Guns, Germs, and Steel

[yovargas]

I have almost finished reading this book. Has anybody else read it? I would love to hear what people thought of it.

[vison]

I read it and thought it was an incredible book.

It gave me a new way of looking at the world. Diamond is often accused of peddling "geographic determinism", but he makes it perfectly clear throughout that he is not.

[yovargas]

Geographic determinism? That's kinda silly, no? I mean, he's just saying, hey, those Australian aborrigenes weren't growing big fields of flowing wheat because there was no wheat for them to grow! Is that "geographic determinism"? Just sounds like common sense to me.


One really obvious question (flaw?) has been bugging me for a while now, though - if the Fertile Crescent is such a powerful and important place, why was it western Europe, thousands of miles away, that ultimately ended up with all the power? Why are the poor people of Baghdad - smack in the heart of the Fertile Crescent - getting bombarded by the rich and powerful European-descended Americans?

[baby tuckoo]

Yov, could you ask a more specific question?



Jnyusa?????





Must watch baseball on tv rather than answer yov's question.

[yovargas]

Yov, could you ask a more specific question?

Yes, I could. How many hairs are on your head.




It seems he does answer exactly my question, in the Epilogue (which I just finished reading). Interestingly enough, the heavy deforestation and irrigation of that area for thousands of years eventually led to heavy erosions, eroding the Crescent's ability to produce until eventually it was all just sand. Observation of the timing makes one think that it was possibly around this time that Europe, with the rise of Greece, begun its long ascent into dominance.

Fascinating.

[Jnyusa]

Jnyusa?????

I do have a partial theory about some of this stuff, but it would take an awful lot of time to write it here.

I haven't read Diamond's book, but I saw the National Geographic Special about the book. And I am sort of a geographic determinist myself, so I can't really argue with the starting point. But I think that the factors contributing to the destruction of pre-European New World economies are quite different from the factors leading to the destruction of the trade routes of the East.

Interestingly enough, the heavy deforestation and irrigation of that area for thousands of years eventually led to heavy erosions, eroding the Crescent's ability to produce until eventually it was all just sand.

This is certainly true for some limited regions but probably not a significant factor for the Near East as a whole ... in my estimation, at least.

With one exception, to my knowledge, where desertification occurred it resulted from the Roman occupation and the water transport system used by the Romans (open aqueducts). Throughout most of the Near East, even to the western regions of China where water is also scarce, the Persian underground acqueduct system is used, even to this day, originally spread by Alexander. Iraq and Iran both make very efficient use of their water.

I had opportunity to see such a system up close in the Occupied Territories ... (long, long ago) ... which was most interesting for me.

[narya]

The book was better than the special.

[yovargas]

With one exception, to my knowledge, where desertification occurred it resulted from the Roman occupation and the water transport system used by the Romans (open aqueducts).

Interesting. How does that lead to desertification?

[Jnyusa]

Interesting. How does that lead to desertification?

Using vast amounts of water for some superfluous, non-agricultural purpose (baths) and transporting it in a manner that maximizes evaporation.

[baby tuckoo]

I've read "G, G, and S", and I'm happy to have Jnyusa respond better than I could.


Sorry, yov, for the original flippant response. My bottle had been spiked.

[Jnyusa]

The book was better than the special.

Quite. It is with some embarrassment that I own up to skipping the source material.

I'm happy to have Jnyusa respond better than I could.

But I haven't said anything yet!

Seriously, there was another thread where we were discussing the destruction of the American economies and Faramond made the point, quite correctly, that we have to distinguish between the guns and the germs. Disease was by far the largest factor in the extermination of American societies.

Disease was not a primary factor in the destruction of the eastern trade routes ... that is, differential prevalence of disease only became a factor after those societies were destroyed ... because the historic migration pattern was different, in multiple ways that I don't really have time to go into.

There are several chains of causation set in motion by the so-called Age of Discovery that are distinctly different from previous interactions throughout history (imo), but this really is a thesis in and of itself.

From what I have seen of Diamond's book (on TV), I don't think I would disagree with his major points.

[narya]

Interesting. How does that lead to desertification?

Using vast amounts of water for some superfluous, non-agricultural purpose (baths) and transporting it in a manner that maximizes evaporation.

The open-to-air aqueducts ran to thousands of fountains and spigots - one for each neighborhood - that were always running, and through sewers that washed away the solid stuff. That's a lot of water!

[baby tuckoo]

But I haven't said anything yet!

To Jnyusa, two cogent posts (which included specific answers to difficult questions of the sort bt didn't want to engage) is "not saying anything."

[yovargas]

One of many thoughts since finishing the book:

According to Diamond, in pre-Europe Americas, South America had the largest, most powerful state (incas) and North America had the least organized peoples. But in post-Europe Americas, it was the North Americans who came to have the largest, most powerful state and the South Americas aren't particularly wealthy or powerful. Why?

[Faramond]

North America is particularly suited to growing all the best old world crops that didn't exist there before Columbus. South America is less so, as much of it is in tropical zones. So once the North American climate can be properly taken advantage of ...

It's pretty hard to build up much of a food surplus in tropical regions, which limits how organized you can get.

[Jnyusa]

It's pretty hard to build up much of a food surplus in tropical regions, which limits how organized you can get.

Yes, food surplus is the key, Faramond! Though I prefer to look at it through the lens of necessity rather than opportunity. In temperate climates a food surplus is necessary because of winter. Along with that necessity goes the necessity for storage, transportation, distribution, record keeping, etc.

In the tropics you have a continuous growing season, but a different necessity prevails. Because the soils are thin, constant migration is required and tribes have to learn how to move their territories in harmony with one another and remember how long it has been since they visited a particular region, where the time frame can be many generations long.

Different kinds of organization are required, in other words, depending on geography.

[narya]

I agree, that necessity is the mother of invention, and a diversified economy. Alaska has some good examples.

In places where hunting and gathering were more than sufficient year 'round (like the case of the Tlingit and Haida Indians in southeastern Alaska), communities stayed small, so that the land could provide for them. Every person was a hunter/gatherer of seafood, game, fish, and wild plants in their various seasons, and in between, everyone was an artist and craftsman. Which is why all useful objects from fishhooks to houseposts were embellished with artwork. Houses were built on a grand scale, and villages were permanent. But domestication of plants never occurred. Not that you can grow much but conifers and ferns in a temperate rainforest where it rains about an inch a day.

In the interior of Alaska, where winters were much harsher, and some Athabascan Indians died every winter of starvation, household objects were much simpler, less decorative, and usually portable. Because they had to be nomadic to chase game, they never developed agriculture or permanent housing. Even now, agriculture is very marginal, despite all the latest technology. And those Athabascans who now live in permanent villages with clapboard houses and flush toilets find that the moose and salmon are getting harder to find each year, and they must rely more and more on sources of income not tied to the land.

In the Americas, it was only in places where highly concentrated foodstuffs could be grown (such as the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilizations) that people could move "off" the land and into cities, diversifying in their crafts and occupations.

[Jnyusa]

yov, I missed this comment of yours earlier, to which Faramond was apparently responding:

South America had the largest, most powerful state (incas) and North America had the least organized peoples.

In this case the distinction I would make is not between South and North but between tropical and non-tropical. The Incas did not inhabit a tropical climate, and my personal feeling is that civilization (such as we usually refer to it - the development of cities, roads, writing systems, etc.) required seasons in which food was not available. Basically, the food surplus factor that Faramond identified.

Narya, you can anwer this better than I can, but my understanding is that the temperate zone peoples of North America had very advanced governance structures. I would expect to find more migratory and meat-dependent lifestyles as one gets closer to the arctic, but in the area where I grew up (Ohio river), the Miami Indians (an Algonkin subgroup) did have permanent structures, settled horticulture, a writing system and a fairly advanced understanding of astronomy ... as most settled horticulturalists do, btw.

They did not have the city development found in Europe at the same time, but they did not have anything like the population density of Europe either, and the development of a commercial sector is strongly dependent upon population density. I think that we have to be careful with our comparisons in that (1) these cultures were not studied extensively before being destroyed, so we don't know as much about them as we would wish, and (2) people living under different environmental circumstances develop different systems which may be equally advanced for the stage they are in but may not be comparable at a given moment in time.

edit: eek ... misidentification of the Miamis. fixed now.

[narya]

Narya, you can anwer this better than I can, but my understanding is that the temperate zone peoples of North America had very advanced governance structures.

Well, no, actually, I can't give you a better answer. I'm pretty familiar with Alaskan indigenous people, but not the rest of the continent. There are thousands of different cultural groups, each with their own language and customs, more diverse than the various European cultures of the time, who occupied a much smaller land area.

I think Jared's main point is that each group was dealt a different set of cards, and made the best hand of it they could. You can't fault a group for not developing technology if that group did not have all the means necessary to first concentrate agriculture and husbandry so that a few could feed many, then move the non-food producers off the land and into cities where they could be full time craftsmen. For that, they needed easy-to-domesticate grains, meat animals, and beasts of burden, as well as reliable weather, reliable and safe water sources, seasons (to encourage harvesting more than the present needs), a moderation of warfare (just enough to develop military technology), abstract money concepts, a unifying culture imposed by one dominant group, and a small and pampered upper class. Then, to move from a feudal society to an industrial revolution, you need governments and religions that encouraged change and freedom of expression, a burgeoning middle class that also wants to pamper itself, and, some would say, coffee.

These vital links were not all present in North America. Corn/beans/squash was not a highly concentrated crop, and all plowing had to be done by human power. There were no large meat animals. Only a few parts of North America had the Mediterranean climate that was so beneficial to the Greeks and Romans. We don't know much about the governments and religions, because 90% of the population, often whole villages, were wiped out by diseases that the Europeans had some immunity to, thanks to their high population concentrations and history of living with their domesticated animals in their houses.

[Jnyusa]

You can't fault a group for not developing technology if that group did not have all the means ...

True. I can only talk about the Miamis because that's the only Native American archeological site I've actually seen firsthand, but they seemed to be in what we would probably call a mesolithic state of development as late as the 13th century, CE; whereas the Near East went through its neolithic revolution between 8,000 and 6,000 BCE. This depended strongly on the luck of discovery, followed by the long transmission of technologies overland. The Miamis had no large domesticated animals, no irrigation systems, and no crop hybridization techniques, as far as we can see, and these are usually the three discoveries to which the agricultural revolution of the Near East is attributed. In all probability they would have developed those things eventually ... they were on the brink, so to speak, when the migration from abroad changed everything.

and, some would say, coffee.

Definitely coffee. From whence flows all early morning inspiration.