Guns, Germs, and Steel

Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is a brilliant analysis of how societies form and how technology is developed. He shows that, while culture and native intelligence is important, environment has a great impact on how a society develops. I first read this book for a Technology and Culture class in graduate school and was very impressed by it.

Jared Diamond starts with the premise that humans are basically similar in intelligence and drive on average. He then explores the environmental differences throughout history that each group of human beings has faced, and how these differences affected the development of technology, culture, and society.

Jared demonstrates that human beings, when shown new technology and foodstuffs that are useful, take advantage of them, and that much of the success of many societies has to do with experience learned from the past and advantageous environment. Diamond shows how agriculture throughout the world came about. He explains how the geography of an area could affect the nature of the crops that were available to a population and in turn the cultural development of a society. His largest example is comparing the cyclical crops of Eurasia. The Eurasian crops, due to the changes in weather, had regular growing and planting times allowing agriculturalist to plan for the future. In climates that were more extreme, such options were not there and this slowed down their agricultural development. This is just one of many interesting agricultural facts that he brings up in his book.

Jared also explains how the availability of animals that could be domesticated was important because it lead to the contraction of diseases for which immunities could be developed. When the West entered the New World, they found populations that had not domesticated many animals and so the West infected them with diseases for which they had no immunities. I am oversimplifying his argument, but hope that what I have written in regards to agriculture and animal husbandry inspires you to buy the book.

Diamond discusses how cultures either embrace or reject technological advancements based on how connected they are to other societies, or how decentralized and interactive their cultures are. He also explains how elites, or plutocracies, evolve. It is a fascinating book. I would recommend buying the “Guns, Germs and Steel” I bought the hardcover and it sits prominently on my bookshelf.