Jared Diamond

An intriguing study of the rise of civilization argues that human development is not based on race or ethnic differences but rather is linked to biological diversity, discussing the evolution of agriculture, technology, writing, political systems, and religious belief. Tour.

The Fates of Human Societies

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Ray Remnant

Chaitanya Baranwal

This book tackles a question simple enough for a teenager to ask: why the modern world is so very dominated by people of Eurasian origin, and what the root causes of the differences between the developed and underdeveloped are. And by root causes I don't mean colonization or the advent of technology, but the causes behind why were the colonizers not the colonized to begin with. Coming up with convincing enough answers, it ultimately relates this differential rate of development to the geographic advantages only some places offered 13,000 years ago (and even before).

Touching the boundaries of geography, anthropology, history and archaeology, it's commendable how Jared Diamond manages to not riddle this book with technicalities. Tracing its argument is easy enough, even for a 17-year old like me, who's completely alien to the subjects this book deals with. That being said, this trait can be a double-edged sword, because an uninformed person like me cannot go and check every fact Diamond mentions, he/she has to presume it to be true and move on. Nevertheless, this is an extremely informative read. It discusses the origins and histories of peoples all around the world, so even if you don't agree with the book's theories, you do get a decent idea of how the people in the world ended up where they are.

My reservations against this book are that it ignores a lot of factors which shaped (and are shaping) the modern world's scenario. Everything from wars, the kind of governments, cultures and the impact of certain individuals is given far less weight than geography and ecology, finally getting tidbits of mention in the epilogue of the book. Perhaps it would benefit the book to cut down on its redundancies and focus on important issues not considered. Basically, the book asserts that the fate of the world was to a great extent decided thousands of years ago itself. Not sure if many of us would agree with that, but regardless, this book was definitely worth the time I gave it.

Gavin

Recognisably a popularisation, but it's in an under-reported field (speculative human geography) so it is still high in nourishing insight. Exciting, thoughtful, deserving. 
Q: Why is it that you white people developed much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but
we black people had little cargo of our own?
A: History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among people's environments, not because of biological differences among people themselves.

The title's misleading: all three of those pro-colonialist environmental factors are merely proximate effects of what he argues is the ultimate cause of world inequality: domesticable crops and livestock on a continent which happens to be oriented in a way that makes its climate very similar across wide latitudes. His theory explicitly disclaims racist explanations of world history - e.g. his chapter on the conquistadors is the most harrowing account I've ever read - and he says things like

  When I arrived in New Guinea for the first time, it became clear to me that New Guineans are curious, questioning, talkative people with complex languages and social relationships, on the average at least as intelligent as Europeans and Americans. In New Guinea, I’m the dope who can’t do elementary things like follow an unmarked trail or light a fire in the rain. 

Yet the anthropologists' party line on him is just that: that he's a racist and, almost worse in that circle, a determinist, a dirty reductionist. I feel perfectly fair in explaining their rancour by his skilful scientific intrusion on their ill-tended turf. (Diamond was originally an ornithologist and geneticist.)

Engaging and original as it is, his thesis faces a hard explanatory limit: agriculture has not been the limiting factor on economies for more than 200 years, and yet the Great Divergence dates from then and not earlier. Diamond could appeal to simple path-dependency: "we win now because we won then" or argue that the technological and military edge yielded land, and that land yielded the economic miracle. But the evidence (also known as Gregory Clark) certainly does not warrant crop or zoological supremacism.

Anyway I know of no better introduction to cultural evolution theory, human population genetics, the Clovis / pre-Clovis controversy, philology, New Guinean traditionalism, the origins and downsides of civilization, animal husbandry, and the ancient history of Africa. The rub is that you can't stop with him, because he doesn't go for all the angles.

In one sentence: See Q&A above.


4/5 (minus a half for awful references - vague, without page numbers in the text or in the source, nor footnotes).

Haley Murray

I read about half of this in high school for a class. From what I remember it was good but I don’t plan to pick it back up. I am just marking this as read to get it off my to be read shelf.

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.

Alex grey

Great, got repetitive in the last third. But very insightful

Nelson Zagalo

A masterpiece of science and history. Obligatory to understand how civilisations have evolved.

Análise em Português: http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com/...

Not Mihai

I'm not Mihai

"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."—Bill Gates In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.

Lucy Newlinds

Diamond sets out to explain how and why is it that certain societies developed; why some never moved past being "hunter-gathers," whilst others developed into Empires with complex organisational structures, a mercantile class and ... Diamond believes that the answer is not that there is an innate difference in the intelligence of individuals but rather is due to differences in the availability of desirable 'Real Estate.' That is differences in "the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species." 

Unfortunately this is book is an example of a novel completely loosing me in the final stages of my reading experience. Without the 2017 Afterword entitled 'Rich and Poor Countries in Light of Guns, Germs and Steel,' I would have still believed that Guns, Germs and Steel ultimately presented a flawed answer to the question posed by Diamond, as any attempt by an author who was attempting to distill 60 000 years of history into a 400 page book would be. 

Whilst Diamond maintains throughout his endeavour he has set out to dispel racist stereotypes that have persisted (and propagated by colonial powers), his single minded determination to see the development of human civilisation through the lens of a single historical theory, geographical determinism, Diamond's insistence that Eurasian nations "just got lucky" ends up absolving colonial powers for their direct involvement in shaping the trajectory of modern African, South American and the Middle Eastern nations and Indigenous societies around the world.  For example, in the 2017 Afterword Diamond insists that all South Korea needed to advance into a modern and wealthy nation and build on its historical "advantages" was "only independence, military security and American foreign-aid assistance." His statement betrays a key blind spot in his analysis. The word 'imperialism' never even appears in the book. In ignoring economics, religion, culture and the complex way class and political division was utilised by Empires throughout history to exploit societies and use the profits to aid their own development, Diamond's history ignores a large part of the story of human development. 

Jason Porterfield

This is a superb examination of where the things people eat, the things that make people sick and the objects people use to murderate other people come from. Hint: not Mars.

the fates of human societies

Guns, germs, and steel

Wynn Netherland

Unable to stick with the hardback edition years ago, I recently decided to give it another try in audio form. Incredibly dry and often tedious, it reads more like a textbook than general non-fiction. Even so, I found his telling of the unfolding of the development of human civilizations on each continent fascinating. Perhaps in attempting to debunk the Great Man theory of history he arrives at sort of an environmental fatalism that leaves little room for other explanations.

If nothing else the author uncovered a curiosity in me for pre-Columbian cultures.

Shelby Doherty

** spoiler alert **
           Liked:
- Explanation of why the world and societies of today are the way they are.
- Dives into topics that I know nothing or very little about (prehistory, history of areas besides USA, Latin America, and Europe)
- Really enjoyed discussions about language, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia's early expansion, and discussion of domesticable animals.

Disliked:
- Very long and dense. At times I felt demotivated to pick it up and felt that I would never finish the book.
- Can be a bit repetitive as he really wants to support his argument and make sure that it is understood.

Overall a very detailed book exploring the pre-history of the world and how this has impacted the world we live in today. How the geography and ecology of the land can strongly impact the inhabitants' ability to create societies that are able to become modern, powerful influences.

Karim Nas

One of the reason I wanted to read this book is due to the fact that its theory was criticized in the book Why Nations Fail. That book would argue that an inclusive government would create a productive food producers. While this book would argue that a productive food producing society will eventually develop an effective government.

Nevertheless, I love both books. I can use this book to explain how our world was shaped prior to the 16th century and Why Nations Fail to explain the later part.

It's no small feat to explain 13,000 human history of all continents into a 400 pages book. One might say it oversimplified human history, other might say it uses the wrong set of theories. But all the theories proposed by Diamond in this book make sense to me. One of the reasons we read books is to achieve a better understanding of the world we live in. And this book succeed in that task.

Anna Pinto

If someone told me this book is the manual Sid Meyer read to create the game rules for Civilization, I'd buy it.
The author has a simple thesis: the differences between world's peoples comes from geography, and not from characteristics inherent to peoples themselves. The chapters contain arguments from archeology, biology, anthropology and even linguistics to support this thesis, as well as graphs, maps and diagrams that help visualize the information.

Ben Nathan

it's like a really interesting and long anthropology lecture. I highly suggest as an audio book so the dry parts are more manageable.

André 

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Melanie Chen

Jacob Crooke

Darma Paramarta

Patrick Baumann

Jonathan Phillips

Bobby Jacobson

PATTERNED PLANET: SPECIAL EDITIONS OF GROUNDBREAKING SCIENCE BOOKS Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians. An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel remains a ground-breaking and humane work of popular science.

(Patterns of the Planet)

Guns, Germs and Steel

Jürgen Schweizer

This book answers the most obvious, the most important, yet the most difficult question about human history: why history unfolded so differently on different continents. Geography and biography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians

Guns, Germs, and Steel The Fates of Human Societies

Reviews

Highlights