Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies cover

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at UCLA. It won the Pulitzer Prize for 1998, as well as the Aventis Prize for best science book in the same year. According to the author, "An alternative title would be: A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years." But the book is not merely an account of the past; it attempts to explain why Western civilization, as a whole, has survived and conquered others, while refuting the belief that European hegemony is due to any form of European intellectual superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies cover This image is a book cover. ... Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies cover This image is a book cover. ... 1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American author, evolutionary biologist, physiologist, and biogeographer. ... Physiology (in Greek physis = nature and logos = word) is the study of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of living organisms. ... The University of California, Los Angeles, popularly known as UCLA, is a public, coeducational university situated in the neighborhood of Westwood within the city of Los Angeles. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-04-13, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... 1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... The Aventis Prizes for Science Books is an annual award for the previous years best general science writing and best science writing for children. ... For alternative meanings for The West in the United States, see the U.S. West and American West. ... A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ... In cybernetics and control theory, feedback is a process whereby some proportion or in general, function, of the output signal of a system is passed (fed back) to the input. ...

Synopsis

Prologue and anticipation of criticisms

The prologue to the book opens with an account of Diamond's conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and technology between Yali's people and the Europeans who dominated the land for 200 years, differences that neither of them considered due to any superiority of Europeans. Yali asked, using the local term for inventions and manufactured goods, "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?" The Independent State of Papua New Guinea, often referred to by just the initials, PNG, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea (the other half is the Papua province of Indonesia). ...

Diamond found that he had no good answer. He says that the same sort of question seems to apply elsewhere: "People of Eurasian origin ... dominate the world in wealth and power." Other peoples, having thrown off colonial domination, lag in wealth and power. Still others, he says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists." (p. 15) He says that, unable to find a satisfactory explanation from the best-known accounts of history, he decided to make his own investigation. African-Eurasian aspect of Earth Eurasia is the landmass composed of the continents of Europe and Asia. ...

Before stating his main argument, Diamond considers three possible criticisms of his investigation (p. 17):

• "If we succeed in explaining how some people came to dominate other people, may this not seem to justify the domination? Doesn't it seem to say that the outcome was inevitable, and that it would therefore be futile to try to change the outcome today?" His answer is that this is a confusion of an explanation of causes with a justification of the results. "[Psychologists, social historians, and physicians] do not seek to justify murder, rape, genocide, and illness." Rather, they investigate causes to be able to stop the results.
• Doesn't addressing the question "automatically involve a Eurocentric approach to history, a glorification of western Europeans ... ?" But, according to Diamond, "most of this book will deal with peoples other than Europeans." It will, he says, describe interactions between non-European peoples. "Far from glorifying peoples of western European origin, we shall see that the most basic elements of their civilization were developed by peoples living elsewhere and were then imported to Western Europe."
• "[D]on't words such as 'civilization,' and phrases such as 'rise of civilization,' convey the false impression that civilization is good, tribal hunter-gatherers are miserable,...?" On the contrary, according to Diamond, civilization is a thoroughly mixed blessing, in ways that he describes.

Eurocentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing emphasis on European (and, generally, Western) concerns, culture and values at the expense of those of other cultures. ...

The theory outlined

Before anyone developed agriculture, people lived as hunter-gatherers, as some still do. In anthropology, the hunter-gatherer way of life is that led by certain societies of the Neolithic Era based on the exploitation of wild plants and animals. ...

Diamond argues that European civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity. That is, civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence, but is more like a house of cards, each level dependent upon the levels below it. Specifically, the key to civilization is agriculture. The keys to agriculture are domesticable plant and animal species for food and work. The demands for domesticability of an animal species are particularly stringent. Diamond identifies six criteria including the animal being sufficiently docile, gregarious, willing to breed in captivity and having a social dominance hierarchy. For alternative meanings for The West in the United States, see the U.S. West and American West. ... A civilization or civilisation has a variety of meanings related to human society. ... Divisions Green algae Land plants (embryophytes) Non-vascular embryophytes Hepatophyta - liverworts Anthocerophyta - hornworts Bryophyta - mosses Vascular plants (tracheophytes) Seedless vascular plants Lycopodiophyta - clubmosses Equisetophyta - horsetails Pteridophyta - true ferns Psilotophyta - whisk ferns Ophioglossophyta - adderstongues Seed plants (spermatophytes) †Pteridospermatophyta - seed ferns Pinophyta - conifers Cycadophyta - cycads Ginkgophyta - ginkgo Gnetophyta - gnetae Magnoliophyta - flowering plants... Phyla Porifera (sponges) Ctenophora (comb jellies) Cnidaria Placozoa Bilateria  Acoelomorpha  Orthonectida  Rhombozoa  Myxozoa  Superphylum Deuterostomia     Chordata (vertebrates, etc. ... Domesticated animals, plants, and other organisms are those whose collective behavior, life cycle, or physiology has been altered as a result of their breeding and living conditions being under human control for multiple generations. ...

Transition

GGS argues that cities require an ample supply of food and thus depend on agriculture. As farmers do the work of providing food, others are free to pursue other functions, such as mining and literacy. (Division of labour.) Urbanization is the expansion of a city or metropolitan area, namely the proportion of total population or area in urban localities or areas (cities and towns), or the increase of this proportion over time. ... Division of labour is the breakdown of labour into specific, circumscribed tasks for maximum efficiency of output, particularly in the context of manufacturing. ...

Essential to the transition from hunter-gatherer to city-dwelling agrarian societies was the presence of large domesticable animals, raised for meat, work and long-distance communication. Diamond identifies a mere 14 suitable candidate species world wide. The 5 most important (cow, horse, sheep, goat and pig) are all native to Eurasia. Of the remaining 9, only one (the llama of South America) is indigenous to a land outside the temperate region of Eurasia. None of the 14 is native to Africa. The Holocene extinction event eliminated many of the candidate species, and Diamond argues that the pattern of extinction is more severe on continents were humans arrived later and with more devastating hunting techniques. Domesticated animals, plants, and other organisms are those whose collective behavior, life cycle, or physiology has been altered as a result of their breeding and living conditions being under human control for multiple generations. ... Look up Cow in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Cow may refer to: Female dairy cattle, other bovines, or other large mammals including elephants and whales. ... Binomial name Equus caballus The Horse (Equus caballus) is a large ungulate mammal, one of the seven modern species of the genus Equus. ... Binomial name Ovis aries Linnaeus, 1758 A sheep is any of several woolly ruminant quadrupeds, but most commonly the Domestic Sheep (Ovis aries), which probably descends from the wild moufflon of south-central and south-west Asia. ... A goat is an animal in the genus Capra, which consists of nine species: the Ibex, the West Caucasian Tur, the East Caucasian Tur, the Markhor, and the Wild Goat. ... Binomial name Sus scrofa Linnaeus, 1758 Synonyms The domestic pig is usually given the scientific name Sus scrofa, though some authors call it , reserving for the wild boar. ... African-Eurasian aspect of Earth Eurasia is the landmass composed of the continents of Europe and Asia. ... Binomial name Lama glama (Linnaeus, 1758) The Llama (Lama glama) is a large camelid native to South America. ... South America South America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. ... Africa is the worlds second-largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. ... The Holocene extinction event is a name customarily given to the widespread, ongoing extinction of species occurring in the modern Holocene epoch. ... The Holocene extinction event is a name customarily given to the widespread, ongoing extinction of species occurring in the modern Holocene epoch. ...

Smaller domesticable animals such as dogs, cats, chickens and guinea pigs may be valuable in various ways to an agricultural society, but will not be adequate in themselves to sustain large-scale agrarian society. Trinomial name Canis lupus familiaris The Dog is a canine carnivorous mammal that has been domesticated for at least 14,000 years and perhaps for as long as 150,000 years based on recent evidence. ... Trinomial name Felis silvestris catus Schreber, 1775 The cat (also called domestic cat or house cat) is a small feline carnivorous mammal. ... Binomial name Gallus gallus (Linnaeus, 1758) This article is concerned with chicken as a domesticated fowl; for other uses of the term see chicken (disambiguation). ... Species Cavia porcellus Cavia aperea Cavia tschudii Cavia guianae Cavia anolaimae Cavia nana Cavia fulgida Cavia magna Guinea pigs (also called cavies) are rodents belonging to the family Caviidae and the genus Cavia. ...

Geography

Diamond also explains how geography shaped human migration, not simply by making travel difficult (particularly by longitude), but by how climates affect where domesticable animals can easily travel and where crops can ideally grow. Human migration denotes any movement of groups of people from one locality to another, rather than of individual wanderers. ... Map of Earth showing curved lines of longitude Longitude, sometimes denoted λ, describes the location of a place on Earth east or west of a north-south line called the Prime Meridian. ...

Modern humans are believed to have developed in the southern region of the African continent, at one time or another (see Out of Africa theory). The Sahara kept people from migrating north to the Fertile Crescent, until later when the Nile river valley became accommodating. Some peoples, such as the Aborigines of Australia, are believed to have been early emigrants from Africa, leaving by boat. Africa is the worlds second-largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. ... The Fertile Crescent is a region in the Middle East incorporating present-day Israel, West Bank, and Lebanon and parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and south-eastern Turkey. ... There is also Nile, a death metal band from South Carolina, USA. The Nile in Egypt Length 6 695 km Elevation of the source 1 134 m Average discharge 2 830 m³/s Area watershed 3 400 000 km² Origin Africa Mouth the Mediterranean Basin countries Uganda - Sudan - Egypt The... ... A boat is a watercraft, usually smaller than most ships. ...

Diamond continues to explain the story of human development up to the modern era, through the rapid development of technology, and its dire consequences on hunter-gathering cultures around the world.

Germs

In the later context of the European-American conquest of the Americas, 90 percent of the indigenous populations are believed to have been killed off by diseases unwittingly brought by the Europeans. The Vikings were the first Europeans to reach the Americas, starting but then abandoning a colonisation process. ...

How was it then that disease native to the American continents did not kill off Europeans? Diamond points out that the combined effect of the increased population densities supported by agriculture, and of close human proximity to domesticated animals leading to animal diseases infecting humans, resulted in European societies acquiring a much richer collection of dangerous pathogens to which European peoples had acquired immunity through natural selection (see the Black Death and other epidemics) during a longer time than was the case for Native American hunter-gatherers and farmers. (He mentions the tropical diseases that limited European penetration into Africa as an exception.) Natural selection is the primary mechanism within the scientific theory of evolution, in that it alters the frequency of alleles within a population. ... Illustration of the Black Death from the Toggenburg Bible (1411). ... Native Americans (also Indians, Aboriginal Peoples, American Indians, First Nations, Alaskan Natives, Amerindians, or Indigenous Peoples of America) are the indigenous inhabitants of The Americas prior to the European colonization, and their modern descendants. ... In anthropology, the hunter-gatherer way of life is that led by certain societies of the Neolithic Era based on the exploitation of wild plants and animals. ...

Other theories

In addition to the central thesis, Professor Diamond includes related (and sometimes controversial) observations: A controversy is a contentious dispute, a disagreement over which parties are actively arguing. ...

• In the prologue he writes that "in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners", which is his personal observation from interacting with both societies, and is defended with the socioevolutionary argument that the trait of "intelligence" was selected for in the hunter-gathering New Guinea societies, but not the densely populated European civilizations (where the major survival pressure was on the genes for resisting epidemics).
• In chapter 13 (on invention) Necessity's mother he writes (page 248) that the QWERTY keyboard layout has become entrenched despite "trials in 1932 with an efficiently laid-out keyboard showed that it would let us double our typing speed and reduce our typing effort by 95 percent". This gives great weight to a trial carried out by the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard company (with a rival system to sell), as independent trials never replicated these results. (Other analysts have found that the current layout is optimal; since it was not designed "to force typists to type as slowly as possible.")
• In chapter 19 (How Africa Became Black) he speculates that if the Dutch had arrived in South Africa after the Bantu they would have been unable to establish themselves in Cape Town, and says that since both sets of invaders displaced the Khoisan people the Dutch claim of prior occupation (although true) "needn't be taken seriously".

The Independent State of Papua New Guinea, often referred to by just the initials, PNG, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea (the other half is the Papua province of Indonesia). ... Genetics (from the Greek genno γεννώ= give birth) is the science of genes, heredity, and the variation of organisms. ... Sociobiology is a branch of biology and also sociology that attempts to throw light upon behavior in both human and non-human societies in terms of evolutionary advantage or strategy. ... Intelligence has two different common meanings : Intelligence (trait) Animal intelligence Artificial intelligence Intelligence (information gathering) Business intelligence Military espionage This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... An epidemic is generally a widespread disease that affects many individuals in a population. ... In lay terms, an invention is a novel device, material, or technique. ... The QWERTY Layout QWERTY (pronounced kwerty) is the modern-day layout of letters on most English language computer and typewriter keyboards. ... Path-dependence exists when the outcome of a process depends on its past history, on the entire sequence of decisions made by agents and resulting outcomes, and not just on contemporary conditions. ... The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is a keyboard layout designed by Drs. ... Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu (dull yellow) vs. ... The central area of Cape Town as seen from Table Mountain. ... This article is about the Khoisan ethnic group. ...

Criticisms of methodology

Some people criticize the argument of the book as derivative of the work of such cultural evolutionists as Leslie White, Julien Steward, and Esther Boserup, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture and economic and political growth; and such historians as William McNeill and Alfred Crosby, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture, European expansion, and disease. Cultural evolution is the structural change of a society and its values over time. ... Leslie Alvin White ([19 January [1900]], Salida Colorado -- 31 March 1975) was an anthropologist known for his advocacy of theories of cultural evolution and his role in creating the department of anthropology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. ... William H. McNeill (born 1917, Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian historian. ...

Others have criticized the book as an example of environmental determinism in the service of Eurocentrism. The charge is not that the book claims any essential superiority of European civilization or culture, nor that the book claims any inherent superiority of some European race. These critics assert that the problem with earlier cultural and racial explanations of European superiority (explanations that Diamond rejects) is not just that their explanations are wrong, but that what they are trying to explain — European superiority — is itself a Western myth. Although Diamond explicitly argues against European cultural or racial superiority, the charge is that his own argument serves many of the same functions as nineteenth century European claims to cultural or racial superiority, by suggesting that Europeans were destined to rule the globe. Diamond anticipates this criticism in the first point in his introduction. Environmental determinism is the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture. ... Eurocentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing emphasis on European (and, generally, Western) concerns, culture and values at the expense of those of other cultures. ... A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ...

Specifically, some argue that:

• It suggests that European civilization has "won" some competition. This suggestion is implicit; Diamond explicitly compares two Oceanian societies in a natural experiment in order to demonstrate the primacy of environmental factors in explaining why some societies are more developed than others. This is a false analogy, because a comparison is not the same thing as an experiment. Human history is far from over; therefore it is impossible to say that any one society has "won" over another form, as long as both survive. In other words, experiments must have clear endings and the human "experiment" never ends. As well as supporting this view, Timothy Taylor goes further by questioning whether Cortez actually "won" in his conflict with the Aztecs in the first place. Taylor accuses Diamond of assuming that Cortez was the victor because the European culture supplanted the Aztec. He says that this is a eurocentric analysis, because the Aztecs may have considered their "fate and chances of eternal salvation" as more promising than the conquistadors'. He writes that while the book sees environmental adaption and resource-base expansion as self-evidently good, the Maya saw the location of cities close to subterranean caverns as self-evidently good, whatever the ecological cost. See similar views from anthropologists at: Edge.org discourse

• It overlooks or obscures the importance of non-European (especially African) knowledge, technologies, and labor in European development, and the fact that Europeans forcibly appropriated much of this knowledge, technology, and labor. In other words, the "ascendancy" in question is one that has primarily benefited Europeans but is not specifically "European" in nature.

• It makes little attempt to explain relatively recent geographic transitions in technology, power and wealth; in particular the rise of Europe and the decline of south-west Asia since about 1500 AD.

• The effect of the above three problems is that Diamond's book suggests the inevitability of European ascendancy. Although Diamond's reliance on geography is not "racist" per se, it has the same effect of naturalizing differences.

Instead, these critics argue that European ascendancy was far from inevitable; a result of complex political and economic forces that cannot be reduced to environment; and likely a temporary phenomenon. Map of Oceania. ... From Latin ex- + -periri (akin to periculum attempt). ... Timothy Taylor is a lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Bradford, and an author of popular books on anthropology. ... Hernán Cortés Hernán Cortés (1485 - December 2, 1547) (who was known as Hernando or Fernando Cortés during his lifetime and signed all his letters Fernán Cortés) was the conquistador who conquered Mexico for Spain. ... Conquistador (meaning Conqueror in the Spanish language) is the term used to refer to the soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas and Asia Pacific under Spanish rule between the 15th and 17th centuries. ... The word Maya or maya can refer to: The Maya – a Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America the modern Maya people the pre-Columbian Maya civilization the Maya language Maya – a concept in Hindu/Vedic philosophy a state of misperception of reality the inherent force of... A satellite composite image of Asia Asia is the central and eastern part of the continent of Eurasia, defined by subtracting the European peninsula from Eurasia. ...

For a review of these criticisms, see the geographer James M. Blaut's Eight Eurocentric Historians.

Many historians dispute Diamond’s “law of history” regarding of dominance of agricultural societies over their non-agricultural neighbors. In fact, there are numerous cases of nomadic societies conquering agricultural ones: the Hittite conquest of the ancient Middle East, the successive movements of the Celtic and Germanic people across Europe, the Aryan migration into India, the Turkish conquest of much of the Moslem world that began in the 11th century, and the vast Mongolian conquests of the 13th and 14th centuries.

A more fundamental argument against Diamond’s thesis is that he does not understand the true nature of history; if history is defined as “a study of human actions” then it must be a study of conscious action and the evolution of ideas, rather than environmental factors. The ability of man to shape his environment and create a positive environment for growth presents many counterexamples to Diamond’s thesis, such as the numerous cases of rapid prosperity achieved by countries with few resources but free markets such as Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan. (Compared with nations blessed with natural resources that have stagnated under interventionist governments, examples: Brazil, Nigeria, and Russia.) Historiography is writing about rather than of history. ... A history resource for kids -Chronology of Events in History, Mythology, and Folklore. ... Economic growth is the increase in the value of goods and services produced by an economy. ... A free market is an idealized market, where all economic decisions and actions by individuals regarding transfer of money, goods, and services are voluntary, and are therefore devoid of coercion and theft (some definitions of coercion are inclusive of theft). Colloquially and loosely, a free market economy is an economy... A planned economy is an economic system in which economic decisions are made by centralized planners, who determine what sorts of goods and services to produce, and how they are to be priced and allocated. ...

Responses to criticisms of methodology

With regard to the question of whether or not there has been some sort of competition that has been "won and lost", Diamond asserts, in the third sentence of the prologue, that "the literate societies with metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies." It is possible that this defines the "competition" that Diamond attempts to explain, and that being conquered is a definite loss, even if not final or absolute. He says that in some cases (such as China) "absorbing the invader" is a long-term strategy for cultural survival that has proven successful, but in other cases – Aztec civilization for instance – the combination of germs and cultural shock has wiped out the colonized culture. Diamond cites analysts who predict the ‘supremacy’ of Asia in the 21st Century, and says that he doesn’t dispute the claim that the current hegemony of Europe (and its colonies) is "temporary". A conquest is the act of conquering a foreign land, usually for its assimilation into a larger federation or empire. ... Look up Genocide in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Genocide has been defined as the deliberate killing of people based on their ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, or (sometimes) politics, as well as other deliberate action(s)leading to the physical elimination of any of the above categories. ... The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th century. ... Moctezuma II (also Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin) (1466–1520) was an Aztec ruler or huey tlatoani, c. ... (20th century - 21st century - 22nd century - other centuries) Decades: 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s 2050s 2060s 2070s 2080s 2090s In calendars based on the Christian Era or Common Era, such as the Gregorian calendar, the 21st century is the current century, as of this writing. ... For other uses, see United States (disambiguation) and US (disambiguation). ...

With regard to the fact that non-European peoples have contributed (often involuntarily) to European society, Diamond does not deny this; he writes that he is in fact concerned with exactly this: explaining facts like why Europeans enslaved Africans and not vice versa. (Confusing Diamond's simple story is the fact that about 1.5 million Europeans were enslaved on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, beginning before the mass European enslavement of Africans in the triangle trade. He emphasises that similar counter-examples do not occur between the "New World" and the old.) A monument celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, erected in Victoria Tower Gardens, Millbank, Westminster, London Look up Slavery in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Slavery is a condition of control over a person against their will, enforced by violence or other forms of coercion. ... A monument celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, erected in Victoria Tower Gardens, Millbank, Westminster, London Look up Slavery in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Slavery is a condition of control over a person against their will, enforced by violence or other forms of coercion. ... The Barbary coast is the somewhat dated term for the coast of North Africa from the western border of Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean. ... A triangular trade is any three-way exchange, but the term is often used to refer to one particular instance: the 18th century trade between Europe, the west coast of Africa, and the Caribbean. ... The New World is one of the names used for the continents of North and South America and adjacent islands collectively, in use since the 16th century. ...

With regard to changes since 1500 AD in the power of southwest Asia compared with Europe, Diamond does touch on this in his conclusion, he says for example that SW Asia's intense agriculture damaged the environment, encouraged desertification, and hurt soil fertility. He argues that because central China has fewer geographical barriers (i.e. mountain ranges or bodies of water) than Europe, China was unified relatively early in its history (see Qin Dynasty), and that political homogeneity led to stagnation. Indeed, it is a matter of historical record that, circa 1500, China's naval superiority over anything Europeans could field was terminated in a single political decision; in a Europe fragmented into hundreds of kingdoms and nation-states, no such authority existed. He also says that India on the other hand may have been too fragmented for a monumental rise in power similar to Europe's. In fact, many attempts were made to ban technologies such as firearms, but only in politically unified and isolated nations (such as Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate) were such bans successful. Still, it is true that the book is mostly concerned with developments from prehistory up to about 1500 AD. Furthermore, Diamond's arguments are rather broad, and mostly argue that Eurasia (as opposed to Europe) would inevitably be dominant. The Qin Dynasty (秦朝 Pinyin Qín, Wade-Giles Chin; 221 BC - 207 BC) was preceded by the Zhou Dynasty and followed by the Han Dynasty in China. ... The Tokugawa shogunate or Tokugawa bakufu (徳川幕府) (also known as the Edo bakufu) was a feudal military dictatorship of Japan established in 1603 by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family until 1868. ...

Diamond has answered the critique of historical counterexamples (in differing growth rates unrelated to material endowments) by claiming that these cases represent short-term growth over (at most) fifty year time windows. In the case of rapidly expanding economies (such as the "East Asian Tigers") the rapid growth is usually explained (in economics) as one country "catching-up" to the rest, through trade and technological transfer (which would have been very difficult between continents in the pre-1500 period the book concentrates on). Instances of civilizations stagnating or being conquered despite having access to superior resources than their neighbours are mentioned several times in this book; in Professor Diamond’s view these reversals of fortune support his thesis, providing a mechanism for the spread of cultural dynamism and technology within continents but not (until the "Age of Exploration") between them. (His later work, Collapse tied environment and the fate of individual civilizations together more closely, but in Guns, Germs, and Steel his argument is made at the continental level, rather than the level of specific societies.) The East Asian Tigers, sometimes also referred to as Asias Four Little Dragons, referred to the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan; these territories and nations were noted for maintaining high growth rates and rapid industrialization between the early 1960s and 1990s. ... Economics (deriving from the Greek words οίκω [okos], house, and νέμω [nemo], rules hence household management) is the social science that studies the allocation of scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. ... In economics, endogenous growth theory or new growth theory was developed in the 1980s as a response to criticism of the neo-classical growth model. ... The so-called Age of Exploration was a period from the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which European ships were traveled around the world to search for new trading routes and partners to feed burgeoning capitalism in Europe. ... Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed cover Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a 2004 English-language book by University of California, Los Angeles geography professor Jared M. Diamond. ...

In the epilogue Diamond discusses "The future of human history as a science", pre-empting the criticism that he fails to understand what history is about by defining what he thinks part of it should be. He contrasts various styles of historical interpretation, and compares these to the practise of other academics who call themselves "scientists". He says he is "optimistic that historical studies of human societies can be pursued as scientifically as studies of dinosaurs". For a List of scientists, see: List of anthropologists List of astronomers List of biologists List of chemists List of computer scientists List of economists List of engineers List of geologists List of inventors List of mathematicians List of meteorologists List of physicists Scientist pairs List of scientist pairs See...

Finally, Diamond's view is undoubtedly largely "deterministic" in that it argues that Eurasian dominance was inevitable, or at least very likely (sometimes called "Geographical determinism"). Nevertheless, Diamond explicitly asks (on page 17) whether this inevitability would "justify the domination", and whether it renders futile modern attempts to "change the outcome". He denies that it does because the effects of proven environmental determinism could be easily nullified by contemporary transport and communication, whereas the effects of proven racial determinism might be used to justify genocide. Physical map of the Earth ( Medium) ( Large 2 MB) Geography is the scientific study of the locational and spatial variation in both physical and human phenomena on Earth. ...

Criticism of scholarship

Other historians have questioned some of the specific propositions Diamond marshals to prove his case on grounds of fact and/or plausibility. For example:

• Professor Joel Mokyr asks whether North-East American Sumpweed is not a counter-example to Diamond's claim that Eurasia was endowed with all of the world’s domesticatable crops. The book argues that although the flower is a "a nutritionist's ultimate dream" it was not possible to use it in farming because it causes hay fever, skin irritation, and smells bad. Mokry says that these are unpersuasive arguments that might be applied to the ancestors of Eurasian crops.
• Diamond cites modern zoologist's inability to domesticate the zebra as evidence that it could not have been domesticated over the past forty millennia in Africa. Again; this has been challenged as not in-itself a persuasive argument. It appears to these critics that modern failures to domesticate elephants and zebras are provided only as a fallbacks to Diamond's main point that since these animals have not been domesticated they could not be. (I.e. denying the antecedent, or as the Science & Society editorial puts it: "tautological reading-backwards from the present"). Supportive reviews have pointed out that Diamond produces further arguments, such as the ingenuity of native peoples in exploiting their environment as evidence of the difficulty of domesticating such animals. Surely, he writes, the native peoples who tamed elephants for use in war would have tried to breed them in captivity. If native peoples were clever enough to selectively breed modern forms of corn from the vastly different variety that grew in the wild, surely they could have found a way to domesticate elephants.

This is a list of genera in the plant family Asteraceae, the sunflowers. ... Dietitians are experts in food and nutrition. ... Species Equus zebra Equus quagga Equus grevyi See Equus for other species. ... Genera and Species Loxodonta Loxodonta cyclotis Loxodonta africana Elephas Elephas maximus Stegodon (extinct) Deinotherium (extinct) Mammuthus (extinct) Elephantidae (the elephants) is the only extant family in the order Proboscidea. ... Species Equus zebra Equus quagga Equus grevyi See Equus for other species. ... Denying the antecedent is a type of logical fallacy. ... Science & Society is the oldest continuously-published journal of Marxist scholarship still extant. ...

See also

• Marvin Harris
• cultural materialism
• Climatic determinism

Marvin Harris (August 18, 1927 - October 25, 2001) was an American anthropologist and highly influential in the development of cultural materialism. ... Cultural materialism - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ... Climatic Determinism is an aspect of economic geography. ...

External links

• The World According to Jared Diamond is a positive review of Diamond's thesis from Georgetown University in 2001. It points out that the historical evidence is weaker than it appears because roughly 80% of humanity lived in Eurasia rather than the other continents, so that the "deck was stacked even without Diamond's biogeographical factors". J.R. McNeill judges the book a "compelling illustration that human history is embedded in the larger web of life on earth."
• Food, social evolution, and conquest is a Science & Society editorial on the book from the marxist perspective, arguing that its ideas are insightful, but require the addition of the social dimension to produce a theory with more explanatory power.
• Professor (of Economics and History) Joel Mokyr reviews the book from the perspective of teaching and understanding economic history, his Northwestern University review says that Diamond has revived the respectability of "Geographic Determinism" in economic history, and that whilst many of his assertions are questionable the book presents a well-thought out argument that will make the reader wiser and better informed.
• A PowerPoint slideshow on geographical determinism contrasting the "Diamond Thesis" with other theories of modern wealth distribution (from University of Washington).

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a major research university in the United States. ... 2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... ... Economic history is the application of economic theories to historical study. ... The Arch, the main entrance to Northwesterns Evanston campus Northwestern University is a private university situated in Evanston, Illinois, on a 240 acre (970,000 m²) campus along the shores of Lake Michigan. ... The University of Washington, founded in 1861, is a major public research university in the Seattle metropolitan area. ...

References

• Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Company, March 1997. ISBN 0393038912
• ABC Radio Transcripts: Why Societies Collapse: Jared Diamond at Princeton University http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s707591.htm
• James M. Blaut: Eight Eurocentric Historians. The Guilford Press, New York, 2000. ISBN 1572305916
• E. L. Jones: The European Miracle : Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, 1981, Cambridge University Press; 2nd edition (1987) ISBN 0521336708

- this is a more extensive discussion of the effects of geography on comparative Chinese and European development than is allowed in the final section of Professor Diamond's book, and predates it by sixteen years.