Guns Germs and Steel The Fates of Human Societies

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Guns Germs and SteelThe Fates of Human Societies

• By Jared Diamond
• 1997

Text extracted from Chapters 1-10
http//images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0393317552.03
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After the Ice Age

• Human societies began to change 13,000 years ago
• when the last ice age melted

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After the Ice Age

• Different societies resulted
• Some literate, industrial
• Some illiterate, agricultural
• Some hunter gatherers retaining stone tools

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Inequality and Extermination

• Those historical inequalities have cast long
  shadows on the modern world,
• because the literate societies with metal tools
• have conquered or exterminated the other
  societies."

5
Yalis Question

• Yali, a New Guinea politician asked
• "Why is it that you white people developed so
  much cargo and brought it to New Guinea,
• but we black people had little cargo of our own?"
  

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Distribution of Wealth

• To rephrase,
• "why did wealth and power become distributed as
  they now are,
• rather than in some other way?

Distribution of Wealth in the World
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Common explanations

• Racial or genetic superiority?
• No objective evidence for this theory

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Common explanations

• Cold climate stimulates inventiveness?
• But Europeans inherited from warm climate peoples
• agriculture,
• wheels,
• writing, and
• metallurgy
• Japan inherited
• Agriculture, metallurgy, writing
• Industrial Revolution

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Cro Magnons

• Cro-Magnons moved into Europe 40,000 years ago.
• Technologies
• Tools, needles, fishhooks, harpoons, bows and
  arrows, sewn clothing, houses, carefully buried
  skeletons, art, hunting big prey.
• Displaced or killed off Neandertals

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Spreading Out

• 40,000-30,000 years ago
• Technology water craft to cross from Asia to
  Indonesia to Australia and New Guinea.
• Time period correlates to
• massive extinction of large game in those places.

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Large Game in Eurasia

• Diamond's theory
• large game survived in Eurasia because
• humans took a million years
• to develop tools
• become lethal predators of large game
• Gave Eurasian game time to adapt.

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Spreading to the Americas

• 20,000 years ago
• Technology clothing and shelter to survive
  Siberia
• led to migration to Americas by 12,000 BC.
• It took 1,000 years for humans to get to S.
  America.
• Time period correlates to
• massive extinction of large game in Americas
• Horses, lions, elephants, cheetahs, camels, and
  giant ground sloths.

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Chatham Islands

• 1835
• Chatham Islands discovered by British Seal
  Hunting ship
• 500 miles off coast of New Zealand
• News told to native New Zealanders
• Chatham Islands
• Abundance of fish, food
• Inhabitants numerous
• Dont know how to fight
• No weapons

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Chatham Islands
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Maori of New Zealand

• Nine hundred of the native Maori people of New
  Zealand,
• armed with guns,
• arrived in the Chatham Islands
• announced that the Chatham Islands people (the
  Moriori)
• were now their slaves,
• and killed those who objected.

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Moriori Slaughter

• An eyewitness account said
• "The Maori commenced to kill us like sheep...
• We were terrified, fled to the bush,
• concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in
  any place to escape our enemies.
• It was of no avail we were discovered and killed
• -- men, women, and children indiscriminately".

Maori
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Maori Explanation

• A Maori conqueror explained
• "We took possession...in accordance with our
  customs and we caught all the people.
• Not one escaped.
• Some ran away from us, these we killed, and
  others we killed -- but what of that?
• It was in accordance with our custom".

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Natural History Experiment

• This is a natural history experiment.
• Both the Maori and Moriori
• descended from the same Polynesian farmers who
  settled New Zealand.

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Moriori

• When the the Moriori moved to the Chatham islands
  
• hundreds of years earlier
• could not farm due to the cold climate, and
• became hunter/gatherers.
• They learned to live peacefully because their
  resources were so limited.

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Maori

• The New Zealand Maori
• continued farming
• dense populations
• more complex technology and political
  organization
• ferocious wars
• The difference was geography.
• Competing agricultural societies are prone to
  warfare

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Conquest of the New World

• "The biggest population shift of modern times
• has been the colonization of the new World by
  Europeans,
• and the resulting
• conquest,
• numerical reduction ,
• or complete disappearance
• of most groups of Native Americans".

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Pizarro

• The Incas were conquered by the Spaniard
  Francisco Pizarro.

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Pizarros Forces

• Pizarro had 168 soldiers.
• They were in unfamiliar territory,
• ignorant of the local inhabitants,
• were 1000 miles away from reinforcements,
• and were and surrounded by the Incan empire
• with 80,000 soldiers led by Atahuallpa.

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Guns, Germs and Steel

• Pizarro had
• steel armor
• swords
• horse mounted cavalry
• guns
• a minor factor

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Treachery

• Pizarro
• ambushed and captured Atahuallpa
• used religion to justify it.
• collected a huge ransom in gold and silver,
• killed him anyway.

Inca Gold
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Conquistadors

• In addition to horses and steel, conquistadors
  had
• Superior ocean going ships
• Superior political organization of the European
  states
• Carried infectious diseases that wiped out 95 of
  Native Americans
• smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus, bubonic
  plague
• Superior knowledge of human behavior
• from thousands of years of written history.

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Why not the other way?

• Still, why was it that the Europeans had all of
  the advantages instead of the Incas?
• Why didn't the Incas
• invent guns and steel swords,
• have horses,
• or bear deadly diseases?

Inca
Inca Warrior
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Advantages of Agricultural Societies

• More food, more people.
• Domestic animals
• Meat
• Pull plows, carts
• Transportation, war
• Furs, fiber
• Fertilizer
• Deadly germs

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Advantages of Agricultural Societies

• Sedentary Existence
• Short birth intervals
• higher population densities
• Grain Storage
• Support specialists
• Kings
• bureaucrats
• soldiers
• priests
• artisans.

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Unequal Conflicts

• "Much of human history has consisted of unequal
  conflicts
• between the haves and the have-nots
• between peoples with farmer power and those
  without it,
• or between those who acquired it at different
  times."

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Independent Crop Domestication

• Middle East (8,000 BC)
• Wheat, pea, olive
• China
• Rice, millet
• Mexico (3,000 BC)
• Maize, squash, beans
• Andes mountains
• Potato
• USA
• Sunflower

Other people adopted these crops (and
domesticated animals) later as a cultural package
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Adoption by Hunter-Gatherers

• Sometimes domesticated plants and animals were
  adopted by hunters/gatherers
• Native Americans in U.S.
• Sometimes hunters/gatherers were displaced by
  agriculturalists
• European expansion in Australia, Tasmania

http//www.tasmanianaboriginal.com.au/images/hist/
Trugannie.jpg
Trugannini, last Remaining Tasmanian Aboriginal,
1868
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Head Start

• "The peoples of areas with a head start on food
  production
• thereby gained a head start on the path leading
  to guns, germs and steel.
• The result was a long series of collisions
  between the haves and have-nots of history."

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Food Production

• Food production often led to
• poorer health
• shorter lifespan
• harder labor for the majority of people.

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Early Plant Domestication

• Humans unknowingly selected for traits
• seed size, fiber length
• lack of bitterness
• early germination
• selfing
• dispersal mutations
• wheat that does not shatter
• seeds that stay in pods

http//www.union.ku.edu/traditions/desktops/wheat.
JPG
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Sowing by Broadcast

• Grains in Eurasia were sown by broadcast,
• later in animal plowed fields to give
  monoculture.

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Digging Sticks

• In the new world,
• planting done by digging stick
• no domesticated plow animals
• Result mixed gardens.

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80 of Worlds Production

• Wheat
• Maize
• Rice
• Barley
• Sorghum
• Soybean
• Potato
• Cassava
• Sweet potato
• Sugar cane
• Sugar beet
• Banana

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Major Domesticated Crops

• No new plants domesticated in modern times
• All of these domesticated  thousands of years
  ago.
• Need a suite of domesticated plants to make
  agriculture work
• Thus new plants domesticated where agriculture
  already successful

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Fertile Crescent
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Fertile Crescent Attributes

• Mediterranean climate.
• Wild stands of wheat
• Hunter/gatherers settled down here before
  agriculture, living off grain
• High percentage of self pollinating plants --
  easiest to domesticate.
• Of large seeded grass species of the world, 32 of
  56 grow here.
• Big animals for domestication goat, sheep, pig,
  cow

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Meso America

• In Meso America, the only animals domesticated
  were turkey and dog
• Maize was slow to domesticate.
• Occurred 5,000 years after domestication of wheat

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Big 5 Domesticated Animals

• Horse
• Cow
• Pig
• Sheep
• Goat
• All from Eurasia

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Large Animals

• Of 148 large herbivorous or omnivorous species in
  the world
• Eurasia had 72
• Africa 51
• Americas 24
• Australia 1
• Most cannot be domesticated

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Why have 134 out of 148 big species not been
domesticated?

• Diet too finicky
• koala
• Growth rate too slow
• elephants, gorillas
• Wont breed in captivity
• cheetah, vicuna
• Nasty Disposition.
• grizzly bear, African buffalo, onager, zebra,
  hippo, elk

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Why have 134 out of 148 big species not been
domesticated?

• Hard to herd (no dominance structure)
• deer, antelope
• Tendency to panic.
• deer, antelope, gazelles
• Solitary
• only cats and ferrets domesticated
• Territorial
• rhino

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Easier to spread East-West

• It was easier for domestic plants and animals
• later, technology like wheels, writing)
• to spread East-West in Eurasia
• than North- South in Americas.

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Evidence

• Some crops domesticated independently in both S.
  America and Meso America
• due to slow spread
• lima beans
• common beans
• chili peppers

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Evidence

• Most crops in Eurasia domesticated only once.
• Rapid spread preempted same or similar
  domestication.
• Fertile Crescent crops spread to Egypt, N.
  Africa, Europe, India and eventually to China.

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Africa

• East-West spread of plants, animals easier
• due to same day-length, similar seasonal
  variations.
• Temperate N. Africa crops did not reach S. Africa
  until colonists brought them
• Sahara
• Tropics
• Tropical crops spread West to East in Africa with
  Bantu culture,
• did not cross to S. Africa due to climate.

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Americas

• Distance between cool highlands of Mexico and
  Andes was only 1,200 miles but separated by low
  hot tropical region.
• Thus, no exchange of crops, animals, writing,
  wheel.
• Only maize spread.

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Americas

• It took 2,000 years for maize to cross 700 miles
  of desert to reach U.S.A.
• It took another 1000 years for maize to adapt to
  U.S.A. climate to be productive

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Not a Cultural Issue

• Some species like cows, dogs, pigs independently
  domesticated in different parts of the world.
• These animals were well suited for
  domestication.
• Modern attempts to domesticate
• eland, elk, moose, musk ox, zebra, American Bison
  
• are only marginally successful.