Issues > December 14, 1997 (#48) > Book Review: Guns, Germs and Steel -- The Fates of Human Societies

Book Review: Guns, Germs and Steel -- The Fates of Human Societies

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond (W.W. Norton & Co., 1997, $27.50)

In 1532, at the decisive battle of Cajamarca, Peru, 168 Spanish soldiers defeated 80,000 Incas, captured their emperor, and released epidemic germs that would eventually kill an estimated 95% of the native population. The immediate factors behind Spanish victory seem clear: They had guns, ships, steel armor, horses, and nasty germs. But why did they have these things in the first place? Why were Europeans the ones to conquer Native Americans, and not the reverse?

Many people have assumed that genetic differences in human intelligence (as argued by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein in The Bell Curve) must be the answer. This book rebuts such racist theories. Evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond writes that the broad patterns of history stem ultimately not from "biological differences among peoples," but from "differences among peoples' environments."

If geography is destiny, then not all continents were created equal. Eleven thousand years ago, when people in the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Iraq) and China first began domesticating plants and animals, Europe and Asia already had the lion's share of food resources: 39 of the world's 56 prize seed grasses, including wheat, barley, and rice; and the wild ancestors of major domestic animals, including cows, sheep, and goats.

Eurasia's early headstart led directly to guns, germs, and steel. Food-producing societies, which developed later or not at all in Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific, could sustain greater populations than hunter-gathering societies. They could store surpluses to support specialists and bureaucrats who developed complex technological and political systems (like writing and empires). Over time, they also evolved resistance to the deadly epidemic diseases like smallpox and measles that originated in their domestic animals. This "farmer power" led to Eurasian dominance.

Diamond's fascinating book is not an apology for that dominance, but a persuasive environmental explanation for the "lopsided" outcomes of history.