Book Review: Guns, Germs & Steel

Saturday, January 21, 2006


When my son turned one, we had a get together in which an acquaintance mentioned
"Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 in the General Non-Fiction category. It sounded interesting and so I bought the book before he turned two. Couple of friends borrowed the book from me and returned it unread taking up few months. I think I started reading it when he turned 3 and finished it just now. Arjun is going to be 4 next month..! Time to take a class in speed reading. :-)  

In about 450 pages, the author analyzes as to why the world turned out the way it is
today. The subject material is similar to another book I read a year back called "The
Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why some are so rich and some so poor" by David S. Landes. But compared to Landes, Diamond’s arguments appear more coherent and focused. The main thesis behind the book is that the advancements or lack there of in various countries/continents/societies is not due to innate abilities/inabilities of the human beings living there. Rather it is a result of the environment. In other words, you can’t say that people of one race are more intelligent/dumb than others. 

He argues that compared to Africa or New Guinea, the Eurasia had a clear head start due  to the number of native flora and fauna that could be domesticated. I liked the way in which he had analyzed the domestication process starting with every known plant species (about 200,000) and then filtering out poisonous ones, difficult to replant plants and then sorting them by the size of the pulses (bigger the better from productivity point of view), nutritional value, etc. to arrive at the couple of dozens of plants that serve the food needs of the entire world. Similarly, he has analyzed the animal species as well to sort out which ones could be domesticated to help human beings in their transport, farming, food, and other needs. At least for the past 2000+ years no new animal has been domesticated perhaps goes to show how clean and complete this process is. Once flora and fauna domestication occurs, the idea of developing more complex societies come into the picture since comparatively efficient food production will allow a society to live in close proximity developing a dense population that can in turn support armies, develop
weapons, go through various infectious diseases and eventually develop immunity (after scores of people die of a given disease, only those who can survive reproduce thus becoming immune to that disease as a society from that point onwards). When a society with these advantages encounter another one which is sparsely populated (like native Indians) and so never had to deal with infectious diseases that spread in dense populations, the Guns (i.e. weapons), germs (carried by the invaders) as well as steel (i.e. all sorts of technological advantage) work in favor of the densely populated society, helping it conquer the other. 

Using several examples and statistics, he shows that if people of Africa had been in Eurasia, the end result will still be similar with people from Eurasia being dominant over a long period of time since whoever lives in a continent with flora/fauna head start will eventually start dominating the rest of the world. In addition, (as other books have argued before), states that the north-south spread of the African continent Vs. the East-West spread of Eurasia works against Africa since climate change over North – South is much more pronounced creating huge barriers for the spread of plants/animals domesticated in one part of the continent to other. 

Diamond does take his space explaining related material also in enough detail. For example, he spends couple of pages explaining how carbon dating works though he could have easily presumed that readers will get that information elsewhere. 

Analysis of this kind gives you sort of an egoistic satisfaction since it seems to neatly explain the entire human history in one book (similar to standing on top of a hill when the elevation helps you comprehend the topology of the landmass lying beneath). So, towards the end I was turning a bit skeptical wondering can we be really sure. Then read the epilogue where Diamond back peddles a bit discussing the role of ‘historical science’ and how its experiments can not be identical to the way physics experiments are conducted and so you can only analyze what has happened and explain the present scenario and
predict general trends but can not precisely say how things will proceed next at the micro level. For example, if the truck driver who hit Hitler’s car in an accident few years before WWII had been a bit slow and ended up killing him, lot of things in world
history might have turned differently. Along similar lines, "Why Europe..? Why not China..?" could be explained by a few Chinese leaders making few specific decisions that prevented China from going out and colonizing most of the world. Once he concedes these points, though the results are no longer very tidy (similar to the book by Landes), the overall thesis becomes much more acceptable. Good, long read. :-)