Why did Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, at the Incan town of Cajamarca in 1532 and with no more than 168 Spanish soldiers, lay waste to the veteran army of Incan Emperor Atahuallpa, numbering 80,000 strong? How could it have happened that within only a few years of the first European sails appearing on the coasts of the New World, roughly ninety-five percent of South America’s total indigenous population lay dead? What causes dwell within the histories of European conquerors versus Native American peoples that can account for the unmitigated doom that was set in motion upon that faithful day in 1492?
Unraveling the Past
Few will argue that either life or history are fair on all sides, and none can deny that the major threads of world history have been supremely imbalanced, with European domination of the world during the Colonial Era serving as only the most blatant example of such. Similarly and with regard to why certain civilizations were able to so thoroughly excel over others in terms of technology, geographic power and acquisition of material wealth, few are able or willing to undertake the monumental task of untangling the complex and intertwined histories of the world’s myriad cultures. Past attempts to do so have pointed to the supposed genetic superiority of one ‘race’ over another, or to the benefits that a particular religious belief conveyed upon its followers. Still others have looked to the personal ingenuity, charisma and drive of a few great individuals who rose to lead their respective peoples into glory.
Each of these attempts has met with resistance, and in the eyes of Pulitzer Prize-winner Jared Diamond, each is inherently flawed; due either to false science, faulty logic or too narrow a scope. In his acclaimed study Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond works to dismantle these antiquated and often destructive takes on the course of civilization, and labours extensively to present his own alternative.
From Cave-Dwellers to Empire-Builders
With the goal of understanding how one civilization could grow so rapidly in comparison to another, to the point of eventually dominating that other with relative ease, Diamond begins by attacking previous efforts to explain why world history is so filled with situations wherein the ‘haves’ were able to thoroughly trample the ‘have-nots’. Arguments based upon genetic superiority/inferiority are denounced as scientifically unsupported on all fronts and socially harmful, at that, while those that look to the impact of a specific cultural trait or individual person – the effects of a religious doctrine or rule of a gifted king – are accused of failing to account for why such elements and individuals appeared when and where they did
As one available argument after another fails to reach far enough back into humanity’s past, Diamond logically chooses to begin at civilization’s outset: 13,000 years ago and the moment of our first steps away from roving hunter-gatherers and toward settled crop-raisers.
Indeed, according to Diamond, if we are to discover which group will likely be the first to develop firearms, steel-forging and epidemic diseases – the three primary weapons in the conqueror’s arsenal – we must first determine who will acquire high-yield crops, such as wheat and barley, and domesticated livestock that can do more than simply put meat on the table. With meticulous, step-by-step explanation, Diamond reveals how dedicated farmers with the right crops and large animals to help with the raising can provide food for more than just themselves, and thus free their neighbours from the daily task of food-production, which results in individuals possessing the time to develop a new technology, like writing or metallurgy, or to govern a wider community, eventually giving rise to chiefs, governors and monarchs.
In this way, Diamond begins his explanation of how the ease and speed with which a society will rise to imperial status is dictated, not by any specific quality of its people, but merely the available flora and fauna that geography and shear dumb luck have gifted them with.
Enticingly informative
Having taken on the near preposterous task of summarizing the worldwide history of all things anthropological, Diamond structures his chapters and arguments in a rigorously academic fashion that proceeds in a logical manner and at a pace that will ensure no layman is left behind. Given the dry-as-toast nature of some of the topics that must be addressed in order to progress his overall theory (the qualities of specific plant species or origins of a particular syllabary), Diamond performs admirably in holding the reader’s interest; doing so primarily via a casual voice and not-infrequent use of sometimes personal, always colourful examples to put a starched fact or datum into context. Personal stories and experiences are in fact a major cornerstone of Guns, Germs, and Steel, as Diamond draws frequently upon his decades of experience as a researcher in New Guinea, with the very inspiration for his presented theory arising from a chance conversation with a New Guinean man named Yali, encountered on a beach many years ago.
Whether your interests lay in the historical – be it military, cultural, political or agricultural – the anthropological, or if you simply seek an explanation as to why the world looks the way it does today, Jared Diamond’s enlightened, compelling and groundbreaking study will have you looking at the past with new eyes, and coming to grips with the potency of Guns, Germs, and Steel.
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