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Book Review:
Guns,
Germs, and Steel:
The Fates of Human Societies
Reviewed by Bonnie
Randall Schutzman
©2004,
Bonnie Randall Schutzman
Jared
Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human
Societies makes an excellent case study in how to build a world, since it
focuses on the development of a particular planet we all know -- our own.
Diamond's ambitious goal for the book is to examine whether an archaeologist
transported back in time to 13,000 B.C. could have predicted which populations
would develop dominant high-tech societies and which would continue at a
stone-age level indefinitely. He goes on to identify several factors he feels
led to societal differentiation: the military technology to dominate one's
neighbors, infectious diseases that weaken societies not already exposed to
them, and industrial and political technology in areas including literacy,
economic and political structures, and manufacturing. He summarizes all these
complex factors in the catchphrase of the title: guns, germs, steel.
In
Diamond's view, a society develops advanced military and industrial technologies
when its population reaches sufficient density. A large sedentary population
depends on an adequate and stable food supply. A stable food supply depends on
several underlying factors in addition to soil quality and weather: the number
of species of plants and animals available for domestication, the ease with
which those species can be domesticated, and the ease with which domesticated
species can be transferred among societies. Areas with many available plant and
animal species, such as Eurasia, got a developmental head start over areas with
fewer, such as Australia and North America.
Diamond
makes a good case that domestication spreads more easily in areas with an
east-west axis, where latitude remains the same, than in areas such as the
Americas where a north-south axis requires domesticated species to adjust to
different lengths of day and drastic climate changes. Corn from Mexico, for
example, requires a longer growing season than the climate of Minnesota
provides, and llamas did poorly in the Central American jungles and thus never
reached more hospitable regions in North America. Goats, on the other hand,
were domesticated early in the Middle East and spread quickly from Spain to
China.
One of
Diamond's more interesting sections examines the characteristics of easily
domesticated animals and explains why cheetahs (unmanageable mating cycles),
elephants (too big and too slow to grow), zebras (too mean) and other easily
tamed animals were never fully domesticated.
Social
technology developed along similar lines. Denser populations required more
complex methods of conflict resolution and more efficient means to distribute
food. Better distribution and reduced conflict in turn supported elites who
could develop writing, accounting, and military strategies, and who passed the
learning of one generation efficiently to the next.
One of
the strengths of Diamond's analysis is his attention to examples that seem to
contradict his arguments. In the competition between hunter-gathering and
farming, for instance, some societies (Australia and parts of Africa, for
instance) possessed such a limited selection of native species that farming
offered little advantage over hunting and gathering. A handful of societies,
including those in the American northwest, had such an abundant supply of fish
and berries that switching to farming would have reduced their level of
nutrition.
Another
interesting section examines innovation: how new technologies are put to new
uses, and how they build on simpler problems that have already been solved. The
alphabet, for example, was streamlined from hieroglyphs. Gutenberg's printing
press was adapted from presses used to make wine. Innovations can be spread
through trade, copied by inventive observers, or acquired by conquest. Chinese
papermaking came to the Islamic world when an Arab army defeated a Chinese army
at the battle of Talas River in 751 A.D. and found several papermakers among the
prisoners of war.
Sometimes technology is abandoned or rejected. Japan rejected firearms because
they violated the samurai code. Polynesian settlers lost the ability to make
pottery as they scattered across the Pacific islands. Many factors contributed
to this loss, including lack of materials on many islands and reduced population
densities that presumably made it difficult to train specialized workers.
Diamond
discusses many other trends and developments of interest to worldbuilders. He
examines transitional societies, where new technologies have incompletely
replaced the old. He looks at settlement patterns and trade routes. He gives
special attention to the "stone age" societies in New Guinea, among whom he
lived for many years as an ornithologist, and to how a handful of illiterate
Spaniards brought the mighty Inca empire to its knees. An entire long section
details the patterns of human settlement in southeast Asia, Polynesia,
Australia, and New Guinea.
Diamond
includes quite a few tables, maps, and pictures, but the text would benefit from
even more. I found many tables hard to read, but the maps are good. The index
seems large, but when I tried to use it to locate several examples I wanted to
cite for this review, I wasn't able to find most of them. I'm also unconvinced
by his basic assertion that resource distribution and geography account for all
of the power differences among modern societies. But when I need to build an
alternate world, understand how geography and resources might have shaped the
town I live in, or invent a fantastic domestic animal for a short story, I'll be
turning to Guns, Germs, and Steel for examples and guidance.
Guns,
Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies,
by Jared Diamond. W. W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-31755-2. Suggested retail
US$16.95
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