“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” — First sentence of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
This is the second of two discussions about Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, published in 1997. Last time, I focused on the role of “Eurasian” diseases (to which European invaders had immunity) in decimating Indigenous populations, particularly in the Americas. This time, I’ll summarize the advantage Eurasians had with respect to using animals to help build their civilizations and discuss some criticisms of this “big-picture” book.
Diamond identifies 13 species of large animals that were domesticated in Eurasia, compared with just two — the llama and alpaca — in the Americas. To domesticate an animal, he proposes six essential positive traits a creature must possess in order to be useful to humans. These include captive breeding (many candidates won’t breed when domesticated), social structure (especially animals that will “imprint” on humans), non-finicky diet, fast growth rate and a temperate disposition. That is, “happy” animals are all similar in that they lack any major negative traits. Hence Diamond’s allusion to the “Anna Karenina Principle,” summarized in Tolstoy’s opening line.
Eurasian’s “happy” animals — ones that were readily domesticated — include goats and sheep for hides and meat; cows for milk and meat; bullocks for tilling crops; pigs and chickens for meat; and horses and camels for transport and warfare. According to Diamond, once domestication of these animals was achieved, migrating tribes and societies could herd them as they moved east-west across the vast Eurasian landmass, along with their crops. Crops and animals readily adapt to different territories at roughly the same latitude, as opposed to the Americas, for instance, where migration routes typically run north-south.
In summary, according to Diamond: Civilization started with the agricultural revolution, in particular with the nutritious, easy-to-grow crops whose precursors originated in the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent.
Agriculture led to food surpluses, which in turn spawned the division of labor leading to whole groups who, instead of sowing and reaping, specialized in, for instance, pottery and metal-working, writing, and (inevitably) bureaucracy: the precursors of nation-states and empires.
Domestication of animals led to efficient nutrition (animals bred for meat and milk), tillage of crops, transport and more. In both these, agriculture and domestication, Eurasians were favored geographically by the east-west orientation of the landmass where they lived.
Diamond’s broad-brush approach to the history of human societies was — and still is — easy pickings for critics. The chief objection is that it might seem to infantilize non-Eurasian societies: “Diamond’s account makes all the factors of European domination a product of distant and accidental history … Europeans become inadvertent, accidental conquerors. Natives succumb passively to their fate,” writes anthropologist Jason Antrosio. Others claim that he “oversold geography” and that he’s guilty of “geographical determinism.” I’m with International Relations scholars Iver Neumann and Einar Wigen, who write, “Until someone can come up with a better way of interpreting and adding to Diamond’s material … his is the best treatment available of the ecological preconditions for why one part of the world, and not another, came to dominate.”
I should mention that Guns, Germs and Steel is eminently readable — he’s a terrific writer. I wholeheartedly recommend it for Diamond’s big-picture take on world history.
Barry Evans (he/him, barryevans9@yahoo.com) also recommends Diamond’s 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
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This article appears in The Humboldt County Fair is at a Crossroads.
What if our macroorganism is a battleground for the ancient intelligence of long dead aliens, playing out an endless dance of care vs apathy in a world that stretches awareness beyond its own limits of existence, huh? What then? Of course we tamed happy animals; to know something is a little bit to tame it (or to love it). Domestication and domination are not inherently entertwined.