“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?” — Yali, a Papua New Guinean politician, in conversation with Jared Diamond. “Cargo” here refers to inventions and manufactured goods.
When Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by polymath Jared Diamond came out in 1997, the overall reaction from anthropologists and geographers was, “Why didn’t I think of that?” However, along with mostly positive reviews — it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 — the book garnered such damning comments as, “academic porn” and “racist.” Nearly 30 years on, the book is still discussed and debated, with reason, since it purports to be “A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years.” Some claim! Here and next time, I’ll try to summarize this transdisciplinary, ground-breaking work which is, in essence, a response to Yali’s implicit question: “Why is virtually the entire thrust of human history one in which Eurasians conquered other civilizations, rather than the other way around?”
Diamond’s answer, from which all else follows, is simple to the point of being simplistic. Geographically, Eurasia runs very approximately east-west, while Africa and the Americas run —approximately — north-south. And that, according to his thesis, made all the difference, starting some 13,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age and the beginning of the agricultural revolution, when much of humankind was transitioning from tribal hunting and gathering to agrarian societies. This is where Eurasia had the advantage over the rest of the world, having the potential to grow better crops and raise domestic animals. Specifically, Eurasia at that time had wild barley, wheat and beans that were both easier to sow and store and more nutritious, than for instance, the Americas’ corn. And while just two large animals lived in the Americas (llamas and alpacas), Eurasia was home to the predecessors of modern horses, donkeys, goats, sheep, cows, bullocks, pigs and chickens. These were useful as protein sources (meat, milk, cheese), hides and clothing, and transport and tillage.
It’s in the spread of both crops and animals that Eurasia’s east-west orientation really paid off, according to Diamond, since people could migrate across the huge landmass while staying at roughly the same latitude. Crops and animals that thrived in, say, Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), generally do well in a wide swath stretching from present-day Spain to China. Not so in the Americas: Corn (and llamas and alpacas) that flourish in Central America are ill-suited to the climate and day length much farther north or south than their native territory.
Then there’s the disease factor. The second word of Diamond’s title, “Germs,” is probably the most applicable when it comes to understanding how Eurasians came to dominate the rest of the world. Estimates vary wildly but the population of the Americas in 1492 was probably around 30 million. Within 150 years, it was less than one-tenth of that, thanks to “virgin-soil epidemics,” that is, outbreaks among populations that had no resistance to novel diseases brought across the Atlantic. For thousands of years, Eurasian populations had been living alongside the animals from which humans acquired these diseases. These included smallpox (from an African rodent), measles (from cattle via the rinderpest virus) and influenza (from birds and pigs). While they must have been devastating when the viruses first crossed over from animals, some of our Eurasian ancestors survived, became immune and passed on that immunity to their children. Indigenous people in the Americas had no such immunity, having never been previously exposed to “Eurasian” diseases, so their first encounters with Europeans resulted in catastrophic epidemics.
Even without the guns and steel of Diamond’s title, the deck was firmly stacked against people living in the Americas. Next time, we’ll look at how Eurasians also benefitted from animals useful to human societies.
Barry Evans (he/him, barryevans9@yahoo.com) still refers to Diamond’s book nearly 30 years on.
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Guns, Germs and Steel
This article appears in Enter the Papaya Lounge.
Hi Barry – couple of points that don’t ring true to me:
1. Yes, South America had llamas and alpacas (an, until relatively recently, giant sloths). But North America also had large animals in the form of bison and bears.
2. Llamas and alpacas are more commonly found in the Andes than the mountains of Central America, no?
Hope all’s well
Pat
Hi Pat!
“…bison and bears…” and probably many more, but the idea of domesticating them (for food, for riding, for hides or as pack or draft animals) doesn’t sound too promising. Here’s Diamond’s full list of large animals that could and were domesticated: sheep, goat, cow, pig, horse, Arabian camel, Bactrian camel, llama and alpaca, donkey, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, Bali cattle, and Mithan (gayal, domesticated Gaur).
Llamas and alpacas–you’re quite right, they need open grazing spaces.
Cheers! barry