In a previous post, I mentioned that I had attended a lecture/book promotion by a resident philosopher of ASU, about his new book which dealt with the rise of agriculture and its effects on the advancement of human civilization, society, and philosophy. I also mentioned that I wasn't particularly swayed by his thoughts, but found them interesting, none the less. Later that month, I had the chance to meet up with an old friend from high school that I hadn't seen in several years, who also happens to be a philosopher, or quite nearly, lacking his PhD by less than a year of study. I brought up the subject, which reminded him of a book he had heard of, Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. He explained that the thesis of the book centered on the unequal, natural distribution of cereal grains and domesticable animals througout the habitable world, and how this natural distribution, along with other geological, geographical, biological and human variables, determined the outcome of modern history once human beings became reliant on agriculture.
It sounded very interesting, but I didn't get around to checking out the book until a few weeks ago. Seeing as this behemoth work of non-fiction (about 500 pages in all) would take me months to read, being the begining of the Spring semester and all, I decided to check out the book and audio book together, and take turns listening as well as reading. It was a success! I am now through the body, and have only the short epilogue to the 2003 edition left to read after only a few weeks.
It may be premature to write a review, seeing as how I'm not really finished yet, but I think I can already say, with some confidence, that I have found a new favorite book and author. In substance, his work reminds me of Darwin's: plain, unequivocal, well-researched, well-supported, and ground breaking, possibly even revolutionary. But his style is much more readable even than Darwin, which is quite an achievment! To bring so many strains of science and history together, spanning such a length of time (from aprox 11,000 b.c. to the present), and doing so in plain and simple speech, and in the relative brevity of only 500 pages, is remarkable!
I learned a myriad of new and useful information about the native plant and animal species of the different continents which are useful to humans, the broad natural and human histories of those continents, the birth of writing, metallurgy, and agriculture (including their independent arrivals as well as the spread of existing technologies), and the oft times tragic consequences of the collisions between populations seperated by millenia of differential development (eg. Native American and European contact in the last 1,000 years). His theory is so simple and yet profound, I really have to wonder why it is not already taught by every teacher of history to young children. I can imagine how this knowledge, in the public mind, would do wonders to solve the social and racial problems of the world, not to mention lending a useful, workable theory to anthropologists, human biologists, sociologists and historians alike. Imagine if all these fields could be merged into one! It sounds lofty, but after reading this book, I don't think it would be all that difficult.
I don't wish to rob anyone of the great satisfaction of reading GG&S by summarizing its points here, but I can assure you that my lame attempts to condense his theory to a few paragraphs will not do it justice, and are only meant to serve as incentive to the prospective reader, and as a personal test to see if I really understood his intent.
Firstly, as I mentioned, cereal grains are not uniformly distributed over the surface of the earth. Most of our main sources of carbohydrates today, about 80%, come from three types of grain: wheat, corn, and rice. These three grains are all "grasses" native to temperate and tropical grasslands. Interestingly, these three were all domisticated independently in pre-history: wheat in the Fertile Crescent about 11,000 years ago, rice in south-east Asia (China) about 8,000 years ago, and corn in the MesoAmerica about 4,000 years ago. Other important sources of carbs include barley and its relatives (grasses), millet, bananas (asian origin), sorghum (an african crop), quinoa (a peruvian pseudocereal) and tubers such as potatoes and yams (domesticated in South America, and Polynesia respectively).
There are some 50 odd types of grasses that could, in theory, be dometicated, but only a handful whose wild ancestors had sufficiently large enough kernels for proto-farmers to take an interest in. The vast majority of these useful grasses are native to the Fertile Crescent and other parts of Eurasia, with extremely few being native to the Americas or Australia. Also, Eurasia, besides being the largest landmass in the world, has by far the largest amount of land located in those temperate and tropical grassland biomes, whose particular climate and rainfall patterns are necessary for agriculture of these crops.
The next agricultural variable is domesticable species of wild animals. This turns out to be important for several reasons: 1, animals, when used for food, provide a dependable source of protein (a difficult nutrient to find in the wild), their skin, bones and fat have found many uses by humans as well (we still use them regularly); 2, the muscle power of larger animals can be harnessed to aid in farming (pulling a plow), transport (riding or pulling a cart), and warfare (chariots, cavalry, etc.); 3, their waste can be used as fertilizer for agriculture; and 4, exposure to their germs transmits diseases to dense human populations (influenza, tuberculosis, typhus, cholera, pox viruses, anthrax, and bubonic plague were all originally animal pathogens) that alternate between epidemics and latent periods, selecting for those individuals with immunity. In turn, these naturally selected populations spread their germs to vulnerable, non-exposed populations when they meet, either in conquest or trade, and the spread of disease has a huge impact on the outcome of such collisions.
As was the case with grains, domesticable wild mammals are also unevenly dispersed over the face of the earth. Of the 15 or so large species that have been domesticated, once again, the vast majority are natives to Eurasia. Large mammals and marsupials were prominent members of the pleistocene fauna of north/south America and Australia, when human colonization occurred on those continents, but they were quickly wiped out as a result of massive drought or over-hunting (most likely the latter), leaving few, if any, remaining candidates for domestication. In the Americas, the only large mammal to be domesticated was the llama/Alpaca of the Inca, and there were no large mammals domesticated in Australia. In sub-Saharan Africa, there are many large mammals, none of which have been successfully domesticated because of something the author refers to as the Ana Karenina principle. In contrast, Eurasian large mammals, including the sheep, pig, cow, camel and the horse became integral parts of the economy, and made up a food-producing-package that came to dominate nearly every civilization on earth with an appropriate habitat.
With a foundation of food producers in place, political organizations of increasing complexity (band-> tribe->chiefdom->state->empire) follow quite easily and predictably, in order to control the surplus of food and goods, and create roles for those not directly involved in food production: bureaucrats, priests, warriors, etc. This type of organization is necessary for the development and adoption of writing, which confers another huge advantage to that civilization. The independent development of writing only happened 3 times (possible only twice): among Ind0-Europeans in the Fertile Crescent, the Maya of Mesoamerica, and ancient China (this is up for debate).
I've only scratched the surface here. This book is packed with knowledge, and brings together so many strands of history into a single, concise perspective. When all taken together, his conclusions are irrefutable: the reason for the current state of the world, with Europeans and their descendants on the very top of the pile, has nothing to do with their superior ability, or some divine mandate that they should rule the world. It has everything to do with the relative timing that the different homelands of the world adopted agriculture as a way of life, abandoned hunting-gathering in the process, and where they were living on the globe. These plain facts totally destroy any and all supposed "evidence" for racism and divine favoritism, and tell the story of man in ecological terms. It is a fascinating, eye-opening, learning experience that sheds light on the vastness of human history, gives direction for the future, and finally puts aside the euro-centric world view that has tarnished our past for centuries.
I hope that in the years to come, we can take lessons like this to heart, and learn to share the wealth and abundance of the world, learn from the mistakes of history and rise above our primitive and selfish ambitions. If Human History was made into a science, this would be the textbook! And for once, I would enjoy doing my homework.
It sounded very interesting, but I didn't get around to checking out the book until a few weeks ago. Seeing as this behemoth work of non-fiction (about 500 pages in all) would take me months to read, being the begining of the Spring semester and all, I decided to check out the book and audio book together, and take turns listening as well as reading. It was a success! I am now through the body, and have only the short epilogue to the 2003 edition left to read after only a few weeks.
It may be premature to write a review, seeing as how I'm not really finished yet, but I think I can already say, with some confidence, that I have found a new favorite book and author. In substance, his work reminds me of Darwin's: plain, unequivocal, well-researched, well-supported, and ground breaking, possibly even revolutionary. But his style is much more readable even than Darwin, which is quite an achievment! To bring so many strains of science and history together, spanning such a length of time (from aprox 11,000 b.c. to the present), and doing so in plain and simple speech, and in the relative brevity of only 500 pages, is remarkable!
I learned a myriad of new and useful information about the native plant and animal species of the different continents which are useful to humans, the broad natural and human histories of those continents, the birth of writing, metallurgy, and agriculture (including their independent arrivals as well as the spread of existing technologies), and the oft times tragic consequences of the collisions between populations seperated by millenia of differential development (eg. Native American and European contact in the last 1,000 years). His theory is so simple and yet profound, I really have to wonder why it is not already taught by every teacher of history to young children. I can imagine how this knowledge, in the public mind, would do wonders to solve the social and racial problems of the world, not to mention lending a useful, workable theory to anthropologists, human biologists, sociologists and historians alike. Imagine if all these fields could be merged into one! It sounds lofty, but after reading this book, I don't think it would be all that difficult.
I don't wish to rob anyone of the great satisfaction of reading GG&S by summarizing its points here, but I can assure you that my lame attempts to condense his theory to a few paragraphs will not do it justice, and are only meant to serve as incentive to the prospective reader, and as a personal test to see if I really understood his intent.
Firstly, as I mentioned, cereal grains are not uniformly distributed over the surface of the earth. Most of our main sources of carbohydrates today, about 80%, come from three types of grain: wheat, corn, and rice. These three grains are all "grasses" native to temperate and tropical grasslands. Interestingly, these three were all domisticated independently in pre-history: wheat in the Fertile Crescent about 11,000 years ago, rice in south-east Asia (China) about 8,000 years ago, and corn in the MesoAmerica about 4,000 years ago. Other important sources of carbs include barley and its relatives (grasses), millet, bananas (asian origin), sorghum (an african crop), quinoa (a peruvian pseudocereal) and tubers such as potatoes and yams (domesticated in South America, and Polynesia respectively).
There are some 50 odd types of grasses that could, in theory, be dometicated, but only a handful whose wild ancestors had sufficiently large enough kernels for proto-farmers to take an interest in. The vast majority of these useful grasses are native to the Fertile Crescent and other parts of Eurasia, with extremely few being native to the Americas or Australia. Also, Eurasia, besides being the largest landmass in the world, has by far the largest amount of land located in those temperate and tropical grassland biomes, whose particular climate and rainfall patterns are necessary for agriculture of these crops.
The next agricultural variable is domesticable species of wild animals. This turns out to be important for several reasons: 1, animals, when used for food, provide a dependable source of protein (a difficult nutrient to find in the wild), their skin, bones and fat have found many uses by humans as well (we still use them regularly); 2, the muscle power of larger animals can be harnessed to aid in farming (pulling a plow), transport (riding or pulling a cart), and warfare (chariots, cavalry, etc.); 3, their waste can be used as fertilizer for agriculture; and 4, exposure to their germs transmits diseases to dense human populations (influenza, tuberculosis, typhus, cholera, pox viruses, anthrax, and bubonic plague were all originally animal pathogens) that alternate between epidemics and latent periods, selecting for those individuals with immunity. In turn, these naturally selected populations spread their germs to vulnerable, non-exposed populations when they meet, either in conquest or trade, and the spread of disease has a huge impact on the outcome of such collisions.
As was the case with grains, domesticable wild mammals are also unevenly dispersed over the face of the earth. Of the 15 or so large species that have been domesticated, once again, the vast majority are natives to Eurasia. Large mammals and marsupials were prominent members of the pleistocene fauna of north/south America and Australia, when human colonization occurred on those continents, but they were quickly wiped out as a result of massive drought or over-hunting (most likely the latter), leaving few, if any, remaining candidates for domestication. In the Americas, the only large mammal to be domesticated was the llama/Alpaca of the Inca, and there were no large mammals domesticated in Australia. In sub-Saharan Africa, there are many large mammals, none of which have been successfully domesticated because of something the author refers to as the Ana Karenina principle. In contrast, Eurasian large mammals, including the sheep, pig, cow, camel and the horse became integral parts of the economy, and made up a food-producing-package that came to dominate nearly every civilization on earth with an appropriate habitat.
With a foundation of food producers in place, political organizations of increasing complexity (band-> tribe->chiefdom->state->empire) follow quite easily and predictably, in order to control the surplus of food and goods, and create roles for those not directly involved in food production: bureaucrats, priests, warriors, etc. This type of organization is necessary for the development and adoption of writing, which confers another huge advantage to that civilization. The independent development of writing only happened 3 times (possible only twice): among Ind0-Europeans in the Fertile Crescent, the Maya of Mesoamerica, and ancient China (this is up for debate).
I've only scratched the surface here. This book is packed with knowledge, and brings together so many strands of history into a single, concise perspective. When all taken together, his conclusions are irrefutable: the reason for the current state of the world, with Europeans and their descendants on the very top of the pile, has nothing to do with their superior ability, or some divine mandate that they should rule the world. It has everything to do with the relative timing that the different homelands of the world adopted agriculture as a way of life, abandoned hunting-gathering in the process, and where they were living on the globe. These plain facts totally destroy any and all supposed "evidence" for racism and divine favoritism, and tell the story of man in ecological terms. It is a fascinating, eye-opening, learning experience that sheds light on the vastness of human history, gives direction for the future, and finally puts aside the euro-centric world view that has tarnished our past for centuries.
I hope that in the years to come, we can take lessons like this to heart, and learn to share the wealth and abundance of the world, learn from the mistakes of history and rise above our primitive and selfish ambitions. If Human History was made into a science, this would be the textbook! And for once, I would enjoy doing my homework.
