book #6

Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond)

Fascinating, fantastic read. As usual, I'll offer the wikipedia page as a good source to handle most of the synopsis/ explanation. Various thoughts the book provoked…

• I really enjoyed the illustrative anecdotes or smaller historical points that Diamond makes… lots of fascinating stories I've never heard before, that helped illustrate his points now and then. Altogether it made for quite a list of things I'd love to read about further. For instance,

The Maori massacre of the Moriori people, Atahaulpa's capture, Charlie Savage, the British Empire's war with New Zealand's Maoris, the Phaistos Disk, the Chimbu tribe's rapid adaption to Western technology, New Zealand's musket wars, Japan's rejection of firearms, the fact that the prelude to the Franco-Prussian war essentially Created Germany, the Wills-Burke expedition, the astonishing isolation of Tasmania, the mysterious disappearance of the Norse colony on Greenland, the McGurrin vs. Taub typing contest in 1888, the extraordinary political fragmentation of New Guinea. Also, I bet the history of failed or forgotten inventions is absolutely fascinating.

• I found his explanation of the archaeological value of linguistics pretty fascinating… that we can trace the evolution of technology and society by what words are held in common by different branches of the same language family (for instance, very many Indo-European languages have a similar word for 'sheep,' implying that this word entered their vocabulary before they started to evolve and divide into different cultures). So the farther back a root word goes, we know that the ancient societies had use for these words- in the Indo-European example, they must have domesticated sheep a particularly long time ago. His other point about archaeological linguistics likewise fascinated me- that we can tell where languages originated, based on where they are most diversified (because this indicates that the language has been spoken there the longest, with the longest time to diverge.)

• His chapter about political organization was one of my favorites, and I'll probably reread it a few times. It's fascinating that gorillas and chimpanzees also live in bands… amazing to think that the earliest stages of our political evolution are, in fact, evolved from those relatives/ancestors. His explanation of the historic ways to justify or enforce a kleptocracy (p. 277) interested me. And the discussion of the underappreciated virtue of order, which centralized society brings- a way of strangers interacting without killing eachother- was pretty fascinating. Also I liked the point about the power of ideology or religion, to give people a reason to die to make the state stronger.

• A few of the facts are just astonishing… to think that the wheel was independently invented in Mesoamerica, and used for toys- and because of geographic barriers, this invention never diffused to the Andes and the llama, to give the Americas wheeled transport. Also, the fact that Madagascar, right off the coast of Africa, was colonized by Austronesians (and also, that Magagascar's animals, having evolved in long isolation, were incredibly distinctive, as if from another world). And that the environmental shift in South Africa- that the Mediterranean climate doesn't allow for the growth of the Bantu's summer rain crops- explains why their civilization did not reach the Cape, and why the British were able to secure their colonial foothold there… a truly astonishing example of environmental factors influencing the political pattern of history.

• He occasionally brings a logical perspective to things that I find really interesting and fresh- for instance, hunter-gathering vs farming was never a conscious choice, it's always about which option was more effective in the environment. Hunter-gatherers had no way of knowing what farming would lead to, they were just trying whichever strategy led best to survival.

• One of my absolute favorite sections was his discussion of, why Europe emerged as the world's master, rather than China or the Fertile Crescent, which shared in the ecological advantages of Eurasia, and were vastly more advanced than Europe for the vast majority of human history. His explanation for the Fertile Crescent- that they “committed ecological suicide” by maintaining food production and development at a rate that the environment could not maintain- is haunting and compelling, and perhaps a story of the world's future. His point about China- that the lack of geographic barriers led to earlier political unification, which allowed China to be ruled by a single despot- and thus, allow technological innovation to be stopped or reversed on the whim of very few people- was also pretty fascinating. So Europe and their culture of smaller states, competition, and innovation emerged because of the numerous geographic barriers which helped split the continent into countless rival cultures. The example of Columbus illustrated this nicely- that he was rejected by the Kings of several different states but eventually found a taker, whereas in China, one rejection would have been the end of it. Altogether I loved, loved his discussion of this subject and will definitely reread it.

• There were certain aspects of the story that I thought were pretty interesting that I wanted to hear more about- like, one of the key points is the diffusion of food production and technology, but I would be interested in hearing more about those interactions- the human stories of diffusion, and of trade, and conquest. Maybe the written record simply doesn't exist. But these interactions with different cultures, I really find fascinating. The scientific explanations are truly fascinating, but, since my interests lie more with human history, I absolutely loved whenever he touched on crucial or surprising experiences in human cultural history, and would like to read a book that spends a little more time examining the titular proximate factors.