Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Until around 11,000 b.c., all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide.

The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences.

He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers.

Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at the UCLA Medical School, is the author of The Third Chimpanzee, awarded the 1992 Los Angeles Times Science Book Award. He is a regular contributor to Natural History and Discover magazines and lives in Los Angeles.

Average Customer Rating:

A Pattern For Technological Advancement

Customer Rating:

In this book Jared Diamond attempts to answer a question put to him by his New Guinean friend, "Why is it that you whit people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people has little cargo of our own?" In New Guineas `cargo' is the term used to refer to goods, such as metal, guns, mirrors, axes, matches, clothing etc. The question is basically, `What factors led to one land having more technology advancement while another did not. IQ tests have been shown to be culturally based. Decades of tests trying to prove an intelligence difference between races have failed. If intelligence is not a factor is there another factor. The answer that Jared Diamond provides is simple and easily observed. It's the environment that encourages the developments that lead to material advancement and with it the development of towns and cities. First explanation he provides answers the question, ` what are the factors needed for one people to conquer another people. Here is an extract from his after word that concludes the main thesis of the book. "My main conclusion was that societies developed differently on different continents because of differences in continental environments, not in human biology. Advanced technology, centralized political organization, and other features of complex societies could emerge only in dense sedentary populations capable of accumulating food surpluses - populations that depended for their food on the rise of agriculture that began around 8,500 BC But the domesticable wild plant and animal species essential for that rise of agriculture were evenly distributed very unevenly over the continents. The most valuable domesticable wild species were concentrated in only nine small areas of the globe, which thus became the earliest homelands of agriculture. The original inhabitants of those homelands thereby gained a head start towards developing guns, germs (ex. smallpox) and steel. The Language and genes of those homeland inhabitants, as well as their livestock, crops, technologies and writing systems became dominant in the ancient and modern world." In other words, it is not that one group of people is more `fitter' for survival than another, it is the environment on which they depend and draw from that lead to their success or loss in conquering their neighbors. The early 19th century Maori are a great example of how a technological and cultural advancement led to a cultural destabilization which in turn led to massive conquering (and death). One tribe, which was closer to the point of contact with the first colonial ships to New Zealand (land of the Maori), was able to acquire muskets before other tribes. Muskets gave them a definitive advantage over other tribes still using bow and arrows. In addition to this they were the first to get potatoes, which provided more nutrition than the sweet potatoes than they grew. Now they could travel long distances because of an advantage in food supply. With the two advantages in food and weapons they began exterminating other tribes around them. Conquering territory. The tribes that delayed acquiring their own muskets and potatoes were completely wiped out. Those that did acquire were able to stay alive till a new balance of power was reached. By that time a quarter of the population had been wiped out. The lucky tribe that happened to be where the colonials first landed saw themselves as divinely chosen to conquer the rest of the island. Primitive people tend to see good luck as divinely provided and bad luck as the result of evil spirit. (ex. the devil). If a land lacks a technological advancement of another then it desperately seeks to gain it for one reason only. Balance of power. So they are not exterminated themselves.

Read entirely before you criticize!

Customer Rating:

I've seen so many critiques and reviews on the internet, from scholars and professional reviewers, that seem like they haven't even read the book. For almost every critique that can be raised, Jared Daimond addresses it in his book already. If you will just read the book yourself, in its entirety, you will see what I mean. This book and the broad explanations he puts forward are pretty much beyond reproach, not least because of their broad scope. Many criticisms can be refuted because the book focuses on the broadest patterns of history, taken over timespans of several hundred years or more. Another essential point to keep in mind before critiquing is that Daimond distinguishes between proximate and ultimate factors, and raises this distinction repeatedly throughout the book. So before raising a criticism, stop and considered whether you are addressing a proximate cause (like technological advances, or large population) or an ulimate cause (which will inevitably be reduced to one of a few factors which are the very premise of the book). These ultimate factors can be crudely boiled down to the following: 1)Naturally occurring species of easily domesticable plants (species which are highly nuritious) and large animals. 2)Geographical features (impassable mountains and deserts, location across differing latitudes and climates) that facilitate or impede diffussion of agriculture, technology, and population. --and that is the book in a nutshell. Those grossly reduced ideas I will carry with me forever and consider every time I hear an explanation of historical outcomes.

Great thesis and synthesis

Customer Rating:

In the first half of the book Diamond presents his thesis why certain continents are richer than other continents. This is fascinating reading as long as Diamond describes pre-historic times. His arguments are the strongest I have seen so far. Diamond is much less convincing when he moves to historic times and tries to explain differential performance within a given continent. The second half of the book describe individual continents and is quite tedious, but there is no need to read this section unless you have special interests in a particular region. The first half or the book is so interesting and thoughtful so it is a must read. Btw, do not buy the DVD with Diamond, it is quite dull. The book is much better.

A profound and lasting classic

Customer Rating:

This is a truly profound book, and quite elegantly written. The central insight is how geography has been a main driving factor in the development of civilizations. Diamond comes at this thesis from several different angles, most importantly after looking at how development has differed between different regions. Diamond builds a very compelling argument, and is helped by his intimate knowledge of many places - knowledge which comes from actually having spent quite a deal of traveling. He is also helped by his diverse background - as a scientist he has also written two brilliant books on biology (The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (P.S.) & Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality (Science Masters)). This is popular science at its best, easily understandable, yet deep in insight.

Fascinating overview of environmental factors, but too biased

Customer Rating:

This is a fascinating study of how societies developed, however, it's frustrating that Diamond takes such an ideological position at the outset, ruling out some factors simply because he doesn't like them. "Inexcusably for an evolutionary biologist, Diamond fails to inform his readers that it is different environments that cause, via natural selection, biological differences among populations. All of the Eurasian developments he described created positive feedback loops selecting for increased intelligence and various personality traits (e.g., altruism, rule-following, etc.)."