Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

Guns, Germs and Steel

I came across Guns, Germs and Steel as required reading for one of my classes and I must say that it soon became one of my favorite non-fiction books. Written by Jared Diamond, this book explores an interesting question – why some societies like the Eurasian ones have risen to become powerful whilst others have struggled to reach that position. Plus, as the author attempts to answer this question, he also throws in a lot of historical details about various civilizations and their different contributions to the world. And that is the beauty of this book.

Diamond uncovers the dominance of one group of people over another in a variety of ways. Firstly, he talks about the importance of agriculture and how that was vital for whether a select society thrived or withered away. By agriculture, it refers not just to settled farming and the ability to harvest a variety of food types but also to the geographical location of the farming area. Diamond argued that societies that were close and linked via routes to one another, especially over the temperate latitudes, had a greater advantage and were more likely to flourish. Thus, such spots would be able to share and trade not only food types but other significant items or data like technological innovations. Incidentally, what props up as interesting side facts are the historical backgrounds to different plant types, or at least the ones we have continued to plant for consumption. Thereby you will be able to find out who grew what where before it was shipped off to so-and-so location to be the favored food of that area.

The topic about agricultural growth in turn lead to his other claim – that these same routes also influenced the domestication of animals. Of course, every region has animals that are native to that area. Diamond again points out that the areas along certain latitudes had an added advantage since they could trade and rear animals without worrying about the creatures adapting to a new environment. In fact, he notes that it is considerably harder for animals to move and adapt to different areas along a longitude because of the different climate and vegetation types.

This hindrance imposed by a society's geographical location is related to one relevant point – germs. Diamond notes that a lot of diseases that we are used to today are ones that have jumped species. Examples include chicken pox, measles, small pox and a variety of others that we have become used to. It turns out that when folks started domesticating animals, the germs adapted to a different mammal and we were introduced to a whole range of new illnesses. However, the book states that once we have been exposed to an illness, we develop immunity to it. Can you see how folks traded animals along the temperate latitude are more likely to be immune to a number of illnesses as opposed to those settled far to the north or south along the longitudes? Diamond asserts that this in particular is vital to why some have withstood many turbulent times whilst others have fared rather badly.

Believe it or not, that is a rather short wrap-up of the book. There are sub-topics within each of these themes. Furthermore, each theme links up to major events in world history, helping us view the world in a new light. This book is definitely a must-read for history buffs.