacific Islands—receive
only brief treatment, mainly as concerns what happened to them very
late in their history, after they were discovered and subjugated by western
Europeans. Even within Eurasia, much more space gets devoted to the
history of western Eurasia than of China, India, Japan, tropical
Southeast Asia, and other eastern Eurasian societies. History before
the emergence of writing around 3,000
B
.
C
. also receives brief treatment,
although it constitutes 99.9% of the five-million-year history of the
human species.
10 • P R E F A C E
Such narrowly focused accounts of world history suffer from three
disadvantages. First, increasing numbers of people today are, quite
understandably, interested in other societies besides those of western
Eurasia. After all, those "other" societies encompass most of the
world's population and the vast majority of the world's ethnic, cultural,
and liguistic groups. Some of them already are, and others are becoming,
among the world's most powerful economies and political forces.
Second, even for people specifically interested in the shaping of the
modern world, a history limited to developments since the emergence of
writing cannot provide deep understanding. It is not the case that
societies on the different continents were comparable to each other
until 3,000
B
.
C
., whereupon western Eurasian societies suddenly developed
writing and began for the first time to pull ahead in other respectsas well.
Instead, already by 3,000
B
.
C
., there were Eurasian and North African
societies not only with incipient writing but also with centralized state
governments, cities, widespread use of metal tools and weapons, use
of domesticated animals for transport and traction and mechanical
power, and reliance on agriculture and domestic animals for food.
Throughout most or all parts of other continents, none of those things
existed at that time; some but not all of them emerged later in parts of the
Native Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, but only over the course of the
next five millenia; and none of them emerged in Aboriginal Australia.
That should already warn us that the roots of western Eurasian
dominance in the modern world lie in the preliterate past before 3,000
B
.
C
. (By western Eurasian dominance, I mean the dominance of western
Eurasian societies themselves and of the societies that they spawned on
other continents.)
Third, a history focused on western Eurasian societies completely
bypasses the obvious big question. Why were those societies the ones
that became disproportionately powerful and innovative? The usual
answers to that question invoke proximate forces, such as the rise of
capitalism, mercantilism, scientific inquiry, technology, and nasty
germs that killed peoples of other continents when they came into contact
with western Eurasians. But why did those ingredients of conquest arise
in western Eurasia, and arise elsewhere only to a lesser degree or not at
all?
All those ingredients are just proximate factors, not ultimate
explanations. Why didn't capitalism flourish in Native Mexico,
mercantil-
WHY IS W O R L D H I S T O R Y L I K E AN O N I O N ? • I I
ism in sub-Saharan Africa, scientific inquiry in China, advanced
technology in Native North America, and nasty germs in Aboriginal
Australia? If one responds by invoking idiosyncratic cultural factors—
e.g., scientific inquiry supposedly stifled in China by Confucianism
but stimulated in western Eurasia by Greek of Judaeo-Christian
traditions—then one is continuing to ignore the need for ultimate
explanations: why didn't traditions like Confucianism and the Judaeo-
Christian ethic instead develop in western Eurasia and China
respectively? In addition, one is ignoring the fact that Confucian China
was technologically more advanced that western Eurasia until about
A
.
D
. 1400.
It is impossible to understand even just western Eurasian societies
themselves, if one focuses on them. The interesting questions concern the
distinctions between them and other societies. Answering those
questions requires us to understand all those other societies as well, so
that western Eurasian societies can be fitted into the broader context.
Some readers may feel that I am going to the opposite extreme from
conventional histories, by devoting too little space to western Eurasia at
the expense of other parts of the world. I would answer that some
other parts of the world are very instructive, because they encompass so
many societies and such diverese societies within a small geographical
area. Other readers may find themselves agreeing with one reviewer
of this book. With mildly critical tongue in cheek, the reviewer wrote
that I seem to view world history as an onion, of which the modern world
constitutes only the surface, and whose layers are to be peeled back in
the search for historical understanding. Yes, world history is indeed
such an onion! But that peeling back of the onion's layers is fascinating,
challenging—and of overwhelming importance to us today, as we seek to
grasp our past's lessons for our future.
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