Re: Guns Germs and Steel
this is from memory (and explaining it to other people), so i may get some things wrong..Originally Posted by Pindar
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diamond's basic thesis is that modern culture/civilization patterns have nothing to do with genetic differences between populations, but with environmental differences between the locations where those populations developed. basically, he views the situation like a building, with every level dependent on the foundation from below.
the most basic foundation is the environment itself, and this has 2 equally important components: domesticable plants, and domesticable animals.
when one has both domesticable plants and animals, agriculture can arise that is sufficient for turning hunter-gatherer populations into agrarian city-dwellers.
diamond uses that setup mainly to distinguish between development in eurasia compared to the rest of the world. every other landmass, he argues, is deficient in some way. mostly, iirc, they lack domesticable animals, which means they lack the animal power for plowing, which is necessary for large-scale agriculture.
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this basis (domesticable animals/plants --> large-scale agriculture --> necessary population densities to turn hunter-gatherers into city-dwellers) leads to a "cultural environment" where ideas like boorstin's come into effect. in addition to large populations leading to conflict/technological innovation, the large populations also create the perfect environment for "germs" to thrive and develop, evolving along with human immune defenses. so, as a side effect of societal development in agrarian societies, dangerous viruses and bacteria develop.
this turned out to be important when people from high-density, agrarian societies imported these germs to the "new world", for example, where the low-population densities never allowed germs to thrive and develop similarly to in eurasia. since the amerindians had never been exposed to these kinds of germs, they were decimated when these germs infected them. there were no reciprocal germs to decimate the eurasians because there was never a high enough population density in the new world to give rise to such virulent pathogens. in addition, the eurasian immune system had been developing along with smallpox, syphilis, etc, and so was able to deal with relatively benign new-world germs.
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diamond also talks about the importance of the physical geography. this is a distinct concern from domestication, but they end up being related. he mentions the old idea that east-west oriented landmasses, like eurasia allow for transmission of animals, plants and agricultural technology more easily than north-south oriented continents.
in addressing the "competition" angle, diamond points out that within eurasia, europe is well suited for competing states because of it's highly "indented" coastline. this geographical setup makes europe much more difficult to unify politically than china, for example, which has a much smoother coastline. china suffered a chronic and frequent unity because there were little in the way of geographic barriers to keep one power center from dominating any other that might arise.
europe, by contrast, suffered a chronic disunity, where isolated populations could develop their own political structures, languages, and ethnic groups. this caused europe to resist attempts at unification more successfully (e.g. ancient rome, napoleonic france, nazi germany).
the significance here is that under a relatively unified culture, a large area like china or europe will not only experience less conflict/competition (leading to innovation, presumably), but also a unified political entity can stunt development with policy.
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so, diamond argues that the environment, both in terms of the geography and in terms of the layout of domesticable plants and animals were the basic controls in the development of human societies. that's how i remember it at least, if i missed anything, please correct me (anybody).
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