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linguistics,
epidemiology,
technolo^J^l8fjftip«|pUeq }i!J§|Sm
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,review)
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"[Jared Diamond]
is
broadly erudite, writes in a styil triat^^teaiMitly
expresses scientific concepts
almost exclusively
about
in
how humanity
ffc
ie^patulfr- Ai£er*c4hTi^li|hpartri $e«is
questic>ls^§$tf$%u^
has developed.
.
.
.
i
^^ ^-^w^^^^lf^
[He] has done us
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A
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human
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societies of different continents
followed widely
divergent pathways of development over the past 13,000 years."
—Bruce D. Smith, Director, Archaeobiology Program,
Smithsonian Institution
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societies
have such diverse
usually received racist answers. Mastering information
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local conditions
Diamond
fates?'
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differ-
convincingly demonstrates that head starts and
can explain
much
of the course of
human
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Guns,
Germs, and
Steel
1
THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES
Jared
Diamond
W. W. Norton
New
York
&
Company
London
—
To
Esa, Kariniga,
and
all
my
Omwai,
New
other
©
Wiwor,
Guinea friends and teachers
masters of a
Copyright
Paran, Sauakari,
difficult
environment
1999, 1997 by Jared Diamond
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
published as a Norton paperback 1999
First
For information about permission to reproduce selections from
W. W. Norton
write to Permissions,
York,
The
text of this
this
book,
& Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New
NY
book
with the display
10110.
is
composed
set in
in
Sabon
Trajan Bold
Composition and manufacturing by the Maple-Vail Book
Manufacturing Group
Book design by Chris Welch
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Diamond, Jared M.
Guns, germs, and
steel
:
the fates of
human
societies /Jared
Diamond.
cm.
p.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-393-31755-8
1.
Social evolution.
2.
Civilization— History.
beings— Effect of environment on.
HM206.D48
3.
Ethnology.
Culture diffusion.
5.
4.
I.
Human
Title.
1997
—dc21
303.4
96-37068
CIP
W.
W
Norton
& Company,
Inc.,
500
Fifth
Avenue,
New
York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W.
W
Norton
& Company
Ltd., Castle
London
House, 75/76 Wells Street,
WIT 3QT
79 80
Contents
Preface to the Paperback Edition
prologue
9
Yalis Question
The regionally
differing courses
of history
1 3
part one From Eden to Cajamarca
chapter
1
3 3
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
What happened on
all
the continents before 11,000 B.C.}
3 5
chapter 2 A NATURAL EXPERIMENT
OF HISTORY
How geography
chapter
Why the
3
molded
societies
on Polynesian
5 3
COLLISION AT CAJAMARCA
Inca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture
King Charles
part two The
I
of Spain
Rise
6 7
and Spread of Food
Production
chapter
islands
4
8 3
FARMER POWER
The roots of guns, germs, and
steel
8 5
CONTENTS
6
chapter 5 HISTORY'S HAVES AND
HAVE-NOTS
Geographic differences
chapter
6
in the onset
of food production
Causes of the spread of food production
chapter?
9 3
TO FARM OR NOT TO FARM
HOW
104
TO MAKE AN ALMOND
The unconscious development of ancient crops
chapters APPLES OR INDIANS
Why did peoples of some regions fail
1
14
to domesticate
131
plants?
chapter 9 ZEBRAS, UNHAPPY MARRIAGES, AND
THE ANNA KARENINA PRINCIPLE
Why were most big wild mammal species never
domesticated?
1 5
chapter
10 SPACIOUS SKIES
TILTED AXES
Why
7
AND
did food production spread at different rates on
176
different continents?
part three from food to guns,
Germs, and Steel
chapter
11
12
9
3
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
The evolution of germs
chapter
i
BLUEPRINTS
195
AND BORROWED
LETTERS
The evolution of writing
215
chapter
13
NECESSITY'S MOTHER
The evolution of technology
2 3 9
chapter 14 FROM EGALITARIANISM TO
KLEPTOCRACY
The evolution of government and
religion
265
part four Around the World
in Five
Chapters
CHAPTER
The
15
histories
PEOPLE
of Australia and
29
3
YALI'S
New
Guinea
295
CONTENTS
chapter
The
16
HOW CHINA
7
BECAME CHINESE
322
history of East Asia
chapter
17
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
The history of the Austronesian expansion
chapter
The
chapter
The
is
histories
19
3 3
4
3 5
4
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
of Eurasia and the Americas compared
HOW
AFRICA BECAME BLACK
376
history of Africa
epilogue The Future
of
Human
History as a Science
4 o
3
Acknowledgments
426
441
Further Readings
442.
Credits
472.
Index
475
2003 Afterword: Guns, Germs, and
Steel
Today
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
Why
is
World History
Onion?
Like an
nr
BOOK ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE
HIS
JL everybody
book
is:
A
SHORT HISTORY OF
13,000 years. The question motivating the
for the last
Why did history unfold differently on different continents?
In case
question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are
this
about to read a
racist treatise,
to the question don't involve
emphasis
is
on the search
you
human
aren't: as
you
will see, the
racial differences at
for ultimate explanations,
all.
answers
The book's
and on pushing back
the chain of historical causation as far as possible.
Most books
ies
that set out to recount world history concentrate
of literate Eurasian and
North African
societies.
on
histor-
Native societies of
—sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Island SouthIslands — receive only
east Asia, Australia, New Guinea, the
other parts of the world
brief
Pacific
treatment, mainly as concerns
history, after they
what happened
to
them very
late in their
were discovered and subjugated by western Europeans.
Even within Eurasia, much more space
gets devoted to the history of west-
ern Eurasia than of China, India, Japan, tropical Southeast Asia, and other
eastern Eurasian societies. History before the emergence of writing around
3,000 B.C. also receives brief treatment, although
the five-million-year history of the
human
it
constitutes
99.9%
species.
Such narrowly focused accounts of world history suffer from three
advantages.
First,
of
dis-
increasing numbers of people today are, quite under-
standably, interested in other societies besides those of western Eurasia.
After
tion
all,
those "other" societies encompass most of the world's popula-
and the vast majority of the world's
ethnic, cultural,
and
linguistic
I
Some
groups.
of
PREFACE
O
them already
are,
and others are becoming, among the
world's most powerful economies and political forces.
Second, even for people specifically interested in the shaping of the
modern world,
a history limited to developments since the
writing cannot provide deep understanding.
on the
different continents
first
societies
emergence of
not the case that societies
were comparable to each other
whereupon western Eurasian
began for the
It is
until
3,000
B.C.,
suddenly developed writing and
time to pull ahead in other respects as well. Instead,
already by 3,000 B.C., there were Eurasian and North African societies not
only with incipient writing but also with centralized state governments,
widespread use of metal tools and weapons, use of domesticated
cities,
animals for transport and traction and mechanical power, and reliance on
agriculture
and domestic animals for food. Throughout most or
of other continents, none of those things existed at that time;
of
all
them emerged
later in parts of the
in
Aboriginal Australia. That should already
the roots of western Eurasian
preliterate past before
dominance
in the
and none of
warn
modern world
us that
dominance of western Eurasian
ties
that they
spawned on other
societies themselves
in the
lie
3,000 B.C. (By western Eurasian dominance,
the
parts
some but not
Native Americas and sub-Saharan
Africa, but only over the course of the next five millennia;
them emerged
all
I
and of the
mean
socie-
continents.)
Third, a history focused on western Eurasian societies completely
bypasses the obvious big question.
Why were those
societies the ones that
became disproportionately powerful and innovative? The usual answers
to that question invoke proximate forces, such as the rise of capitalism,
mercantilism, scientific inquiry, technology, and nasty germs that killed
peoples of other continents
asians.
why
But
Eurasia,
and
did
all
when they came
those ingredients of conquest arise in western
arise elsewhere only to a lesser degree or
All those ingredients are just
tions.
Why
into contact with western Eur-
didn't capitalism flourish in Native
sub-Saharan Africa,
not at
all?
proximate factors, not ultimate explana-
scientific inquiry in
Mexico, mercantilism
Native North America, and nasty germs in Aboriginal Australia?
responds by invoking idiosyncratic cultural factors
supposedly
stifled in
in
China, advanced technology in
—
e.g., scientific
China by Confucianism but stimulated
Eurasia by Greek or Judaeo-Christian traditions—then one
to ignore the need for ultimate explanations:
why
is
in
If
one
inquiry
western
continuing
didn't traditions like
Confucianism and the Judaeo-Christian ethic instead develop in western
PREFACE
I
I
Eurasia and China, respectively? In addition, one
Confucian
is
ignoring the fact that
China was technologically more advanced than western
Eurasia until about a.d. 1400.
It is
impossible to understand even just western Eurasian societies them-
selves,
if
tinctions
one focuses on them. The interesting questions concern the
between them and other
requires us to understand
Eurasian societies can be
Some
readers
may
all
societies.
those other societies as well, so that western
fitted into the
feel that
I
am
broader context.
going to the opposite extreme from
conventional histories, by devoting too
the expense of other parts of the world.
little
I
space to western Eurasia at
would answer
parts of the world are very instructive, because they
societies
readers
and such diverse
may
dis-
Answering those questions
that
some other
encompass so many
societies within a small geographical area.
find themselves agreeing
with one reviewer of
mildly critical tongue in cheek, the reviewer wrote that
this
I
Other
book. With
seem to view
world history as an onion, of which the modern world constitutes only the
surface,
and whose
layers are to be peeled
understanding. Yes, world history
back of the onion's layers
is
is
back
in the search for historical
indeed such an onion! But that peeling
fascinating, challenging
ing importance to us today, as
we
—and of overwhelm-
seek to grasp our past's lessons for our
future.
J.D.
PROLOGUE
Question
Yali's
WE
ALL
KNOW THAT HISTORY HAS PROCEEDED VERY
ferently for peoples
from
13,000 years since the end of the
developed
last Ice
Age, some parts of the world
with metal tools, other parts devel-
literate industrial societies
oped only nonliterate farming
DIF-
different parts of the globe. In the
societies,
and
still
others retained societies
of hunter-gatherers with stone tools. Those historical inequalities have cast
long shadows on the
modern world, because
the literate societies with
metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies. While
those differences constitute the most basic fact of world history, the rea-
sons for them remain uncertain and controversial. This puzzling question
of their origins
In July
1972
was posed
I
to
me 25
was walking along
Guinea, where as a biologist
I
years ago in a simple, personal form.
beach on the tropical island of
a
study bird evolution.
about a remarkable local politician named
trict
then.
By chance,
Yali
day, and he overtook me.
the
and
I
Yali,
were walking
We walked
I
who was
in the
New
had already heard
same
touring the dis-
direction
on that
together for an hour, talking during
whole time.
Yali radiated charisma
way.
and energy. His eyes flashed
He talked confidently about himself,
questions and listened intently.
in a
but he also asked lots of probing
Our conversation began with
i
3
mesmerizing
a subject then
PROLOGUE
4
I
New Guinean's mind—the rapid pace of political developments.
New Guinea, as Yali's nation is now called, was at that time still
on every
Papua
administered by Australia as a mandate of the United Nations, but inde-
pendence was
explained to
in the air. Yali
me
his role in getting local peo-
ple to prepare for self-government.
After a while, Yali turned the conversation and began to quiz me.
had never been outside
New
He
Guinea and had not been educated beyond
was
high school, but his curiosity
wanted
insatiable. First, he
to
know
my work on New Guinea birds (including how much I got paid for
how different groups of birds had colonized New
Guinea over the course of millions of years. He then asked how the ances-
about
it).
explained to him
I
own
tors of his
people had reached
how
sands of years, and
within the
last
200
years.
The conversation remained
two
the
Two
is,
they
still
New
all
friendly,
and
societies that Yali
centuries ago,
That
New Guinea over the last tens of thouNew Guinea
white Europeans had colonized
I
even though the tension between
represented
Guineans were
was
still
familiar to both of us.
"living in the Stone Age."
used stone tools similar to those superseded in Europe
by metal tools thousands of years ago, and they dwelt in villages not organized
under any centralized
political
Whites had arrived,
authority.
imposed centralized government, and brought material goods whose value
New Guineans instantly recognized,
ranging from
steel axes,
medicines to clothing, soft drinks, and umbrellas. In
goods were referred to
Many
were
still
Even the
least able of
of
New
are
lots of
He and
on the average
Yali's
I
at least as
mind when, with
much cargo and brought
cargo of our own?"
to
was
it
a
had quizzed
New
lots
Guineans
yet another penetrating glance of his
is it
that
you white people developed so
New Guinea,
a simple question that
still is
I
New
Yet Yali had
smart as Europeans. All those things must
"Why
Yes, there
like Yali.
both knew perfectly well that
flashing eyes, he asked me,
It
"masters," as they
whites as he was then quizzing me, and
Guineans.
these
Guineans as
called in 1972, enjoyed a far higher standard of living than
have been on
it.
New
New Guinea's white
Guineans, higher even than charismatic politicians
quizzed
all
collectively as "cargo."
of the white colonialists openly despised
"primitive."
matches, and
New Guinea
went
but
we
to the heart of
huge difference between the
black people had
life
little
as Yali experienced
lifestyle
of the average
YALI'S
QUESTION
I
5
New Guinean and that of the average European or American.
world as
differences separate the lifestyles of other peoples of the
Those huge
disparities
Comparable
well.
must have potent causes that one might think
would be obvious.
Yet Yali's apparently simple question
is
a difficult
have an answer then. Professional historians
still
tion;
most are no longer even asking the question.
and
had that conversation,
of
I
human
I
one to answer.
I
didn't
disagree about the soluIn the years since Yali
have studied and written about other aspects
and language. This book, written twenty-five
evolution, history,
years later, attempts to answer Yali.
Although
styles of
New
yali's
question
concerned only the contrasting
Guineans and of European whites,
larger set of contrasts within the
gin, especially those
still
it
can be extended to a
modern world. Peoples
living in
life-
of Eurasian ori-
Europe and eastern Asia, plus those
transplanted to North America, dominate the
modern world
in
wealth and
power. Other peoples, including most Africans, have thrown off European
colonial domination but remain far behind in wealth
and power.
Still
other
peoples, such as the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, the Americas, and
southernmost Africa, are no longer even masters of their
own
lands but
have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by
European
colonialists.
Thus, questions about inequality
Why
lated as follows.
now
are, rather
in the
did wealth and
modern world can be reformu-
power become
distributed as they
why weren't Native
ones who decimated,
than in some other way? For instance,
Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the
subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?
We
1500,
can easily push
when
this
question back one step. As of the year a.d.
Europe's worldwide colonial expansion was just beginning,
peoples on different continents already differed greatly in technology and
political organization.
site
Much
of Europe, Asia, and North Africa
of metal-equipped states or empires,
industrialization.
Two
some of them on
was
the
the threshold of
Native American peoples, the Aztecs and the Incas,
ruled over empires with stone tools. Parts of sub-Saharan Africa were
divided
ples
among
—including
small states or chiefdoms with iron tools.
all
those of Australia and
New
Most
Guinea,
other peo-
many
Pacific
—
I
PROLOGUE
6
of the Americas, and small parts of sub-Saharan Africa
islands,
much
lived as
farming tribes or even
bands using stone
as hunter-gatherer
still
tools.
Of
course, those technological
weapons were able
steel
stone and wood.
and
Empires with
inequalities.
to conquer or exterminate tribes with
How, though,
1500
political differences as of a.d.
modern world's
were the immediate cause of the
did the world get to be the
weapons of
way
was
it
in
a.d. 1500?
Once
we can
again,
drawing on written
easily
push
this
question back one step further, by
and archaeological
histories
peoples on
all
continents were
on
different conti-
nents,
and
end
hunter-gatherers. Different rates of development
of the last Ice Age, around 11,000 B.C.,
still
discoveries. Until the
from 11,000
all
1500, were what led to the technological
B.C. to a.d.
1500. While Aboriginal Australians and
political inequalities of a.d.
many Native Americans remained hunter-gatherers, most of Eurasia and
much of the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa gradually developed agriculture, herding, metallurgy,
and complex
political organization. Parts of
Eurasia, and one area of the Americas, independently developed writing
as well.
However, each of these new developments appeared
earlier in
Eurasia than elsewhere. For instance, the mass production of bronze tools,
which was
beginning in the South American Andes in the centuries
just
was already
before a.d. 1500,
years earlier.
tered by
Thus,
The stone technology of
European explorers
in parts of
Upper
we can
finally
ferent rates
ject is
this
why
did
is
my
encoun-
first
Europe tens of thousands of years
Those disparate
earlier.
modern world's
human development proceed
different continents?
book
when
rephrase the question about the
broadest pattern and
While
at
such
dif-
rates constitute histo-
book's subject.
thus ultimately about history and prehistory,
sub-
its
not of just academic interest but also of overwhelming practical and
political
is
on
the Tasmanians,
1642, was simpler than that prevalent
in a.d.
Paleolithic
inequalities as follows:
ry's
established in parts of Eurasia over 4,000
importance. The history of interactions
what shaped
cide.
Those
after
many
the
among
disparate peoples
modern world through conquest, epidemics, and geno-
collisions created reverberations that
centuries,
and that are
have
still
not died
actively continuing in
down
some of
the
world's most troubled areas today.
For example,
much
of Africa
recent colonialism. In other
is
still
struggling with
its
legacies
from
regions— including much of Central America,
—
YALI'S
—
civil
ulations
unrest or guerrilla warfare pits still-numerous indigenous pop-
against governments
conquerors.
Many
dominated by descendants of invading
other indigenous populations
ians, Aboriginal Australians, native Siberians,
Canada,
States,
7
I
New Caledonia, the former Soviet Union, and parts of Indo-
Mexico, Peru,
nesia
QUESTION
and Chile
Brazil, Argentina,
bers by genocide
—such as native Hawai-
and Indians
in the
— became so reduced
United
in
num-
and disease that they are now greatly outnumbered by
the descendants of invaders. Although thus incapable of
mounting
a civil
war, they are nevertheless increasingly asserting their rights.
and economic reverberations of
In addition to these current political
past collisions
among
especially the
impending disappearance of most of the modern world's
peoples, there are current linguistic reverberations
6,000 surviving languages, becoming replaced by English, Chinese, Russian,
and a few other languages whose numbers of speakers have increased
enormously
result
in recent centuries. All these
from the
different historical trajectories implicit in Yali's question.
Defore seeking answers
mere posing of the question,
One
objection goes as follows.
it
that
it
would
it
seem
If
we
how some
may
justify the
to say that the
common tendency to
with a justification or acceptance of
torical explanation
Understanding
is
it.
murderers and
this
not seem to
outcome was
is
results.
a question separate
What
often used to try to alter an
why
why
use one
makes of
outcome than
a hisitself.
to repeat
psychologists try to understand the minds of
social historians try to
try to understand the causes of
do not seek to
and
outcome today? This
from the explanation
more
rapists,
inevitable,
confuse an explanation of causes
That's
and why physicians
investigators
succeed in explaining
therefore be futile to try to change the
objection rests on a
or perpetuate
at all.
for several reasons.
people came to dominate other people,
domination? Doesn't
we should pause to
Some people take offense
to Yali's question,
consider some objections to discussing
at the
problems of the modern world
justify
understand genocide,
human
disease.
murder, rape, genocide, and
Those
illness.
Instead, they seek to use their understanding of a chain of causes to inter-
rupt the chain.
Second, doesn't addressing
Yali's
question automatically involve a
Eurocentric approach to history, a glorification of western Europeans, and
an obsession with the prominence of western Europe and Europeanized
America
in the
phenomenon
PROLOGUE
8
I
modern world?
prominence
Isn't that
of the last few centuries,
of Japan and Southeast Asia? In
now
fact,
an ephemeral
just
fading behind the prominence
most of
this
book
will deal with
peoples other than Europeans. Rather than focus solely on interactions
between Europeans and non-Europeans, we
shall also
tions between different non-European peoples
—
examine
among
peoples native to those areas. Far from glorifying peoples
of western European origin,
civilization
New
and
place within sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Indonesia,
Guinea,
interac-
especially those that took
we
shall see that
most basic elements of
were developed by other peoples
their
and were
living elsewhere
then imported to western Europe.
Third, don't words such as "civilization," and phrases such as "rise of
civilization,"
convey the
false
impression that civilization
good,
is
tribal
hunter-gatherers are miserable, and history for the past 13,000 years has
involved progress toward greater
assume that industrialized
or that the
human
states are "better"
abandonment of
My own
United States
cities
risk of
modern
it
than hunter-gatherer
has led to an increase in
human
compared with hunter-gatherers,
life
span, but receive
from friendships and extended
families.
human
My
societies
is
much
less
motive for
not to cele-
brate one type of society over another but simply to understand
what hap-
in history.
Does
we
tribes,
industrialized states enjoy better medical care, lower
investigating these geographic differences in
pened
do not
my life between
New Guinea villages, is that the so-called blessings
death by homicide, and a longer
social support
I
impression, from having divided
and
of civilization are mixed. For example,
citizens of
fact,
the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for iron-based
statehood represents "progress," or that
happiness.
happiness? In
question really need another book
know the answer? If so, what is it?
yali's
already
to
answer
it?
Don't
Probably the commonest explanation involves implicitly or explicitly
assuming biological differences among peoples. In the centuries
after a.d.
1500, as European explorers became aware of the wide differences
the world's peoples in technology
that those differences arose
and
political organization, they
from differences
in innate ability.
among
assumed
With the
rise
of Darwinian theory, explanations were recast in terms of natural selection
and of evolutionary descent. Technologically primitive peoples were con-
QUESTION
YALI'S
sidered evolutionary vestiges of
human
The displacement of such peoples by
exemplified the survival of the
descent from apelike ancestors.
colonists
fittest.
9
I
from industrialized
With the
societies
later rise of genetics, the
explanations were recast once again, in genetic terms. Europeans became
considered genetically more intelligent than Africans, and especially more
so than Aboriginal Australians.
Today, segments of Western society publicly repudiate racism. Yet
many
(perhaps most!) Westerners continue to accept racist explanations privately or subconsciously. In
nations are
still
Japan and many other countries, such expla-
advanced publicly and without apology. Even educated
white Americans, Europeans, and Australians,
lian
Aborigines comes up, assume that there
the Aborigines themselves.
Many
They
when
certainly look different
of the living descendants of those Aborigines
now
of European colonization are
the subject of Austra-
something primitive about
is
finding
it
who
difficult to
from whites.
survived the era
succeed economi-
cally in white Australian society.
A seemingly compelling argument goes
as follows.
White immigrants
to
Australia built a literate, industrialized, politically centralized, democratic
state
based on metal tools and on food production,
all
within a century of
colonizing a continent where the Aborigines had been living as tribal
hunter-gatherers without metal for at least 40,000 years. Here were
successive experiments in
was
identical
ment.
What
and the
human development,
sole variable
further proof could be
was
in
two
which the environment
the people occupying that environ-
wanted
to establish that the differences
between Aboriginal Australian and European
societies arose
from
differ-
ences between the peoples themselves?
The objection
to such racist explanations
is
not just that they are loath-
some, but also that they are wrong. Sound evidence for the existence of
human
differences in intelligence that parallel
nology
is
lacking. In fact, as
Age" peoples
are
human
shall explain in a
I
on the average probably more
moment, modern "Stone
intelligent,
gent, than industrialized peoples. Paradoxical as
see in
differences in tech-
it
may
not
sound,
we
shall
Chapter 15 that white immigrants to Australia do not deserve the
credit usually accorded to
them
for building a literate industrialized society
with the other virtues mentioned above. In addition, peoples
New
Guineans
who
until
—
—routinely master industrial technologies when given
recently were technologically primitive
and
less intelli-
opportunities to do so.
such as Aboriginal Australians
PROLOGUE
2 O
An enormous
effort
for differences in
by cognitive psychologists has gone into the search
same country.
living in the
different geographic origins
IQ between peoples of
now
numerous white American psy-
In particular,
chologists have been trying for decades to demonstrate that black Ameri-
cans of African origins are innately
of European origins. However, as
than white Americans
less intelligent
well
is
known, the peoples compared
environment and educational opportunities.
differ greatly in their social
This fact creates double difficulties for efforts to test the hypothesis that
intellectual differences underlie technological differences. First,
even our
cognitive abilities as adults are heavily influenced by the social environ-
ment
that
we experienced during
childhood, making
it
hard to discern any
influence of preexisting genetic differences. Second, tests of cognitive ability (like
IQ
intelligence,
tend to measure cultural learning and not pure innate
tests)
whatever that
is.
Because of those undoubted
hood environment and learned knowledge on IQ
effects of child-
test results, the
psycholo-
date have not succeeded in convincingly establishing the
gists' efforts to
postulated genetic deficiency in IQs of nonwhite peoples.
My
with
of
perspective
New
on
Guineans
my work
with
this
New
is.
own
intact societies.
Guineans, they impressed
age more intelligent, more
things
controversy comes from 33 years of working
in their
alert,
more
From
me
expressive,
the very beginning
on the
as being
and more
aver-
interested in
and people around them than the average European or American
At some tasks that one might reasonably suppose to
brain function, such as the ability to form a mental
reflect aspects of
map
of unfamiliar
surroundings, they appear considerably more adept than Westerners.
course,
New
Guineans tend to perform poorly
at tasks that
have been trained to perform since childhood and that
not.
Hence when unschooled
New
of
how
stupid
displaying
trail
my
I
look to
New
incompetence
It's
I
I
am
villages visit
constantly aware
Guineans when I'm with them
in the jungle,
at simple tasks (such as following a jungle
or erecting a shelter) at which
childhood and
New Guineans have
Guineans from remote
towns, they look stupid to Westerners. Conversely,
Of
Westerners
New
Guineans have been trained since
have not.
easy to recognize
two reasons why
eans are smarter than Westerners
thousands of years been living
governments, police, and
may
my
impression that
New
Guin-
be correct. First, Europeans have for
in densely
populated societies with central
judiciaries. In those societies, infectious
diseases of dense populations (such as smallpox)
were
epidemic
historically the
YALI'S
QUESTION
major cause of death, while murders were
of
war was
escaped
2
relatively
the exception rather than the rule.
fatal infections also
I
uncommon and a
state
Most Europeans who
escaped other potential causes of death and
proceeded to pass on their genes. Today, most live-born Western infants
and reproduce themselves, regardless of
survive fatal infections as well
their intelligence
been living
New
and the genes they bear. In contrast,
Guineans have
where human numbers were too low for epidemic
in societies
diseases of dense populations to evolve. Instead, traditional
New Guineans
suffered high mortality from murder, chronic tribal warfare, accidents,
and problems
in
procuring food.
Intelligent people are likelier
than
causes of high mortality in traditional
the differential mortality
had
societies
little
to
resistance dependent
with blood group B or
O
However,
European
body chemistry. For example, people
have a greater resistance to smallpox than do
probably been
more densely populated,
societies.
in traditional
Guinea
and instead involved genetic
intelligence,
details of
people with blood group A. That
intelligence has
New
from epidemic diseases
do with
on
ones to escape those
less intelligent
is,
far
politically
natural selection promoting genes for
more
ruthless in
complex
New
societies,
Guinea than
where natural
in
selec-
body chemistry was instead more potent.
tion for
Besides this genetic reason, there
is
also a second reason
why New
Guineans may have come to be smarter than Westerners. Modern European and American children spend much of
their time being passively
entertained by television, radio, and movies. In the average American
household, the
New
TV set is on for seven hours per day. In contrast, traditional
Guinea children have
virtually
no such opportunities
entertainment and instead spend almost
all
for passive
of their waking hours actively
doing something, such as talking or playing with other children or adults.
Almost
all
studies of child
development emphasize the role of childhood
stimulation and activity in promoting mental development, and stress the
mental stunting associated with reduced childhood stimula-
irreversible
tion.
This effect surely contributes a non-genetic component to the supe-
rior average
That
is,
mental function displayed by
in
mental
rior to Westerners,
ability
New
New
Guineans.
Guineans are probably genetically supe-
and they surely are superior
in escaping the devastating
developmental disadvantages under which most children
societies
now grow
d/sadvantage of
up. Certainly, there
New
is
no hint
in industrialized
at all of
Guineans that could serve to answer
any
intellectual
Yali's question.
PROLOGUE
2 2
The same two
genetic
distinguish not only
and childhood developmental factors are
New
and other members of technologically primitive
erers
likely to
Guineans from Westerners, but also hunter-gathsocieties
from mem-
bers of technologically advanced societies in general. Thus, the usual racist
assumption has to be turned on
its
their likely genetic disadvantage
head.
and
(in
Why is it that Europeans,
modern
developmental disadvantage, ended up with
New
did
times) their
much more
despite
undoubted
of the cargo?
Why
Guineans wind up technologically primitive, despite what
I
believe to be their superior intelligence?
A. genetic explanation
isn't
the only possible answer to Yali's ques-
Another one, popular with inhabitants of northern Europe, invokes
tion.
the supposed stimulatory effects of their homeland's cold climate
inhibitory effects of hot, humid, tropical climates
on human
and the
creativity
and
energy. Perhaps the seasonally variable climate at high latitudes poses
more
diverse challenges than does a seasonally constant tropical climate.
Perhaps cold climates require one to be more technologically inventive to
survive, because
one must build a
whereas one can survive
ing.
Or
the
warm home and make warm
in the tropics
clothing,
with simpler housing and no cloth-
argument can be reversed to reach the same conclusion: the
long winters at high latitudes leave people with
much
time in which to
sit
indoors and invent.
Although formerly popular,
vive scrutiny.
As we
this type of explanation, too, fails to sur-
shall see, the peoples of
northern Europe contributed
nothing of fundamental importance to Eurasian civilization until the
thousand years; they simply had the good luck to
live at a
last
geographic
location where they were likely to receive advances (such as agriculture,
wheels, writing, and metallurgy) developed in
the
New
World the cold regions
human backwater. The
arose in
at high latitude
sole Native
Mexico south of
warmer
American
parts of Eurasia. In
were even more of a
societies to
develop writing
the Tropic of Cancer; the oldest
New
World
pottery comes from near the equator in tropical South America; and the
New World
society generally considered the
omy, and other respects was the Classic
tan and Guatemala in the
Still
a third type of
lowland
first
most advanced
Maya
in art, astron-
society of the tropical Yuca-
millennium a.d.
answer to Yali invokes the supposed importance of
river valleys in dry climates,
where highly productive agriculture
QUESTION
YALI'S
depended on
large-scale irrigation systems that in turn required centralized
bureaucracies. This explanation
the earliest
2 3
known
was suggested by
the
undoubted
fact that
empires and writing systems arose in the Tigris and
Euphrates Valleys of the
Fertile
Crescent and in the Nile Valley of Egypt.
Water control systems also appear to have been associated with centralized
political organization in
some other areas of the world, including
Valley of the Indian subcontinent, the Yellow
China, the
Maya
However,
lowlands of Mesoamerica, and the coastal desert of Peru.
detailed archaeological studies have
gation systems did not
accompany
followed after a considerable
lag.
shown
complex
that
systems.
None
irri-
the rise of centralized bureaucracies but
That
is,
political centralization arose for
some other reason and then permitted construction of complex
tion in those
the Indus
and Yangtze Valleys of
irrigation
of the crucial developments preceding political centraliza-
same parts of the world were associated with
with complex irrigation systems. For example,
production and village
life
originated in
hills
river valleys or
Crescent food
in the Fertile
and mountains, not
in low-
land river valleys. The Nile Valley remained a cultural backwater for about
3,000 years after village food production began to flourish
in the hills of
the Fertile Crescent. River valleys of the southwestern United States even-
came
tually
only after
to support irrigation agriculture
many
of the developments
and complex
on which those
societies,
but
societies rested
had
been imported from Mexico. The river valleys of southeastern Australia
remained occupied by
tribal societies
Yet another type of explanation
Europeans to
kill
is
on the
the immediate factors that enabled
or conquer other peoples
infectious diseases, steel tools,
nation
without agriculture.
lists
—
especially
European guns,
and manufactured products. Such an expla-
right track, as those factors
demonstrably were directly
responsible for European conquests. However, this hypothesis
plete,
because
tifying
it still
offers only a
immediate causes.
It
proximate
(first-stage)
is
incom-
explanation iden-
invites a search for ultimate causes:
why were
Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up
with guns, the nastiest germs, and
steel?
While some progress has been made
in the-case of Europe's
puzzle. Africa
time,
is
in identifying those ultimate causes
conquest of the
the continent
New
World, Africa remains a big
where protohumans evolved
for the longest
where anatomically modern humans may also have
where native diseases
explorers.
If
a long
like
head
arisen,
and
malaria and yellow fever killed European
start
counts for anything,
why
didn't guns
and
PROLOGUE
2 4
permitting Africans and their germs to conquer
steel arise first in Africa,
Europe? And what accounts for the
failure of Aboriginal Australians to
pass beyond the stage of hunter-gatherers with stone tools?
human
Questions that emerge from worldwide comparisons of
formerly attracted
much
attention
best-known modern example of such an
volume Study of History. Toynbee was
dynamics of 23 advanced
were Eurasian.
He was
was Arnold Toynbee's 12-
effort
especially interested in the internal
which 22 were
civilizations, of
less interested in
in prehistory.
Hence Toynbee did not pose
what
I
and 19
literate
prehistory and in simpler, nonlit-
erate societies. Yet the roots of inequality in the
to grips with
societies
from historians and geographers. The
modern world
Yali's question,
see as history's broadest pattern.
lie
far
back
nor did he come
Other available
books on world history similarly tend to focus on advanced
literate
Eur-
asian civilizations of the last 5,000 years; they have a very brief treatment
of pre-Columbian Native American civilizations, and an even briefer dis-
cussion of the rest of the world except for
asian
Since
civilizations.
have
historical causation
its
recent interactions with Eur-
Toynbee's attempt, worldwide syntheses of
fallen into disfavor
among most
historians, as
posing an apparently intractable problem.
Specialists
from
several disciplines have provided global syntheses of
their subjects. Especially useful contributions
have been made by ecologi-
cal geographers, cultural anthropologists, biologists studying plant
and
animal domestication, and scholars concerned with the impact of infec-
on
tious diseases
history.
These studies have called attention to parts of
the puzzle, but they provide only pieces of the needed broad synthesis that
has been missing.
Thus, there
is
no generally accepted answer
one hand, the proximate explanations are
guns, germs,
steel,
factors at
all.
On
did;
Our
political
and economic
and never
in parts of Eurasia, late
in Aboriginal Australia
—for example,
and only
locally
—remain unclear.
present lack of such ultimate explanations leaves a big intellectual
gap, since the broadest pattern of history thus remains unexplained.
more
the
some peoples developed
the other hand, the ultimate explanations
New World,
On
and some peoples never developed these power
bronze tools appeared early
in the
clear:
and other factors conferring
power before others
why
to Yali's question.
serious, though,
to everyone,
is
the moral gap
whether an overt
fared differently in history.
left unfilled. It is
racist or not, that different
The modern United
Much
perfectly obvious
States
is
peoples have
a European-
QUESTION
YALI'S
molded
society,
2 5
occupying lands conquered from Native Americans and
incorporating the descendants of millions of sub-Saharan black Africans
brought to America as
slaves.
Modern Europe
who
sub-Saharan black Africans
is
not a society molded by
brought millions of Native Americans as
slaves.
These
results are completely lopsided:
it
cent of the Americas, Australia, and Africa
was not
the case that 51 per-
was conquered by Europeans,
while 49 percent of Europe was conquered by Native Americans, Aborigi-
The whole modern world has been shaped by
nal Australians, or Africans.
lopsided outcomes.
more
basic than
Hence they must have inexorable explanations, ones
mere
details
concerning
who happened
to
win some
battle
or develop some invention on one occasion a few thousand years ago.
It
seems logical to suppose that history's pattern
ences
among
We
inborn differences, and
suffer
Of course, we're taught
people themselves.
to say so in public.
from technical
reflects innate differ-
that
it's
not polite
read of technical studies claiming to demonstrate
we
flaws.
also read rebuttals claiming that those studies
We
our daily
see in
lives that
some of
the con-
quered peoples continue to form an underclass, centuries after the conquests or slave imports took place. We're told that this too
to be
is
attributed not to any biological shortcomings but to social disadvantages
and limited opportunities.
Nevertheless,
we have
to
wonder.
We
sistent differences in peoples' status.
keep seeing
all
those glaring, per-
We're assured that the seemingly
transparent biological explanation for the world's inequalities as of a.d.
1500
is
wrong, but we're not told what the correct explanation
we have some
is.
Until
convincing, detailed, agreed-upon explanation for the broad
pattern of history, most people will continue to suspect that the racist biological explanation
ment
Authors
book
is
correct after
all.
That seems to
me the strongest argu-
for writing this book.
in
are regularly asked by
one sentence. For
this
journalists to
book, here
is
summarize
a long
such a sentence: "History
followed different courses for different peoples because of differences
among peoples' environments, not because
of biological differences
among
peoples themselves."
Naturally, the notion that environmental geography and biogeography
influenced societal development
is
an old
idea.
Nowadays, though,
the
PROLOGUE
2 6
view
is
or
tic,
else
not held in esteem by historians;
it
considered wrong or simplis-
caricatured as environmental determinism and dismissed, or
is
the whole subject of trying
shelved as too
worldwide differences
to understand
Yet geography obviously has
difficult.
open question concerns
tory; the
it is
some
effect
on
is
his-
how much effect, and whether geography
can account for history's broad pattern.
The time is now ripe for a fresh look at these questions, because of
new information from scientific disciplines seemingly remote from human
Those
history.
disciplines include,
and biogeography
above
all,
and
as applied to crops
genetics, molecular biology,
their wild ancestors; the
same
disciplines plus behavioral ecology, as applied to domestic animals and
their wild ancestors;
molecular biology of
human germs and related germs
human genetics; linguistics;
of animals; epidemiology of
human
archaeological studies on
continents and major islands; and studies of
all
the histories of technology, writing,
diseases;
and
political organization.
This diversity of disciplines poses problems for would-be authors of a
book aimed
at
answering
Yali's question.
The author must possess
a range
of expertise spanning the above disciplines, so that relevant advances can
be synthesized. The history and prehistory of each continent must be simi-
The book's
larly synthesized.
that of science
—
modern space-age
the
problem
is
at first to
would be doomed from
demand
disciplines,
and
will require
led
me
Yali put his question to
me
in
a multi-author
to
work. Yet
That consideration
it
dictates
poses. Inevitably, that
guidance from
my
become
father's
a physician.
of seven.
It
I
example,
from
colleagues.
My
mother
is
a teacher
I
and
linguist;
childhood diseases.
went through school expecting to
had also become a fanatical bird-watcher by the age
was thus an easy
to shift
many
to several of these disciplines even before
1972.
father, a physician specializing in the genetics of
Because of
sity,
societies
the outset, because the essence of
to develop a unified synthesis.
background had
my
firsthand expe-
author will have to sweat copiously in order to assimilate material
from many
My
is
civilizations.
single authorship, despite all the difficulties that
single
approach
such as evolution-
from hunter-gatherer
societies,
These requirements seem
that approach
history, but the
The author must understand from
human
range of
a
is
in particular, that of historical sciences
ary biology and geology.
rience
subject matter
my
step, in
initial
my
last
undergraduate year at univer-
goal of medicine to the goal of biological
QUESTION
YALI'S
training
was mainly
my
school and undergraduate years,
languages, history, and writing. Even after deciding
in
to obtain a Ph.D. in physiology,
first
my
However, throughout
research.
2 J
nearly dropped out of science during
I
my
year of graduate school to become a linguist.
Since completing
my
Ph.D.
two
research efforts between
in
1961,
my
have divided
I
scientific
molecular physiology on the one hand,
fields:
evolutionary biology and biogeography on the other hand. As an unforeseen bonus for the purposes of this book, evolutionary biology
cal science forced to use
methods
difficulties in devising a scientific
approach to human history familiar to me. Living
among European
1962,
friends
by 20th-century European
about
how
whose
lives
For the
last
me
specialty
is
start to think
33 years
my
to
more
seriously
fieldwork as an evolutionary biologist has
into close contact with a
bird evolution, which
wide range of human
have studied
I
ern Africa, Indonesia, Australia, and especially
ing with native peoples of these areas,
technologically primitive
human
to those of tribal farmers
and
tools.
lifestyles of
New
Europe from 1958
chains of causes operate in history's unfolding.
brought
on stone
in
had been brutally traumatized
made me
history,
a histori-
from those of the laboratory
different
That experience has made the
sciences.
is
societies,
Thus, what most
literate
it
me
My
societies.
South America, south-
New
Guinea. Through
have become familiar with
liv-
many
from those of hunter-gatherers
fishing peoples
remote prehistory are for
Guinea, though
I
in
who depended
until recently
people would consider strange
the
most
vivid part of
my
life.
accounts for only a small fraction of the world's
land area, encompasses a disproportionate fraction of
its
human
diversity.
modern world's 6,000 languages, 1,000 are confined to New
Guinea. In the course of my work on New Guinea birds, my interests in
Of
the
language were rekindled, by the need to
100 of those
species in nearly
Out of
account of
all
New
those interests grew
human
elicit lists
of local
names of
Guinea languages.
my most
recent book, a nontechnical
evolution entitled The Third Chimpanzee.
Its
14, called "Accidental Conquerors," sought to understand the
Chapter
outcome
of the encounter between Europeans and Native Americans. After
completed that book,
I
realized that other
modern,
had wrestled
which
tion Yali
had asked me
I
in
in that
I
had
as well as prehistoric,
encounters between peoples raised similar questions.
tion with
bird
Chapter 14 was
I
saw
that the ques-
in essence the ques-
1972, merely transferred to a different part of
PROLOGUE
2 8
the world.
And
so at
last,
satisfy Yali's curiosity
book's chapters
1 his
"From Eden
a
with the help of
many
friends,
I
shall
attempt to
—and my own.
are divided into four parts. Part 1, entitled
to Cajamarca," consists of three chapters.
human
whirlwind tour of
Chapter
1
provides
evolution and history, extending from our
divergence from apes, around 7 million years ago, until the end of the last
We
Age, around 13,000 years ago.
Ice
humans, from our origins
understand the state of the world
a
spread of ancestral
just before the events often
the term "rise of civilization" began.
on some continents got
shall trace the
in Africa to the other continents, in order to
head
It
start in
Chapter 2 prepares us for exploring
on history over the past 13,000
years,
turns out that
into
time over developments on others.
effects of continental
by
briefly
examining
environments
effects of island
environments on history over smaller time scales and areas.
tral
lumped
human development
When
ances-
Polynesians spread into the Pacific around 3,200 years ago, they
encountered islands differing greatly in their environments. Within a few
millennia that single ancestral Polynesian society had
diverse islands a range of diverse daughter societies,
tribes to proto-empires.
larger-scale,
and
less
That radiation can serve as a model for the longer,
understood radiation of societies on different conti-
nents since the end of the last Ice Age, to
tribes
become variously hunter-gatherer
and empires.
The
third chapter introduces us to collisions
ferent continents,
the
spawned on those
from hunter-gatherer
by
retelling
between peoples from
dif-
through contemporary eyewitness accounts
most dramatic such encounter
in history: the
pendent Inca emperor, Atahuallpa,
capture of the
in the presence of his
last inde-
whole army, by
Francisco Pizarro and his tiny band of conquistadores, at the Peruvian city
of Cajamarca.
We can
identify the chain of
proximate factors that enabled
Pizarro to capture Atahuallpa, and that operated in European conquests
of other Native American societies as well. Those factors included Spanish
germs, horses,
ships
and technology (especially
and weapons). That analysis of proximate causes is the easy part of
literacy, political organization,
book; the hard part is to identify the ultimate causes leading to them
and to the actual outcome, rather than to the opposite possible outcome
of Atahuallpa's coming to Madrid and capturing King Charles I of Spain.
this
Part 2, entitled
"The Rise and Spread of Food Production" and con-
QUESTION
YALI'S
sisting of
Chapters 4-10,
2 9
devoted to what
is
I
believe to be the
important constellation of ultimate causes. Chapter 4 sketches
production
—that
is,
still
we
shall see in
rise
Chapter
of food production
5,
peoples in some
world developed food production by themselves; some other
peoples acquired
and
food
— ultimately led to the immedi-
But the
ate factors permitting Pizarro's triumph.
varied around the globe. As
cally
most
the growing of food by agriculture or herding, instead
of the hunting and gathering of wild foods
parts of the
how
it
in prehistoric times
from those independent
centers;
others neither developed nor acquired food production prehistori-
modern
but remained hunter-gatherers until
times.
Chapter 6
explores the numerous factors driving the shift from the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle
toward food production,
Chapters
7, 8,
toric times to be
incipient farmers
in
some
areas but not in others.
and 9 then show how crops and livestock came
in prehis-
domesticated from ancestral wild plants and animals, by
and herders
come. Geographic differences
who
could have had no vision of the out-
in the local suites of
available for domestication go a long
wild plants and animals
way toward
explaining
why
few areas became independent centers of food production, and
arose earlier in
some of those
areas than in others.
of origin, food production spread
to others.
A
much more
From
only a
why
it
those few centers
rapidly to
some areas than
major factor contributing to those differing
rates of spread
turns out to have been the orientation of the continents' axes: predomi-
nantly west-east for Eurasia, predominantly north-south for the Americas
and Africa (Chapter
10).
Thus, Chapter 3 sketched the immediate factors behind Europe's conquest of Native Americans, and Chapter 4 the development of those factors
to
from the ultimate cause of food production.
Guns, Germs, and
Steel,"
In Part 3
("From Food
Chapters 11-14), the connections from
mate to proximate causes are traced
of germs characteristic of dense
in detail,
human
populations (Chapter 11). Far
more Native Americans and other non-Eurasian peoples were
Eurasian germs than by Eurasian guns or
ulti-
beginning with the evolution
steel
killed
by
weapons. Conversely, few
or no distinctive lethal germs awaited would-be European conquerors in
the
New World. Why was the germ exchange so
unequal? Here, the results
of recent molecular biological studies are illuminating in linking germs to
the rise of food production, in Eurasia
much more than
in the
Americas.
Another chain of causation led from food production to writing, possibly the
most important
single invention of the last
few thousand years
PROLOGUE
O
3
human
(Chapter 12). Writing has evolved de novo only a few times in
earliest sites of the rise of
had been the
history, in areas that
tion in their respective regions. All other societies that have
food produc-
become
literate
did so by the diffusion of writing systems or of the idea of writing from
one of those few primary centers. Hence, for the student of world
phenomenon
the
of writing
is
history,
particularly useful for exploring another
important constellation of causes: geography's effect on the ease with
which ideas and inventions spread.
What
cial
holds for writing also holds for technology (Chapter 13).
question
whether technological innovation
is
inventor-geniuses,
number of
fact,
cultural factors
we
A cru-
so dependent on rare
and on many idiosyncratic cultural
an understanding of world patterns. In
cally, this large
is
factors, as to defy
shall see that, paradoxi-
makes
it
easier,
not harder, to
understand world patterns of technology. By enabling farmers to generate
food surpluses, food production permitted farming societies to support
full-time craft specialists
who
did not
grow
their
own
food and
who
devel-
oped technologies.
Besides sustaining scribes and inventors, food production also enabled
farmers to support politicians (Chapter 14). Mobile bands of hunter-gatherers are relatively egalitarian,
band's
own
With the
rise
and to
territory
rise
and
their political sphere
shifting alliances
is
confined to the
with neighboring bands.
of dense, sedentary, food-producing populations
came
the
of chiefs, kings, and bureaucrats. Such bureaucracies were essential
not only to governing large and populous domains but also to maintaining
standing armies, sending out
fleets
of exploration, and organizing wars of
conquest.
Part 4 ("Around the
the lessons of Parts 2
islands.
Chapters 15-19) applies
in Five Chapters,"
and 3 to each of the continents and some important
Chapter 15 examines the history of Australia
large island of
nent.
World
The
New
case of Australia,
simplest technologies,
home
and the
human
to the recent
and of the
critical test
societies.
human
societies
with the
where food production did
sole continent
not develop indigenously, poses a
nental differences in
itself,
Guinea, formerly joined to Australia in a single conti-
of theories about interconti-
We shall
see
why
Aboriginal Austra-
lians
remained hunter-gatherers, even while most peoples of neighboring
New
Guinea became food producers.
Chapters 16 and 17 integrate developments in Australia and
New
Guinea into the perspective of the whole region encompassing the East
YALI'S
QUESTION
Asian mainland and Pacific islands. The
spawned
several great prehistoric
cultural traits, or of both.
One
3
rise
I
of food production in China
movements of human populations, or of
of those movements, within China
and cultural phenomenon of China
created the political
as
itself,
we know
it
whole
today. Another resulted in a replacement, throughout almost the
of tropical Southeast Asia, of indigenous hunter-gatherers by farmers of
ultimately South Chinese origin.
Still
another, the Austronesian expansion,
similarly replaced the indigenous hunter-gatherers of the Philippines
and
Indonesia and spread out to the most remote islands of Polynesia, but was
unable to colonize Australia and most of
world
history, all those collisions
are doubly important: they
modern world's population
ingly
among
New
Guinea. To the student of
East Asian and Pacific peoples
formed the countries where one-third of the
lives,
and
in
which economic power
becoming concentrated; and they furnish
is
increas-
models for
especially clear
understanding the histories of peoples elsewhere in the world.
Chapter 18 returns to the problem introduced
sion between
last
13,000 years of
how Europe's
in
Chapter
European and Native American peoples.
New World
3, the colli-
A summary
of the
and western Eurasian history makes
clear
conquest of the Americas was merely the culmination of two
long and mostly separate historical trajectories. The differences between
those trajectories were stamped by continental differences in domesticable
plants
axes,
and animals, germs, times of settlement, orientation of continental
and ecological
barriers.
Finally, the history of
sub-Saharan Africa (Chapter 19) offers striking
similarities as well as contrasts
that
with
New World
history.
The same
molded Europeans' encounters with Africans molded
factors
their encounters
with Native Americans as well. But Africa also differed from the Americas
in all these factors.
As
a result,
European conquest did not create wide-
spread or lasting European settlement of sub-Saharan Africa, except in the
far south.
Of more
within Africa
itself,
lasting significance
was
the Bantu expansion.
It
a large-scale population shift
proves to have been triggered
by many of the same causes that played themselves out
East Asia, on Pacific islands, and in Australia and
I
New
at
harbor no illusions that these chapters have succeeded
the histories of
all
all
in
in explaining
the continents for the past 13,000 years. Obviously, that
would be impossible
stand
Cajamarca,
Guinea.
to accomplish in a single
the answers,
which we
don't.
At
book even
best, this
constellations of environmental factors that
I
book
if
we
did under-
identifies several
believe provide a large part
2
3
PROLOGUE
of the answer to Yali's question. Recognition of those factors emphasizes
the unexplained residue,
The Epilogue,
lays out
some
whose understanding
entitled
"The Future of
will be a task for the future.
Human
pieces of the residue, including the
History as a Science,"
problem of the
differ-
ences between different parts of Eurasia, the role of cultural factors unrelated to environment,
and the
these unsolved problems
ence,
on
is
role of individuals. Perhaps the biggest of
to establish
human
history as a historical sci-
a par with recognized historical sciences such as evolutionary
and climatology. The study of human history does pose
biology, geology,
real difficulties, but those recognized historical sciences
the
same
fields
the
methods developed
also prove useful in the field of
Already, though,
is
Hence
challenges.
may
not "just one
I
damn
it is
in
some of
these other
history.
hope to have convinced you, the reader, that history
fact after another," as a cynic
are broad patterns to history,
productive as
human
encounter some of
fascinating.
and the search for
put
it.
There
their explanation
really
is
as
PART ONE
FROM EDEN TO
CAJAMARCA
CHAPTER
1
Up to the Starting
Line
A
SUITABLE STARTING POINT FROM WHICH TO COMPARE
.
developments on the different continents
historical
is
around
11,000 B.C.* This date corresponds approximately to the beginnings of
village life in a
few parts of the world, the
first
Americas, the end of the Pleistocene Era and
what
date.
last Ice
geologists term the Recent Era. Plant
began
in at least
undisputed peopling of the
Age, and the start of
and animal domestication
one part of the world within a few thousand years of that
As of then, did the people of some continents already have
a
head
or a clear advantage over peoples of other continents?
start
If so,
perhaps that head
*Throughout
this
start,
amplified over the last 13,000 years, pro-
book, dates for about the
last
15,000 years will be quoted as so-
called calibrated radiocarbon dates, rather than as conventional, uncalibrated radiocar-
bon
5.
dates.
The
difference between the
two types of dates
Calibrated dates are the ones believed to correspond
dates.
will be explained in
more
Readers accustomed to uncalibrated dates will need to bear
mind whenever they
find
me
Chapter
closely to actual calendar
this distinction in
quoting apparently erroneous dates that are older than the
ones with which they are familiar. For example, the date of the Clovis archaeological
horizon in North America
but
I
quote
quoted
is
it
is
usually quoted as around
9000
B.C.
(11,000 years ago),
instead as around 11,000 B.C. (13,000 years ago), because the date usually
uncalibrated.
3
5
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
3
vides the answer to Yali's question.
Hence
wind tour of human history on
the continents, for millions of years,
from
all
chapter will offer a whirl-
this
now
our origins as a species until 13,000 years ago. All that will
summarized
in less
than 20 pages. Naturally,
mention only what seem to
Our
me
the trends
I
shall gloss over details
most relevant
be
and
to this book.
closest living relatives are three surviving species of great ape: the
gorilla, the
common
chimpanzee, and the pygmy chimpanzee (also
as bonobo). Their confinement to Africa, along with
dence, indicates that the earliest stages of
played out in Africa.
Human
human
abundant
known
fossil evi-
evolution were also
something separate from the
history, as
his-
tory of animals, began there about 7 million years ago (estimates range
from 5 to 9 million years ago). Around that time, a population of African
apes broke up into several populations, of which one proceeded to evolve
into
modern
into
humans. The
gorillas, a
second into the two modern chimps, and the third
gorilla line apparently split off slightly before the split
between the chimp and the human
lines.
Fossils indicate that the evolutionary line leading to us
substantially upright posture by
increase in
ago. Those
canus,
body
and
had achieved a
around 4 million years ago, then began to
in relative brain size
around 2.5 million years
protohumans are generally known
as Australopithecus afri-
Homo
size
habilis,
and
Homo
erectus,
each other in that sequence. Although
which apparently evolved into
Homo
erectus, the stage reached
around 1.7 million years ago, was close to us modern humans
size, its
brain size
was
still
barely half of ours. Stone tools
in
body
became common
around 2.5 million years ago, but they were merely the crudest of flaked
or battered stones. In zoological significance and distinctiveness,
erectus
was more than an
All of that
human
ape, but
still
by
ally
was
Homo
erectus, as
is
known
first
attested
man (see Figure 1.1). The oldest Java "man" fossils—
may actually have belonged to a Java woman have usu-
as Java
—
been assumed to date from about a million years ago. However,
recently been argued that they actually date
(Strictly
our
discovered on the Southeast Asian island of Java and convention-
of course, they
ally
Homo
than a modern human.
remained confined to Africa. The
ancestor to spread beyond Africa
fossils
less
history, for the first 5 or 6 million years after
origins about 7 million years ago,
human
much
speaking, the
and the African
name Homo
fossils classified as
name.) At present, the
earliest
from
it
has
1.8 million years ago.
erectus belongs to these Javan fossils,
Homo
erectus
may warrant
a different
unquestioned evidence for humans in
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
3
7
by 10,000 bc
Figure 1.1. The spread of humans around the world.
Europe stems from around half
of an earlier presence.
a million years ago, but there are claims
One would
certainly
assume that the colonization
of Asia also permitted the simultaneous colonization of Europe, since
Eurasia
That
some
is
a single landmass not bisected by major barriers.
illustrates
an issue that will recur throughout
scientist claims to
the earliest
human
have discovered "the
fossil in
corn in Mexico, or the
this
earliest
book. Whenever
X"
—whether X
earliest
anything anywhere
—that announcement
challenges other scientists to beat the claim by finding something
lier.
In reality, there
must be some
earlier X's being false.
year brings forth
new
However,
discoveries
as
It
truly "earliest
we
X," with
still
ear-
claims of
all
shall see, for virtually
and claims of a purported
along with refutations of some or
X.
is
Europe, the earliest evidence of domesticated
any X, every
still
earlier
X,
of previous years' claims of earlier
all
often takes decades of searching before archaeologists reach a con-
sensus on such questions.
By about
older
Homo
skulls.
half a million years ago,
fossils
had diverged from
and
less
angular
African and European skulls of half a million years ago were
ciently similar to skulls of us
cies,
human
erectus skeletons in their enlarged, rounder,
Homo
sapiens,
moderns that they are
instead of in
Homo
erectus.
classified in
suffi-
our spe-
This distinction
is
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
38
arbitrary, since
Homo
early
Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens.
sapiens
significantly smaller
still
from us
differed
However, these
in skeletal details,
had brains
than ours, and were grossly different from us in their
and behavior. Modern stone-tool-making peoples, such
artifacts
as Yali's
great-grandparents, would have scorned the stone tools of half a million
years ago as very crude.
The only other
tors' cultural repertoire that can be
that time
was
the use of
significant addition to
our ances-
documented with confidence around
fire.
No art, bone tool, or anything else has come down to us from early
Homo sapiens except for their skeletal remains, plus those crude stone
tools.
it
There were
still
no humans
would have taken boats
also
in Australia, for the
to get there
no humans anywhere
in the
obvious reason that
from Southeast Asia. There were
Americas, because that would have
required the occupation of the nearest part of the Eurasian continent (Siberia),
and possibly boat-building
Strait,
skills as well.
(The present, shallow Bering
separating Siberia from Alaska, alternated between a strait and a
broad intercontinental bridge of dry land, as sea
level repeatedly rose
and
fell
during the Ice Ages.) However, boat building and survival in cold Sibe-
ria
were both
still
far
beyond the
capabilities of early
After half a million years ago, the
human
Homo
sapiens.
populations of Africa and
western Eurasia proceeded to diverge from each other and from East Asian
populations in skeletal details. The population of Europe and western Asia
between 130,000 and 40,000 years ago
skeletons,
species,
known
Homo
as Neanderthals
is
represented by especially
and sometimes
many
classified as a separate
neanderthalensis. Despite being depicted in innumerable
cartoons as apelike brutes living in caves, Neanderthals had brains slightly
own. They were
larger than our
also the
first
humans
to leave behind
strong evidence of burying their dead and caring for their sick. Yet their
stone tools were
still
crude by comparison with modern
polished stone axes and were usually not yet
made
New
Guineans'
in standardized diverse
shapes, each with a clearly recognizable function.
The few preserved African
skeletal fragments
contemporary with the
Neanderthals are more similar to our modern skeletons than to Neanderthal skeletons.
Even fewer preserved East Asian
known, but they appear
thals.
As
different again
skeletal fragments are
from both Africans and Neander-
for the lifestyle at that time, the best-preserved evidence
from stone
artifacts
and prey bones accumulated
comes
at southern African sites.
Although those Africans of 100,000 years ago had more modern skeletons
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
had no preserved
To judge from
art.
on which they preyed,
cies
mainly
still
essentially the
same
They
the
bone evidence of the animal spe-
hunting
their
made
9
lacking standardized shapes.
than did their Neanderthal contemporaries, they
crude stone tools as Neanderthals,
3
skills
were unimpressive and
They were
directed at easy-to-kill, not-at-all-dangerous animals.
not yet in the business of slaughtering buffalo, pigs, and other dangerous
prey.
They couldn't even catch
lack fish bones
still
rank as
Human
what
I
first
appear
and fishhooks. They and
less
than
fully
immediately on the seacoast
Neanderthal contemporaries
their
human.
history at last took off
around 50,000 years ago,
have termed our Great Leap Forward. The
that leap
the
fish: their sites
come from
East African
sites
at the time of
earliest definite signs of
with standardized stone tools and
preserved jewelry (ostrich-shell beads). Similar developments soon
in the
Near East and
in southeastern
Europe, then (some 40,000
years ago) in southwestern Europe, where abundant artifacts are associ-
ated with fully
ter,
modern
skeletons of people termed
Cro-Magnons. Thereaf-
the garbage preserved at archaeological sites rapidly
and more
cally
interesting
becomes more
and leaves no doubt that we are dealing with
biologi-
and behaviorally modern humans.
Cro-Magnon garbage heaps
of bone,
whose
suitability for
yield not only stone tools but also tools
shaping (for instance, into fishhooks) had
apparently gone unrecognized by previous humans. Tools were produced
in diverse
and
distinctive shapes so
awls, engraving tools,
modern
that their functions as needles,
and so on are obvious to
us. Instead of
only single-
made their appearance. Recognizable multipiece weapons at Cro-Magnon sites include harpoons, spear-throwers, and eventually bows and arrows, the precursors of
rifles and other multipiece modern weapons. Those efficient means of killpiece tools such as hand-held scrapers, multipiece tools
ing at a safe distance permitted the hunting of such dangerous prey as
rhinos and elephants, while the invention of rope for nets,
allowed the addition of
sewn clothing
fish
and birds to our
testify to a greatly
improved
diet.
lines,
and snares
Remains of houses and
ability to survive in cold cli-
mates, and remains of jewelry and carefully buried skeletons indicate revolutionary aesthetic and spiritual developments.
Of the Cro-Magnons' products that have been preserved, the best
known are their artworks: their magnificent cave paintings, statues, and
musical instruments, which we still appreciate as art today. Anyone who
has experienced firsthand the overwhelming power of the life-sized painted
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
4 O
bulls
and horses
in the
stand at once that their
as they
were
Lascaux Cave of southwestern France
creators must have been
as
modern
will under-
in their
minds
in their skeletons.
Obviously, some
momentous change took
place in our ancestors' capa-
bilities between about 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. That Great Leap
Forward poses two major unresolved questions, regarding its triggering
cause and
its
geographic location. As for
The Third Chimpanzee
the anatomical basis of
creativity
is
cause,
its
argued
I
my book
box and hence
for the perfection of the voice
modern language, on which
in
the exercise of
so dependent. Others have suggested instead that a change in
brain organization around that time, without a change in brain size,
modern language
As
made
possible.
for the site of the Great
one geographic area,
to
for
human
in
Leap Forward, did
one group of humans,
it
take place primarily in
who were
thereby enabled
expand and replace the former human populations of other parts of the
world? Or did
the
human
it
occur in parallel in different regions, in each of which
populations living there today would be descendants of the
populations living there before the leap? The rather modern-looking
human
skulls
from Africa around 100,000 years ago have been taken to
support the former view, with the leap occurring specifically in Africa.
Molecular studies (of so-called mitochondrial
interpreted in terms of an African origin of
meaning of those molecular findings
is
DNA)
were
initially also
modern humans, though
currently in doubt.
On
the
the other
hand, skulls of humans living in China and Indonesia hundreds of thousands of years ago are considered by some physical anthropologists to
exhibit features
still
found
in
modern Chinese and
lians, respectively. If true, that finding
and multiregional
gle
origins of
Garden of Eden. The
The evidence
in Aboriginal Austra-
would suggest
modern humans,
parallel evolution
rather than origins in a sin-
issue remains unresolved.
for a localized origin of
modern humans, followed by
spread and then their replacement of other types of
humans
their
elsewhere,
seems strongest for Europe. Some 40,000 years ago, into Europe came the
Cro-Magnons, with
advanced cultural
Neanderthals,
their
traits.
who had
modern
skeletons, superior
weapons, and other
Within a few thousand years there were no more
been evolving as the sole occupants of Europe for
hundreds of thousands of years. That sequence strongly suggests that the
modern Cro-Magnons somehow used
their
language
skills
or brains, to infect,
their far superior technology,
kill,
and
or displace the Neanderthals,
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
leaving behind
4
I
or no evidence of hybridization between Neanderthals
little
and Cro-Magnons.
he great leap Forward coincides with the first proven major extension of human geographic range since our ancestors' colonization of
1
Eurasia. That extension consisted of the occupation of Australia
Many
Guinea, joined at that time into a single continent.
dated
sites attest to
human
presence in Australia
/
New
and
New
radiocarbon-
Guinea between
40,000 and 30,000 years ago (plus the inevitable somewhat older claims
of contested validity). Within a short time of that
initial
had expanded over the whole continent and adapted to
from the tropical rain
forests
peopling,
its
diverse habitats,
New
and high mountains of
humans
Guinea to the
dry interior and wet southeastern corner of Australia.
During the
much
Ice Ages, so
worldwide sea
glaciers that
present stand. As a result,
and the Indonesian
of the oceans' water
what
was locked up
dropped hundreds of
levels
are
now
below
feet
in
their
the shallow seas between Asia
islands of Sumatra, Borneo, Java,
and
Bali
land. (So did other shallow straits, such as the Bering Strait
became dry
and the English
Channel.) The edge of the Southeast Asian mainland then lay 700 miles
east
of
between
Nevertheless, central Indonesian islands
present location.
its
Bali
and Australia remained surrounded and separated by deep-
water channels. To reach Australia
at that time
est of
still
required crossing a
which was
islands visible
/
at least
from each
/
minimum
from the Asian mainland
of eight channels, the broad-
50 miles wide. Most of those channels divided
other, but Australia itself
from even the nearest Indonesian
occupation of Australia
New Guinea
New
islands,
Guinea
is
was always
invisible
Timor and Tanimbar. Thus,
momentous
in that
it
the
demanded
watercraft and provides by far the earliest evidence of their use in history.
Not
until
about 30,000 years
dence of watercraft anywhere
Initially,
later
else in the
is
there strong evi-
world, from the Mediterranean.
archaeologists considered the possibility that the colonization
of Australia
/
New
Guinea was achieved accidentally by
swept to sea while fishing on a
extreme scenario the
single
(13,000 years ago)
pregnant young
first settlers
woman
raft
just a
few people
near an Indonesian island. In an
are pictured as having consisted of a
carrying a male fetus. But believers in the
fluke-colonization theory have been surprised by recent discoveries that
still
other islands, lying to the east of
New
Guinea, were colonized soon
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
4 2
after
New
New
Britain
the
Guinea
itself,
New
and
by around 35,000 years ago. Those islands were
Bismarck Archipelago, and Buka,
Ireland, in the
Solomon Archipelago. Buka
lies
in
out of sight of the closest island to the
west and could have been reached only by crossing a water gap of about
New
and
miles. Thus, early Australians
100
Guineans were probably
capable of intentionally traveling over water to visible islands, and were
using watercraft sufficiently often that the colonization of even invisible
distant islands
was repeatedly achieved
The settlement of Australia
still
another big
first,
besides
/
New
humans'
extension since reaching Eurasia: the
mal
species by
humans. Today, we
mammals. Modern Eurasia
also has
unintentionally.
Guinea was perhaps associated with
use of watercraft and
first
first
first
range
mass extermination of large
ani-
regard Africa as the continent of big
many
species of big
mammals
(though
not in the manifest abundance of Africa's Serengeti Plains), such as Asia's
rhinos and elephants and tigers, and Europe's
classical times) lions. Australia
mammals,
tralia
/
in fact
New
no mammal
/
New
larger than
Guinea formerly had
its
moose and bears and
(until
Guinea today has no equally large
100-pound kangaroos. But Aus-
own
suite of diverse big
mammals,
including giant kangaroos, rhinolike marsupials called diprotodonts and
reaching the size of a cow, and a marsupial "leopard."
a
400-pound
ostrichlike flightless bird, plus
It
also formerly
some impressively
had
big reptiles,
including a one-ton lizard, a giant python, and land-dwelling crocodiles.
All of those Australian
/
New
Guinean giants
(the so-called
megafauna)
disappeared after the arrival of humans. While there has been controversy
about the exact timing of their demise, several Australian archaeological
sites,
with dates extending over tens of thousands of years, and with prodi-
giously abundant deposits of animal bones, have been carefully excavated
and found
to contain not a trace of the
now
extinct giants over the last
35,000 years. Hence the megafauna probably became extinct soon
humans reached
after
Australia.
The near-simultaneous disappearance of so many large species raises an
obvious question: what caused it? An obvious possible answer is that they
were
killed off or else eliminated indirectly
Recall that Australian
years in the absence of
arctic birds
humans and
/ New
first
arriving
humans.
Guinean animals had evolved for millions of
human
hunters.
and mammals, which
did not see
by the
humans
We know that Galapagos
and Ant-
similarly evolved in the absence of
until
modern
times, are
tame today. They would have been exterminated
if
still
incurably
conservationists
had
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
On
not imposed protective measures quickly.
islands
4
other recently discovered
where protective measures did not go into
virtually a
We
symbol for extinction.
effect quickly, extermi-
dodo of Mauritius, has
nations did indeed result: one such victim, the
become
3
know now
also
that,
on
every one of the well-studied oceanic islands colonized in the prehistoric
human
era,
included the
colonization
moas
of
New
led
to
an extinction spasm whose victims
Zealand, the giant lemurs of Madagascar, and
the big flightless geese of Hawaii. Just as
modern humans walked up
unafraid dodos and island seals and killed them, prehistoric
humans
sumably walked up to unafraid moas and giant lemurs and
killed
to
pre-
them
too.
Hence one hypothesis
giants
that they
is
for the demise of Australia's
met the same
fate
and
New
Guinea's
around 40,000 years ago. In contrast,
most big mammals of Africa and Eurasia survived
into
modern
times,
because they had coevolved with protohumans for hundreds of thousands
They thereby enjoyed ample time
or millions of years.
humans,
as our ancestors' initially
The dodo, moas, and perhaps
poor hunting
to evolve a fear of
slowly improved.
skills
the giants of Australia
/
New
Guinea had
the misfortune suddenly to be confronted, without any evolutionary prep-
modern humans possessing
aration, by invading
fully
developed hunting
skills.
However, the
overkill hypothesis, as
lenged for Australia
/
New
it is
termed, has not gone unchal-
Guinea. Critics emphasize that, as yet, no one
has documented the bones of an extinct Australian
with compelling evidence of
of
its
its
/
New
Guinean giant
having been killed by humans, or even
having lived in association with humans. Defenders of the overkill
hypothesis reply: you would hardly expect to find
kill sites if
the extermi-
nation was completed very quickly and long ago, such as within a few
millennia
some 40,000 years ago. The
ory: perhaps the giants
a severe drought
critics
succumbed instead
respond with a counterthe-
to a
change
in climate,
such as
on the already chronically dry Australian continent. The
debate goes on.
Personally,
I
can't
fathom why Australia's giants should have survived
innumerable droughts
tory,
on
the
in their tens of millions of years of Australian his-
and then have chosen
to drop dead almost simultaneously (at least
a time scale of millions of years) precisely
first
humans
arrived.
The
giants
Australia but also in drenching wet
became
and
just coincidentally
when
extinct not only in dry central
New Guinea
and southeastern Austra-
44
They became
lia.
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
extinct in every habitat without exception,
to cold rain forest and tropical rain forest.
likely that the giants
Hence
from
seems to
it
were indeed exterminated by humans, both
(by being killed for food)
indirectly (as the result of fires
and
deserts
me most
directly
and habitat
modification caused by humans). But regardless of whether the overkill
hypothesis or the climate hypothesis proves correct, the disappearance of
all
of the big animals of Australia
New Guinea had, as we shall see, heavy
human
consequences for subsequent
all
/
history.
Those extinctions eliminated
the large wild animals that might otherwise have been candidates for
domestication, and
left
native Australians
and
New
Guineans with not a
single native domestic animal.
Ihus, the colonization
of Australia
/
New
Guinea was not
achieved until around the time of the Great Leap Forward. Another extension of
human
range that soon followed was the one into the coldest parts
of Eurasia. While Neanderthals lived in glacial times and were adapted to
the cold, they penetrated
no
farther north than northern
Germany and
Kiev. That's not surprising, since Neanderthals apparently lacked needles,
sewn
clothing,
warm
houses, and other technology essential to survival in
the coldest climates. Anatomically
modern peoples who did possess such
technology had expanded into Siberia by around 20,000 years ago (there
are the usual
much
older disputed claims). That expansion
may have been
mammoth and
responsible for the extinction of Eurasia's woolly
woolly
rhinoceros.
With
the settlement of Australia
/
New
Guinea, humans
now
occupied
three of the five habitable continents. (Throughout this book,
Eurasia as a single continent, and
I
omit Antarctica because
it
I
count
was not
reached by humans until the 19th century and has never had any
supporting
human
population.) That
left
self-
only two continents, North
America and South America. They were surely the
last
ones
settled, for the
obvious reason that reaching the Americas from the Old World required
either boats (for
which there
is
no evidence even
years ago and none in Europe until
else
it
much
in Indonesia until
later) in
40,000
order to cross by sea, or
required the occupation of Siberia (unoccupied until about 20,000
years ago) in order to cross the Bering land bridge.
However,
it is
uncertain when, between about 14,000 and 35,000 years
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
ago, the Americas were
remains in the Americas are at
followed by a profusion of
border and in Mexico
sites are called
Clovis,
were
human
These
filled
11,000
the
The
B.C.
after the type site near the
latter
town of
their characteristic large stone spearpoints
Hundreds of Clovis
states
now known,
sites are
blanketing
south into Mexico. Unquestioned evidence
presence appears soon thereafter in Amazonia and in Patagonia.
facts suggest the interpretation that Clovis sites
colonization by people,
icas' first
B.C.,
the United States south of the Canadian
named
Mexico, where
recognized.
human
Alaska dated around 12,000
sites in
sites in
sites,
5
oldest unquestioned
in the centuries just before
Clovis
48 of the lower U.S.
all
of
New
first
The
colonized.
first
4
two
One might
who
document the Amer-
quickly multiplied, expanded, and
continents.
at first be surprised that Clovis descendants
could reach
Patagonia, lying 8,000 miles south of the U.S. -Canada border, in
a thousand years.
However, that
only 8 miles per year, a
translates into
trivial feat for a
that distance even within a single day's
One might
also at
first
less
than
an average expansion of
hunter-gatherer likely to cover
normal foraging.
be surprised that the Americas evidently
up with humans so quickly that people were motivated
filled
to keep spreading
south toward Patagonia. That population growth also proves unsurprising
when one
came
stops to consider the actual numbers.
the Americas eventually
If
to hold hunter-gatherers at an average population density of
what under one person per square mile
gatherers), then the
(a
some-
high value for modern hunter-
whole area of the Americas would eventually have
held about 10 million hunter-gatherers. But even
consisted of only 100 people and their
if
the initial colonists
numbers had increased
had
at a rate of
only 1.1 percent per year, the colonists' descendants would have reached
that population ceiling of 10 million people within a thousand years.
population growth rate of 1.1 percent per year
again
is
trivial: rates as
high as 3.4 percent per year have been observed in modern times
people colonized virgin lands, such as
and
when
HMS
when
Bounty mutineers
their Tahitian wives colonized Pitcairn Island.
The profusion of Clovis
hunters' sites within the
their arrival resembles the site profusion
the
the
A
more
recent discovery of
sion of early sites
is
also
New
first
few centuries
documented archaeologically
Zealand by ancestral Maori.
documented
after
for the
Europe by anatomically modern humans, and
much
A
for
profu-
older colonization of
for the occupation of Aus-
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
4 6
tralia
its
/
New Guinea. That is, everything about the Clovis phenomenon and
spread through the Americas corresponds to findings for other, unques-
tioned virgin-land colonizations in history.
What might
be the significance of Clovis
bursting forth in the
sites'
centuries just before 11,000 B.C., rather than in those before 16,000 or
always been cold, and that a continu-
21,000
B.C.? Recall that Siberia has
ous
sheet stretched as an impassable barrier across the whole width of
ice
Canada during much of
the Pleistocene Ice Ages.
We
have already seen
that the technology required for coping with extreme cold did not emerge
modern humans invaded Europe around 40,000
until after anatomically
years ago, and that people did not colonize Siberia until 20,000 years later.
Eventually, those early Siberians crossed to Alaska, either by sea across the
Bering Strait (only 50 miles wide even today) or else on foot at glacial
times
when
Bering Strait was dry land. The Bering land bridge, during
millennia of intermittent existence,
would have been up
miles wide, covered by open tundra,
adapted to cold conditions. The
strait
again most recently
Whether those
when
early Siberians
secure evidence of
human
and
to a thousand
easily traversable
land bridge
its
by people
was flooded and became
sea level rose after
around 14,000
walked or paddled to Alaska, the
a
B.C.
earliest
presence in Alaska dates from around 12,000
B.C.
Soon
thereafter, a north-south ice-free corridor
ice sheet,
permitting the
first
the Great Plains around the site of the
ton.
That removed the
opened
in the
modern Canadian
last serious barrier
city of
Plains teeming with game.
Edmon-
between Alaska and Patagonia
modern humans. The Edmonton pioneers would have found
for
Canadian
Alaskans to pass through and come out into
They would have
thrived, increased in
the Great
numbers,
and gradually spread south to occupy the whole hemisphere.
One
the
first
other feature of the Clovis
human
phenomenon
fits
our expectations for
presence south of the Canadian ice sheet. Like Australia
/
New Guinea, the Americas had originally been full of big mammals. About
15,000 years ago, the American West looked
Plains
much
as Africa's Serengeti
do today, with herds of elephants and horses pursued by
cheetahs, and joined by
ground
members
sloths. Just as in Australia
those large
mammals became
lions
and
of such exotic species as camels and giant
/
New
extinct.
Guinea, in the Americas most of
Whereas the extinctions took place
probably before 30,000 years ago in Australia, they occurred around
17,000 to 12,000 years ago
in the
Americas. For those extinct American
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
mammals whose bones
are available in greatest
4 7
abundance and have been
dated especially accurately, one can pinpoint the extinctions as having
occurred around 11,000 B.C. Perhaps the two most accurately dated
extinctions are those of the Shasta
Grand Canyon
tain goat in the
ground
sloth
and Harrington's moun-
area; both of those populations disap-
peared within a century or two of 11,100 B.C. Whether coincidentally or
not, that date
is
identical, within
experimental error, to the date of Clovis
Grand Canyon
hunters' arrival in the
area.
The discovery of numerous skeletons of mammoths with Clovis
points between their ribs suggests that this agreement of dates
coincidence.
Hunters
southward
expanding
through
found those American animals easy to
A
countertheory
is
not a
may have
and may have exterminated
kill
that America's big
extinct because of climate changes at the
spear-
Americas,
the
encountering big animals that had never seen humans before,
them.
is
mammals
end of the
instead
last Ice
became
Age, which
confuse the interpretation for modern paleontologists) also happened
(to
around 11,000
Personally,
I
B.C.
have the same problem with a climatic theory of megafau-
nal extinction in the Americas as with such a theory in Australia
/
New
Guinea. The Americas' big animals had already survived the ends of 22
previous Ice Ages.
cert, in the
presence of
they disappear in
in
Why
all
did most of
all
them pick the 23rd
to expire in con-
those supposedly harmless humans?
Why
did
habitats, not only in habitats that contracted but also
ones that greatly expanded at the end of the
pect that Clovis hunters did
it,
last Ice
Age? Hence
I
sus-
but the debate remains unresolved. Which-
ever theory proves correct, most large wild
mammal
species that might
otherwise have later been domesticated by Native Americans were thereby
removed.
Also unresolved
first
is
the question whether Clovis hunters really were the
Americans. As always happens whenever anyone claims the
thing, claims of discoveries of pre-Clovis
human
sites in
constantly being advanced. Every year, a few of those
do appear convincing and exciting when
initially
inevitable problems of interpretation arise.
Were
site really
tools
made by humans,
first
any-
the Americas are
new
claims really
announced. Then the
the reported tools at the
or just natural rock shapes? Are the
reported radiocarbon dates really correct, and not invalidated by any of
the
numerous
difficulties that
can plague radiocarbon dating?
are correct, are they really associated with
human
If
the dates
products, rather than
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
48
just
being a 15,000-year-old lump of charcoal lying next to a stone tool
actually
To
made 9,000
years ago?
illustrate these
problems, consider the following typical example of
an often quoted pre-Clovis claim. At a Brazilian rock shelter named Pedra
Furada,
found cave paintings undoubtedly made by
archaeologists
humans. They also discovered, among the
piles of stones at the
base of a
some stones whose shapes suggested the possibility of their being
crude tools. In addition, they came upon supposed hearths, whose burnt
cliff,
charcoal yielded radiocarbon dates of around 35,000 years ago. Articles
on Pedra Furada were accepted
and
for publication in the prestigious
highly selective international scientific journal Nature.
But none of those rocks at the base of the
made
and Cro-Magnon
tool, as are Clovis points
thousands of rocks
many
sands of years,
hit the
from a high
fall
of
them
cliff is
will
cliff
an obviously humantools. If
hundreds of
over the course of tens of thou-
become chipped and broken when they
rocks below, and some will come to resemble crude tools chipped
and broken by humans. In western Europe and elsewhere
in
Amazonia,
archaeologists have radiocarbon-dated the actual pigments used in cave
paintings, but that
was not done
at
Pedra Furada. Forest
quently in the vicinity and produce charcoal that
caves by wind and streams.
No
is
fires
occur
fre-
regularly swept into
evidence links the 35,000-year-old char-
coal to the undoubted cave paintings at Pedra Furada. Although the original excavators remain convinced, a
team of archaeologists
who were
not
involved in the excavation but receptive to pre-Clovis claims recently visited the site
and came away unconvinced.
The North American
site
as a possible pre-Clovis site
that currently enjoys the strongest credentials
is
Meadowcroft rock
shelter, in Pennsylvania,
yielding reported human-associated radiocarbon dates of about 16,000
years ago. At
facts
Meadowcroft no archaeologist denies
do occur
in
many
them
many human
arti-
carefully excavated layers. But the oldest radiocar-
bon dates don't make
associated with
that
sense,
because the plant and animal species
are species living in Pennsylvania in recent times of
mild climates, rather than species expected for the glacial times of 16,000
years ago.
Hence one has
the oldest
human occupation
to suspect that the charcoal samples dated
trated with older carbon.
America
is
the
levels consist of post-Clovis
The
Monte Verde
charcoal
from
infil-
strongest pre-Clovis candidate in South
site,
in
southern Chile, dated to at least
49
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
15,000 years ago.
but caution
If
is
It
too
warranted
now
view of
in
many
seems convincing to
all
archaeologists,
the previous disillusionments.
why
there really were pre-Clovis people in the Americas,
is it still
so
hard to prove that they existed? Archaeologists have excavated hundreds
2000 and 11,000
of American sites unequivocally dating to between
including dozens of Clovis sites in the
in the
Appalachians, and
logical layers
sites,
sites in
with undoubted
North American West, rock
Below
coastal California.
human
many
presence, at
deeper older layers have been excavated and
remains of animals
all
still
B.C.,
shelters
the archaeo-
of those same
yield
undoubted
— but with no further evidence of humans. The weak-
nesses in pre-Clovis evidence in the Americas contrast with the strength of
the evidence in Europe,
where hundreds of
sites attest to the
modern humans long before Clovis hunters appeared
around 11,000
New
in the
B.C.
Even more
striking
presence of
in the
Americas
the evidence from Australia/
is
many
Guinea, where there are barely one-tenth as
archaeologists as
United States alone, but where those few archaeologists have never-
theless discovered over a
hundred unequivocal pre-Clovis
sites scattered
over the whole continent.
Early
humans
certainly didn't fly by helicopter
owcroft and Monte Verde, skipping
all
from Alaska to Mead-
Advo-
the landscape in between.
cates of pre-Clovis settlement suggest that, for thousands or even tens of
thousands of years, pre-Clovis humans remained
ties
or poorly visible archaeologically, for
elsewhere in the world.
I
at
low population
densi-
unknown reasons unprecedented
find that suggestion infinitely
more implausible
than the suggestion that Monte Verde and Meadowcroft will eventually
be reinterpreted, as have other claimed pre-Clovis
if
there really
had been pre-Clovis settlement
have become obvious at
many
in the
locations by now,
My feeling is that,
Americas,
it
and we would not
arguing. However, archaeologists remain divided
The consequences
sites.
would
still
be
on these questions.
for our understanding of later
American prehistory
remain the same, whichever interpretation proves correct. Either: the
Americas were
people.
Or
else:
first settled
the
first
around 11,000
cates of pre-Clovis settlement
or had
little
settlers
and quickly
somewhat
filled
earlier
up with
(most advo-
would suggest by 15,000 or 20,000
ago, possibly 30,000 years ago, and few
but those pre-Clovis
B.C.
settlement occurred
remained few
would
in
years
seriously claim earlier);
numbers, or inconspicuous,
impact, until around 11,000 B.C. In either case, of the
five
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O
5
habitable continents, North America and South America are the ones with
the shortest
With
human
prehistories.
the occupation
of the Americas, most habitable areas of the
continents and continental islands, plus oceanic islands from Indonesia to
east of
New
Guinea, supported humans. The settlement of the world's
remaining islands was not completed until modern times: Mediterranean
and Sardinia between about 8500
islands such as Crete, Cyprus, Corsica,
and 4000
B.C.;
Caribbean islands beginning around 4000
and Micronesian islands between 1200
B.C.
B.C.;
Polynesian
and a.d. 1000; Madagascar
sometime between a.d. 300 and 800; and Iceland
in the ninth century a.d.
Native Americans, possibly ancestral to the modern Inuit, spread throughout the High Arctic around 2000 B.C. That
left,
areas awaiting European explorers over the last
as the sole uninhabited
700
years, only the
most
remote islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans (such as the Azores and
Seychelles), plus Antarctica.
What significance,
if
any,
do the continents'
differing dates of settlement
have for subsequent history? Suppose that a time machine could have
transported an archaeologist back in time, for a world tour at around
11,000
B.C.
Given the
state of the
predicted the sequence in which
world then, could the archaeologist have
human
would develop guns, germs, and
societies
on the various continents
and thus predicted the
steel,
state of the
world today?
Our
head
archaeologist might have considered the possible advantages of a
start. If that
counted for anything, then Africa enjoyed an enormous
advantage: at least 5 million more years of separate protohuman existence
than on any other continent. In addition,
if it is
true that
modern humans
arose in Africa around 100,000 years ago and spread to other continents,
that
would have wiped out any advantages accumulated elsewhere
meantime and given Africans a new head
genetic diversity
collectively
is
mean
of a footrace
time
for the purposes of this
literally. If
by head
start
reflect:
book?
is
human
humans would
relatively brief: for
example,
what,
We
really,
does a "head
cannot take the metaphor
you mean the time required
continent after the arrival of the
late a
Furthermore,
produce more-diverse inventions.
But our archaeologist might then
start"
start.
highest in Africa; perhaps more-diverse
in the
first
less
few pioneering
to popu-
colonists, that
than 1,000 years to
fill
up even
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
the
whole
New World.
If
by head
to adapt to local conditions,
I
5
I
you instead mean the time required
start
grant that
some extreme environments did
take time: for instance, 9,000 years to occupy the High Arctic after the
occupation of the
and adapted
to
rest of
North America. But people would have explored
most other areas
quickly, once
modern human
ness had developed. For example, after the ancestors of the
New
Zealand,
it
some of
the world's
a
few more centuries to
most rugged
terrain;
differentiate into a range of diverse societies,
new
gatherers to that of farmers practicing
Our
Maori reached
apparently took them barely a century to discover
worthwhile stone sources; only
in
inventive-
kill
and only
a
every last
all
moa
few centuries to
from that of coastal hunter-
types of food storage.
archaeologist might therefore look at the Americas and conclude
enormous head
that Africans, despite their apparently
been overtaken by the
earliest
Americans within
at
would have
start,
most
a millennium.
Thereafter, the Americas' greater area (50 percent greater than Africa's)
and much greater environmental
to Native
diversity
The archaeologist might then turn
Eurasia
is
would have given
the advantage
Americans over Africans.
to Eurasia
the world's largest continent.
It
and reason
as follows.
has been occupied for longer
than any other continent except Africa. Africa's long occupation before
the colonization of Eurasia a million years ago might have counted for
nothing anyway, because protohumans were at such a primitive stage then.
Our
archaeologist might look at the
Upper
Paleolithic flowering of south-
western Europe between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago, with
famous artworks and complex
tools,
those
all
and wonder whether Eurasia was
already getting a head start then, at least locally.
Finally, the archaeologist
first its
small area
(it's
would turn
to Australia
/
New Guinea,
the smallest continent), the large fraction of
noting
it
cov-
ered by desert capable of supporting few humans, the continent's isolation,
and
its
later
occupation than that of Africa and Eurasia. All that might
lead the archaeologist to predict slow development in Australia
/
New
Guinea.
But remember that Australians and
est watercraft in the
New
at least as early as the
Cro-Magnons
Tim Flannery have noted
in
far the earli-
Europe. Jonathan Kingdon and
that the colonization of Australia
from the islands of the Asian continental
deal with the
Guineans had by
world. They were creating cave paintings apparently
new environments
shelf required
/
New
humans
Guinea
to learn to
they encountered on the islands of central
5
Indonesia
—a
coral reefs,
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2
maze of
coastlines offering the richest marine resources,
and mangroves
in the world.
As the
colonists crossed the straits
separating each Indonesian island from the next one to the east, they
adapted anew,
island again.
up that next
filled
It
was
island,
and went on to colonize the next
a hitherto unprecedented golden age of successive
human
population explosions. Perhaps those cycles of colonization, adap-
tation,
and population explosion were what
selected for the Great
Forward, which then diffused back westward to Eurasia and Africa.
scenario
is
start that
after the
correct, then Australia
/
New
might have continued to propel
Leap
If this
Guinea gained a massive head
human development
there long
Great Leap Forward.
Thus, an observer transported back in time to 11,000 B.C. could not
have predicted on which continent
made a
we know
human
societies
would develop most
quickly, but could have
strong case for any of the continents. With
hindsight, of course,
that Eurasia
that the actual reasons behind the
societies
were not
was
the one. But
it
turns out
more rapid development of Eurasian
at all the straightforward
archaeologist of 11,000 B.C. guessed.
ones that our imaginary
The remainder of
of a quest to discover those real reasons.
this
book
consists
CHAPTER
2
A Natural Experiment
of History
ON
THE CHATHAM ISLANDS, 500 MILES EAST OF NEW
Zealand, centuries of independence came to a brutal end for the
Moriori people
carrying 500
in
December 1835.
December 5 by
a shipload of
walk through Moriori
their slaves,
On November
Maori armed with guns,
and
arrived, followed
on
400 more Maori. Groups of Maori began
to
settlements,
killing those
the Moriori could
still
19 of that year, a ship
and axes
clubs,
now
announcing that the Moriori were
who
An
objected.
organized resistance by
then have defeated the Maori,
who were outnum-
bered two to one. However, the Moriori had a tradition of resolving
putes peacefully.
They decided
to offer peace, friendship,
and
meeting not to
in a council
fight
dis-
back but
a division of resources.
Before the Moriori could deliver that offer, the Maori attacked en
masse. Over the course of the next few days, they killed hundreds of Moriori,
cooked and
ate
many
of the bodies, and enslaved
most of them too over the next few years
survivor recalled, "[The Maori]
were
and
terrified, fled to the
in
it
commenced
all
suited their
the others, killing
whim.
A Moriori
to kill us like sheep.
It
was of no
avail;
we were
—men, women, and children indiscriminately."
conqueror explained,
.
.
.
[We]
bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground,
any place to escape our enemies.
ered and killed
as
"We took
possession.
5
3
.
.
in
A
discov-
Maori
accordance with our cus-
—
54
toms and we caught
us, these
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
all
the people.
Some ran away from
but what of that? It was in accor-
Not one
we killed, and others we killed
—
escaped.
dance with our custom."
The
brutal
outcome of this
collision
between the Moriori and the Maori
could have been easily predicted. The Moriori were a small, isolated population of hunter-gatherers, equipped with only the simplest technology
weapons,
came from
New
The Maori invaders (from
Zealand's North Island)
engaged
a dense population of farmers chronically
in ferocious
equipped with more-advanced technology and weapons, and
wars,
operating under strong leadership.
came
and lacking strong leadership or
entirely inexperienced at war,
organization.
and
into contact,
it
was
the
Of course, when
the
Maori who slaughtered
two groups
finally
the Moriori, not vice
versa.
The tragedy of the Moriori resembles many other such
the
modern and
the ancient world, pitting
against few ill-equipped opponents.
sion grimly illuminating
is
What makes
that both groups
origin less than a millennium earlier. Both
modern Maori
turn colonized the
ries after the
the
the Maori-Moriori colli-
had diverged from a
Chatham
thereafter, a
Islands
common
were Polynesian peoples. The
are descendants of Polynesian farmers
Zealand around a.d. 1000. Soon
tragedies in both
numerous well-equipped people
who
colonized
New
group of those Maori
and became the Moriori.
two groups separated, they evolved
In the centu-
in opposite directions,
North Island Maori developing more-complex and the Moriori
complex technology and
political organization.
in
The Moriori
less-
reverted to
being hunter-gatherers, while the North Island Maori turned to
more
intensive farming.
Those opposite evolutionary courses sealed the outcome of
tual collision. If
we
their even-
could understand the reasons for the disparate devel-
opment of those two
island
societies,
we might have
a
model
for
understanding the broader question of differing developments on the continents.
A/Ioriori and maori
experiment that
tests
history constitutes a brief, small-scale natural
how environments
affect
human societies.
Before you
read a whole book examining environmental effects on a very large scale
on human societies around the world for the last 13,000 years
you might reasonably want assurance, from smaller tests, that such effects
effects
A
NATURAL EXPERIMENT OF HISTORY
really are significant. If
you were
5
a laboratory scientist studying rats,
by taking one
might perform such
a test
those ancestral rats
among many
coming back many
rat generations later to see
rat colony, distributing
Instead, scientists
something similar
befell
must look
humans
you
groups of
cages with differing environments, and
what had happened. Of
course, such purposeful experiments cannot be carried out
eties.
5
on human
for "natural experiments," in
soci-
which
in the past.
Such an experiment unfolded during the settlement of Polynesia. Scattered over the Pacific
Ocean beyond
New
Guinea and Melanesia are thou-
sands of islands differing greatly in area, isolation, elevation, climate,
productivity,
and geological and biological resources (Figure
most of human history those
craft.
Around 1200
B.C. a
islands lay far
group of farming,
the Bismarck Archipelago north of
ing
some of those
islands.
2.1).
For
beyond the reach of water-
fishing, seafaring
people from
New Guinea finally succeeded in reach-
Over the following centuries
their descendants
colonized virtually every habitable scrap of land in the Pacific. The process
was mostly complete by
a.d. 500, with the last few islands settled
around
or soon after a.d. 1000.
Thus, within a modest time span, enormously diverse island environ-
ments were
settled
by colonists
all
of
whom stemmed
founding population. The ultimate ancestors of
all
from the same
modern Polynesian
populations shared essentially the same culture, language, technology, and
set
of domesticated plants and animals.
Hence Polynesian
tutes a natural experiment allowing us to study
human
history consti-
adaptation, devoid
of the usual complications of multiple waves of disparate colonists that
often frustrate our attempts to understand adaptation elsewhere in the
world.
Within that medium-sized
test. It is
Islands
ently.
easy to trace
and of
New
how
test,
the fate of the Moriori forms a smaller
the differing environments of the
Chatham
Zealand molded the Moriori and the Maori
While those ancestral Maori
who
first
differ-
colonized the Chathams
have been farmers, Maori tropical crops could not grow
in the
may
Chathams'
cold climate, and the colonists had no alternative except to revert to being
hunter-gatherers. Since as hunter-gatherers they did not produce crop surpluses available for redistribution or storage, they could not support and
feed nonhunting craft specialists, armies, bureaucrats, and chiefs. Their
prey were
seals, shellfish, nesting seabirds,
and
fish that
could be captured
by hand or with clubs and required no more elaborate technology. In addi-
5
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
(North
America)
...
Hawaii
Marquesas
Samoa'
)
SocJeties
EQUATOR
Tuamotus
Pitcairn,
o
Henderson
Cooks
Easter
^New
ry Zealand
'Chathams
Figure 2.1. Polynesian islands. (Parentheses denote
some non-Polynesian
lands.)
tion, the
Chathams
are relatively small
and remote
islands, capable of sup-
porting a total population of only about 2,000 hunter-gatherers. With no
other accessible islands to colonize, the Moriori had to remain in the Chat-
hams, and to learn
how
to get along with each other.
They did
so by
renouncing war, and they reduced potential conflicts from overpopulation
by castrating some male infants. The result was a small, unwarlike population with simple technology
and weapons, and without strong leadership
or organization.
In contrast, the northern
largest island
group
in Polynesia,
Those Maori who remained
there were
in
was
New
Zealand, by far the
suitable for Polynesian agriculture.
more than 100,000 of them. They developed
With the crop surpluses
craft specialists, chiefs,
until
locally dense
pop-
in
wars with neighboring popula-
that they could
and part-time
numbers
Zealand increased
ulations chronically engaged in ferocious
tions.
New
(warmer) part of
soldiers.
grow and
store, they fed
They needed and developed
varied tools for growing their crops, fighting, and
elaborate ceremonial buildings and prodigious
making
art.
numbers of
They erected
forts.
NATURAL EXPERIMENT OF HISTORY
A
5
7
Thus, Moriori and Maori societies developed from the same ancestral
society, but
awareness
again for
along very different
The
lines.
many
centuries, perhaps for as long as
Australian seal-hunting ship visiting the
New
Zealand brought the news to
abundance of
and
sea
of the karaka berry.
how
.
.
eels;
and
an
New
to
is
an
a land
it is
are very numerous, but they
to sail to the
do
Chathams. The outcome
clearly
political
within a short time.
skills
mentioned, the Maori-Moriori collision represents a
What can we learn from all of Polyinfluences on human societies? What differ-
nesia about environmental
among
years. Finally,
and have no weapons/' That news was
small test within a medium-sized
ences
500
into contact
environments can affect economy, technology,
already
i
societies lost
Chathams en route
swarm with
The inhabitants
to fight,
organization, and fighting
JKs
two
Zealand of islands where "there
shellfish; the lakes
900 Maori
to induce
illustrates
.
how
not understand
enough
resulting
and did not come
even of each other's existence
societies
on
test.
different
Polynesian
islands
need
to
be
explained?
much wider
Polynesia as a whole presented a
conditions than did just
latter define
one extreme
their subsistence
the
sive
New
range of environmental
Zealand and the Chathams, although the
(the simple end) of Polynesian organization. In
modes, Polynesians ranged from the hunter-gatherers of
Chathams, through slash-and-burn farmers, to practitioners of
food production living
of any
human
societies.
some of
at
inten-
the highest population densities
Polynesian food producers variously intensified
production of pigs, dogs, and chickens. They organized work forces to
construct large irrigation systems for agriculture and to enclose large
ponds
for fish production.
sisted of
more or
ported
guilds
The economic
less self-sufficient
of
hereditary
basis of Polynesian societies con-
households, but some islands also sup-
part-time
organization, Polynesian societies ran the
village societies to
many
some of
the
most
hierarchically ranked lineages
whose members married within
craft
specialists.
gamut from
In
stratified societies in the
world, with
and with chief and commoner
their
own
social
fairly egalitarian
classes
class. In political organization,
Polynesian islands ranged from landscapes divided into independent tribal
or village units, up to multi-island proto-empires that devoted standing
military establishments to invasions of other islands
and wars of conquest.
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
5
Finally, Polynesian material culture varied
from the production of no more
than personal utensils to the construction of monumental stone architec-
How can all that variation
ture.
be explained?
among Polynesian societies were at
environmental variables among Polynesian islands: island
Contributing to these differences
least six sets of
climate, geological type, marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation,
and
examine the ranges of these
isolation. Let's
consequences for Polynesian
their specific
The climate
most
islands,
from
in Polynesia varies
which
lie
factors, before considering
societies.
warm
tropical or subtropical
near the equator, to temperate on most of
on
New
Zealand, and cold subantarctic on the Chathams and the southern part of
New Zealand's
South Island. Hawaii's Big Island, though lying well within
the Tropic of Cancer, has mountains high
tats
and
enough to support alpine habifrom the highest
receive occasional snowfalls. Rainfall varies
recorded on Earth
Swamp on
(in
New
Zealand's Fjordland and Hawaii's Alakai
Kauai) to only one-tenth as
much on
islands so dry that they
are marginal for agriculture.
Island geological types include coral atolls, raised limestone, volcanic
islands, pieces of continents,
innumerable
islets,
atolls barely rising
and mixtures of those
types.
At one extreme,
such as those of the Tuamotu Archipelago, are
above sea
and Rennell, have been
level.
lifted far
Other former
above sea
atolls,
flat,
low
such as Henderson
level to constitute raised lime-
stone islands. Both of those atoll types present problems to
human
settlers,
because they consist entirely of limestone without other stones, have only
very thin
soil,
and lack permanent
the largest Polynesian island,
continental fragment of
fresh water.
At the opposite extreme,
New Zealand, is an old, geologically diverse,
Gondwanaland,
offering a range of mineral
resources, including commercially exploitable iron, coal, gold,
Most
and
jade.
other large Polynesian islands are volcanoes that rose from the sea,
have never formed parts of a continent, and
of raised limestone. While lacking
New
may
or
may
not include areas
Zealand's geological richness, the
oceanic volcanic islands at least are an improvement over atolls (from the
Polynesians' perspective) in that they offer diverse types of volcanic stones,
some of which
are highly suitable for
The volcanic
islands differ
making stone
among
themselves.
tools.
The
elevations of the
higher ones generate rain in the mountains, so the islands are heavily
weathered and have deep
soils
instance, of the Societies,
Samoa, the Marquesas, and
and permanent streams. That
is
true, for
especially Hawaii,
NATURAL EXPERIMENT OF HISTORY
A
5
Among
the Polynesian archipelago with the highest mountains.
islands,
Tonga and
have rich
(to a lesser extent) Easter also
9
the lower
because of
soil
volcanic ashfalls, but they lack Hawaii's large streams.
As
marine resources, most Polynesian islands are surrounded by
for
shallow water and
reefs,
ronments teem with
fish
and many also encompass lagoons. Those
and
shellfish.
and the Marquesas, and the
Pitcairn,
envi-
However, the rocky coasts of Easter,
steeply dropping ocean
much
absence of coral reefs around those islands, are
less
bottom and
productive of
seafood.
Area
is
another obvious variable, ranging from the 100 acres of Anuta,
up
the smallest permanently inhabited isolated Polynesian island,
103,000 square miles of the minicontinent of
terrain of
some
islands, notably the
to the
New Zealand. The habitable
Marquesas,
is
fragmented into steep-
walled valleys by ridges, while other islands, such as Tonga and Easter,
consist of gently rolling terrain presenting
no obstacles
and com-
to travel
munication.
The
last
environmental variable to consider
isolation. Easter Island
is
and the Chathams are small and so remote from other islands
that,
once
they were initially colonized, the societies thus founded developed in total
isolation
from the
rest of the
world.
New
Zealand, Hawaii, and the Mar-
quesas are also very remote, but at least the latter
some
and
two apparently did have
further contact with other archipelagoes after the
three consist of
all
many
islands close
enough
contact between islands of the same archipelago.
were
islands
lar,
the
in
more or
less regular
Tongan Archipelago
lies
first
colonization,
to each other for regular
Most
other Polynesian
contact with other islands. In particu-
close
enough
to the Fijian,
Samoan, and
Wallis Archipelagoes to have permitted regular voyaging between archipelagoes,
and eventually to permit Tongans to undertake the conquest of
After that
see
brief look
at Polynesia's
varying environments,
how that variation influenced Polynesian societies.
venient facet of society with which to start, since
it
let's
Subsistence
is
Fiji.
now
a con-
in turn affected other
facets.
Polynesian subsistence depended on varying mixes of fishing, gathering
wild plants and marine shellfish and Crustacea, hunting terrestrial birds
and breeding seabirds, and food production. Most Polynesian
inally
supported big
flightless birds that
had evolved
islands orig-
in the
absence of
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 O
New
predators,
Zealand's
moas and Hawaii's
flightless geese
being the
best-known examples. While those birds were important food sources for
on
the initial colonists, especially
them were soon exterminated on
New
islands, because they
all
hunt down. Breeding seabirds were
Zealand's South Island, most of
were easy to
also quickly reduced in
number but
continued to be important food sources on some islands. Marine resources
were
significant
on most
islands but least so
Marquesas, where people as a
were
result
on
Easter, Pitcairn,
especially
and the
dependent on food
that they themselves produced.
Ancestral Polynesians brought with them three domesticated animals
(the pig, chicken,
Polynesia.
Many
and dog) and domesticated no other animals within
islands retained
all
three of those species, but the
more
isolated Polynesian islands lacked one or more of them, either because
livestock brought in canoes failed to survive the colonists' long overwater
journey or because livestock that died out could not be readily obtained
again from the outside. For instance, isolated
New Zealand ended
up with
only dogs; Easter and Tikopia, with only chickens. Without access to coral
reefs or productive
shallow waters, and with their
terrestrial birds quickly
exterminated, Easter Islanders turned to constructing chicken houses for
intensive poultry farming.
At
however, these three domesticated animal species provided only
best,
occasional meals. Polynesian food production depended mainly on agriculture,
which was impossible
sian crops
brought
were tropical ones
in
ern part of
by colonists. The
New
at subantarctic latitudes because all Polyneinitially
settlers
domesticated outside Polynesia and
of the
Chathams and
the cold south-
Zealand's South Island were thus forced to abandon the
farming legacy developed by their ancestors over the previous thousands
of years, and to
become hunter-gatherers
again.
People on the remaining Polynesian islands did practice agriculture
based on dryland crops (especially taro, yams, and sweet potatoes),
irri-
gated crops (mainly taro), and tree crops (such as breadfruit, bananas, and
coconuts).
The productivity and
varied considerably
Human
atolls
also
on
relative
different islands,
importance of those crop types
depending on their environments.
population densities were lowest on Henderson, Rennell, and the
because of their poor
low on temperate
soil
and limited fresh water. Densities were
New Zealand, which was too cool for some Polyne-
sian crops. Polynesians
on these and some other islands practiced a nonin-
tensive type of shifting, slash-and-burn agriculture.
A
NATURAL EXPERIMENT OF HISTORY
Other islands had rich
soils
permanent streams and hence
6
I
but were not high enough to have large
irrigation. Inhabitants of those islands devel-
oped intensive dryland agriculture requiring
heavy input of labor to
a
build terraces, carry out mulching, rotate crops, reduce or eliminate fallow
periods,
cially
and maintain
tree plantations.
Dryland agriculture became espe-
productive on Easter, tiny Anuta, and
flat
and low Tonga, where
Polynesians devoted most of the land area to the growing of food.
The most productive Polynesian
gated
fields.
ruled out for
Among
more populous
the
Tonga by
its
tion agriculture reached
agriculture
was taro
cultivation in
irri-
tropical islands, that option
was
low elevation and hence
its
its
lack of rivers. Irriga-
peak on the westernmost Hawaiian islands of
Kauai, Oahu, and Molokai, which were big and wet enough to support
not only large permanent streams but also large
able for construction projects.
human
Hawaiian labor corvees
populations avail-
built elaborate irri-
gation systems for taro fields yielding up to 24 tons per acre, the highest
crop yields in
all
of Polynesia. Those yields in turn supported intensive pig
production. Hawaii was also unique within Polynesia in using mass labor
for aquaculture, by constructing large fishponds in
which milkfish and
mullet were grown.
As
a result of
human
all this
environmentally related variation in subsistence,
population densities (measured in people per square mile of arable
land) varied greatly over Polynesia. At the lower end were the hunter-
gatherers of the
Chathams
(only 5 people per square mile)
Zealand's South Island, and the farmers of the rest of
people per square mile). In contrast,
many
Societies achieved
and of
New
Zealand (28
islands with intensive agricul-
ture attained population densities exceeding
Samoa, and the
New
120 per square
mile. Tonga,
210-250 people per square mile and
Hawaii 300. The upper extreme of 1,100 people per square mile was
reached on the high island of Anuta, whose population converted essentially all
sufficient
that of
100
acres,
peoself-
populations in the world. Anuta's population density exceeded
modern Holland and even
Population
mile)
crammed 160
and joined the ranks of the densest
the land to intensive food production, thereby
ple into the island's
size
is
rivaled that of Bangladesh.
the product of population density (people per square
and area (square
miles).
The
relevant area
is
not the area of an island
but that of a political unit, which could be either larger or smaller than a
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 2
On
single island.
combined
become
the one hand, islands near one another might
into a single political unit.
ged islands were divided into
On
the other hand, single large rug-
many independent
political units.
Hence
the
area of the political unit varied not only with an island's area but also with
its
fragmentation and isolation.
For small isolated islands without strong barriers to internal communication, the entire island constituted the political unit
Anuta, with
its
160 people.
Many
—as
larger islands never did
in the case of
become
unified
politically, whether because the population consisted of dispersed bands of
only a few dozen hunter-gatherers each (the Chathams and
New Zealand's
southern South Island), or of farmers scattered over large distances (the
rest of
New
Zealand), or of farmers living in dense populations but in
rugged terrain precluding
political unification.
For example, people
in
neighboring steep-sided valleys of the Marquesas communicated with each
other mainly by sea; each valley formed an independent political entity of
a
few thousand inhabitants, and most individual large Marquesan islands
remained divided into many such
The
terrains of the
entities.
Tongan, Samoan,
Society,
and Hawaiian
islands did
permit political unification within islands, yielding political units of
10,000 people or more (over 30,000 on the large Hawaiian
distances between islands of the
tances between
modest that
Tongan archipelago,
islands).
as well as the dis-
Tonga and neighboring archipelagoes, were
a multi-island empire
tually established.
The
sufficiently
encompassing 40,000 people was even-
Thus, Polynesian political units ranged in
size
from a
few dozen to 40,000 people.
A
population
political unit's
size interacted
to influence Polynesian technology
organization. In general, the larger the size
more complex and
reasons that
we
with
its
and economic,
population density
social,
and
and the higher the
political
density, the
specialized
were the technology and organization, for
examine
in detail in later chapters. Briefly, at high
shall
population densities only a portion of the people came to be farmers, but
they were mobilized to devote themselves to intensive food production,
thereby yielding surpluses to feed nonproducers. The nonproducers mobilizing
them included
political units
chiefs, priests, bureaucrats,
and warriors. The biggest
could assemble large labor forces to construct irrigation sys-
tems and fishponds that intensified food production even further. These
developments were especially apparent on Tonga, Samoa, and the Societies, all
of which were
fertile,
densely populated, and moderately large by
NATURAL EXPERIMENT OF HISTORY
A
6
3
Polynesian standards. The trends reached their zenith on the Hawaiian
Archipelago, consisting of the largest tropical Polynesian islands, where
high population densities and large land areas meant that very large labor
were potentially available to individual
forces
The
among
variations
chiefs.
Polynesian societies associated with different
population densities and sizes were as follows. Economies remained sim-
on
plest
densities
it
low population
islands with
densities (such as the hunter-gather-
Chathams), low population numbers (small
ers of the
and low numbers.
needed; there was
Samoa, the
Societies,
or both low
In those societies each household
made what
or no economic specialization. Specialization
little
more densely populated
increased on larger,
atolls),
islands, reaching a
and especially Tonga and Hawaii. The
peak on
two
latter
islands supported hereditary part-time craft specialists, including canoe
masons, bird catchers, and tattooers.
builders, navigators, stone
Social complexity
atolls
was
similarly varied. Again, the
had the simplest, most egalitarian
societies.
Chathams and
the
While those islands
retained the original Polynesian tradition of having chiefs, their chiefs
wore
little
or no visible signs of distinction, lived in ordinary huts like
those of commoners, and grew or caught their food like everyone
and
Social distinctions
chiefly
else.
powers increased on high-density islands
with large political units, being especially marked on Tonga and the Societies.
Social complexity again reached
where people of
chiefly descent
ranked lineages. Members of those
commoners but only with each
siblings.
Commoners had
chiefs. All the
specialists
members
its
peak
in the
Hawaiian Archipelago,
were divided into eight hierarchically
chiefly lineages did not intermarry
to prostrate themselves before high-ranking
of chiefly lineages, bureaucrats, and
some
craft
were freed from the work of food production.
Political organization
atolls, the chiefs
followed the same trends.
On
the
Chathams and
had few resources to command, decisions were reached
by general discussion, and landownership rested with the community
whole rather than with the
units concentrated
was
with
other, sometimes even with siblings or half-
greatest
chiefs. Larger,
more authority with
more densely populated
the chiefs. Political complexity
on Tonga and Hawaii, where the powers of hereditary
approximated those of kings elsewhere
as a
political
in the world,
chiefs
and where land was
controlled by the chiefs, not by the commoners. Using appointed bureaucrats as agents, chiefs requisitioned
food from the commoners and also
conscripted them to
ied
from island to
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
6 4
work on
whose form
large construction projects,
island: irrigation projects
dance and feast centers on the Marquesas,
var-
and fishponds on Hawaii,
tombs on Tonga, and
chiefs'
temples on Hawaii, the Societies, and Easter.
At the time of Europeans'
dom
the
or state had already
Tongan Archipelago
chief;
become an
itself
several large islands with
under a single
arrival in the 18th century, the
chief-
inter-archipelagal empire. Because
was geographically
unfragmented
Tongan
terrain,
close-knit
and included
each island became unified
then the hereditary chiefs of the largest Tongan island
(Tongatapu) united the whole archipelago, and eventually they conquered
islands outside the archipelago
up to 500 miles
regular long-distance trade with
Fiji
ments
and began to raid and conquer parts of
in Fiji,
and administration of
this"
They engaged
distant.
and Samoa, established Tongan
Fiji.
in
settle-
The conquest
maritime proto-empire were achieved by navies
of large canoes, each holding up to 150 men.
Like Tonga, Hawaii became a political entity encompassing several
one confined to a single archipelago because of
its
extreme isolation. At the time of Hawaii's "discovery" by Europeans
in
populous
islands, but
1778, political unification had already taken place within each Hawaiian
island,
and some
largest islands
Kauai
between islands had begun. The four
political fusion
—Big Island (Hawaii
in the
narrow
—remained independent, controlling
for control of) the smaller islands (Lanai,
sense),
Maui, Oahu, and
with each other
(or jockeying
Molokai, Kahoolawe, and Nii-
hau). After the arrival of Europeans, the Big Island's King
Kamehameha
I
rapidly proceeded with the consolidation of the largest islands by purchasing
European guns and ships to invade and conquer
first
Oahu. Kamehameha thereupon prepared invasions of the
Hawaiian
island, Kauai,
whose
culture.
variation
among
unification.
Polynesian societies to be con-
and other aspects of material
At the one extreme was Henderson
above sea
independent
culture. The differing
raw materials imposed an obvious constraint on material
sidered involves tools
availability of
last
chief finally reached a negotiated settle-
ment with him, completing the archipelago's
The remaining type of
Maui and then
level
Island,
an old coral reef raised
and devoid of stone other than limestone.
Its
inhabitants
were reduced to fabricating adzes out of giant clamshells. At the opposite
extreme, the Maori on the minicontinent of
New Zealand
had access to a
wide range of raw materials and became especially noted for
jade.
Between those two extremes
fell
their use of
Polynesia's oceanic volcanic islands,
65
NATURAL EXPERIMENT OF HISTORY
A
which lacked
granite, flint,
and other continental rocks but did
at least
have volcanic rocks, which Polynesians worked into ground or polished
stone adzes used to clear land for farming.
As
for the types of artifacts
made, the Chatham Islanders required
more than hand-held clubs and
Most other
and other
islanders
objects.
the atolls, as
on the Chathams, those
more than simple
populated islands supported craft specialists
of prestige goods for chiefs
The
gan
were
huts. Large
who produced
and densely
a wide range
—such as the feather capes reserved for Hawai-
and made of tens of thousands of bird
largest products of Polynesia
few islands
artifacts
and individually produced and owned, while
architecture consisted of nothing
a
little
lobsters.
produced a diverse array of fishhooks, adzes, jewelry,
On
small, relatively simple,
ian chiefs
and
sticks to kill seals, birds,
feathers.
were the immense stone structures of
—the famous giant statues of Easter Island, the tombs of Ton-
chiefs, the
ceremonial platforms of the Marquesas, and the temples of
Hawaii and the
Societies.
This monumental Polynesian architecture was
obviously evolving in the same direction as the pyramids of Egypt, Meso-
potamia, Mexico, and Peru. Naturally, Polynesia's structures are not on
the scale of those pyramids, but that merely reflects the fact that Egyptian
pharaohs could draw conscript labor from a much larger human population than could the chief of any Polynesian island.
Islanders
managed
to erect 30-ton stone statues
island with only 7,000 people,
own
—no
who had no power
so, the Easter
mean
feat for
an
source other than their
muscles.
Ihus, Polynesian island
nomic
rial
Even
societies differed greatly in their eco-
specialization, social complexity, political organization,
and mate-
products, related to differences in population size and density, related
in turn to differences in island area, fragmentation,
and
isolation
and
in
opportunities for subsistence and for intensifying food production. All
those differences
among Polynesian
societies developed, within a relatively
short time and modest fraction of the Earth's surface, as environmentally
related variations
differences
on
Those categories of cultural
within Polynesia are essentially the same categories that
emerged everywhere
Of
a single ancestral society.
else in the
world.
course, the range of variation over the rest of the globe
greater than that within Polynesia. While
modern
is
much
continental peoples
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 6
included ones dependent on stone tools, as were Polynesians, South
America also spawned
asians
societies expert in using precious metals,
and Africans went on to
cluded in Polynesia, because no Polynesian island except
had
had
significant metal deposits. Eurasia
Polynesia
was even
oped empires
later,
settled,
and Eur-
Those developments were pre-
utilize iron.
New
Zealand
full-fledged empires before
and South America and Mesoamerica devel-
whereas Polynesia produced
one of which (Hawaii) coalesced only
just
two proto-empires,
after the arrival of
Europeans.
Eurasia and Mesoamerica developed indigenous writing, which failed to
emerge
script
in Polynesia, except
may however have
That
world's
is,
perhaps on Easter Island, whose mysterious
postdated the islanders' contact with Europeans.
Polynesia offers us a small
human
social diversity.
provides only a small
since Polynesia
slice
slice,
not the
full
That shouldn't surprise
spectrum, of the
us, since Polynesia
of the world's geographic diversity. In addition,
was colonized so
late in
human
history,
even the oldest
Polynesian societies had only 3,200 years in which to develop, as opposed
to at least 13,000 years for societies
(the Americas).
on even the last-colonized continents
Given a few more millennia, perhaps Tonga and Hawaii
would have reached
the level of full-fledged empires battling each other
for control of the Pacific, with indigenously developed writing to administer those empires,
and iron
while
New
Zealand's Maori might have added copper
tools to their repertoire of jade
and other materials.
In short, Polynesia furnishes us with a convincing
mentally related diversification of
thereby learn only that
Did
it
also
it
human
If so,
differences responsible for diversification
their
consequences?
societies in operation.
can happen, because
happen on the continents?
example of environ-
it
happened
what were
But
we
in Polynesia.
the environmental
on the continents, and what were
CHAPTER
3
Collision at Cajamarca
THE
BIGGEST POPULATION SHIFT OF MODERN TIMES HAS
been the colonization of the
New
World by Europeans, and
the
resulting conquest, numerical reduction, or complete disappearance of
most groups of Native Americans (American
Chapter
B.C.
1,
the
by way of Alaska, the Bering
societies gradually arose in the
Strait,
of the
Old World. After
and
Americas
route, developing in complete isolation
ties
Indians).
As
I
explained in
New World was initially colonized around or before
Siberia.
Complex
far to the
11,000
agricultural
south of that entry
from the emerging complex
that initial colonization
well-attested further contacts between the
New
socie-
from Asia, the
sole
World and Asia involved
only hunter-gatherers living on opposite sides of the Bering
Strait, plus
inferred transpacific voyage that introduced the sweet potato
an
from South
America to Polynesia.
As
for contacts of
involved the Norse
New World peoples
who
with Europe, the sole early ones
occupied Greenland in very small numbers
between a.d. 986 and about 1500. But those Norse
ible
impact on Native American
the collision of advanced
visits
had no
societies. Instead, for practical
Old World and
New
World
discern-
purposes
societies
began
abruptly in a.d. 1492, with Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of Carib-
bean islands densely populated by Native Americans.
The most dramatic moment
in
subsequent European-Native American
6 7
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 8
relations
was
the
first
encounter between the Inca emperor Atahuallpa and
the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro at the Peruvian highland
of Cajamarca on
November
of the largest and most advanced state in the
represented the Holy
Roman Emperor
Charles
monarch of
of Spain),
I
Pizarro, leading a ragtag
town
16, 1532. Atahuallpa was absolute monarch
New World, while Pizarro
V (also known as King
Charles
most powerful
the
group of 168 Spanish
terrain, ignorant of the local inhabitants,
soldiers,
state in
was
Europe.
in unfamiliar
completely out of touch with the
nearest Spaniards (1,000 miles to the north in
Panama) and
far
beyond the
reach of timely reinforcements. Atahuallpa was in the middle of his
own
empire of millions of subjects and immediately surrounded by his army of
80,000
less,
soldiers, recently victorious in a
war with other
Indians. Neverthe-
Pizarro captured Atahuallpa within a few minutes after the two lead-
ers first set eyes
for eight
on each
other. Pizarro proceeded to hold his prisoner
months, while extracting history's largest ransom
promise to
free him. After the
ransom
in return for a
—enough gold to a room 22
—was delivered, Pizarro
feet
fill
long by 17 feet wide to a height of over 8 feet
reneged on his promise and executed Atahuallpa.
Atahuallpa's capture
was
decisive for the
European conquest of the Inca
Empire. Although the Spaniards' superior weapons would have assured an
ultimate Spanish victory in any case, the capture
made
the conquest
quicker and infinitely easier. Atahuallpa was revered by the Incas as a sun-
god and exercised absolute authority over
the orders he issued
from
captivity.
who obeyed
even
until his death
gave
his subjects,
The months
Pizarro time to dispatch exploring parties unmolested to other parts of the
Inca Empire, and to send for reinforcements from Panama.
between Spaniards and Incas
finally did
cution, the Spanish forces were
commence
When
fighting
after Atahuallpa's exe-
more formidable.
Thus, Atahuallpa's capture interests us specifically as marking the decisive
moment
more general
in the greatest collision of
interest,
modern
history.
But
it is
also of
because the factors that resulted in Pizarro's seizing
Atahuallpa were essentially the same ones that determined the outcome of
many
in the
dow
similar collisions between colonizers
and native peoples elsewhere
modern world. Hence Atahuallpa's capture offers us a broad win-
onto world
What
history.
unfolded that
was recorded
in writing
day
at
Cajamarca
is
well
known, because
it
by many of the Spanish participants. To get a
COLLISION AT CAJAMARCA
6 9
them by weaving together excerpts from
flavor of those events, let us relive
eyewitness accounts by six of Pizarro's companions, including his brothers
Hernando and Pedro:
"The prudence,
tions,
and
of the
Roman
fortitude, military discipline, labors, perilous naviga-
battles of the Spaniards
to the faithful
—vassals of the most invincible Emperor
— cause joy
Catholic Empire, our natural King and Lord
and terror to the
infidels.
For
this reason,
will
and
for the glory
God our Lord and for the service of the Catholic Imperial Majesty, it
has seemed good to me to write this narrative, and to send it to Your
Majesty, that all may have a knowledge of what is here related. It will be
of
to the glory of
God, because they have conquered and brought
number
Catholic Faith so vast a
It
will be to the
power and good
of heathens, aided by His holy guidance.
honor of our Emperor because, by reason of
fortune, such events
happened
to the faithful that such battles have been
and conquered, such
and that such
excited in
all
to our holy
his great
in his time. It will give joy
won, such provinces discovered
home for the King and for themselves;
been spread among the infidels, such admiration
riches brought
terror has
mankind.
"For when, either
in ancient or
modern
times, have such great exploits
been achieved by so few against so many, over so
many
climes, across so
many seas, over such distances by land, to subdue the unseen and
unknown? Whose deeds can be compared with those of Spain? Our Spaniards, being few in number, never having more than 200 or 300 men
together,
and sometimes only 100 and even fewer, have,
quered more territory than has ever been
faithful
and
infidel princes possess.
befell in the conquest,
and
I
I
known
in
our times, con-
before, or than
all
will only write, at present, of
will not write
much,
in order to
the
what
avoid pro-
lixity.
"Governor Pizarro wished
who had come from
that they
to obtain intelligence
from some Indians
Cajamarca, so he had them tortured. They confessed
had heard that Atahuallpa was waiting
for the
marca. The Governor then ordered us to advance.
we saw
Governor
On
at Caja-
reaching the
camp of Atahuallpa at a distance of a
The Indians' camp looked like a
very beautiful city. They had so many tents that we were all filled with
great apprehension. Until then, we had never seen anything like this in the
Indies. It filled all our Spaniards with fear and confusion. But we could
entrance to Cajamarca,
the
league, in the skirts of the mountains.
not show any fear or turn back, for
in us,
even the Indians that
we were
if
the Indians
had sensed any weakness
bringing with us as guides would have
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
7 O
killed us.
So we made a show of good
town and
the
we descended
the tents,
and
spirits,
after carefully observing
into the valley
and entered Caja-
marca.
"We
talked a lot
among
what
ourselves about
to do. All of us were full
we were so few in number and we had penetrated so far
we could not hope to receive reinforcements. We all met
with the Governor to debate what we should undertake the next day. Few
of us slept that night, and we kept watch in the square of Cajamarca,
of fear, because
into a land where
looking at the campfires of the Indian army.
Most
was
It
of the campfires were on a hillside and so close to each other that
looked
like the
sky brightly studded with
stars.
horsemen. Everyone carried out sentry duty
fully
good old Governor, who went about encouraging
Hernando Pizarro estimated
brother
at 40,000, but
actually
"On
he was
that, in
harm
I
and
men. The Governor's
encourage
soldiers there
us, for there
were
Indians.
'Tell
pray that he
arrived,
your lord to come when and
what way soever he may come
and brother.
his
morning a messenger from Atahuallpa
Governor said to him,
soldiers
armed. So too did the
number of Indian
telling a lie just to
more than 80,000
the next
the
it
There was no distinction
and the lowly, or between foot
that night between the mighty
and
a frightening sight.
may come
I
will receive
quickly, for
and the
how
he pleases,
him
as a friend
desire to see him.
I
No
or insult will befall him.'
"The Governor concealed
dividing the cavalry into
one to
his brother
Hernando de
ing one part
his troops
around the square
two portions of which he gave
Hernando Pizarro and
Soto. In like
manner he divided
and giving the other
time, he ordered Pedro de
the
command
Cajamarca,
command
of
of the other to
the infantry, he himself tak-
to his brother
Juan Pizarro. At the same
Candia with two or three infantrymen to go
with trumpets to a small fort
with a small piece of
the
at
in the plaza
artillery.
When
all
and to
station themselves there
the Indians,
and Atahuallpa with
them, had entered the Plaza, the Governor would give a signal to Candia
and
his
men,
after
which they should
start firing the
gun, and the trumpets
should sound, and at the sound of the trumpets the cavalry should dash
out of the large court where they were waiting hidden in readiness.
"At noon Atahuallpa began to draw up
we saw
more Indians who kept
filling
his
men and
to approach.
Soon
the entire plain full of Indians, halting periodically to wait for
out
in separate
filing
out of the
camp behind them. They kept
detachments into the afternoon. The front detach-
COLLISION AT CAJAMARCA
camp
now close
camp, and
I
more troops kept
issuing
from
of the Indians. In front of Atahuallpa went 2,000 Indians
who
ments were
the
7
to our
still
swept the road ahead of him, and these were followed by the warriors,
half of
whom
were marching
on one
in the fields
side of
him and
half
on
the other side.
"First
like
came
squadron of Indians dressed
a
in clothes of different colors,
a chessboard. They advanced, removing the straws from the ground
and sweeping the road. Next came three squadrons
dancing and singing. Then came a number of
plates,
and crowns of gold and
silver.
very fine
upon
carried
him on
was
it
Among them came
it.
with the ends of
litter
its
their shoulders, all
in different dresses,
with armor, large metal
So great was the amount of furniture
of gold and silver which they bore, that
the sun glinted
men
a marvel to observe
how
the figure of Atahuallpa in a
timbers covered in
Eighty lords
silver.
wearing a very rich blue
Ata-
livery.
huallpa himself was very richly dressed, with his crown on his head and a
around
collar of large emeralds
rich saddle cushion resting
feathers of
many
colors
on
his litter.
The
and decorated with
"Behind Atahuallpa came two other
which were some high
crowns of gold and
to the
He
his neck.
litter
a small stool with a
was
lined with parrot
plates of gold
litters
and
silver.
and two hammocks,
in
then several squadrons of Indians with
chiefs,
silver.
on
sat
These Indian squadrons began to enter the plaza
accompaniment of great songs, and thus entering they occupied
every part of the plaza. In the meantime
all
Many
ready, hidden in a courtyard, full of fear.
noticing
out of sheer terror.
it,
huallpa remained in his
litter
On
of us Spaniards were waiting
of us urinated without
reaching the center of the plaza, Ata-
on high, while
his troops
continued to
file
in
behind him.
now
"Governor Pizarro
sent Friar Vicente de Valverde to go speak to
Atahuallpa, and to require Atahuallpa in the
name
of
God and
of the King
of Spain that Atahuallpa subject himself to the law of our Lord Jesus
Christ and to the service of His Majesty the King of Spain. Advancing with
a cross in one
hand and
the Bible in the other hand,
and going among the
Indian troops up to the place where Atahuallpa was, the Friar thus
addressed him:
God, and
God
'I
in like
am
a Priest of
manner
I
come
God, and
will be for
I
teach Christians the things of
to teach you.
says to us in this Book. Therefore,
Christians,
I
What
is
that
which
on the part of God and of the
beseech you to be their friend, for such
your good.'
teach
I
is
God's
will,
and
it
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
7 2
"Atahuallpa asked for the Book, that he might look at
gave
it
to
him
and the Friar was extending
him
anger, gave
know how
closed. Atahuallpa did not
a
Then he opened
his
arm
to
do
so,
when
blow on the arm, not wishing that
it
to
and the Friar
it,
open the Book,
Atahuallpa, in great
should be opened.
it
himself, and, without any astonishment at the
and paper he threw
it
away from him
five
letters
or six paces, his face a deep
crimson.
"The
tians!
Friar returned to Pizarro, shouting,
Come
has thrown
happened?
when
at these
enemy dogs who
my book of
Why remain
'Come
Come
out!
out, Chris-
God. That tyrant
reject the things of
holy law to the ground! Did you not see what
polite
and
the plains are full of Indians?
servile
toward
March out
this
over-proud dog
against him, for
absolve
I
you!'
"The governor then gave the
signal to Candia,
who began to
fire
off the
guns. At the
same time the trumpets were sounded, and the armored Span-
ish troops,
both cavalry and infantry,
places straight into the
sallied forth
out of their hiding
mass of unarmed Indians crowding the square,
giving the Spanish battle cry, 'Santiago!'
horses to terrify the Indians.
We
The booming of
had placed
rattles
on the
the guns, the blowing of the
trumpets, and the rattles on the horses threw the Indians into panicked
confusion.
The
The Spaniards
Indians were so
fell
filled
upon them and began
to cut
them
to pieces.
with fear that they climbed on top of one
another, formed mounds, and suffocated each other. Since they were
unarmed, they were attacked without danger to any Christian. The cavalry
rode them down, killing and wounding, and following in pursuit. The
infantry
made
so
good an
assault
on those that remained that
in a short
time most of them were put to the sword.
"The Governor himself took
his
sword and dagger, entered the thick of
who were with him, and with great bravery
He fearlessly grabbed Atahuallpa's left arm
the Indians with the Spaniards
reached Atahuallpa's
and shouted
because
litter,
we
it
litter.
'Santiago!,' but he could not pull Atahuallpa out of his litter
was held up
high.
Although we
who
held the
in this
manner
killed the Indians
others at once took their places and held
it
aloft,
and
spent a long time in overcoming and killing Indians. Finally seven or
eight Spaniards
litter
from one
In that
on horseback spurred on
side,
and with great
way Atahuallpa was
their horses,
effort they
heaved
it
rushed upon the
over on
its side.
captured, and the Governor took Atahuallpa
COLLISION AT CAJAMARCA
The Indians carrying
to his lodging.
huallpa, never
abandoned him:
all
the
ing of the guns
and
at the horses
and those escorting Ata-
litter,
in the square, terrified at the
—something they had never seen—
from the square by knocking down
Our
out onto the plain outside.
3
died around him.
"The panic-stricken Indians remaining
to flee
7
a stretch of wall
fir-
tried
and running
cavalry jumped the broken wall and
charged into the plain, shouting, 'Chase those with the fancy clothes!
Don't
any escape! Spear them!' All of the other Indian soldiers
let
Atahuallpa had brought were a mile from Cajamarca ready for
made
not one
move, and during
a
When
against a Spaniard.
the plain outside the
of
all this
the squadrons of Indians
fled. It
but
battle,
not one Indian raised a weapon
town saw the other Indians
them too panicked and
who had remained
fleeing
was an astonishing
20 miles was completely
valley for 15 or
whom
filled
in
and shouting, most
sight, for the
whole
with Indians. Night had
already fallen, and our cavalry were continuing to spear Indians in the
fields,
when we heard
"If night
trumpet calling for us to reassemble at camp.
a
had not come on, few out of the more than 40,000 Indian
troops would have been
and many more had
self
admitted that
killed in
left alive.
their
arms cut
we had
one of the
litters
killed
was
Six or seven thousand Indians lay dead,
off
7,000 of
who were
Indians
and
councillors.
who
killed,
huallpa were great lords.
It
captured in so short a time,
of us.
it
It
and others, but
the grace of
out of his
litter.
their
numbers were so great
in attendance
The Governor ordered
dressed, the
on Ata-
to see so powerful a ruler
a mighty army.
forces, for there
were so few
great.
when
the Spaniards pulled
him
clothes to be brought to him,
and
"Atahuallpa's robes had been torn off
when Atahuallpa was
appeared
as well as those
when he had come with such
is
litter
whom
and hammocks. The lord of
was extraordinary
God, which
The man
Chincha, of
all killed,
who came
all
was not accomplished by our own
was by
in that battle.
bore Atahuallpa's
carried in the other litters
Cajamarca was also
men
They were
that they could not be counted, for
Truly,
his
his minister, the lord of
he was very fond. All those Indians
to be high chiefs
and other wounds. Atahuallpa him-
Governor ordered Atahuallpa
to
sit
near him and soothed his rage and agitation at finding himself so quickly
fallen
it
as
from
an
his high estate.
insult that
Christians
The Governor
said to Atahuallpa,
you have been defeated and taken prisoner,
who come
with me, though so few in number,
I
'Do not take
for with the
have conquered
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
7 4
kingdoms than yours, and have defeated other more powerful
greater
lords than you, imposing
vassal
am, and
I
who
is
upon them
to conquer this land by his
of
God and
sion,
mits
of His
command,
Holy Catholic
that
Faith;
all
may come
this, in
order that you
life
that
you
coming
live,
you
to your land
knowledge
all
things in them, per-
may know Him and come
out from the bestial
lead.
It is
for this reason that we, being so
number, subjugate that vast host.
which you
to a
whose
We come
and by reason of our good mis-
God, the Creator of heaven and earth and of
and diabolical
in
the dominion of the Emperor,
King of Spain and of the universal world.
When you
few
have seen the errors in
we have done you by
King of Spain. Our Lord
understand the good that
will
by order of
his
Majesty the
permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian
should be able to offend a Christian.'
Let us now
trace the chain of causation in this extraordinary confron-
tation, beginning with the
met
at
"
Cajamarca,
why
immediate events.
When Pizarro and Atahuallpa
did Pizarro capture Atahuallpa and
more numerous
of his followers, instead of Atahuallpa's vastly
turing and killing Pizarro? After
on horses, along with 106 foot
army of about 80,000. As
all,
How
all?
gift
Why
did Atahuallpa walk into
mounted
how
come
did
to be
to Spain to capture
what seems
to us, with the
of hindsight, to have been such a transparent trap? Did the factors
acting in the encounter of Atahuallpa
in
did Pizarro
coming
many
commanded an
for the antecedents of those events,
there to capture him, instead of Atahuallpa's
I?
Atahuallpa
soldiers, while
so
forces cap-
Pizarro had only 62 soldiers
Atahuallpa come to be at Cajamarca at
King Charles
kill
and Pizarro also play a broader
encounters between Old World and
New
role
World peoples and between
other peoples?
Why
did Pizarro capture Atahuallpa? Pizarro's military advantages lay
in the Spaniards' steel
horses.
swords and other weapons,
To those weapons, Atahuallpa's
to ride into battle, could
steel
armor, guns, and
troops, without animals
on which
oppose only stone, bronze, or wooden clubs,
maces, and hand axes, plus slingshots and quilted armor. Such imbalances
of equipment were decisive in innumerable other confrontations of Euro-
peans with Native Americans and other peoples.
The
sole Native
Americans able to
resist
European conquest
for
many
COLLISION AT CAJAMARCA
7
5
centuries were those tribes that reduced the military disparity by acquiring
and mastering both horses and guns. To the average white American, the
word "Indian" conjures up an image
dishing a
Custer's U.S.
1876.
We
Army
battalion at the
easily forget that horses
mounted
of a
the Sioux warriors
rifle, like
who
famous
and
Plains Indian bran-
annihilated General George
battle of the Little Big
rifles
Horn
in
were originally unknown to
Native Americans. They were brought by Europeans and proceeded to
transform the societies of Indian tribes that acquired them. Thanks to their
mastery of horses and
rifles,
the Plains Indians of
North America, the
Araucanian Indians of southern Chile, and the Pampas Indians of Argentina fought off invading whites longer than did
cans,
in the
any other Native Ameri-
succumbing only to massive army operations by white governments
1870s and 1880s.
Today,
it is
hard for us to grasp the enormous numerical odds against
which the Spaniards' military equipment prevailed. At the
battle of Caja-
marca recounted above, 168 Spaniards crushed a Native American army
500 times more numerous,
single Spaniard.
Time and
killing
thousands of natives while not losing a
again, accounts of Pizarro's subsequent battles
with the Incas, Cortes's conquest of the Aztecs, and other early European
campaigns against Native Americans describe encounters
in
which
a
few
dozen European horsemen routed thousands of Indians with great slaughter.
During Pizarro's march from Cajamarca to the Inca capital of Cuzco
after Atahuallpa's death, there
were four such
man, Vilcaconga, and Cuzco. Those four
battles: at Jauja, Vilcashua-
battles involved a
mere 80, 30,
110, and 40 Spanish horsemen, respectively, in each case ranged against
thousands or tens of thousands of Indians.
These Spanish victories cannot be written off as due merely to the help
of Native
American
ons and horses, or
for their returning
allies,
(as
is
god Viracocha. The
Cortes did attract native
become
allies if
to the psychological novelty of Spanish
allies.
initial
successes of both Pizarro
they had not already been persuaded, by earlier devasta-
they should side with the likely winners.
ons,
and
However, many of them would not have
ting successes of unassisted Spaniards, that resistance
was
futile
The novelty of horses,
and guns undoubtedly paralyzed the Incas
tles after
weap-
often claimed) to the Incas' mistaking Spaniards
at
and that
steel
weap-
Cajamarca, but the bat-
Cajamarca were fought against determined resistance by Inca
armies that had already seen Spanish weapons and horses. Within half a
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
7 6
dozen years of the
initial
conquest, Incas
mounted two
desperate, large-
scale, well-prepared rebellions against the Spaniards. All those efforts
failed
By
because of the Spaniards' far superior armament.
the 1700s, guns
had replaced swords
as the
main weapon favoring
European invaders over Native Americans and other native peoples. For
example, in 1808 a British sailor named Charlie Savage equipped with
muskets and excellent aim arrived
Savage proceeded single-handedly to upset
many
his
exploits, he
Kasavu, halted
away
fired
less
at the
paddled
aptly
named
Fiji's
canoe up a
balance of power.
Among
river to the Fijian village of
than a pistol shot's length from the village fence, and
undefended inhabitants. His victims were so numerous
up the bodies to take
that surviving villagers piled
and the stream beside the
the
his
The
in the Fiji Islands.
power of guns against
village
shelter behind them,
was red with blood. Such examples of
native peoples lacking guns could be multiplied
indefinitely.
In the Spanish conquest of the Incas, guns played only a
The guns of those times (so-called harquebuses) were
fire,
and Pizarro had only a dozen of them. They did produce
logical effect
on those occasions when they managed to
important were the Spaniards'
minor
difficult to
role.
load and
a big psycho-
fire.
Far more
swords, lances, and daggers, strong
steel
sharp weapons that slaughtered thinly armored Indians. In contrast,
Indian blunt clubs, while capable of battering and wounding Spaniards
and
their horses, rarely
succeeded in killing them. The Spaniards'
chain mail armor and, above
all,
effective defense against club blows, while the Indians' quilted
offered
no protection against
steel
The tremendous advantage
down and
Horsemen could
ride
maneuverability, the speed of attack that
and protected
kill
Indians on foot.
fighting platform that
nearly helpless in the open.
armor
their horses
easily outride Indian
had time to warn Indian troops behind them,
and could
raised
from
that the Spaniards gained
charge,
its
Nor was
it
The shock of
it
a horse's
permitted, and the
provided
left
foot soldiers
the effect of horses due only to the
terror that they inspired in soldiers fighting against
them
for the first time.
By the time of the great Inca rebellion of 1536, the Incas had learned
best to defend themselves against cavalry, by
were never able to defeat cavalry
how
ambushing and annihilating
Spanish horsemen in narrow passes. But the Incas, like
diers,
or
weapons.
leaps out of the eyewitness accounts.
sentries before the sentries
steel
provided an
their steel helmets usually
in the open.
all
other foot sol-
When Quizo Yupan-
77
COLLISION AT CAJAMARCA
the
qui,
Atahuallpa, besieged the Spaniards in
city,
on
Lima
1536 and
in
flat
ground, killed Quizo and
A
his army.
of his
storm the
larger Indian force
commanders
in the first charge,
a
26 horsemen routed the
similar cavalry charge of
Emperor Manco
best troops of
all
tried to
much
two squadrons of Spanish cavalry charged
and routed
in
emperor Manco, who succeeded
Inca
of the
general
best
himself, as he
was
besieging the Spaniards
Cuzco.
The transformation of warfare by horses began with
tion
around 4000
B.C., in the steppes
their domestica-
north of the Black Sea. Horses per-
mitted people possessing them to cover far greater distances than was
possible
on
foot, to attack
by surprise, and to
flee
before a superior
defending force could be gathered. Their role at Cajamarca thus exemplifies
weapon
a military
that remained potent for 6,000 years, until the early
20th century, and that was eventually applied on
World War did the
until the First
military
all
the continents.
dominance of cavalry
Not
finally
end.
When we consider the advantages that Spaniards derived from horses,
steel
weapons, and armor against foot soldiers without metal,
longer surprise us that Spaniards consistently
mous
won
it
should no
battles against enor-
odds.
How
did Atahuallpa
army came
in a civil
to be at
war
that
come
to be at
Cajamarca? Atahuallpa and
Cajamarca because they had
left
the Incas divided
won
decisive battles
and vulnerable. Pizarro quickly
appreciated those divisions and exploited them.
war was
just
his
The reason
for the civil
among South
in Panama and
that an epidemic of smallpox, spreading overland
American Indians
Colombia, had
after
its
arrival
killed the Inca
with Spanish
settlers
emperor Huayna Capac and most of
his
court around 1526, and then immediately killed his designated heir, Ninan
Cuyuchi. Those deaths precipitated a contest for the throne between Atahuallpa and his half brother Huascar.
the Spaniards
would have faced
If it
had not been
for the epidemic,
a united empire.
Atahuallpa's presence at Cajamarca thus highlights one of the key factors in
world
history: diseases transmitted to peoples lacking
immunity by
invading peoples with considerable immunity. Smallpox, measles,
influ-
endemic
enza, typhus, bubonic plague,
and other
Europe played
European conquests, by decimating many
a decisive role in
infectious diseases
in
peoples on other continents. For example, a smallpox epidemic devastated
the Aztecs after the failure of the
Cuitlahuac,
the
Aztec
first
Spanish attack in 1520 and killed
emperor who
briefly
succeeded
Montezuma.
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
78
Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread
from
advance of the Europeans themselves,
tribe to tribe far in
killing
an
estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population.
The most populous and highly organized
native societies
North
of
way between
Europeans themselves made their
America, the Mississippian chiefdoms, disappeared in that
1492 and the
late
1600s, even before
settlement on the Mississippi River.
first
A smallpox epidemic in
the biggest single step in the destruction of
by European
the
first
settlers.
Soon
after the British settlement of
Sydney
in
1788,
of the epidemics that decimated Aboriginal Australians began.
well-documented example from
over
1713 was
South Africa's native San people
Fiji in
Pacific islands
A
the epidemic that swept
is
1806, brought by a few European sailors
who
struggled ashore
marked
from the wreck of the ship Argo. Similar epidemics
the histories
of Tonga, Hawaii, and other Pacific islands.
I
do not mean
to imply, however, that the role of disease in history
confined to paving the
fever,
way
for
was
European expansion. Malaria, yellow
and other diseases of tropical Africa,
India, Southeast Asia,
and
New
Guinea furnished the most important obstacle to European colonization
of those tropical areas.
How
did Pizarro
come
to be at
instead try to conquer Spain? Pizarro
European maritime technology, which
the Atlantic
from Spain
to
Why
Cajamarca?
came
to
didn't Atahuallpa
Cajamarca by means of
built the ships that
Panama, and then
took him across
in the Pacific
to Peru. Lacking such technology, Atahuallpa did not
from Panama
expand overseas out
of South America.
In addition to the ships themselves, Pizarro's presence
depended on the
centralized political organization that enabled Spain to finance, build,
staff,
and equip the
ships.
The Inca Empire
organization, but that actually
seized the Inca chain of
the Inca bureaucracy
monarch,
it
worked
command
was
to
also
its
intact
had
a centralized political
disadvantage, because Pizarro
by capturing Atahuallpa. Since
so strongly identified with
its
godlike absolute
disintegrated after Atahuallpa's death. Maritime technology
coupled with political organization was similarly essential for European
expansions to other continents, as well as for expansions of
many
other
peoples.
A
related factor bringing Spaniards to Peru
Spain possessed
it,
was
the existence of writing.
while the Inca Empire did not. Information could be
spread far more widely, more accurately, and in more detail by writing
COLLISION AT CAJAMARCA
than
it
7 9
could be transmitted by mouth. That information, coming back to
Spain from Columbus's voyages and from Cortes's conquest of Mexico,
New
sent Spaniards pouring into the
and the necessary detailed
plied both the motivation
first
World. Letters and pamphlets supsailing directions.
Mena, was printed
tobal de
after Atahuallpa's execution.
into other
Why
in Seville in April
It
became
1534, a mere nine months
a best-seller,
European languages, and sent
nists to tighten Pizarro's grip
was
rapidly translated
a further stream of Spanish colo-
on Peru.
did Atahuallpa walk into the trap? In hindsight,
ishing that Atahuallpa
marched
we
The consequences of
literacy
are prominent
The immediate explanation
is
that scant information by
word
visited Pizarro's force for
two days while
aston-
had very
That envoy saw the Spaniards
it
informa-
their intent.
was en route inland from
at their
given 200 Indians. Understandably,
little
He derived
from an envoy who had
and
of mouth, mainly
it
at their success.
the
most disorganized, told Ata-
huallpa that they were not fighting men, and that he could
the Spaniards were formidable
it
in the ultimate explanation.
that Atahuallpa
tion about the Spaniards, their military power,
coast.
find
into Pizarro's obvious trap at Cajamarca.
The Spaniards who captured him were equally surprised
if
The
published report of Pizarro's exploits, by his companion Captain Cris-
tie
them
all
up
never occurred to Atahuallpa that
and would attack him without provoca-
tion.
In the
New
among some
World
was confined
to small elites
modern Mexico and neighboring
areas far to the
the ability to write
peoples of
north of the Inca Empire. Although the Spanish conquest of Panama, a
mere 600 miles from the
no knowledge even of
Incas' northern boundary,
began already
in
1510,
the Spaniards' existence appears to have reached
the Incas until Pizarro's
first
landing on the Peruvian coast in 1527. Ata-
huallpa remained entirely ignorant about Spain's conquests of Central
America's most powerful and populous Indian societies.
As surprising to us today
is
his behavior thereafter.
that,
once paid
off, the
He
offered his
famous ransom
in the naive belief
Spaniards would release him and depart.
no way of understanding
force bent
as Atahuallpa's behavior leading to his capture
that Pizarro's
men formed
on permanent conquest, rather than an
Atahuallpa was not alone in these
He had
the spearhead of a
isolated raid.
fatal miscalculations.
Even
after Ata-
huallpa had been captured, Francisco Pizarro's brother Hernando Pizarro
deceived Atahuallpa's leading general, Chalcuchima,
commanding
a large
8
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O
army, into delivering himself to the Spaniards. Chalcuchima's miscalcula-
marked
tion
a turning point in the collapse of Inca resistance, a
moment
almost as significant as the capture of Atahuallpa himself. The Aztec
emperor Montezuma miscalculated even more grossly when he took Cortes for a returning
god and admitted him and
capital of Tenochtitlan.
The
was
result
army
his tiny
into the Aztec
Montezuma,
that Cortes captured
then went on to conquer Tenochtitlan and the Aztec Empire.
On
mundane
a
Montezuma, and
level, the
miscalculations by Atahuallpa, Chalcuchima,
countless other Native
Europeans were due to the fact that
World had been
specific
to the
no
American leaders deceived by
living inhabitants of the
New
Old World, so of course they could have had no
information about the Spaniards. Even so,
we
find
the conclusion that Atahuallpa "should" have been
it
more
only his society had experienced a broader range of
hard to avoid
suspicious,
human
if
behavior.
Pizarro too arrived at Cajamarca with no information about the Incas
other than
what he had learned by interrogating
the Inca subjects he
encountered in 1527 and 1531. However, while Pizarro himself happened
to be illiterate, he belonged to a literate tradition.
iards
knew
of
many contemporary
civilizations
about several thousand years of European
eled his
ambush of Atahuallpa on
In short, literacy
about
human
made
From books,
the Span-
remote from Europe, and
history. Pizarro explicitly
mod-
the successful strategy of Cortes.
body of knowledge
the Spaniards heirs to a huge
behavior and history. By contrast, not only did Atahuallpa
have no conception of the Spaniards themselves, and no personal experience of any other invaders from overseas, but he also had not even heard
(or read) of similar threats to
anyone
else,
anywhere
else,
anytime pre-
viously in history. That gulf of experience encouraged Pizarro to set his
trap and Atahuallpa to
1 hus,
walk
into
pizarro 's capture
mate factors that resulted
in
it.
of Atahuallpa illustrates the set of proxi-
Europeans' colonizing the
New World instead
of Native Americans' colonizing Europe. Immediate reasons for Pizarro 's
success included military technology based
horses; infectious diseases
endemic
on guns,
in Eurasia;
steel
weapons, and
European maritime technol-
ogy; the centralized political organization of European states; and writing.
The
title
of this
book
will serve as
shorthand for those proximate factors,
which also enabled modern Europeans to conquer peoples of other conti-
COLLISION AT CAJAMARCA
nents.
8
I
Long before anyone began manufacturing guns and
those same factors had led to the expansions of
we shall see in later chapters.
we are still left with the fundamental
steel,
others of
some non-European peo-
ples, as
But
diate advantages
Why
came
to
lie
question
why
more with Europe than with
all
those imme-
the
New World.
weren't the Incas the ones to invent guns and steel swords, to be
mounted on animals
pean lacked
as fearsome as horses, to bear diseases to
resistance, to develop
organization, and to be able to
which Euro-
oceangoing ships and advanced
draw on
years of written history? Those are
political
the experience of thousands of
no longer the questions of proximate
causation that this chapter has been discussing, but questions of ultimate
causation that will take up the next two parts of this book.
PART TWO
THE RISE AND
SPREAD OF FOOD
PRODUCTION
CHAPTER
4
Farmer Power
AS
.
A TEENAGER,
tana,
working
Switzerland, Fred had
SPENT THE SUMMER OF 1956 IN MON-
I
for
an elderly farmer named Fred Hirschy. Born
come
to southwestern
time of his arrival,
much
was
as a teenager in the
first
farms in the area. At the
of the original Native
American population of
1890s and proceeded to develop one of the
hunter-gatherers
Montana
in
living there.
still
My fellow farmhands were, for the most part, tough whites whose normal speech featured
strings of curses,
wages
in the local saloon.
Among
of the Blackfoot Indian tribe
from the coarse miners
spoken.
He was
the
their
weekdays work-
to squandering their week's
the farmhands, though,
named
— being
first
and who spent
weekends
ing so that they could devote their
Levi,
who behaved
was
a
polite, gentle, responsible, sober,
Indian with
whom
I
member
very differently
and well
had spent much time, and
I
came to admire him.
It
was
therefore a shocking disappointment to
morning, Levi too staggered
binge.
in
drunk and cursing
me when, one Sunday
after a Saturday-night
one has stood out in my memory: "Damn you,
damn the ship that brought you from Switzerland!" It
brought home to me the Indians' perspective on what I, like
Among
his curses,
Fred Hirschy, and
poignantly
other white schoolchildren, had been taught to view as the heroic conquest
8
5
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
8
of the American West. Fred Hirschy's family
neer farmer
who
had succeeded under
was proud of him,
difficult conditions.
of hunters and famous warriors had been robbed of
grant white farmers.
How
its
as a pio-
But Levi's tribe
lands by the immi-
did the farmers win out over the famous war-
riors?
For most of the time since the ancestors of modern humans diverged
from the ancestors of the
humans on Earth
living great apes,
fed themselves exclusively by hunting wild animals
gathering wild plants, as the Blackfeet
only within the
around 7 million years ago,
last
still
did in the 19th century.
It
all
and
was
11,000 years that some peoples turned to what
is
is,
domesticating wild animals and plants
and eating the
resulting livestock
and crops. Today, most people on Earth
consume food
that they produced themselves or that
termed food production: that
duced for them. At current
someone
rates of change, within the next
else pro-
decade the few
remaining bands of hunter-gatherers will abandon their ways, disintegrate,
or die out, thereby ending our millions of years of
hunter-gatherer
commitment
to the
lifestyle.
Different peoples acquired food production at different times in prehistory.
Some, such as Aboriginal Australians, never acquired
those
who
did,
some
(for
it
at
example, the ancient Chinese) developed
pendently by themselves, while others
acquired
it
from neighbors. But, as
rectly a prerequisite for the
(including
we'll see,
all.
it
Of
inde-
ancient Egyptians)
food production was
development of guns, germs, and
indi-
Hence
steel.
geographic variation in whether, or when, the peoples of different continents became farmers and herders explains to a large extent their subse-
quent contrasting
understanding
how
fates.
Before
we devote
the
next six chapters to
geographic differences in food production arose, this
chapter will trace the main connections through which food production
led to all the
advantages that enabled Pizarro to capture Atahuallpa, and
Fred Hirschy's people to dispossess Levi's (Figure 4.1).
The
first
connection
is
the
most
direct one: availability of
more consum-
Figure 4.1. Schematic overview of the chains of causation leading up to
proximate factors (such as guns, horses, and diseases) enabling some peoples to
conquer other peoples, from ultimate factors (such as the orienta-
tion of continental axes). For example, diverse epidemic diseases of
humans evolved
in areas
with
many
wild plant and animal species
able for domestication, partly because the resulting crops
and
suit-
livestock
FARMER POWER
8
7
Factors Underlying the Broadest Pattern of History
ULTIMATE
FACTORS
east/west axis
1
—
many
suitable
ease of species
wild species
spreading
\
\
/
J
many domesticated
and animal
plant
species
\
food surpluses,
food storage
\
large, dense, sedentary,
r—
stratified societies
\\
1
/
1
1
L-
technology
)
T
1
1
PROXIMATE
FACTORS
f
hor ses
helped feed dense societies
ocean-
pol itical
epid emic
stee
going
organ zation,
dise ases
swore Is
ships
guns
in
\
,
wr
ting
which epidemics could maintain them-
selves, and partly because the diseases evolved from germs of the domestic
animals themselves.
—
able calories
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
8
means more people. Among wild plant and animal
humans
only a small minority are edible to
Most
species,
or worth hunting or gathering.
species are useless to us as food, for
one or more of the following
reasons: they are indigestible (like bark), poisonous (monarch butterflies
and death-cap mushrooms), low
prepare (very small nuts),
in nutritional value (jellyfish), tedious to
gather (larvae of most insects), or
difficult to
dangerous to hunt (rhinoceroses). Most biomass
on land
By
in the
is
selecting
we can
As
typically,
(living biological matter)
most of which we cannot
digest.
and animals that
species of plants
they constitute 90 percent rather than 0.1 percent of
on an acre of
land,
we
obtain far
more
edible calories per
one acre can feed many more herders and farmers
a result,
10 to 100 times more
brute numbers
leaves,
and growing those few
eat, so that
the biomass
acre.
form of wood and
was
the
first
of
—than hunter-gatherers. That strength of
many military advantages
that food-produc-
ing tribes gained over hunter-gatherer tribes.
human
In
societies possessing
ple in four distinct ways:
domestic animals, livestock fed more peo-
by furnishing meat, milk, and
fertilizer
and by
pulling plows. First and most directly, domestic animals became the socie-
major source of animal protein, replacing wild game. Today, for
ties'
instance,
Americans tend to get most of
their
pigs, sheep,
and chickens, with game such
In addition,
some
big domestic
mammals
animal protein from cows,
as venison just a rare delicacy.
served as sources of milk and of
milk products such as butter, cheese, and yogurt. Milked
mammals include
the cow, sheep, goat, horse, reindeer, water buffalo, yak,
and Arabian and
Bactrian camels. Those
mammals
over their lifetime than
if
thereby yield several times more calories
they were just slaughtered and
consumed
as
meat.
Big domestic
ways
still
knows by
applied as
ers
mammals
fertilizer.
Even with the modern
in
most
societies
of yaks and sheep.
fires in
factories, the
is still
fertilizer
—especially of cows, but also
valuable, too, as a source of fuel for
traditional societies.
In addition, the largest domestic
mammals
interacted with domestic
plants to increase food production by pulling plows
it
manure
availability of synthetic fertiliz-
major source of crop
animal manure
Manure has been
two
modern gardener or farmer
experience, crop yields can be greatly increased by
produced by chemical
today
also interacted with domestic plants in
to increase crop production. First, as any
possible for people to
for farming.
till
and thereby making
land that had previously been uneconomical
Those plow animals were the cow, horse, water buffalo,
Bali
FARMER POWER
cattle,
and yak / cow hybrids. Here
is
8
9
one example of
prehistoric farmers of central Europe, the so-called
culture that arose slightly before
light
enough
5000
B.C.,
were
initially
means of hand-held digging
to be tilled by
a thousand years later, with the introduction of the
those farmers able to extend cultivation to a
soils
and tough sods.
their value: the first
Linearbandkeramik
Similarly,
confined to soils
sticks.
Only over
ox-drawn plow, were
much wider
range of heavy
Native American farmers of the North
American Great Plains grew crops
farming of the
in the river valleys, but
tough sods on the extensive uplands had to await 19th-century Europeans
and
animal-drawn plows.
their
All those are direct
human
to denser
gatherer
A
more
indirect
move
must remain near
their fields
one
child,
led
way
involved the consequences of the
many
hunter-
frequently in search of wild foods, but farmers
human
tributes to denser
A
which plant and animal domestication
enforced by food production. People of
lifestyle
gatherer societies
interval.
in
populations by yielding more food than did the hunter-
lifestyle.
sedentary
ways
and orchards. The resulting fixed abode con-
populations by permitting a shortened birth
hunter-gatherer mother
who
is
shifting
camp can
carry only
along with her few possessions. She cannot afford to bear her
next child until the previous toddler can walk fast enough to keep up with
the tribe
and not hold
their children
it
back. In practice, nomadic hunter-gatherers space
about four years apart by means of lactational amenorrhea,
sexual abstinence, infanticide, and abortion. By contrast, sedentary people,
unconstrained by problems of carrying young children on treks, can
bear and raise as
many
many farm peoples
is
children as they can feed.
The
birth interval for
around two years, half that of hunter-gatherers. That
higher birthrate of food producers, together with their ability to feed
people per acre,
lets
them achieve much higher population
more
densities than
hunter-gatherers.
A
separate consequence of a settled existence
store food surpluses, since storage
would be
is
that
pointless
if
it
permits one to
one didn't remain
nearby to guard the stored food. While some nomadic hunter-gatherers
may
occasionally bag
such a bonanza
But stored food
is
is
of
more food than they can consume
little
use to
essential for feeding
certainly for supporting
in a
non-food-producing
specialists,
appear
Two
in
it.
and
whole towns of them. Hence nomadic hunter-
gatherer societies have few or no such full-time specialists,
first
few days,
them because they cannot protect
who
instead
sedentary societies.
types of such specialists are kings and bureaucrats. Hunter-gath-
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
9 O
erer societies tend to be relatively egalitarian, to lack full-time bureaucrats
and hereditary
level of the
chiefs,
band or
and
to have small-scale political organization at the
tribe. That's
are obliged to devote
much
because
all
able-bodied hunter-gatherers
of their time to acquiring food. In contrast,
once food can be stockpiled, a
political elite
can gain control of food pro-
duced by others, assert the right of taxation, escape the need to feed
and engage
Hence moderate-sized
full-time in political activities.
tural societies are often organized in chiefdoms,
fined to large agricultural societies.
mount
better able to
a sustained
and kingdoms are con-
Those complex
much
political units are
war of conquest than
band of hunters. Some hunter-gatherers
itself,
agricul-
is
an egalitarian
in especially rich
environments,
such as the Pacific Northwest coast of North America and the coast of
Ecuador, also developed sedentary
food storage, and nascent
societies,
chiefdoms, but they did not go farther on the road to kingdoms.
A
stored food surplus built up by taxation can support other full-time
specialists besides kings
of conquest,
and bureaucrats. Of most
can be used to feed professional
it
wars
direct relevance to
soldiers.
decisive factor in the British Empire's eventual defeat of
That was the
New
Zealand's
well-armed indigenous Maori population. While the Maori achieved some
stunning temporary victories, they could not maintain an army constantly
in the field
and were
in the
end worn down by 18,000 full-time
who
troops. Stored food can also feed priests,
tion for
provide religious
wars of conquest; artisans such as metalworkers,
swords, guns, and other technologies; and scribes,
who
British
justifica-
who
develop
preserve far
more
information than can be remembered accurately.
So
far, I've
emphasized direct and indirect values of crops and livestock
However, they have other
as food.
uses,
such as keeping us
warm and
providing us with valuable materials. Crops and livestock yield natural
fibers for
making
clothing, blankets, nets,
and rope. Most of the major
centers of plant domestication evolved not only food crops but also fiber
crops
—notably
cotton, flax (the source of linen),
domestic animals yielded animal fibers
goats, llamas,
and alpacas, and
silk
—
especially
and hemp. Several
wool from sheep,
from silkworms. Bones of domestic
animals were important raw materials for artifacts of Neolithic peoples
before the development of metallurgy.
leather.
One
was grown
Cow
of the earliest cultivated plants in
for
nonfood purposes: the
Big domestic
mammals
hides were used to
many parts
make
of the Americas
bottle gourd, used as a container.
further revolutionized
human
society by
becom-
FARMER POWER
main means of land transport
ing our
9
until the
I
development of railroads
19th century. Before animal domestication, the sole means of trans-
in the
porting goods and people by land
was on
mammals
sible to move heavy goods
time in
changed that: for the
first
the backs of humans. Large
human
history,
it
became pos-
in large quantities, as well as people, rapidly
overland for long distances. The domestic animals that were ridden were
and Arabian and Bactrian camels. Ani-
the horse, donkey, yak, reindeer,
mals of those same
Cows and
packs.
five species, as well as the
llama, were used to bear
horses were hitched to wagons, while reindeer and dogs
pulled sleds in the Arctic.
The horse became
The
tance transport over most of Eurasia.
the chief
means of
long-dis-
three domestic camel species
(Arabian camel, Bactrian camel, and llama) played a similar role in areas
of
North Africa and Arabia, Central
The most
of conquest
jeeps
Asia,
direct contribution of plant
was from
Eurasia's horses,
and the Andes,
respectively.
and animal domestication
whose
military role
to
wars
made them
and Sherman tanks of ancient warfare on that continent. As
I
the
men-
tioned in Chapter 3, they enabled Cortes and Pizarro, leading only small
bands of adventurers, to overthrow the Aztec and Inca Empires. Even
much
earlier
(around 4000
bareback, they
B.C.), at a
may have been
time
when
horses were
still
ridden
the essential military ingredient behind the
westward expansion of speakers of Indo-European languages from the
Ukraine. Those languages eventually replaced
languages except Basque.
When
all earlier
western European
horses later were yoked to
wagons and
other vehicles, horse-drawn battle chariots (invented around 1800 B.C.)
proceeded to revolutionize warfare in the Near East, the Mediterranean
region,
and China. For example,
in
1674
B.C.,
horses even enabled a for-
eign people, the Hyksos, to conquer then horseless Egypt and to establish
themselves temporarily as pharaohs.
Still later,
Huns and
after the invention of saddles
successive
terrorize the
ries a.d.
of
stirrups, horses
allowed the
waves of other peoples from the Asian steppes to
Roman Empire and
Mongol conquests
and
much
its
successor states, culminating in the
of Asia and Russia in the 13th and 14th centu-
Only with the introduction of trucks and tanks
in
World War I did
horses finally become supplanted as the main assault vehicle and means of
fast transport in
war. Arabian and Bactrian camels played a similar mili-
tary role within their geographic range. In
all
these examples, peoples with
domestic horses (or camels), or with improved means of using them,
enjoyed an enormous military advantage over those without them.
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
9 2
Of equal importance in wars of conquest were the germs that evolved in
human societies with domestic animals. Infectious diseases like smallpox,
measles, and flu arose as specialized germs of humans, derived by mutations of very similar ancestral
11).
germs that had infected animals (Chapter
The humans who domesticated animals were
to the
the
first
to
fall
victim
newly evolved germs, but those humans then evolved substantial
new
resistance to the
When such partly immune
who had had no previous exposure
diseases.
into contact with others
people came
to the germs,
epidemics resulted in which up to 99 percent of the previously unexposed
population was
killed.
Germs thus acquired
ultimately from domestic ani-
mals played decisive roles in the European conquests of Native Americans,
Australians, South Africans,
In short, plant
hence
(in
much
some
and
Pacific islanders.
and animal domestication meant much more food and
denser
human
populations.
areas) the animal-based
The
means of transporting those
were a prerequisite for the development of
socially stratified, economically
ties.
Hence the
explains
why
Eurasia and
or not at
all,
plete the
list
surpluses,
complex, technologically innovative socie-
empires, literacy, and steel
later,
and
settled, politically centralized,
availability of domestic plants
and animals ultimately
weapons developed
earliest in
on other continents. The military uses of
horses and camels, and the killing
we
resulting food surpluses,
power of animal-derived germs, com-
of major links between food production and conquest that
shall be exploring.
CHAPTER
5
History's Haves and
Have-nots
MUCH
OF
HUMAN HISTORY HAS CONSISTED OF UNEQUAL
conflicts
between the haves and the have-nots: between peoples
with farmer power and those without
it
at different times.
It
it,
or between those
who
acquired
should come as no surprise that food production
never arose in large areas of the globe, for ecological reasons that
make
it
still
or impossible there today. For instance, neither farming
difficult
nor herding developed
in prehistoric times in
North America's
Arctic,
while the sole element of food production to arise in Eurasia's Arctic was
reindeer herding.
deserts remote
Nor could food production
from sources of water
and parts of the western United
lia
Instead,
what
to appear, until
are
among
cries
States.
out for explanation
modern
times, in
spring up spontaneously in
for irrigation, such as central Austra-
some
is
the failure of food production
ecologically very suitable areas that
the world's richest centers of agriculture
and herding today.
Foremost among these puzzling areas, where indigenous peoples were
hunter-gatherers
when European
still
were California and
colonists arrived,
the other Pacific states of the United States, the Argentine pampas, south-
western and southeastern Australia, and
Africa.
Had we
much
surveyed the world in 4000
the rise of food production in
its
of the
B.C.,
Cape region of South
thousands of years after
oldest sites of origin,
9
3
we would have been
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
9 4
surprised too at several other
without
it
—including
all
that were
then
still
the rest of the United States, England
and much
When we
trace food
of France, Indonesia, and
production back to
modern breadbaskets
all
of subequatorial Africa.
beginnings, the earliest sites provide another sur-
its
Far from being modern breadbaskets, they include areas ranking
prise.
today as somewhat dry or ecologically degraded: Iraq and Iran, Mexico,
the Andes, parts of China,
tion develop
in today's
first in
most
and
Africa's Sahel zone.
fertile
in the
are also puzzling. In a few places
later
means by which food production arose
it
developed independently, as a result of
local people domesticating local plants
was
food produc-
and only
farmlands and pastures?
Geographic differences
it
Why did
these seemingly rather marginal lands,
instead imported, in the
and animals.
most other places
In
form of crops and livestock that had been
domesticated elsewhere. Since those areas of nonindependent origins were
suitable for prehistoric food production as
arrived,
ers
why
soon as domesticates had
did the peoples of those areas not
become farmers and herd-
without outside assistance, by domesticating local plants and animals?
Among those regions where food production did spring up indepenfor examdently, why did the times at which it appeared vary so greatly
—
ple,
thousands of years
States
and never
was imported
—
so greatly
earlier in eastern
Asia than in the eastern United
Among those regions into which it
why did the date of arrival also vary
in eastern Australia?
in the prehistoric era,
for example, thousands of years
Europe than
in the southwestern United
regions where
it
was imported, why
in
earlier
States?
in
southwestern
Again among those
some areas (such
as the southwest-
ern United States) did local hunter-gatherers themselves adopt crops and
livestock
from neighbors and survive as farmers, while
as Indonesia
in other areas (such
and much of subequatorial Africa) the importation of food
production involved a cataclysmic replacement of the region's original
hunter-gatherers by invading food producers? All these questions involve
developments that determined which peoples became history's have-nots,
and which became
Before we can
how
its
hope to answer these questions, we need to
to identify areas
there,
haves.
figure out
where food production originated, when
and where and when a given crop or animal was
The most unequivocal evidence comes from
first
it
arose
domesticated.
identification of plant
and
HISTORY'S HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
animal remains
mal species
at archaeological sites.
m
9
Most domesticated
5
plant and ani-
morphologically from their wild ancestors: for example,
differ
in the smaller size of
domestic cattle and sheep, the larger
size of
domestic
chickens and apples, the thinner and smoother seed coats of domestic peas,
and the corkscrew-twisted rather than scimitar-shaped horns of domestic
goats.
Hence remains of domesticated plants and animals
archaeological
at a dated
can be recognized and provide strong evidence of food
site
production at that place and time, whereas finding the remains only of
wild species at a
site fails
to provide evidence of food production
and
is
compatible with hunting-gathering. Naturally, food producers, especially
early ones, continued to gather
so the food remains at their
some wild
plants
and hunt wild animals,
often include wild species as well as
sites
domesticated ones.
Archaeologists date food production by radiocarbon dating of carbon-
containing materials at the
site.
This method
radioactive carbon 14, a very minor
building block of
14
is
life,
is
based on the slow decay of
component of carbon,
the ubiquitous
into the nonradioactive isotope nitrogen 14.
Carbon
continually being generated in the atmosphere by cosmic rays. Plants
take up atmospheric carbon, which has a
stant ratio of
known and approximately
carbon 14 to the prevalent isotope carbon 12
con-
(a ratio
of
about one to a million). That plant carbon goes on to form the body of
the herbivorous animals that eat the plants,
that eat those herbivorous animals.
half of
after
its
Once
and of the carnivorous animals
the plant or animal dies, though,
carbon 14 content decays into carbon 12 every 5,700 years,
about 40,000 years the carbon 14 content
is
until
very low and difficult to
measure or to distinguish from contamination with small amounts of modern materials containing carbon 14. Hence the age of material from an
archaeological
bon 12
site
can be calculated from the material's carbon 14 /car-
ratio.
Radiocarbon
is
plagued by numerous technical problems, of which two
deserve mention here.
One
required relatively large
is
that radiocarbon dating until the 1980s
amounts of carbon
(a
few grams), much more
than the amount in small seeds or bones. Hence
had
scientists instead often
to resort to dating material recovered nearby at the
believed to be "associated with" the food remains
deposited simultaneously by the people
of "associated" material
But archaeological
is
who
charcoal from
sites are
left
—that
the food.
same
is,
site
and
to have been
A typical choice
fires.
not always neatly sealed time capsules of
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
9 6
materials
deposited on the same day. Materials deposited at different
all
times can get mixed together, as
worms and
rodents and other agents
churn up the ground. Charcoal residues from a
fire
can thereby end up
and was eaten thousands
close to the remains of a plant or animal that died
of years earlier or later. Increasingly today, archaeologists are circum-
new
venting this problem by a
technique termed accelerator mass spec-
trometry, which permits radiocarbon dating of tiny samples and thus
food residue. In
directly date a single small seed, small bone, or other
one
some
lets
cases big differences have been found between recent radiocarbon
dates based
on the
direct
and those based on the
new methods (which have
indirect older ones.
their
own
problems)
Among the resulting controver-
sies
remaining unresolved, perhaps the most important for the purposes of
this
book concerns
icas: indirect
7000
B.C.,
when food production
the date
originated in the
methods of the 1960s and 1970s yielded dates
Amer-
as early as
but more recent direct dating has been yielding dates no earlier
than 3500 B.C.
A
second problem in radiocarbon dating
12 ratio of the atmosphere
slightly
is
is
that the carbon 14 /carbon
in fact not rigidly constant but fluctuates
with time, so calculations of radiocarbon dates based on the
assumption of a constant ratio are subject to small systematic
magnitude of
with the help of long-lived trees laying
the rings can be counted
for each ring,
and
a
then be analyzed for
down annual growth
The
rings, since
up to obtain an absolute calendar date
carbon sample of
its
errors.
each past date can in principle be determined
this error for
wood
carbon 14 / carbon 12
dated in
this
ratio. In this
in the past
manner can
way, measured
radiocarbon dates can be "calibrated" to take account of fluctuations in
the atmospheric carbon ratio.
with apparent (that
rials
6000
is,
The
earlier.
is
that, for
uncalibrated) dates between about
B.C., the true (calibrated)
sand years
effect of this correction
Somewhat
date
is
mate-
1000 and
between a few centuries and a thou-
older samples have
more
recently
begun to
be calibrated by an alternative method based on another radioactive decay
process and yielding the conclusion that samples apparently dating to
about 9000
B.C. actually date to
around 11,000
B.C.
Archaeologists often distinguish calibrated from uncalibrated dates by
writing the former in upper-case letters and the latter in lower-case letters
(for
example, 3000 B.C.
logical literature
vs.
3000 b.c,
can be confusing in
respectively).
this respect,
papers report ^calibrated dates as B.C. and
fail
However, the archaeo-
because
to
many books and
mention that they are
w*
Plate
1.
A woman and
(Siar Island).
child
from
New
Guinea's north coastal lowlands
New Guinea highlander of the Fore people. Plates 2-5
depict four of my New Guinea friends to whom this book is dedicated.
Plate 2. Varan, a
Plate 3. Esa, a
New
Guinea bigblander of the Fore people.
-
people.
u
Guinea lowlander of the Tudawhe
P/tfte 5.
Sauakari, a
New
Guinea lowlander from the north
coast.
Plate
6.
A New Guinea
highlander.
Plate
7.
tralia).
An
Aboriginal Australian
man
of the Pintupi people (central Aus-
Plate
8.
Aboriginal Australians from
Arnhem Land
(northern Australia).
Plate 9.
An
Aboriginal Tasmanian
woman, one of the
those born before European arrival.
last survivors
of
Plate 10.
A Tungus woman from
Siberia.
Plate 11.
A Japanese: Emperor Akihito
celebrating his 59th birthday.
Plate 12.
A Javanese woman
harvesting
speakers of Austronesian languages.
rice.
Plates 12
and 13
depict
Plate 13.
A
Polynesian
woman from Rapa
7,000 miles east of Java.
Island in the tropical Pacific,
Plate 14.
A
Chinese
girl
gathering
bamboo
shoots.
Plate 15.
tribe
A
Native North American: Spotted Horse Chief of the Pawnee
of the Great Plains.
Plate 16.
Another Native North American: a Navajo
western United States.
woman
of the south-
HISTORY'S HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
The
actually uncalibrated.
dates that
report in this
I
the last 15,000 years are calibrated dates.
discrepancies that readers
quoted
in
some standard
may
how
domesticated
book
for events within
That accounts
for
some of
the
note between this book's dates and those
reference books
Once one has recognized and dated
or animals,
9 7
on
early food production.
ancient remains of domestic plants
does one decide whether the plant or animal was actually
than domesticated
in the vicinity of that site itself, rather
elsewhere and then spread to the
One method
site?
is
to
examine
a
the geographic distribution of the crop's or animal's wild ancestor,
map
of
and
to
reason that domestication must have taken place in the area where the
wild ancestor occurs. For example, chickpeas are widely grown by tradi-
from the Mediterranean and Ethiopia
tional farmers
east to India, with
the latter country accounting for 80 percent of the world's chickpea pro-
duction today.
One might therefore have been
chickpeas were domesticated in India. But
it
deceived into supposing that
turns out that ancestral wild
chickpeas occur only in southeastern Turkey. The interpretation that
chickpeas were actually domesticated there
is
supported by the fact that
the oldest finds of possibly domesticated chickpeas in Neolithic archaeo-
come from southeastern Turkey and nearby northern
logical sites
that date to
around 8000
B.C.;
on the Indian subcontinent.
ological evidence of chickpeas appear
A
tion
second method for identifying a crop's or animal's
is
to plot
ance at each
on
a
map
locality.
initial
domestication
and
the dates of
if
—
first
site
where
especially
if
appearance
it
appeared
suggesting spread to those other
Soon
of domestica-
earliest
may
first
be
appear-
its site
of
the wild ancestor also occurred there,
at other sites
with increasing distance from the putative
cultivated
site
the dates of the domesticated form's
The
Syria
not until over 5,000 years later does archae-
sites.
emmer wheat comes from
become progressively
site
of
initial
For instance, the
later
domestication,
earliest
the Fertile Crescent around
known
8500
B.C.
thereafter, the crop appears progressively farther west, reaching
Greece around 6500 B.C. and Germany around 5000 B.C. Those dates
emmer wheat in the Fertile Crescent, a conclusion
that ancestral wild emmer wheat is confined to the
suggest domestication of
supported by the fact
area extending from Israel to western Iran and Turkey.
However,
as
we
shall see, complications arise in
many
same plant or animal was domesticated independently
sites.
cases
where the
at several different
Such cases can often be detected by analyzing the resulting morpho-
logical, genetic, or
chromosomal
differences between specimens of the
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
9 8
same crop or domestic animal
For instance, India's zebu
in different areas.
humps lacking in western Eurasian cattle
show that the ancestors of modern Indian
breeds of domestic cattle possess
breeds,
and genetic analyses
and western Eurasian
cattle breeds diverged
from each other hundreds of
thousands of years ago, long before any animals were domesticated anywhere. That
is,
were domesticated independently
cattle
in India
and west-
ern Eurasia, within the last 10,000 years, starting with wild Indian and
western Eurasian cattle subspecies that had diverged hundreds of thousands of years
Let's
earlier.
now return
to our earlier questions about the rise of food pro-
duction. Where, when, and
how
did food production develop in different
parts of the globe?
At one extreme are areas
in
which food production arose altogether
independently, with the domestication of
many
some
any crops or animals from other
areas.
cases, animals) before the arrival of
There are only
detailed
five
indigenous crops (and, in
such areas for which the evidence
and compelling: Southwest Asia, also known
is
as the
at present
Near East
or Fertile Crescent; China; Mesoamerica (the term applied to central and
southern Mexico and adjacent areas of Central America); the Andes of
South America, and possibly the adjacent
eastern United States (Figure 5.1).
Some
or
Amazon
all
Basin as well; and the
of these centers
may actually
comprise several nearby centers where food production arose more or
less
independently, such as North China's Yellow River valley and South China's
Yangtze River
valley.
In addition to these five areas
New
Guinea
some uncertainty
Africa's
distinction.
in
herding
may have
in Africa's Sahel
zone
just
south of the Sahara,
preceded agriculture there, and
whether those were independently domesticated Sahel
domestic
cattle of Fertile
plant domestication.
is
each case. Although indigenous wild plants were
undoubtedly domesticated
cattle
definitely arose
—
Sahel zone, tropical West Africa, Ethiopia,
—are candidates for that
However, there
de novo, four others
and
where food production
It
it is
not yet certain
cattle or, instead,
Crescent origin whose arrival triggered local
remains similarly uncertain whether the arrival of
those Sahel crops then triggered the undoubted local domestication of
indigenous wild plants in tropical West Africa, and whether the arrival of
Southwest Asian crops
is
what
triggered the local domestication of indige-
HISTORY'S HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
9 9
%&f^
/•^-y
<4K $kLy
v
\y
&^S$W-s
/
Sahel?
China
^3
s.
West \
(
^
x>
ft
\
New
Guinea?
Mesoamerica
;^^\
t>
Andes"\^/
t
\
L^.
^^xy/
%
and(?)
'
•
y
some uncertainty whether
was
really uninfluenced
terSy
or
J
C
A
question
mark
indi-
the rise of food production at that center
by the spread of food production from other cen-
the case of New Guinea)
nous wild plants
(
V
Amazon iaf
j,
Figure 5.1. Centers of origin of food production.
(in
U.S.
Ethiopia?
r
cates
^
^JU^i*.
J a
)
^"T^eastern
V
«7
^
1^^, \y \/\ O
Africa?
^
O-A
(
Fertile
Crescent
in Ethiopia.
As
what
for
New
the earliest crops were.
Guinea, archaeological studies
there have provided evidence of early agriculture well before food production in any adjacent areas, but the crops
grown have not been
definitely
identified.
Table 5.1 summarizes, for these and other areas of local domestication,
some of
the best-known crops
of domestication.
Among
and animals and the
earliest
known
dates
these nine candidate areas for the independent
evolution of food production, Southwest Asia has the earliest definite dates
for both plant domestication (around
tion (around
8000
B.C.);
it
also has
by
8500
B.C.)
and animal domestica-
far the largest
number
of accurate
radiocarbon dates for early food production. Dates for China are nearly
as early, while dates for the eastern United States are clearly
about 6,000
years later. For the other six candidate areas, the earliest well-established
dates
do not
rival those for
been securely dated
really lagged
Southwest Asia, but too few early
have
in those six other areas for us to be certain that they
behind Southwest Asia and
The next group
sites
(if
so)
by
how much.
of areas consists of ones that did domesticate at least a
I
Table
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
o o
5.1
Examples of Species Domesticated
in
Domesticated
Area
Each Area
Earliest
Attested
Plants
Animals
Date of
Domestication
Independent Origins of Domestication
8500
Southwest Asia
wheat, pea, olive
sheep, goat
2.
China
rice, millet
pig,
by 7500
B.C.
3.
Mesoamerica
corn, beans,
turkey
by 3500
b.c.
4.
Andes and
potato, manioc
llama, guinea
by 3500 B.C.
sunflower,
none
2500
guinea fowl
by 5000
b.c.
none
by 3000
b.c.
p
1.
silkworm
B.C.
squash
Amazonia
?
Pig
Eastern United
5.
6.
States
goosefoot
Sahel
sorghum, African
Tropical West
rice
African yams,
?
7.
?
8.
Ethiopia
coffee, teff
none
?
9.
New
sugar cane,
none
Africa
oil
Guinea
b.c.
palm
7000
B.C.?
banana
Local Domestication Following Arrival of Founder Crops from Elsewhere
6000-3500
10.
Western Europe
poppy, oat
none
11
Indus Valley
sesame, eggplant
humped
Egypt
sycamore
donkey, cat
.
12.
fig,
cattle
7000
b.c.
6000
b.c.
b.c.
chufa
couple of local plants or animals, but where food production depended
mainly on crops and animals that were domesticated elsewhere. Those
imported domesticates
may
be thought of as "founder" crops and animals,
because they founded local food production. The arrival of founder
domesticates enabled local people to become sedentary, and thereby
increased the likelihood of local crops' evolving from wild plants that were
gathered, brought
tionally.
home and
planted accidentally, and later planted inten-
HISTORY'S HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
In three or four such areas, the arriving founder
Southwest Asia.
One
of
them
is
I
O
I
package came from
western and central Europe, where food
production arose with the arrival of Southwest Asian crops and animals
between 6000 and 3500
bly oats
but at least one plant (the poppy, and proba-
B.C.,
and some others) was then domesticated
locally.
Wild poppies are
confined to coastal areas of the western Mediterranean. Poppy seeds are
absent from excavated
sites
of the earliest farming communities in eastern
Europe and Southwest Asia; they
appear
first
in early
farming
sites in
west-
ern Europe. In contrast, the wild ancestors of most Southwest Asian crops
and animals were absent from western Europe. Thus,
it
seems clear that
food production did not evolve independently in western Europe. Instead,
it
was
triggered there by the arrival of Southwest Asian domesticates.
resulting western
European farming
which subsequently spread eastward
Another area where
arrival of
societies
The
domesticated the poppy,
as a crop.
local domestication appears to
Southwest Asian founder crops
is
have followed the
the Indus Valley region of the
Indian subcontinent. The earliest farming communities there in the seventh
millennium
wheat, barley, and other crops that had been pre-
B.C. utilized
viously domesticated in the Fertile Crescent
the Indus Valley through Iran.
Only
and that evidently spread
later did domesticates derived
indigenous species of the Indian subcontinent, such as
humped
to
from
cattle
and
sesame, appear in Indus Valley farming communities. In Egypt as well,
food production began
in the sixth
millennium B.C. with the arrival of
fig
and
barley,
and
Southwest Asian crops. Egyptians then domesticated the sycamore
a local vegetable called chufa.
The same pattern perhaps
applies to Ethiopia,
where wheat,
other Southwest Asian crops have been cultivated for a long time. Ethiopi-
ans also domesticated
most of which are
bean) has
now
many
still
locally available wild species to obtain crops
confined to Ethiopia, but one of them (the coffee
spread around the world. However,
whether Ethiopians were cultivating these
it is
not yet
known
local plants before or only after
the arrival of the Southwest Asian package.
In these and other areas where food production depended
on the
arrival
of founder crops from elsewhere, did local hunter-gatherers themselves
adopt those founder crops from neighboring farming peoples and thereby
become farmers themselves? Or was
by invading farmers,
ers
and
to
kill,
the founder package instead brought
who were thereby enabled to outbreed the
displace, or
outnumber them?
local hunt-
In Egypt
it
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O 2
I
seems
likely that the
techniques to their
own
diet of wild plants
phased out the wild foods. That
in
former happened: local hunter-gather-
simply added Southwest Asian domesticates and farming and herding
ers
is,
and animals, then gradually
what arrived
to launch food production
Egypt was foreign crops and animals, not foreign peoples. The same
may have been
true
on the Atlantic coast of Europe, where
local hunter-
gatherers apparently adopted Southwest Asian sheep and cereals over the
many
course of
centuries. In the
Cape of South Africa the
local
Khoi
hunter-gatherers became herders (but not farmers) by acquiring sheep and
cows from
Similarly,
ally
from Southwest
farther north in Africa (and ultimately
Native American hunter-gatherers of the U.S. Southwest gradu-
became farmers by acquiring Mexican crops.
onset of food production provides
little
replacement of
human
or no evidence for the
little
population.
At the opposite extreme are regions
began with an abrupt
In these four areas the
or no evidence for the domestica-
tion of local plant or animal species, but also
in
which food production
certainly
arrival of foreign people as well as of foreign crops
and animals. The reason why we can be certain
place in
Asia).
modern times and involved
literate
is
that the arrivals took
Europeans,
who
described in
innumerable books what happened. Those areas include California, the
Pacific
and
Northwest of North America, the Argentine pampas, Australia,
were
Siberia. Until recent centuries, these areas
hunter-gatherers
—Native Americans
still
in the first three cases
occupied by
and Aboriginal
Australians or Native Siberians in the last two. Those hunter-gatherers
were
killed, infected, driven out,
farmers and herders
any
who
or largely replaced by arriving European
brought their
own crops and
local wild species after their arrival (except for
Australia). In the
Cape of South Africa
did not domesticate
macadamia nuts
in
the arriving Europeans found not
only Khoi hunter-gatherers but also Khoi herders
who
already possessed
only domestic animals, not crops. The result was again the start of farming
dependent on crops from elsewhere, a
failure to domesticate local species,
and a massive modern replacement of human population.
Finally, the
same pattern of an abrupt
start of
food production depen-
dent on domesticates from elsewhere, and an abrupt and massive population replacement, seems to have repeated itself in
many
areas in the
prehistoric era. In the absence of written records, the evidence of those
prehistoric replacements
inferred
from
must be sought
linguistic evidence.
The
in the archaeological record or
best-attested cases are ones in
which
HISTORY'S HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
there can be
I
O
3
no doubt about population replacement because the newly
arriving food producers differed
hunter-gatherers
whom
markedly
in their skeletons
from the
they replaced, and because the food producers
introduced not only crops and animals but also pottery. Later chapters will
two
describe the
clearest such examples: the Austronesian
expansion from
South China into the Philippines and Indonesia (Chapter 17), and the
Bantu expansion over subequatorial Africa (Chapter
19).
Southeastern Europe and central Europe present a similar picture of an
abrupt onset of food production (dependent on Southwest Asian crops
and animals) and of pottery making. This onset too probably involved
replacement of old Greeks and Germans by
as old gave
Africa.
erers
way
to
new
However, the
new Greeks and Germans,
skeletal differences
between the
and the farmers who replaced them are
in the Philippines, Indonesia,
and subequatorial
population replacement in Europe
In short, only
less
is
less
a few areas of the
earlier hunter-gath-
marked
the case for
less direct.
world developed food production
independently, and they did so at widely differing times.
nuclear areas, hunter-gatherers of
Europe than
in
Hence
Africa.
strong or
just
and subequatorial
in the Philippines, Indonesia,
some neighboring
From
those
areas learned food
production, and peoples of other neighboring areas were replaced by
invading food producers from the nuclear areas
times. Finally, peoples of
some areas
—again
at widely differing
ecologically suitable for food produc-
tion neither evolved nor acquired agriculture in prehistoric times at
they persisted as hunter-gatherers until the
upon them. The peoples of
modern world
areas with a head start
finally
all;
swept
on food production
thereby gained a head start on the path leading toward guns, germs, and
steel.
The
result
was
a long series of collisions between the haves
and the
have-nots of history.
How
can
we
explain these geographic differences in the times and
modes of onset of food production? That
question, one of the most
important problems of prehistory, will be the subject of the next
ters.
five
chap-
CHAPTER
6
To Farm or Not
to Farm
FORMERLY,
ers.
Why
ALL PEOPLE ON EARTH WERE HUNTER-GATHER-
did any of them adopt food production at
they must have had
and
Given that
some reason, why did they do so around 8500
Mediterranean habitats of the
the climatically
all?
B.C. in
only 3,000 years later in
Fertile Crescent,
structurally similar Mediterranean habitats of south-
western Europe, and never indigenously in the similar Mediterranean habitats
Why
of California, southwestern Australia, and the
Cape of South Africa?
did even people of the Fertile Crescent wait until 8500 B.C., instead
of becoming food producers already around 18,500 or 28,500 B.C.?
From our modern
perspective,
all
these questions at
first
seem
because the drawbacks of being a hunter-gatherer appear so obvious.
entists
silly,
Sci-
used to quote a phrase of Thomas Hobbes's in order to characterize
the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers as "nasty, brutish,
and short." They
seemed to have to work hard, to be driven by the daily quest for food,
often to be close to starvation, to lack such elementary material comforts
as soft beds
and adequate clothing, and
to die young.
In reality, only for today's affluent First
ally
do the work of
World
citizens,
who
don't actu-
raising food themselves, does food production (by
remote agribusinesses) mean
less physical
from starvation, and a longer expected
work, more comfort, freedom
lifetime.
104
Most peasant farmers and
TO FARM OR NOT TO FARM
herders,
who
I
O
5
constitute the great majority of the world's actual food pro-
ducers, aren't necessarily better off than hunter-gatherers.
show
studies
at
work than
the
first
fered
may spend more
that they
Time budget
rather than fewer hours per day
hunter-gatherers do. Archaeologists have demonstrated that
many
farmers in
from more serious
areas were smaller and less well nourished, suf-
diseases,
and died on the average
than the hunter-gatherers they replaced.
If
those
first
at a
younger age
farmers could have
foreseen the consequences of adopting food production, they might not
have opted to do
less
make
so.
Why, unable
to foresee the result, did they neverthe-
that choice?
There exist many actual cases of hunter-gatherers
production practiced by their neighbors, and
accept
who
who
did see food
nevertheless refused to
supposed blessings and instead remained hunter-gatherers. For
its
instance, Aboriginal hunter-gatherers of northeastern Australia traded for
thousands of years with farmers of the Torres
and
tralia
New
Strait Islands,
between Aus-
Guinea. California Native American hunter-gatherers
traded with Native American farmers in the Colorado River valley. In
addition,
Khoi herders west of the Fish River of South Africa traded with
Bantu farmers east of the Fish River, and continued to dispense with farming themselves.
Still
Why?
other hunter-gatherers in contact with farmers did eventually
become farmers, but only
after
what may seem
to us like
long delay. For example, the coastal peoples of northern
adopt food production
until
keramik culture introduced
to the south.
them
Why
finally to
Before we can
their
did not
1,300 years after peoples of the Linearbandit
to inland parts of
did those coastal
change
an inordinately
Germany
Germany only 125
Germans wait
so long, and
miles
what
led
minds?
answer these questions, we must dispel some miscon-
ceptions about the origins of food production and then reformulate the
What actually happened was not a discovery of food production,
nor an invention, as we might first assume. There was often not even a
question.
conscious choice between food production and hunting-gathering. Specifically, in
each area of the globe the
first
people
who adopted
food pro-
duction could obviously not have been making a conscious choice or
consciously striving toward farming as a goal, because they had never seen
farming and had no way of knowing what
it
would be
like. Instead, as
we
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O 6
food production evolved as a by-product of decisions made with-
shall see,
out awareness of their consequences. Hence the question that
why food production
others, why at different
ask
not
at
did evolve,
is
some
why
it
we have
why
times in different places, and
not instead
earlier or later date.
Another misconception
that there
is
is
sharp divide
necessarily a
between nomadic hunter-gatherers and sedentary food producers. In
ity,
to
evolved in some places but
we
although
frequently
draw such
a contrast, hunter-gatherers in
real-
some
productive areas, including North America's Pacific Northwest coast and
possibly southeastern Australia,
became sedentary but never became food
producers. Other hunter-gatherers, in Palestine, coastal Peru, and Japan,
became sedentary
and adopted food production much
first
much
groups probably made up a
15,000 years ago, when
most productive
all
were
areas)
later.
inhabited parts of the world (including the
occupied by hunter-gatherers, than they
still
do today, when the few remaining hunter-gatherers survive only
ductive areas where
nomadism
of
New
Guinea's Lakes Plains
make
on
unpro-
their crops,
Some modern
clearings in the jungle, plant
bananas and papayas, go off for a few months to
gatherers, return to check
in
the sole option.
is
Conversely, there are mobile groups of food producers.
nomads
Sedentary
higher fraction of hunter-gatherers
weed
again as hunter-
live
the garden
if
they find the
crops growing, set off again to hunt, return months later to check again,
and
settle
down for a while to
harvest and eat
Apache Indians of the southwestern United
the
summer
the south
at higher elevations
Many
their
garden has produced.
States settled
down
to
farm
in
and toward the north, then withdrew to
and to lower elevations to wander
the winter.
if
in search of wild foods during
herding peoples of Africa and Asia
shift
camp along
regular seasonal routes to take advantage of predictable seasonal changes
in pasturage.
Thus, the
shift
from hunting-gathering to food production
did not always coincide with a shift from
nomadism
to sedentary living.
Another supposed dichotomy that becomes blurred
tinction
in reality
between food producers as active managers of
is
a dis-
their land
and
hunter-gatherers as mere collectors of the land's wild produce. In reality,
some hunter-gatherers
Guinea peoples
who
intensively
manage
their land.
For example,
danus nevertheless increase production of these wild edible plants by
ing
away encroaching competing
clear,
New
never domesticated sago palms or mountain pan-
trees,
clear-
keeping channels in sago swamps
and promoting growth of new sago shoots by cutting down mature
TO FARM OR NOT TO FARM
sago
trees.
Aboriginal Australians
yams and seed
who
never reached the stage of farming
plants nonetheless anticipated several elements of farming.
They managed
the landscape by burning
edible seed plants that sprout after
off
O 7
I
growth of
to encourage the
it,
In gathering wild yams, they cut
fires.
most of the edible tuber but replaced the stems and tops of the tubers
in the
ground so that the tubers would regrow. Their digging to extract
the tuber loosened
and aerated the
soil
and fostered regrowth.
All that
they would have had to do to meet the definition of farmers was to carry
the stems
and remaining attached tubers home and
in soil at their
similarly replace
them
camp.
From those precursors
hunter-gatherers,
it
of food production already practiced by
developed stepwise. Not
were developed within a short time, and not
the necessary techniques
all
all
the wild plants
and animals
that were eventually domesticated in a given area were domesticated
simultaneously. Even in the cases of the most rapid independent develop-
ment of food production from
sands of years to
shift
a hunting-gathering lifestyle,
it
took thou-
from complete dependence on wild foods
to a diet
with very few wild foods. In early stages of food production, people simultaneously collected wild foods and raised cultivated ones, and diverse
types of collecting activities diminished in importance at different times as
reliance
on crops
increased.
The underlying reason why
this transition
was piecemeal
production systems evolved as a result of the accumulation of
rate decisions
about allocating time and
aging animals, have only
various ways.
Shall
I
finite
my garden
but more likely nothing)?
payoff.
and making
If
Many
sepa-
like for-
(predictably yielding a lot of vegeta-
months from now), gathering
They concentrate
many
Foraging humans,
time and energy, which they can spend in
meat today), or hunting deer
ritizing
that food
can picture an incipient farmer waking up and asking:
spend today hoeing
bles several
little
We
effort.
is
Human
shellfish (predictably yielding a
(yielding possibly a lot of
and animal foragers are constantly
effort-allocation decisions, even
first
on
meat today,
if
prio-
only unconsciously.
favorite foods, or ones that yield the highest
these are unavailable, they shift to less
and
less
preferred foods.
considerations enter into these decisions. People seek food in
order to satisfy their hunger and
fill
foods, such as protein-rich foods,
their bellies.
fat, salt,
They
sweet
also crave specific
fruits,
and foods that
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O 8
I
simply taste good. All other things being equal, people seek to maximize
their return of calories, protein, or other specific
ing in a
least
way
that yields the
food categories by forag-
most return with the greatest certainty
in the
time for the least effort. Simultaneously, they seek to minimize their
risk of starving:
moderate but
reliable returns are preferable to a fluctuat-
ing lifestyle with a high time-averaged rate of return but a substantial like-
lihood of starving to death.
nearly 11,000 years ago
One
was
ance in case wild food supplies
Conversely,
men
a giraffe once a
home
selves
and
first
gardens of
failed.
hunters tend to guide themselves by considerations of
example, they might rather go giraffe hunting every day, bag
prestige: for
bring
suggested function of the
to provide a reliable reserve larder as insur-
month, and thereby gain the
status of great hunter, than
twice a giraffe's weight of food in a
month by humbling them-
reliably gathering nuts every day. People are also guided
seemingly arbitrary cultural preferences, such as considering
by the
delicacies or taboo. Finally, their priorities are heavily influenced
relative values they attach to different lifestyles
For instance,
farmers
ers
all
in the 19th-century U.S.
—
just as
we can
by
fish either
see today.
West, the cattlemen, sheepmen, and
despised each other. Similarly, throughout
human history farm-
have tended to despise hunter-gatherers as primitive, hunter-gatherers
have despised farmers as ignorant, and herders have despised both. All
these elements
come
into play in people's separate decisions about
how
to
obtain their food.
rVs we already
noted, the
first
farmers on each continent could not
have chosen farming consciously, because there were no other nearby
farmers for them to observe. However, once food production had arisen
in
one part of a continent, neighboring hunter-gatherers could see the
result
and make conscious
decisions. In
some
cases the hunter-gatherers
adopted the neighboring system of food production virtually as a complete
package; in others they chose only certain elements of
it;
and
in
still
others
they rejected food production entirely and remained hunter-gatherers.
For example, hunter-gatherers in parts of southeastern Europe had
quickly adopted Southwest Asian cereal crops, pulse crops, and livestock
simultaneously as a complete package by around 6000 B.C. All three of
these elements also spread rapidly through central
before
5000
B.C.
Europe
in the centuries
Adoption of food production may have been rapid and
TO FARM OR NOT TO FARM
O 9
I
wholesale in southeastern and central Europe because the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle there
was
less
productive and
competitive. In contrast, food
less
production was adopted piecemeal in southwestern Europe (southern
France, Spain, and
Italy),
where sheep arrived
first
and
The
cereals later.
adoption of intensive food production from the Asian mainland was also
very slow and piecemeal in Japan, probably because the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle
based on seafood and local plants was so productive there.
Just as a hunting-gathering lifestyle can be traded piecemeal for a food-
producing
lifestyle,
one system of food production can also be traded
piecemeal for another. For example, Indians of the eastern United States
were domesticating
tions with
local plants
by about 2500
Mexican Indians who developed
based on the
trinity of corn,
had trade connec-
B.C. but
more productive crop system
a
squash, and beans. Eastern U.S. Indians
adopted Mexican crops, and many of them discarded many of
domesticates, piecemeal; squash
arrived
was domesticated independently, corn
from Mexico around a.d. 200 but remained
around a.d. 900, and beans arrived
3000
it
B.C.
later. It
until
even hap-
in favor of hunting-
B.C. the hunter-gatherers of southern
Sweden adopted farming based on Southwest Asian
around 2700
minor crop
a
two
a century or
pened that food-production systems were abandoned
gathering. For instance, around
their local
crops, but
and reverted to hunting-gathering
for
abandoned
400 years before
resuming farming.
All
these considerations make
it
clear that
pose that the decision to adopt farming was
made
we should
in a
vacuum,
people had previously had no means to feed themselves. Instead,
not supas
if
the
we must
consider food production and hunting-gathering as alternative strategies
competing with each other. Mixed economies that added certain crops or
livestock to hunting-gathering also
competed against both types of "pure"
economies, and against mixed economies with higher or lower proportions
of food production. Nevertheless, over the last 10,000 years, the predomi-
nant result has been a
Hence we must
ask:
shift
from hunting-gathering
What were
to food production.
the factors that tipped the competitive
advantage away from the former and toward the
latter?
That question continues to be debated by archaeologists and anthropologists.
One
reason for
have been decisive
its
remaining unsettled
in different parts of the
is
that different factors
may
world. Another has been the
I
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O
problem of disentangling cause and
However,
main contributing
five
factor
factors can
food production.
be identified; the contro-
still
mainly around their relative importance.
versies revolve
One
effect in the rise of
is
the decline in the availability of wild foods.
of hunter-gatherers has
become increasingly
less
The
lifestyle
rewarding over the past
13,000 years, as resources on which they depended (especially animal
become
resources) have
most
Chapter
1,
America
at the
and
large
less
abundant or even disappeared. As we saw
mammal
species
became
extinct in
in
North and South
end of the Pleistocene, and some became extinct
in Eurasia
Africa, either because of climate changes or because of the rise in skill
and numbers of human hunters. While the
role of animal extinctions in
eventually (after a long lag) nudging ancient Native Americans, Eurasians,
and Africans toward food production can be debated, there are numerous
on
incontrovertible cases
islands in
more recent
Polynesian settlers had exterminated
on
New
times.
Only
moas and decimated
after the first
seal populations
Zealand, and exterminated or decimated seabirds and land birds
on other Polynesian
islands, did they intensify their
instance, although the Polynesians
who
food production. For
colonized Easter Island around
500 brought chickens with them, chicken did not become
a.d.
food
until
a
major
wild birds and porpoises were no longer readily available as
food. Similarly, a suggested contributing factor to the rise of animal
domestication in the Fertile Crescent was the decline in abundance of the
wild gazelles that had previously been a major source of meat for huntergatherers in that area.
A
second factor
that, just as the depletion of wild
is
make hunting-gathering
less
domesticable wild plants
made
rewarding,
game tended
to
an increased availability of
steps leading to plant domestication
more
rewarding. For instance, climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene in
the Fertile Crescent greatly
als,
expanded the area of habitats with wild
cere-
of which huge crops could be harvested in a short time. Those wild
cereal harvests
the cereals
Still
were precursors to the domestication of the
wheat and
earliest crops,
barley, in the Fertile Crescent.
another factor tipping the balance away from hunting-gathering
was
the cumulative development of technologies
tion
would eventually depend
—technologies
on which food produc-
for collecting, processing,
and storing wild foods. What use can would-be farmers make of
a ton of
how to
harvest,
wheat grains on the
stalk, if they
husk, and store them?
have not
first
figured out
The necessary methods, implements, and
facilities
III
TO FARM OR NOT TO FARM
appeared rapidly
in the Fertile
Crescent after 11,000 B.C., having been
invented for dealing with the newly available abundance of wild cereals.
Those inventions included
sickles of flint blades
cemented into wooden
or bone handles, for harvesting wild grains; baskets in which to carry the
grains
home from
the hillsides
where they grew; mortars and
pestles, or
grinding slabs, to remove the husks; the technique of roasting grains so
that they could be stored without sprouting;
some of them
plastered to
and underground storage
make them waterproof. Evidence
techniques becomes abundant at
pits,
for all of these
of hunter-gatherers in the Fertile
sites
Crescent after 11,000 B.C. All these techniques, though developed for the
exploitation of wild cereals, were prerequisites to the planting of cereals
as crops.
These cumulative developments constituted the unconscious
first
steps of plant domestication.
A fourth
factor
lation density
was the two-way
and the
is
and which the
problem: did a
rise in
rise in
all
human popu-
parts of the world
available, archaeologists find evidence of rising
densities associated with the
the cause
between the
food production. In
rise in
where adequate evidence
link
appearance of food production. Which was
result? This
human
is
a long-debated chicken-or-egg
population density force people to turn to
food production, or did food production permit a
rise in
human
popula-
tion density?
In principle, one expects the chain of causation to operate in both directions.
As
I've already discussed,
population densities because
does hunting-gathering.
were gradually
improvements
foods.
rising
in
it
it
yields
more
edible calories per acre than
the other hand,
throughout the
human
As population
favored because
On
food production tends to lead to increased
human
population densities
late Pleistocene
anyway, thanks to
technology for collecting and processing wild
densities rose,
food production became increasingly
provided the increased food outputs needed to feed
all
those people.
That
is,
the adoption of food production exemplifies
autocatalytic process
—one
what
is
termed an
that catalyzes itself in a positive feedback cycle,
going faster and faster once
it
has started.
densities impelled people to obtain
A
gradual
rise in
population
more food, by rewarding those who
unconsciously took steps toward producing
it.
Once people began
to pro-
duce food and become sedentary, they could shorten the birth spacing and
produce
still
more people,
requiring
still
more food. This
bidirectional link
between food production and population density explains the paradox
112
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
that food production, while increasing the quantity of edible calories per
acre, left the
whom
food producers
well nourished than the hunter-gatherers
less
they succeeded. That paradox developed because
tion densities rose slightly
more
Taken together, these four
around 18,500 or 28,500
B.C.
popula-
steeply than did the availability of food.
factors help us understand
At the
why the transition
began around 8500
to food production in the Fertile Crescent
was
human
latter
B.C.,
not
two dates hunting-gathering
much more rewarding than incipient food production, because
mammals were still abundant; wild cereals were not yet abundant;
still
wild
people had not yet developed the inventions necessary for collecting, processing,
and storing
cereals efficiently;
and human population
densities
were not yet high enough for a large premium to be placed on extracting
more
calories per acre.
A final factor in the transition became decisive at geographic boundaries
between hunter-gatherers and food producers. The much denser popula-
them
tions of food producers enabled
by
to displace or kill hunter-gatherers
numbers, not to mention the other advantages associated
their sheer
with food production (including technology, germs, and professional
where there were only hunter-gatherers to begin with, those
diers). In areas
who adopted
groups of hunter-gatherers
who
sol-
food production outbred those
didn't.
As a
result, in
most areas of the globe
hunter-gatherers met one of
two
suitable for food production,
fates: either
they were displaced by neigh-
boring food producers, or else they survived only by adopting food production themselves. In places where they were already numerous or where
geography retarded immigration by food producers, local hunter-gatherers
did have time to adopt farming in prehistoric times and thus to survive as
farmers. This
may have happened
in the U.S. Southwest, in the
western
Mediterranean, on the Atlantic coast of Europe, and in parts of Japan.
However,
Africa,
in Indonesia, tropical
and probably
in
Southeast Asia, most of subequatorial
parts of Europe, the hunter-gatherers were
replaced by farmers in the prehistoric era, whereas a similar replacement
took place
in
modern times
in Australia
and much of the western United
States.
Only where
especially potent geographic or ecological barriers
made
immigration of food producers or diffusion of locally appropriate food-
producing techniques very
until
modern times
difficult
were hunter-gatherers able to
in areas suitable for
persist
food production. The three out-
TO FARM OR NOT TO FARM
I
I
3
standing examples are the persistence of Native American hunter-gatherers in California, separated
by deserts from the Native American farmers
of Arizona; that of Khoisan hunter-gatherers at the
in a
Cape of South
Africa,
Mediterranean climate zone unsuitable for the equatorial crops of
nearby Bantu farmers; and that of hunter-gatherers throughout the Australian continent, separated
Indonesia and
New
by narrow seas from the food producers of
Guinea. Those few peoples
who remained
hunter-
gatherers into the 20th century escaped replacement by food producers
because they were confined to areas not
deserts
and Arctic
fit
for food production, especially
regions. Within the present decade, even they will have
been seduced by the attractions of civilization, settled
down under pressure
from bureaucrats or missionaries, or succumbed to germs.
CHAPTER
How
7
to Make an
Almond
you're a
Ifgrown
foods,
hiker whose appetite
it's
is
fun to try eating wild foods.
jaded by farmYou know that some
wild plants, such as wild strawberries and blueberries, are both tasty and
safe to eat. They're sufficiently similar to familiar crops that
much
recognize the wild berries, even though they're
we
you can
easily
smaller than those
many
grow. Adventurous hikers cautiously eat mushrooms, aware that
species can kill us. But not even ardent nut lovers eat wild almonds, of
which
a
few dozen contain enough cyanide
chambers) to
kill us.
The
forest
of
is full
(the
many
poison used in Nazi gas
other plants
deemed
ined-
ible.
Yet
all
crops arose from wild plant species.
get turned into crops?
many
ing,
crops
and
(like
That question
is
How did certain wild plants
especially puzzling in regard to the
almonds) whose wild progenitors are
lethal or bad-tast-
to other crops (like corn) that look drastically different
from
their
What cavewoman or caveman ever got the idea of "domesticating" a plant, and how was it accomplished?
Plant domestication may be defined as growing a plant and thereby,
wild ancestors.
consciously or unconsciously, causing
ancestor in ways making
it
more
it
to change genetically
useful to
i
i
4
from
its
human consumers. Crop
wild
devel-
HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND
opment
is
I
I
5
today a conscious, highly specialized effort carried out by pro-
fessional scientists.
They already know about
the hundreds of existing
crops and set out to develop yet another one. To achieve that goal, they
plant
many
different seeds or roots, select the best
seeds, apply
true,
knowledge of genetics to develop good
and perhaps even use the
transfer specific useful genes.
latest
and another
their
varieties that breed
techniques of genetic engineering to
At the Davis campus of the University of
California, an entire department (the
to apples
progeny and plant
Department of Pomology)
is
devoted
Department of Viticulture and Enology) to
(the
grapes and wine.
But plant domestication goes back over 10,000 years. Early farmers
The
surely didn't use molecular genetic techniques to arrive at their results.
first
farmers didn't even have any existing crop as a model to inspire them
to develop
new
ones.
Hence they couldn't have known
were doing, they would enjoy a tasty
How,
ple,
that,
whatever they
treat as a result.
then, did early farmers domesticate plants unwittingly? For
how
did they turn poisonous almonds into safe ones without
what they were doing? What changes did they
plants, besides rendering
some of them bigger or
actually
make
exam-
knowing
in
wild
poisonous? Even for
less
valuable crops, the times of domestication vary greatly: for instance, peas
were domesticated by 8000
until the
B.C., olives
around 4000
Middle Ages, and pecans not
until
B.C., strawberries
Many
1846.
not
valuable wild
plants yielding food prized by millions of people, such as oaks sought for
many parts of the world, remain untamed even
What made some plants so much easier or more inviting to domesti-
their edible acorns in
today.
cate than others?
oak
Why
did olive trees yield to Stone
trees continue to defeat
Let's begin by looking
As
far as plants are
cies that
Like
Age farmers, whereas
our brightest agronomists?
at domestication
from the
plant's point of view.
concerned, we're just one of thousands of animal spe-
unconsciously "domesticate" plants.
all
animal species (including humans), plants must spread their
offspring to areas where they can thrive
Young animals
and pass on
their parents' genes.
disperse by walking or flying, but plants don't have that
option, so they must
somehow
seeds adapted for being carried
hitchhike.
While some plant species have
by the wind or for floating on water, many
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
I
others trick an animal into carrying their seeds, by wrapping the seed in a
and advertising the
tasty fruit
fruit's
ripeness by
hungry animal plucks and swallows the
in this
It
manner be
may come
who
flies off,
parent
The
and then
tree.
Seeds
carried for thousands of miles.
are not too squeamish can
The
themselves.
its
can
as a surprise to learn that plant seeds
your gut and nonetheless germinate out of your
readers
color or smell.
its
walks or
out or defecates the seed somewhere far from
spits
can
fruit,
seeds of
many
feces.
make
resist digestion
by
But any adventurous
the test
and prove
it
for
wild plant species actually must pass
through an animal's gut before they can germinate. For instance, one Afri-
can melon species
is
so well adapted to being eaten by a hyena-like animal
called the aardvark that
sites
most melons of that species grow on the
latrine
of aardvarks.
As an example of how would-be plant hitchhikers
sider wild strawberries.
When
strawberry seeds are
ready to be planted, the surrounding
attract animals, con-
still
the seeds finally mature, the berries turn red, sweet,
change
young and not
fruit is green, sour,
and hard.
yet
When
and tender. The
in the berries' color serves as a signal attracting birds like thrushes
to pluck the berries
and
fly off,
eventually to spit out or defecate the seeds.
Naturally, strawberry plants didn't set out with a conscious intent of
when, and only when,
attracting birds
their seeds
were ready to be
dis-
persed. Neither did thrushes set out with the intent of domesticating strawberries. Instead,
greener and
strawberry plants evolved through natural selection. The
more sour
young strawberry, the fewer the
the
birds that
destroyed the seeds by eating berries before the seeds were ready; the
sweeter and redder the final strawberry, the
dispersed
its
more numerous
the birds that
ripe seeds.
Countless other plants have fruits adapted to being eaten and dispersed
by particular species of animals. Just as strawberries are adapted to birds,
so acorns are adapted to squirrels,
ants.
That
fulfills
mangos
genetic modification of an ancestral plant in
to consumers. But
no one would
fulfill
ways
make
it
more
same way, the
and disperse
grow
early unconscious stages of crop evolution
from wild plants consisted of plants evolving
to eat
useful
and bats and other animal consumers
the other part of the definition: they don't consciously
plants. In the
humans
that
seriously describe this evolutionary pro-
cess as domestication, because birds
don't
and some sedges to
to bats,
part of our definition of plant domestication, as the
their fruit
in
ways
that attracted
without yet intentionally growing
HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND
them.
Human
ground of the
latrines, like those of
first
aardvarks,
I
7
I
may have been
a testing
unconscious crop breeders.
Latrines are merely one
many places where we accidentally
sow the seeds of wild plants that we eat. When we gather edible wild
plants and bring them home, some spill en route or at our houses. Some
fruit rots
while
still
of the
containing perfectly good seeds, and gets thrown out
uneaten into the garbage. As parts of the
fruit that
we
actually take into
our mouths, strawberry seeds are tiny and inevitably swallowed and defecated, but other seeds are large
enough to be spat
and garbage dumps joined our
latrines to
out. Thus, our spittoons
form the
first
agricultural
research laboratories.
At whichever such "lab" the seeds ended up, they tended to come from
only certain individuals of edible plants
to eat for one reason or another.
you
that
—namely, those that we preferred
From your
berry-picking days, you
select particular berries or berry bushes. Eventually,
farmers began to
sow
seeds deliberately, they
would
know
when the first
sow those
inevitably
from the plants they had chosen to gather, even though they
didn't under-
stand the genetic principle that big berries have seeds likely to
grow
into
bushes yielding more big berries.
So,
when you wade
humid
into a thorny thicket
you don't do
day,
it
for just
amid
the mosquitoes
any strawberry bush. Even
on
if
a hot,
uncon-
sciously,
you decide which bush looks most promising, and whether
worth
at
it
One
all.
What
it's
are your unconscious criteria?
criterion, of course,
is size.
You
prefer large berries, because
it's
not worth your while to get sunburned and mosquito bitten for some lousy
little
berries.
have
much
That provides part of the explanation why many crop plants
bigger fruits than their wild ancestors do.
to us that supermarket strawberries
It's
especially familiar
and blueberries are gigantic compared
with wild ones; those differences arose only in recent centuries.
Such
go back to the very beginnings of
size differences in other plants
agriculture,
when
cultivated peas evolved through
10 times heavier than wild peas. The
human
selection to be
wild peas had been collected
little
by hunter-gatherers for thousands of years,
just as
we
collect little wild
blueberries today, before the preferential harvesting and planting of the
most appealing
largest wild peas
—that
is,
what we
call
farming
automatically to contribute to increases in average pea size
— began
from genera-
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
I
tion to generation. Similarly, supermarket apples are typically
around
three inches in diameter, wild apples only one inch. The oldest corn cobs
are barely
more than
half an inch long, but
Mexican Indian farmers of
1500 already had developed six-inch cobs, and some modern cobs are
a.d.
one and a half
feet long.
Another obvious difference between seeds that we grow and many of
their wild ancestors
is
in bitterness.
Many
wild seeds evolved to be
bad-tasting, or actually poisonous, in order to deter animals
them. Thus, natural selection acts oppositely on seeds and on
whose
from eating
fruits.
Plants
by animals, but the seed
within the fruit has to be bad-tasting. Otherwise, the animal would
itself
also
fruits are tasty get their seeds dispersed
bitter,
chew up
the seed,
Almonds provide
and
it
couldn't sprout.
example of
a striking
bitter seeds
and
their
change
under domestication. Most wild almond seeds contain an intensely
chemical called amygdalin, which
(as
down
A
to yield the poison cyanide.
was already mentioned) breaks
snack of wild almonds can
person foolish enough to ignore the warning of the bitter
first
bitter
kill
a
taste. Since the
stage in unconscious domestication involves gathering seeds to eat,
how on
earth did domestication of wild almonds ever reach that
first
stage?
The explanation
is
tion in a single gene that prevents
almond
trees
have a muta-
them from synthesizing the
bitter-tasting
that occasional individual
amygdalin. Such trees die out in the wild without leaving any progeny,
because birds discover and eat
all their
seeds.
But curious or hungry
chil-
dren of early farmers, nibbling wild plants around them, would eventually
have sampled and noticed those nonbitter almond
European peasants today
ual
oak
trees
almond seeds
still
whose acorns
trees. (In the
same way,
recognize and appreciate occasional individ-
are sweet rather than bitter.)
at first unintentionally in their
garbage heaps and
Those nonbitter
would have
are the only ones that ancient farmers
planted,
later intentionally in
their orchards.
Already by 8000 B.C. wild almonds show up in excavated archaeological sites in Greece.
By 3000
the eastern Mediterranean.
around 1325
to nourish
plants,
B.C.,
him
B.C. they
When
were being domesticated
the Egyptian king
almonds were one of the foods
in the afterlife.
in lands of
Tutankhamen
left in his
died,
famous tomb
Lima beans, watermelons, potatoes,
egg-
and cabbages are among the many other familiar crops whose wild
ancestors were bitter or poisonous, and of which occasional sweet individ-
HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND
uals
must have sprouted around the
While
and
size
tastiness are the
I
9
I
latrines of ancient hikers.
most obvious
by which human
criteria
hunter-gatherers select wild plants, other criteria include fleshy or seedless
fruits, oily seeds,
and long
fibers.
Wild squashes and pumpkins have
little
or no fruit around their seeds, but the preferences of early farmers selected
and pumpkins consisting of
for squashes
vated bananas were selected long ago to be
inspiring
grapes,
modern
and watermelons
how human
of a wild
fruit,
Among
world were
all flesh
to
scientists
flesh
than seeds. Culti-
and no
seed, thereby
develop seedless oranges,
as well. Seedlessness provides a
good example of
selection can completely reverse the original evolved function
which
In ancient times
seeds.
agricultural
more
far
in nature serves as a vehicle for dispersing seeds.
many
plants were similarly selected for oily fruits or
the earliest fruit trees domesticated in the Mediterranean
olives, cultivated since
around 4000
Crop
B.C. for their oil.
olives are not only bigger but also oilier than wild ones. Ancient farmers
selected sesame, mustard, poppies,
modern plant
scientists
and
flax as well for oily seeds, while
have done the same for sunflower, safflower, and
cotton.
Before that recent development of cotton for
selected for
hairs
its fibers,
on the cotton
used to weave
seeds,
Old World independently
In flax
and
textiles.
come
long, straight stems.
food, flax
is
oil,
it
fibers
early farmers of both the
was of course
(termed
lint)
are
Americas and the
selected different species of cotton for long
and hemp, two other plants grown
uity, the fibers
The
lint.
to supply the textiles of antiq-
instead from the stem,
and plants were
selected for
While we think of most crops as being grown for
one of our oldest crops (domesticated by around 7000
furnished linen, which remained the chief textile of Europe until
it
B.C.). It
became
supplanted by cotton and synthetics after the Industrial Revolution.
5o
far, all the changes that
I've described in the evolution of
wild
plants into crops involve characters that early farmers could actually
notice
—such
length.
as fruit size, bitterness, fleshiness,
and
oiliness,
and
By harvesting those individual wild plants possessing these
fiber
desir-
able qualities to an exceptional degree, ancient peoples unconsciously dis-
persed the plants and set them on the road to domestication.
In addition, though, there were at least four other major types of change
that did not involve berry pickers
making
visible choices. In these cases the
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 O
berry pickers caused changes either by harvesting available plants while
other planrs remained unavailable for invisible reasons, or by changing the
selective conditions acting
The
seeds.
Many
plants have specialized
thereby prevent
mechanisms that
humans from gathering them
become
Only mutant
the progenitors of crops.
example involves peas, whose seeds
clear
scatter seeds (and
efficiently).
mechanisms would have been harvested and would
seeds lacking those
A
plants.
such change affected wild mechanisms for the dispersal of
first
thus have
on
we
(the peas
enclosed in a pod. Wild peas have to get out of the pod
eat)
come
they are to
if
germinate. To achieve that result, pea plants evolved a gene that makes the
pod explode, shooting out
the peas onto the ground. Pods of occasional
mutant peas don't explode. In the wild the mutant peas would
entombed
in their
would pass on
humans
pod on
their parent plants,
and only the popping pods
their genes. But, conversely, the only
to harvest
would be
the
nonpopping ones
once humans began bringing wild peas
home
selection for that single-gene mutant. Similar
selected in lentils, flax,
die
left
pods available to
on the
to eat, there
plant. Thus,
was immediate
nonpopping mutants were
and poppies.
Instead of being enclosed in a poppable pod, wild wheat and barley
seeds
grow
at the top of a stalk that
seeds to the ground
spontaneously shatters, dropping the
where they can germinate.
A
single-gene mutation
prevents the stalks from shattering. In the wild that mutation
lethal to the plant, since the seeds
would remain suspended
would be
in the air,
unable to germinate and take root. But those mutant seeds would have
been the ones waiting conveniently on the stalk to be harvested and
home by humans. When humans then planted those harvested
any mutant seeds among the progeny again became available to the farmers to harvest and sow, while normal seeds among the
progeny fell to the ground and became unavailable. Thus, human farmers
brought
mutant
seeds,
reversed the direction of natural selection by 180 degrees: the formerly
successful gene suddenly
cessful.
tering
became
lethal,
and the
lethal
Over 10,000 years ago, that unconscious
wheat and barley
"improvement"
in
stalks
mutant became suc-
selection for nonshat-
was apparently the
first
major human
any plant. That change marked the beginning of
agri-
culture in the Fertile Crescent.
The second type of change was even
annual plants growing
in
less visible to
ancient hikers. For
an area with a very unpredictable climate,
it
HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND
could be lethal
no seeds
1
and simultaneously. Were
the seeds sprouted quickly
if all
that to happen, the seedlings might
frost, leaving
12
be killed by a single drought or
all
to propagate the species.
Hence many annual
plants
have evolved to hedge their bets by means of germination inhibitors, which
make
seeds initially
dormant and spread out
years. In that way, even
A common
result
most seedlings are
if
weather, some seeds will be
their
left
germination over several
killed
by a bout of bad
to germinate later.
bet-hedging adaptation by which wild plants achieve that
to enclose their seeds in a thick coat or armor.
is
The many wild
plants with such adaptations include wheat, barley, peas, flax,
flowers.
While such late-sprouting seeds
minate
in
the wild, consider
still
have the opportunity to ger-
what must have happened
developed. Early farmers would have discovered by
they could obtain higher yields by
sowing
seeds.
into plants
many
When
tilling
and sun-
trial
farming
as
and error that
and watering the
soil
and then
that happened, seeds that immediately sprouted
whose seeds were harvested and planted
grew
in the next year.
But
of the wild seeds did not immediately sprout, and they yielded no
harvest.
among
Occasional mutant individuals
wild plants lacked thick seed
coats or other inhibitors of germination. All such mutants promptly
sprouted and yielded harvested mutant seeds. Early farmers wouldn't have
noticed the difference, in the
way
that they did notice
vest big berries. But the cycle of
in seed dispersal, these
wheat, barley, peas, and
selectively har-
sow / grow / harvest / sow would have
and unconsciously
selected immediately
and
for the mutants. Like the changes
changes in germination inhibition characterize
many other crops compared with their wild
ances-
tors.
The remaining major type of change
plant reproduction.
sional
A
invisible to early farmers involved
general problem in crop development
mutant plant individuals are more useful to humans
because of bigger or
less bitter seeds)
would immediately be
would
it
that occa-
example,
than are normal individuals.
desirable mutants proceeded to interbreed with
tion
is
(for
diluted or lost.
normal
If
plants, the
those
muta-
Under what circumstances
remain preserved for early farmers?
For plants that reproduce themselves, the mutant would automatically
be preserved. That's true of plants that reproduce vegetatively (from a
tuber or root of the parent plant), or that are hermaphrodites capable of
fertilizing themselves.
But the vast majority of wild plants don't reproduce
12
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2
that way. They're either hermaphrodites incapable of fertilizing themselves
and forced to interbreed with other hermaphrodite individuals (my male
my
part fertilizes your female part, your male part fertilizes
female part),
or else they occur as separate male and female individuals, like
normal
all
mammals. The former plants are termed self-incompatible hermaphrodites; the latter,
who would
dioecious species. Both were bad news for ancient farmers,
thereby have promptly lost any favorable mutants without
understanding why.
The
mutations affect the reproductive system
developed
fruit
and became able
—a process exemplified by many
and
cherries.
in
our
and pineapples. Some mutant hermaph-
rodites lost their self-incompatibility
apples, apricots,
itself.
without even having to be pollinated, resulting
seedless bananas, grapes, oranges,
selves
Numerous plant
Some mutant individuals
solution involved another type of invisible change.
fruit trees
to fertilize them-
such as plums, peaches,
Some mutant grapes
that normally
would
have had separate male and female individuals also became
self-fertilizing
who
didn't under-
hermaphrodites. By
all
these means, ancient farmers,
stand plant reproductive biology,
true
still
ended up with useful crops that bred
and were worth replanting, instead of
whose worthless progeny were consigned
Thus, farmers selected from
among
initially
promising mutants
to oblivion.
individual plants
on the
basis not
only of perceptible qualities like size and taste, but also of invisible features
like seed dispersal
biology.
As
mechanisms, germination inhibition, and reproductive
a result, different plants
became
even opposite features. Some plants
much
(like
selected for quite different or
sunflowers) were selected for
bigger seeds, while others (like bananas) were selected for tiny or
even nonexistent seeds. Lettuce was selected for luxuriant leaves at the
expense of seeds or
fruit;
wheat and sunflowers,
for seeds at the expense
of leaves; and squash, for fruit at the expense of leaves. Especially instructive are cases in
which a
for different purposes
crops. Beets,
modern
single wild plant species
and thereby gave
grown already
in
was variously
selected
rise to quite different-looking
Babylonian times for their leaves
(like the
beet varieties called chards), were then developed for their edible
roots and finally (in the 18th century) for their sugar content (sugar beets).
Ancestral cabbage plants, possibly
underwent even greater
for leaves
grown
(modern cabbage and
kale),
sprouts), or flower shoots (cauliflower
So
far,
originally for their oily seeds,
diversification as they
we have been
became variously
selected
stems (kohlrabi), buds (brussels
and
broccoli).
discussing transformations of wild plants into
HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND
I
2 3
crops as a result of selection by farmers, consciously or unconsciously.
That
farmers
is,
initially selected seeds
of certain wild plant individuals to
bring into their gardens and then chose certain progeny seeds each year to
grow
next year's garden. But
in the
much
of the transformation
was
also
effected as a result of plants' selecting themselves. Darwin's phrase "natural selection" refers to certain individuals
and / or reproducing more
same
of a species surviving better,
competing individuals of the
successfully, than
species under natural conditions. In effect, the natural processes of
differential survival
and reproduction do the
change, different types of individuals
and become "naturally
melanism
industrial
in British
commoner than
survive or reproduce better
selected," with the result that the population
undergoes evolutionary change.
tively
selecting. If the conditions
may now
A
classic
example
is
the development of
moths: darker moth individuals became
paler individuals as the environment
became
rela-
dirtier
during the 19th century, because dark moths resting on a dark, dirty tree
were more
likely
than contrasting pale moths to escape the attention of
predators.
Much
as the Industrial Revolution
changed the environment
A
farming changed the environment for plants.
weeded garden provides growing conditions very
Many
a dry, unfertilized hillside.
from such changes
resulted
for moths,
tilled, fertilized,
different
watered,
from those on
changes of plants under domestication
in conditions
and hence
in the favored types
when a farmer sows seeds densely in a garden,
there is intense competition among the seeds. Big seeds that can take
advantage of the good conditions to grow quickly will now be favored
of individuals. For example,
over small seeds that were previously favored on dry, unfertilized hillsides
where seeds were sparser and competition
less intense.
Such increased
among plants themselves made a major contribution to larger
and to many other changes developing during the transformation
competition
seed size
of wild plants into ancient crops.
What
accounts for
the great differences
among
plants in ease of
domestication, such that some species were domesticated long ago and
others not until the Middle Ages, whereas
proved immune to
all
our
activities?
We
It
in
Southwest Asia's
other wild plants have
can deduce
by examining the well-established sequence
oped
still
in
many
of the answers
which various crops
devel-
Fertile Crescent.
turns out that the earliest Fertile Crescent crops, such as the wheat
—
12
4
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
'
and barley and peas domesticated around 10,000 years ago, arose from
wild ancestors offering
many
advantages. They were already edible and
gave high yields in the wild. They were easily grown, merely by being sown
or planted.
They grew quickly and could be harvested within
of sowing, a big advantage for incipient farmers
between nomadic hunters and
stored, unlike
many later crops such
mostly self-pollinating: that
selves
settled villagers.
and pass on
their
own
is,
little
few months
They could be
as strawberries
and
lettuce.
readily
They were
the crop varieties could pollinate them-
desirable genes unchanged, instead of having
to hybridize with other varieties less useful to
ancestors required very
a
on the borderline
still
humans.
Finally, their wild
genetic change to be converted into crops
for instance, in wheat, just the mutations for nonshattering stalks
and
uni-
form quick germination.
A
next stage of crop development included the
and grapes. Compared with
granates,
drawback of not
ing,
cereals
and nut
first fruit
domesticated around 4000 B.C. They comprised olives,
figs,
dates,
trees,
pome-
and legumes, they had the
starting to yield food until at least three years after plant-
and not reaching
production until after as
full
much as
growing these crops was possible only for people already
to the settled village
life.
However, these
early fruit
a decade. Thus,
fully
and nut
committed
trees
were
still
the easiest such crops to cultivate. Unlike later tree domesticates, they
could be grown directly by being planted as cuttings or even seeds. Cuttings
have the advantage
oped a productive
tree,
remain identical to
A
that,
once ancient farmers had found or devel-
they could be sure that
all its
descendants would
it.
third stage involved fruit trees that
proved much harder to
cultivate,
including apples, pears, plums, and cherries. These trees cannot be
from
cuttings.
It's
also a waste of effort to
grow them from
grown
seed, since the
offspring even of an outstanding individual tree of those species are highly
variable
and mostly
grown by
yield worthless fruit. Instead, those trees
must be
the difficult technique of grafting, developed in China long after
the beginnings of agriculture.
you know the
Not only
is
grafting hard
principle, but the principle itself could
work even once
have been discovered
only through conscious experimentation. The invention of grafting was
hardly just a matter of some
nomad
relieving herself at a latrine
returning later to be pleasantly surprised by the resulting crop of fine
Many of these
late-stage fruit trees
posed a further problem
and
fruit.
in that their
wild progenitors were the opposite of self-pollinating. They had to be
HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND
2
I
5
cross-pollinated by another plant belonging to a genetically different variety of their species.
Hence
early farmers either
had
mutant
to find
trees not
requiring cross-pollination, or had consciously to plant genetically different varieties or else male and female individuals nearby in the
same
orchard. All those problems delayed the domestication of apples, pears,
plums, and cherries until around classical times. At about the same time,
though, another group of late domesticates arose with
as wild plants that established themselves initially as
Crops
intentionally cultivated crops.
and
oats, turnips
Although
starting out as
and radishes, beets and
the detailed
leeks,
sequence that
and
much
weeds
less effort,
in fields of
weeds included rye
lettuce.
I've just described applies to
the Fertile Crescent, partly similar sequences also appeared elsewhere in
the world. In particular, the Fertile Crescent's
the class of crops termed cereals or grains
while Fertile Crescent peas and
lentils
wheat and barley exemplify
(members of the grass
family),
exemplify pulses (members of the
legume family, which includes beans). Cereal crops have the virtues of
being fast growing, high in carbohydrates, and yielding up to a ton of
edible food per hectare cultivated.
over half of
all
calories
As
a result, cereals today account for
consumed by humans and include
ern world's 12 leading crops (wheat, corn,
Many cereal
rice, barley,
crops are low in protein, but that deficit
which are often 25 percent protein (38 percent
Cereals and pulses together thus provide
anced
five
many
is
of the
mod-
and sorghum).
made up by
pulses,
in the case of soybeans).
of the ingredients of a bal-
diet.
As Table
7.1 (next page) summarizes, the domestication of local cereal
pulse combinations launched food production in
familiar examples are the combination of
lentils in
species in
many
areas.
/
The most
wheat and barley with peas and
the Fertile Crescent, the combination of corn with several bean
Mesoamerica, and the combination of
beans and other beans in China. Less well
rice
known
and
millets with soy-
are Africa's combination
of sorghum, African rice, and pearl millet with cowpeas and groundnuts,
and the Andes' combination of the noncereal grain quinoa with
bean
several
species.
Table 7.1 also shows that the Fertile Crescent's early domestication of
flax for fiber
was
paralleled elsewhere.
and agave variously furnished
fiber for
Hemp,
four cotton species, yucca,
rope and woven clothing
in
China,
I
Table
7.1.
2 6
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
Examples of Early Major Crop Types around the
Ancient World
Crop Type
Area
Cereals,
Pulses
Other Grasses
Fertile
Crescent
emmer wheat,
pea,
ein-
korn wheat, barley
China
foxtail millet,
Mesoamerica
corn
corn
lentil,
chickpea
broom-
soybean, adzuki
bean, mung bean
common bean, tep-
millet, rice
ary bean, scarlet
runner bean
Andes, Amazonia
lima bean,
quinoa, [corn]
common
bean,
peanut
West Africa and
sorghum, pearl
cowpea, groundnut
millet,
African rice
Sahel
hyacinth bean,
[wheat, barley, rice,
India
sorghum,
black gram,
millets]
green gram
Ethiopia
teff,
Eastern United States
maygrass,
finger millet,
[pea, lentil]
[wheat, barley]
barley,
little
knotweed,
goosefoot
New
Guinea
—
sugar cane
Mesoamerica, India, Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa, and South America,
supplemented
in several of those areas
by wool from domestic animals. Of
the centers of early food production, only the eastern United States
New
Guinea remained without a
and
fiber crop.
Alongside these parallels, there were also some major differences in
food production systems around the world.
much
of the
ture fields,
Old World came
One
is
that agriculture in
to involve broadcast seeding
and eventually plowing. That
is,
seeds were
and monocul-
sown by being
HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND
I
2 7
Crop Type
Melons
Roots,
Fiber
Tubers
flax
muskmelon
hemp
[muskmelon]
cotton (G. hirsutum),
jicama
squashes (C. pepo,
manioc, sweet
squashes (C. maxima,
etc.)
yucca, agave
cotton (G. barbadense)
etc.)
potato, potato,
oca
African yams
cotton G. herbaceum)
watermelon, bottle gourd
—
cotton (G. arboreum),
cucumber
flax
[flax]
squash
Jerusalem artichoke
(C.
pepo)
yams, taro
The
table gives
major crops, of
five
crop classes, from early agricultural
parts of the world. Square brackets enclose
names not enclosed
in brackets refer to local domesticates.
became important only
States,
names of crops
later,
and sweet potato
in
first
in the eastern
United
Guinea. Cottons are four species of the genus Gossypium,
each species being native to a particular part of the world; squashes are
genus Cucurbita. Note that cereals, pulses, and
areas, but that root
various
Omitted are crops that arrived or
such as bananas in Africa, corn and beans
New
sites in
domesticated elsewhere;
fiber
five species
of the
crops launched agriculture in most
and tuber crops and melons were of early importance
in
only some areas.
12
thrown
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
in handfuls, resulting in a
Once cows,
and other
horses,
were hitched to plows, and
whole
large
mammals were
were
fields
devoted to a single crop.
field
domesticated, they
by animal power. In the
tilled
New
World, however, no animal was ever domesticated that could be hitched
to a plow. Instead, fields
were always
tilled
by hand-held
sticks or hoes,
and seeds were planted individually by hand and not scattered as whole
handfuls.
Most
New World
fields
thus
came
to be
mixed gardens of many
crops planted together, rather than monoculture.
Another major difference among agricultural systems involved the main
sources of calories and carbohydrates. As
in
many
we have
seen, these
areas. In other areas, though, that role of cereals
were cereals
was taken over
or shared by roots and tubers, which were of negligible importance in the
ancient Fertile Crescent and China.
Manioc
and sweet
(alias cassava)
potato became staples in tropical South America, potato and oca in the
Andes, African yams in Africa, and Indo-Pacific yams and taro in South-
and
east Asia
also
New
Guinea. Tree crops, notably bananas and breadfruit,
furnished carbohydrate-rich staples in Southeast Asia and
New
Guinea.
Ihus, by roman
cultivated
times, almost
somewhere
mals too (Chapter
all
of today's leading crops were being
in the world. Just as
we
shall see for
domestic ani-
ancient hunter-gatherers were intimately familiar
9),
with local wild plants, and ancient farmers evidently discovered and
Of course, medieval
to cultivate strawberries and raspberries, and modern
still improving ancient crops and have added new minor
domesticated almost
monks
did begin
plant breeders are
crops, notably
of those worth domesticating.
all
some
berries (like blueberries, cranberries,
and
kiwifruit)
and nuts (macadamias, pecans, and cashews). But these few modern additions have remained of
like
wheat, corn, and
Still,
our
as food,
list
we
many wild plants that,
never succeeded in domesticating. Notable
oak
trees,
in California
whose acorns were
and the eastern United
nutritionally valuable, being rich in starch
most acorns do contain
and
despite their value
among
these
fail-
a staple food of Native
States as well as a fallback
food for European peasants in famine times of crop
edible wild foods,
staples
rice.
of triumphs lacks
ures of ours are
Americans
modest importance compared with ancient
oil.
failure.
Like
bitter tannins,
Acorns are
many
otherwise
but acorn lovers
HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND
way
learned to deal with tannins in the same
I
2 9
that they dealt with bitter
chemicals in almonds and other wild plants: either by grinding and leaching the acorns to
remove the tannins, or by harvesting acorns from the
occasional mutant individual oak tree low in tannins.
Why have we failed to domesticate such a prized food source as acorns?
Why did we take so long to domesticate strawberries and raspberries?
What
is
it
about those plants that kept
their domestication
beyond the
reach of ancient farmers capable of mastering such difficult techniques as
grafting?
It
turns out that oak trees have three strikes against them. First, their
slow growth would exhaust the patience of most farmers. Sown wheat
few months; a planted almond grows into a nut-
yields a crop within a
bearing tree in three or four years; but a planted acorn
may
not become
productive for a decade or more. Second, oak trees evolved to
and
of a size
taste suitable for squirrels,
digging up, and eating acorns.
a squirrel forgets to dig up.
which we've
Oaks grow from
With
all
make
nuts
seen burying,
the occasional acorn that
billions of squirrels
each spreading hun-
dreds of acorns every year to virtually any spot suitable for oak trees to
we humans didn't stand a chance of selecting oaks for the acorns
we wanted. Those same problems of slow growth and fast squirrels
probably also explain why beech and hickory trees, heavily exploited as
grow,
that
wild trees for their nuts by Europeans and Native Americans, respectively,
were also not domesticated.
Finally,
acorns
is
perhaps the most important difference between almonds and
that bitterness
is
controlled by a single dominant gene in almonds
but appears to be controlled by
many
genes in oaks.
If
ancient farmers
planted almonds or acorns from the occasional nonbitter mutant
tree, the
laws of genetics dictate that half of the nuts from the resulting tree growing
up would
still
also be nonbitter in the case of almonds, but almost
be bitter in the case of oaks. That alone would
any would-be acorn farmer
who had
kill
all
would
the enthusiasm of
defeated the squirrels and remained
patient.
As
for strawberries
and raspberries, we had similar trouble competing
with thrushes and other berry-loving
birds. Yes, the
Romans
did tend wild
strawberries in their gardens. But with billions of European thrushes defecating wild strawberry seeds in every possible place (including
dens), strawberries
remained the
the big berries that
humans wanted. Only with
little
berries that thrushes
Roman
gar-
wanted, not
the recent development of
130
protective nets
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
and greenhouses were we
finally able to defeat the thrushes,
and to redesign strawberries and raspberries according to our
own
stan-
dards.
We've thus
seen
that the difference between gigantic supermarket
strawberries and tiny wild ones
distinguishing cultivated plants
is
just
from
one example of the various features
their wild ancestors.
among
ences arose initially from natural variation
selves.
Some
of
it,
would have been
such as the variation in berry
Those
differ-
the wild plants them-
nut bitterness,
size or in
readily noticed by ancient farmers. Other variation, such
as that in seed dispersal
mechanisms or seed dormancy, would have gone
unrecognized by humans before the
modern botany. But whether
rise of
or not the selection of wild edible plants by ancient hikers relied on conscious or unconscious criteria, the resulting evolution of wild plants into
crops was at
first
an unconscious process.
It
followed inevitably from our
among wild plant individuals, and from competition among plant
selecting
individuals in gardens favoring individuals different
from those favored
in
the wild
That's
start
why Darwin,
in his great
book
On
the Origin of Species, didn't
with an account of natural selection. His
through
chapter
is
instead a
our domesticated plants and animals arose
artificial selection
by humans. Rather than discussing the Galapa-
gos Island birds that
cussing
first
how
lengthy account of
we
usually associate with him,
—how farmers develop
Darwin began by
varieties of gooseberries!
seen great surprise expressed in horticultural
works
He
at the
dis-
wrote, "I have
wonderful
skill
of gardeners, in having produced such splendid results from such poor
materials; but the art has been simple,
and
as far as the final result
cerned, has been followed almost unconsciously.
cultivating the
better variety
best-known
variety,
sowing
its
chanced to appear, selecting
principles of crop
development by
It
seeds, and,
it,
is
con-
has consisted in always
when
a slightly
and so onwards." Those
artificial selection still
serve as our
understandable model of the origin of species by natural selection.
most
CHAPTER
8
Apples or Indians
WE
HAVE JUST SEEN HOW PEOPLES OF SOME REGIONS
began to cultivate wild plant
unforeseen consequences for their
history. Let us
arise
now
fertile
and highly
with momentous
their descendants' place in
Why
did agriculture never
suitable areas, such as Cali-
Europe, temperate Australia, and subequatorial Africa? Why,
among the areas where agriculture did
much earlier in some than in others?
Two
and
return to our questions:
independently in some
fornia,
species, a step
lifestyle
arise independently, did
it
develop
contrasting explanations suggest themselves: problems with the
local people, or
problems with the locally available wild plants.
On
the
one hand, perhaps almost any well-watered temperate or tropical area of
the globe offers
enough
species of wild plants suitable for domestication.
In that case, the explanation for agriculture's failure to develop in
those areas
would
lie
with cultural characteristics of their peoples.
other hand, perhaps at least
would have been
tion.
some humans
in
some of
On
the
any large area of the globe
receptive to the experimentation that led to domestica-
Only the lack of
suitable wild plants
might then explain why food
production did not evolve in some areas.
As we
shall see in the
domestication of big wild
next chapter, the corresponding problem for
mammals
i
3
proves easier to solve, because there
i
13
are
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2.
fewer species of them than of plants. The world holds only about
many
148 species of large wild mammalian
the large
Only
mammals
terrestrial herbivores or
omnivores,
that could be considered candidates for domestication.
mammal is suitable
a region's big mam-
modest number of factors determines whether a
a
for domestication.
mals and to
regions
was
test
It's
thus straightforward to review
whether the lack of
mammal
domestication in some
due to the unavailability of suitable wild species, rather than
to local peoples.
That approach would be much more
number
of the sheer
all
apply to plants because
—200,000 —of species of wild flowering
of our crops.
We
plants, the
on the land and that have furnished
plants that dominate vegetation
almost
difficult to
can't possibly
hope to examine
the wild
all
plant species of even a circumscribed area like California, and to assess
how many of them would have been
how to get around that problem.
When
one's
one hears
first
species
that there are so
many
on Earth, any area with a
shall
now
see
species of flowering plants,
reaction might be as follows: surely, with
had more than enough
we
domesticable. But
sufficiently
all
those wild plant
benign climate must have
species to provide plenty of candidates for crop
development.
But then
reflect that the vast
majority of wild plants are unsuitable for
obvious reasons: they are woody, they produce no edible
leaves
a
and roots are
also inedible.
Of the 200,000 wild
few thousand are eaten by humans, and
been more or
less
just a
fruit,
and
their
plant species, only
few hundred of these have
domesticated. Even of these several hundred crops, most
provide minor supplements to our diet and would not by themselves have
sufficed to support the rise of civilizations.
for over
A
mere dozen
species account
80 percent of the modern world's annual tonnage of
Those dozen blockbusters are the
all
crops.
cereals wheat, corn, rice, barley,
and
sorghum; the pulse soybean; the roots or tubers potato, manioc, and sweet
potato; the sugar sources sugarcane and sugar beet; and the fruit banana.
now account for more than half of the calories conworld's human populations. With so few major crops in the
Cereal crops alone
sumed by
the
world,
of
that
all
many
them domesticated thousands of years ago,
areas of the world
ing potential.
Our
had no wild native plants
failure to domesticate
it's
less surprising
at all of outstand-
even a single major
new food
13
APPLES OR INDIANS
plant in
modern times
explored virtually
suggests that ancient peoples really
useful wild plants
all
3
and domesticated
may have
all
the ones
worth domesticating.
Yet some of the world's failures to domesticate wild plants remain hard
to explain.
in
The most
one area but not
flagrant cases concern plants that
We
in another.
were domesticated
can thus be sure that
it
was indeed
and we have
possible to develop the wild plant into a useful crop,
why
that wild species
was not domesticated
A
typical puzzling
example comes from Africa. The important
sorghum was domesticated
It
to ask
in certain areas.
cereal
south of the Sahara.
in Africa's Sahel zone, just
also occurs as a wild plant as far south as southern Africa, yet neither
nor any other plant was cultivated in southern Africa
the
it
until the arrival of
whole crop package that Bantu farmers brought from Africa north of
the equator 2,000 years ago.
Why
sorghum
Africa not domesticate
did the native peoples of southern
for themselves?
the failure of people to domesticate flax in
its
wild
range in western Europe and North Africa, or einkorn wheat in
its
wild
Equally puzzling
is
range in the southern Balkans. Since these two plants were
eight crops of the Fertile Crescent, they
readily domesticated of
all
among
the
first
were presumably among the most
wild plants. They were adopted for cultivation
range outside the Fertile Crescent as soon as
in those areas of their wild
they arrived with the whole package of food production from the Fertile
Crescent.
Why,
then,
begun to grow them of
had peoples of those outlying areas not already
their
own
accord?
Similarly, the four earliest domesticated fruits of the Fertile Crescent all
had wild ranges stretching
they appear to have been
far
beyond the eastern Mediterranean, where
first
domesticated: the olive, grape, and
fig
occurred west to Italy and Spain and Northwest Africa, while the date
palm extended
dently
among
to all of
North Africa and Arabia. These four were
the easiest to domesticate of
outside the Fertile Crescent
fail
all
wild
fruits.
to domesticate them,
them only when they had already been domesticated
Why did peoples
and begin
in
evi-
to
grow
the eastern Medi-
terranean and arrived thence as crops?
Other striking examples involve wild species that were not domesticated in areas where food production never arose spontaneously, even
though those wild species had close
relatives
domesticated elsewhere. For
example, the olive Olea europea was domesticated
in the eastern
Mediter-
ranean. There are about 40 other species of olives in tropical and southern
13
Africa, southern Asia,
to Olea europea, but
many
and eastern Australia, some of them
none of them was ever domesticated.
and a wild grape
a wild apple species
there are
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
4
related wild apple
some of which have
in
species
closely related
Similarly, while
were domesticated
and grape
species in
in Eurasia,
North America,
modern times been hybridized with
the crops
derived from their wild Eurasian counterparts in order to improve those
crops.
Why,
useful apples
then, didn't Native Americans domesticate those apparently
and grapes themselves?
One can go on and on with such
this reasoning: plant
domestication
examples. But there
is
a fatal flaw in
not a matter of hunter-gatherers'
is
domesticating a single plant and otherwise carrying on unchanged with
nomadic
their
lifestyle.
would have evolved
settled
down and
Suppose that North American wild apples
into a terrific crop
if
really
only Indian hunter-gatherers had
nomadic hunter-gatherers would
cultivated them. But
way of life, settle in villages, and start
tending apple orchards unless many other domesticable wild plants and
animals were available to make a sedentary food-producing existence
not throw over their traditional
competitive with a hunting-gathering existence.
How,
in short,
do we
assess the potential of
North American
apples, did the
problem
an entire local
who
domestication? For those Native Americans
really
lie
flora for
failed to domesticate
with the Indians or with
the apples?
In order to
that
lie
answer
at opposite
As we have
we shall now compare three regions
among centers of independent domestication.
this question,
extremes
one of them, the
seen,
Fertile Crescent,
center of food production in the world,
the
and the
modern world's major crops and almost
animals.
The other two
regions,
New
site
of
the earliest
of origin of several of
its
major domesticated
Guinea and the eastern United
States, did domesticate local crops, but these
ety,
all
was perhaps
crops were very few in vari-
only one of them gained worldwide importance, and the resulting food
package
failed to
support extensive development of human technology and
political organization as in the Fertile Crescent. In the light of this
ison,
we
shall ask:
Did the
flora
and environment of the
have clear advantages over those of
New
Fertile
comparCrescent
Guinea and the eastern United
States?
\Jne of the
human history is the early importance of
known as the Fertile Crescent (because of the
central facts of
the part of Southwest Asia
APPLES OR INDIANS
crescent-like shape of
its
cities,
writing, empires,
civilization. All those
3
5
uplands on a map: see Figure
appears to have been the earliest
including
I
site for
a
whole
That area
string of developments,
and what we term
developments sprang,
8.1).
(for better or
worse)
from the dense human
in turn,
populations, stored food surpluses, and feeding of nonfarming specialists
made
tion
form of crop
possible by the rise of food production in the
and animal husbandry. Food production was the
first
cultiva-
of those major
innovations to appear in the Fertile Crescent. Hence any attempt to understand the origins of the modern world must
tion
why
come
such a potent head
is
by
and best understood part of the globe
far the
it
ancestor has been identified;
its
most
intensively studied
as regards the rise of agriculture.
For most crops domesticated in or near the
Fertile Crescent, the
wild plant
close relationship to the crop has been
proven by genetic and chromosomal studies;
its
and animals gave
start.
Fortunately, the Fertile Crescent
known;
to grips with the ques-
the Fertile Crescent's domesticated plants
its
wild geographic range
is
changes under domestication have been identified and are often
understood at the
level of single genes; those
changes can be observed
Figure 8.1. The Fertile Crescent, encompassing
before 7000
B.C.
sites
of food production
in
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
3
and the approximate place
successive layers of the archaeological record;
and time of domestication are known.
don't deny that other areas, nota-
I
had advantages as early
bly China, also
sites
of domestication, but those
advantages and the resulting development of crops can be specified in
much more detail for the Fertile Crescent.
One advantage of the Fertile Crescent is
that
within a zone of so-
it lies
by mild, wet winters
called Mediterranean climate, a climate characterized
and long, hot, dry summers. That climate
survive the long dry season
Many
of the rains.
pulses,
Fertile
and
selects for plant species able to
resume growth rapidly upon the return
to
Crescent plants, especially species of cereals and
have adapted in a way that renders them useful to humans: they are
annuals, meaning that the plant
Within
their
itself dries
mere one year of life,
up and
dies in the dry season.
annual plants inevitably remain small
herbs.
Many
seeds,
which remain dormant during the dry season and are then ready
when
sprout
making
But
of
the rains come.
inedible
many
them instead put much of
wood
their energy into
Annual plants therefore waste
producing big
little
energy on
or fibrous stems, like the body of trees and bushes.
of the big seeds, notably those of the annual cereals and pulses,
are edible by
humans. They constitute 6 of the modern world's 12 major
crops. In contrast,
you
if
live
near a forest and look out your window, the
plant species that you see will tend to be trees and shrubs, most of
body you cannot
Of
seeds.
to
course,
eat
and which put much
some
less
forest trees in areas of
whose
of their energy into edible
wet climate do produce big
edible seeds, but these seeds are not adapted to surviving a long dry season
and hence to long storage by humans.
A
second advantage of the
tors of
many
Fertile
Fertile Crescent crops
ductive, occurring in large stands
Crescent flora
that the wild ances-
whose value must have been obvious
hunter-gatherers. Experimental studies in
seeds
is
were already abundant and highly pro-
from such natural stands of wild
to
which botanists have collected
cereals,
much
as hunter-gatherers
must have been doing over 10,000 years ago, show that annual harvests
of up to nearly a ton of seeds per hectare can be obtained, yielding 50
kilocalories of food energy for only
collecting
were
ripe,
and storing them for use
some hunting-gathering peoples of
down
in
one kilocalorie of work expended. By
huge quantities of wild cereals
permanent
villages
in a short time
as food
through the
the Fertile Crescent
when
the seeds
rest of the year,
had already
settled
even before they began to cultivate plants.
Since Fertile Crescent cereals were so productive in the wild, few addi-
13
APPLES OR INDIANS
had
tional changes
made
to be
in
them under
cultivation.
preceding chapter, the principal changes
in the
7
—the
As we discussed
breakdown of
natural systems of seed dispersal and of germination inhibition
automatically and quickly as soon as
humans began
to cultivate the seeds
The wild ancestors of our wheat and barley crops look so
in fields.
the
—evolved
similar
to the crops themselves that the identity of the ancestor has never been in
doubt. Because of this ease of domestication, big-seeded annuals were the
first,
or
among
the
crops developed not only in the Fertile Crescent
first,
but also in China and the Sahel.
Contrast this quick evolution of wheat and barley with the story of
corn, the leading cereal crop of the
a wild plant
known
New World.
Corn's probable ancestor,
as teosinte, looks so different
flower structures that even
from corn
its
wheat,
from
it
it,
become
produced much
and
it
enclosed
a useful crop,
had
biology, to increase greatly
like
coverings of
many
its
less
by
productive in the wild than wild
seed than did the corn eventually developed
seeds in inedible hard coverings. For teosinte to
its
it
was
it
less
and
would not have
botanists for a long time. Teosinte's value as food
impressed hunter-gatherers:
in its seed
role as ancestor has been hotly debated
undergo drastic changes
to
its
in its reproductive
investment in seeds, and to lose those rock-
seeds. Archaeologists are
still
vigorously debating
how
centuries or millennia of crop development in the Americas were
required for ancient corn cobs to progress from a tiny size up to the size
of a
human thumb,
but
it
seems clear that several thousand more years
were then required for them to reach modern
the immediate virtues of
teosinte
of
may have been
sizes.
That contrast between
wheat and barley and the
difficulties
posed by
a significant factor in the differing developments
New World and Eurasian human societies.
A third advantage of the Fertile Crescent flora
percentage of hermaphroditic "selfers"
—that
is,
is
that
it
includes a high
plants that usually polli-
nate themselves but that are occasionally cross-pollinated. Recall that most
wild plants either are regularly cross-pollinated hermaphrodites or consist
of separate male and female individuals that inevitably depend on another
individual for pollination. Those facts of reproductive biology vexed early
farmers, because, as soon as they had located a productive mutant plant,
its
offspring
would cross-breed with other plant
lose their inherited advantage.
As
a result,
individuals
and thereby
most crops belong
to the small
percentage of wild plants that either are hermaphrodites usually pollinating themselves or else reproduce without sex by propagating vegetatively
—
138
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
example, by a root that genetically duplicates the parent plant). Thus,
(for
the high percentage of hermaphroditic selfers in the Fertile Crescent flora
aided early farmers, because
had
flora
a high percentage of the wild
to
humans.
were also convenient for early farmers
become
did
meant that
a reproductive biology convenient for
Selfers
which
it
in that they occasionally
cross-pollinated, thereby generating
select.
new
between individuals of the same
species, but also
to produce interspecific hybrids.
One such hybrid among
selfers,
between related species
Fertile
Crescent
bread wheat, became the most valuable crop in the modern world.
Of the
tile
among
varieties
That occasional cross-pollination occurred not only
first
Crescent,
eight significant crops to have been domesticated in the Ferall
einkorn wheat,
were
selfers.
Of
the three selfer cereals
emmer wheat, and
barley
—the wheats offered the addi-
tional advantage of a high protein content,
most important
cereal crops of eastern Asia
and corn, respectively
among them
8-14 percent. In contrast, the
and of the
New
World
—had a lower protein content that posed
—
rice
significant
nutritional problems.
Ihose were some
afforded the
first
of the advantages that the Fertile Crescent's flora
farmers:
it
included an unusually high percentage of wild
plants suitable for domestication.
zone of the
Fertile Crescent
However, the Mediterranean climate
extends westward through
much
of southern
Europe and northwestern Africa. There are also zones of similar Mediterranean climates
western
in four other parts of the
Mediterranean zones not only
8.2).
Yet
those
other
failed to rival the Fertile Crescent as early
of food production; they never gave rise to indigenous agriculture at
sites
all.
world: California, Chile, south-
and South Africa (Figure
Australia,
What advantage
did that particular Mediterranean zone of western
Eurasia enjoy?
turns out that
It
at least five
it,
and
especially
its
Fertile
Crescent portion, possessed
advantages over other Mediterranean zones.
First,
western
Eurasia has by far the world's largest zone of Mediterranean climate. As a
result,
in the
and
it
has a high diversity of wild plant and animal species, higher than
comparatively tiny Mediterranean zones of southwestern Australia
Chile. Second,
among Mediterranean
zones, western Eurasia's experi-
ences the greatest climatic variation from season to season and year to
year.
That variation favored the evolution, among the
flora, of
an espe-
13
APPLES OR INDIANS
*
7
&\
°
<S\^
^-^h
<^_
/$.
Mediterranean
r §*
A rY
California
9
W
***•
\a
r
J
Chile—-/
South
Southwest
Africa
Australia
v
d
two
fac-
Figure 8.2. The world's zones of Mediterranean climate.
daily high percentage of annual plants.
tors
—a high
diversity of species
The combination of
these
and a high percentage of annuals
that western Eurasia's Mediterranean zone
is
—means
the one with by far the high-
est diversity of annuals.
The
significance of that botanical wealth for
the geographer
Mark
humans
is
illustrated
Blunder's studies of wild grass distributions.
by
Among
the world's thousands of wild grass species, Blumler tabulated the 56 with
the largest seeds, the
at least
cream of nature's crop: the grass
species with seeds
10 times heavier than the median grass species
Virtually
all
of
them
(see
Table 8.1).
are native to Mediterranean zones or other seasonally
dry environments. Furthermore, they are overwhelmingly concentrated in
the Fertile Crescent or other parts of western Eurasia's Mediterranean
zone, which offered a huge selection to incipient farmers: about 32 of the
world's 56 prize wild grasses! Specifically, barley and
two
earliest
and 13th
important crops of the
in seed size
among
Fertile Crescent,
emmer wheat,
the
rank respectively 3rd
those top 56. In contrast, the Mediterranean
zone of Chile offered only two of those species, California and southern
Africa just one each, and southwestern Australia none at
alone goes a long
A
way toward
explaining the course of
all.
human
That
fact
history.
third advantage of the Fertile Crescent's Mediterranean zone
is
that
1
I40
Table
8.1
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
World Distribution of Large-Seeded Grass
Species
Number of Species
Area
West Asia, Europe, North Africa
33
32
Mediterranean zone
England
1
6
East Asia
4
Sub-Saharan Africa
Americas
1
4
North America
Mesoamerica
5
South America
2
Northern Australia
2
56
Total:
Table 12.1 of
Mark
Blumler's Ph.D. dissertation, "Seed Weight and Environment in Medi-
terranean-type Grasslands in California and Israel" (University of California, Berkeley,
1992), listed the world's 56 heaviest-seeded wild grass species (excluding bamboos) for which
data were available. Grain weight in those species ranged from 10 milligrams to over 40
milligrams, about 10 times greater than the median value for
Those 56
species
make up
less
than
1
all
of the world's grass species.
percent of the world's grass species. This table shows
that these prize grasses are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Mediterranean zone of west-
ern Eurasia.
it
provides a wide range of altitudes and topographies within a short dis-
tance. Its range of elevations,
Sea) to
mountains of 18,000
from the lowest spot on Earth
feet (near Teheran), ensures a
Dead
(the
corresponding
variety of environments, hence a high diversity of the wild plants serving
as potential ancestors of crops.
lowlands with
Those mountains are
rivers, flood plains,
culture. In contrast, the
and deserts
in
proximity to gentle
suitable for irrigation agri-
Mediterranean zones of southwestern Australia
and, to a lesser degree, of South Africa and western Europe offer a nar-
rower range of
altitudes, habitats,
The range of
and topographies.
altitudes in the Fertile Crescent
meant staggered harvest
seasons: plants at higher elevations produced seeds
plants at lower elevations.
As a
somewhat
result, hunter-gatherers
could
later
than
move up
a mountainside harvesting grain seeds as they matured, instead of being
overwhelmed by
all
a concentrated harvest season at a single altitude,
grains matured simultaneously.
When cultivation
began,
it
was
where
a simple
APPLES OR INDIANS
matter for the
hillsides
in the
damp
I
farmers to take the seeds of wild cereals growing on
and dependent on unpredictable
rains,
and
to plant those seeds
where they would grow
valley bottoms,
dependent on
The
first
4
I
reliably
and be
less
rain.
over small distances contrib-
Fertile Crescent's biological diversity
uted to a fourth advantage
—
its
wealth in ancestors not only of valuable
crops but also of domesticated big mammals. As
few or no wild
mammal
we
shall see, there
were
species suitable for domestication in the other
Mediterranean zones of California, Chile, southwestern Australia, and
mammals
South Africa. In contrast, four species of big
pig,
and cow
—were domesticated very early
dog anywhere
bly earlier than any other animal except the
world. Those species remain today four of the world's
domesticated
monest
mammals
(Chapter
9).
—the goat, sheep,
in the Fertile Crescent, possi-
five
But their wild ancestors were com-
in slightly different parts of the Fertile Crescent,
that the four species
else in the
most important
were domesticated
with the result
in different places: sheep possibly
in the central part, goats either in the eastern part at higher elevations (the
Zagros Mountains of Iran) or
in the north-central part,
in the
and cows
southwestern part (the Levant), pigs
in the
western part, including Anatolia.
Nevertheless, even though the areas of abundance of these four wild progenitors thus differed,
all
were readily transferred
four lived in sufficiently close proximity that they
after domestication
from one part of the
Crescent to another, and the whole region ended up with
Agriculture
was launched
in the Fertile Crescent
all
Fertile
four species.
by the early domestica-
tion of eight crops, termed "founder crops" (because they founded agriculture in the region
the cereals
and possibly
Those eight founders were
in the world).
emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and
barley; the pulses lentil, pea,
chickpea, and bitter vetch; and the fiber crop flax.
two, flax and barley, range in the wild at
Crescent and Anatolia.
Two
all
Of
of the founders had very small ranges in the
wild, chickpea being confined to southeastern Turkey
to the Fertile Crescent
these eight, only
widely outside the Fertile
itself.
and emmer wheat
Thus, agriculture could arise in the
Fertile
Crescent from domestication of locally available wild plants, without having to wait for the arrival of crops derived
elsewhere. Conversely,
two of
from wild plants domesticated
the eight founder crops could not have been
domesticated anywhere in the world except in the Fertile Crescent, since
they did not occur wild elsewhere.
Thanks
to this availability of suitable wild
mammals and
plants, early
peoples of the Fertile Crescent could quickly assemble a potent and bal-
14
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2.
anced biological package for intensive food production. That package
comprised three
cereals, as the
main carbohydrate
sources; four pulses,
with 20-25 percent protein, and four domestic animals, as the main pro-
supplemented by the generous protein content of wheat; and
tein sources,
and
flax as a source of fiber
percent
oil).
oil
(termed linseed
oil:
about 40
flax seeds are
Eventually, thousands of years after the beginnings of animal
domestication and food production, the animals also began to be used for
milk, wool, plowing, and transport. Thus, the crops and animals of the
Fertile Crescent's first
farmers came to meet humanity's basic economic
needs: carbohydrate, protein,
fat,
clothing, traction,
and transport.
A final advantage of early food production in the Fertile Crescent is that
it
may have
that in
faced less competition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle than
some other
areas, including the western Mediterranean.
Southwest
Asia has few large rivers and only a short coastline, providing relatively
meager aquatic resources
fish).
One
(in
of the important
originally lived in
the
form of
mammal
river
species
and coastal
fish
and
hunted for meat, the
shell-
gazelle,
huge herds but was overexploited by the growing human
population and reduced to low numbers. Thus, the food production package quickly became superior to the hunter-gatherer package. Sedentary
based on cereals were already in existence before the
villages
rise
of food
production and predisposed those hunter-gatherers to agriculture and
herding. In the Fertile Crescent the transition from hunting-gathering to
food production took place relatively
fast: as late as
had no crops and domestic animals and were
6000
foods, but by
B.C.
some
societies
9000
entirely
B.C. people
still
dependent on wild
were almost completely dependent
on crops and domestic animals.
The
situation in
Mesoamerica contrasts
strongly: that area provided
only two domesticable animals (the turkey and the dog), whose meat yield
was
far
lower than that of cows, sheep, goats, and pigs; and corn, Meso-
america's staple grain, was, as I've already explained, difficult to domesticate
and perhaps slow to develop. As a
begun
in
Mesoamerica
uncertain); those
still
result,
around 3500
domestication
B.C. (the date
may
settled villages did
not have
remains very
developments were undertaken by people
nomadic hunter-gatherers; and
around 1500
who were
not arise there until
B.C.
In all this
rise
first
until
discussion of the Fertile Crescent's advantages for the early
of food production,
we have not had
to invoke
any supposed advan-
APPLES OR INDIANS
4
I
tages of Fertile Crescent peoples themselves. Indeed,
any supposed
one's even seriously suggesting
3
I
am unaware
of any-
distinctive biological features
of the region's peoples that might have contributed to the potency of
we have
food production package. Instead,
many
seen that the
its
distinctive
features of the Fertile Crescent's climate, environment, wild plants,
and
animals together provide a convincing explanation.
Since the food production packages arising indigenously in
and
United States were considerably
in the eastern
explanation there
lie
less
New Guinea
potent, might the
with the peoples of those areas? Before turning to
we must
those regions, however,
consider two related questions arising in
regard to any area of the world where food production never developed
independently or else resulted in a
less
gatherers and incipient farmers really
and
species
their uses, or
if
they do
do they exploit that knowledge
do
first
ogy, studies peoples'
all
know
First,
do hunter-
locally available wild
their local plants
to domesticate the
cultural factors keep
As regards the
well
might they have overlooked potential ancestors
of valuable crops? Second,
species, or
potent package.
know
most
and animals,
useful available
them from doing so?
question, an entire field of science, termed ethnobiol-
knowledge of the wild plants and animals
in their
environment. Such studies have concentrated especially on the world's few
surviving hunting-gathering peoples, and
on farming peoples who
still
depend heavily on wild foods and natural products. The studies generally
show
that such peoples are walking encyclopedias of natural history, with
individual
names
language) for as
(in their local
more plant and animal
species,
cies' biological characteristics, distribution,
become
increasingly dependent
traditional
arrives at
grass
many
thousand or
and potential
uses.
knowledge gradually
loses
its
value and becomes
spe-
As people
on domesticated plants and animals,
modern supermarket shoppers who could not
from
as a
and with detailed knowledge of those
lost, until
this
one
distinguish a wild
a wild pulse.
Here's a typical example. For the last 33 years, while conducting biological
exploration in
constantly in the
New
company
animals extensively.
I
were starving
Guinea,
One
in the jungle
to our supply base, a Fore
full
last!
of
of
day,
I
New
have been spending
Guineans
But then
I
still
field
time there
use wild plants and
of the Fore tribe and
because another tribe was blocking our return
man
returned to
mushrooms he had found, and
poisonous?
who
when my companions
my
camp with
a large rucksack
started to roast them. Dinner at
had an unsettling thought: what
if
the
mushrooms were
14
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
4
my Fore companions that I had read about some
patiently explained to
mushrooms' being poisonous, that
mushroom
had heard of even expert American
I
collectors' dying because of the difficulty of distinguishing safe
from dangerous mushrooms, and that although we were
wasn't worth the
me
risk.
up and
to shut
had been quizzing them
how
birds,
could
I
my companions
At that point
listen
all
hungry,
got angry and told
while they explained some things to me. After
for years
about names of hundreds of
them by assuming they
insult
didn't have
mushrooms? Only Americans could be so stupid
different
29 types of edible mushroom
species,
trees,
and
I
it
was
island, they regularly talk
Guineans
bring
whom
them back
ences with
ing
delicious
have taken
New
and
me
it.
This one, the
to their
home
villages to try planting
New
them.
some food production or
first
still
My
experi-
by those of ethnobiologists study-
However,
when everyone on Earth
The
tdnti,
to other parts of their
all
such peoples either
are the partly acculturated last
societies.
Knowledge of
wild species was presumably even more detailed before the
for food.
me about
about local plants and animals with other
remnants of the world's former hunter-gatherer
production,
for
they meet, and they gather potentially useful plants and
peoples elsewhere.
practice at least
names
perfectly edible.
Guineans with
New Guineans are paralleled
traditional
and
each species' name in the Fore lan-
guage, and where in the forest one should look for
Whenever
I
trees
as to confuse
poisonous mushrooms with safe ones. They went on to lecture
grew on
just
it
depended
entirely
rise
of food
on wild
species
farmers were heirs to that knowledge, accumulated
through tens of thousands of years of nature observation by biologically
modern humans
living in intimate
dependence on the natural world.
It
therefore seems extremely unlikely that wild species of potential value
would have escaped the notice of the
The
other, related question
is
first
farmers.
whether ancient hunter-gatherers and
farmers similarly put their ethnobiological knowledge to good use in
selecting wild plants to gather
from an archaeological
called Tell
there
still
may
site at
and eventually to
cultivate.
One
test
comes
the edge of the Euphrates Valley in Syria,
Abu Hureyra. Between 10,000 and 9000
B.C. the
people living
already have been residing year-round in villages, but they were
hunter-gatherers; crop cultivation began only in the succeeding millen-
nium. The archaeologists Gordon Hillman, Susan Colledge, and David
Harris retrieved large quantities of charred plant remains from the
site,
probably representing discarded garbage of wild plants gathered elsewhere
APPLES OR INDIANS
and brought to the
by
site
its
residents.
The
I
4
5
analyzed over 700
scientists
samples, each containing an average of over 500 identifiable seeds belonging to over 70 plant species.
It
turned out that the villagers were collecting
a prodigious variety (157 species!) of plants identified by their charred
seeds, not to
mention other plants that cannot
Were those naive
found, bringing
it
now
be identified.
villagers collecting every type of seed plant that they
home, poisoning themselves on most of the
species,
nourishing themselves from only a few species? No, they were not so
While 157 species sounds
growing wild
157
like indiscriminate collecting,
selected species fall into three categories.
members
and immediately
edible.
A few
of
them have seeds
and
seeds belong to species tradition-
used as sources of dyes or medicine. The
sented
Many
edible. Others, such as pulses
of the mustard family, have toxic seeds, but the toxins are easily
removed, leaving the seeds
ally
species
were absent from the charred remains. The
in the vicinity
that are nonpoisonous
many more
and
silly.
among
the
157
selected are ones that
harmful to people, including
all
of the
many
wild species not repre-
would have been
most toxic weed
useless or
species in the envi-
ronment.
Thus, the hunter-gatherers of
and endangering themselves by
Instead, they evidently
ern
knew
Tell
Abu Hureyra were
not wasting time
collecting wild plants indiscriminately.
the local wild plants as intimately as
do mod-
New Guineans, and they used that knowledge to select and bring home
only the most useful available seed plants. But those gathered seeds would
have constituted the material for the unconscious
first
steps of plant
domestication.
My other example
of
how
knowledge
to
good
biological
ancient peoples apparently used their ethnoeffect
comes from the Jordan Valley
in the
ninth millennium B.C., the period of the earliest crop cultivation there.
valley's first
still
among
The
emmer wheat, which are
today. But, as at Tell Abu
domesticated cereals were barley and
the world's
most productive crops
Hureyra, hundreds of other seed-bearing wild plant species must have
grown
in the vicinity,
edible
and gathered before the
and a hundred or more of them would have been
rise
of plant domestication.
What was
about barley and emmer wheat that caused them to be the
first
Were those
who
know what
first
Jordan Valley farmers botanical ignoramuses
they were doing?
Or were
barley and
emmer wheat
it
crops?
didn't
actually
the best of the local wild cereals that they could have selected?
Two Israeli
scientists,
Ofer Bar-Yosef and Mordechai Kislev, tackled
this
146
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
"
question by examining the wild grass species
ley today.
growing wild
still
in the val-
Leaving aside species with small or unpalatable seeds, they
picked out 23 of the most palatable and largest-seeded wild grasses.
surprisingly, barley
But
it
those 23, barley and
Emmer wheat
criteria.
biggest. In the wild, barley
emmer wheat is
while
tage that
its
genetics
is
emmer wheat proved
one of the 4 most abundant of the 23
medium abundance.
of
and morphology permit
the preceding chapter.
Emmer
can be gathered more
cereals in that
their
and
its
seeds
some
species,
Barley has the further advanit
to evolve quickly the useful
we
discussed in
wheat, however, has compensating virtues:
efficiently
than barley, and
do not adhere
drawbacks include smaller
in
to be the best by
has the biggest seeds and barley the second
changes in seed dispersal and germination inhibition that
it
Not
list.
wasn't true that the 21 other candidates would have been equally
Among
useful.
many
and emmer wheat were on that
to husks.
seeds, in
As
many
it is
unusual
among
for the other 21 species,
cases lower abundance,
cases their being perennial rather than annual plants, with the
consequence that they would have evolved only slowly under domestication.
Thus, the
first
farmers in the Jordan Valley selected the 2 very best of
Of
the 23 best wild grass species available to them.
course, the evolution-
ary changes (following cultivation) in seed dispersal and germination inhi-
would have been unforeseen consequences of what those
bition
farmers were doing. But their
initial selection
rather than other cereals to collect, bring
of barley and
home, and
been conscious and based on the easily detected
ability,
first
emmer wheat
cultivate
would have
criteria of seed size, palat-
and abundance.
This example from the Jordan Valley, like that from Tell
illustrates that the first
cies to their
own
a handful of
to cultivate
farmers used their detailed knowledge of local spe-
benefit.
modern
Abu Hureyra,
Knowing
far
more about
professional botanists, they
local plants than all but
would hardly have
failed
any useful wild plant species that was comparably suitable for
domestication.
We
can now examine what
(New Guinea and
local farmers, in
two
parts of the world
the eastern United States) with indigenous but appar-
ently deficient food production systems
Crescent, actually did
compared
to that of the Fertile
when more-productive crops
arrived from else-
14
APPLES OR INDIANS
where.
If it
7
turned out that such crops did not become adopted for cultural
or other reasons,
reasoning so
far,
we would
we would
be
left
still
with a nagging doubt. Despite
all
have to suspect that the local wild
our
flora
harbored some ancestor of a potential valuable crop that local farmers
failed to exploit
will also
because of similar cultural factors. These two examples
demonstrate
in detail a fact critical to history: that
indigenous
crops from different parts of the globe were not equally productive.
New
Guinea, the largest island in the world after Greenland,
north of Australia and near the equator. Because of
and great
diversity in
lies just
tropical location
its
New Guinea is rich in
topography and habitats,
both
plant and animal species, though less so than continental tropical areas
because
it is
40,000 years
an
island. People
have been living in
—much longer than
in the
New
Guinea for
at least
Americas, and slightly longer than
anatomically modern peoples have been living in western Europe. Thus,
New Guineans have had ample opportunity to get to know their local flora
and fauna. Were they motivated to apply
this
knowledge
to developing
food production?
I
mentioned already that the adoption of food production involved a
competition between the food producing and the hunting-gathering
styles.
Hunting-gathering
not so rewarding in
is
New Guinea
the motivation to develop food production. In particular,
Guinea hunters
game: there
is
suffer
from the crippling disadvantage of
no native land animal
bird (the cassowary)
and
still
live
all
If
trips,
shellfish,
live as
still
modern highlanders
only to supplement their
hunting
and
modern
New
100-pound
New
flightless
Guineans
and some lowlanders
in the
today as hunter-gatherers, subsisting especially on wild
sago palms. But no peoples
highlands;
fish
life-
remove
a dearth of wild
50-pound kangaroo. Lowland
a
on the coast do obtain much
interior
larger than a
as to
diets.
hunter-gatherers in the
are instead farmers
When
who
New Guinea
use wild foods
highlanders go into the forest on
they take along garden-grown vegetables to feed themselves.
they have the misfortune to run out of those provisions, even they starve
to death despite their detailed
knowledge of
Since the hunting-gathering lifestyle
New
Guinea,
it
comes
as
no
most lowlanders today are
is
locally available wild foods.
thus nonviable in
surprise that
all
settled farmers
New
much
of
modern
Guinea highlanders and
with sophisticated systems of
food production. Extensive, formerly forested areas of the highlands were
converted by traditional
sively
managed
field
New
Guinea farmers to fenced, drained, inten-
systems supporting dense
human
populations.
148
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
Archaeological evidence shows that the origins of
ture are ancient, dating to
around 7000
New
landmasses surrounding
B.C.
Guinea were
hunter-gatherers, so this ancient agriculture
dently in
New
fields,
from wild
domesticates
agricul-
At those early dates
still
all
the
occupied exclusively by
must have developed indepen-
is
New
the
some of
they are likely to have included
same crops that were being grown
in
New Guinea
now known
pean colonization and that are
locally
Guinea
Guinea. While unequivocal remains of crops have not been
recovered from those early
the
New
Euro-
at the time of
to have been domesticated
Guinea ancestors. Foremost among these
modern world's leading
local
crop, sugarcane, of which the
annual tonnage produced today nearly equals that of the number two and
number
combined (wheat and
crops
three
undoubted
New
Other crops
corn).
swamp
tralimusa bananas, the nut tree Canarium indicum, and giant
as well as various edible grass stems, roots,
taro,
and green vegetables. The
and the root crops yams and (ordinary) taro may
breadfruit tree
New
of
Guinea origin are a group of bananas known as Aus-
also be
Guinean domesticates, although that conclusion remains uncertain
because their wild ancestors are not confined to
tributed
New
from
New
Guinea but are
dis-
Guinea to Southeast Asia. At present we lack evidence
that could resolve the question whether they were domesticated in Southeast Asia, as traditionally assumed, or independently or even only in
New
Guinea.
However,
it
turns out that
severe limitations.
First,
no
New
cereal
Guinea's biota suffered from three
New
crops were domesticated in
Guinea, whereas several vitally important ones were domesticated in the
Fertile Crescent, Sahel,
crops,
tems
New
Guinea
in other
and China. In
carries to
its
emphasis instead on root and
an extreme a trend seen
wet tropical areas
(the
Amazon,
tree
in agricultural sys-
tropical
West
Africa,
and
Southeast Asia), whose farmers also emphasized root crops but did manage to
come up with
at least
two
cereals (Asian rice
and a giant-seeded
tears). A likely reason for the failure of cereal
New Guinea is a glaring deficiency of the wild start-
Asian cereal called Job's
agriculture to arise in
ing material: not one of the world's 56 largest-seeded wild grasses
is
native
there.
Second, the
New Guinea fauna included no domesticable large mammal
The sole domestic animals of modern New Guinea,
species whatsoever.
the pig
and chicken and dog, arrived from Southeast Asia by way of Indo-
nesia within the last several thousand years.
As a
result,
while
New Guinea
APPLES OR INDIANS
lowlanders obtain protein from the
farmer populations suffer
low
they catch,
fish
from severe protein
most of
ple crops that provide
4 9
I
New
their calories (taro
and sweet potato) are
Taro, for example, consists of barely
in protein.
much worse than even white
rice,
and
far
Guinea highland
limitation, because the sta-
below the
1
percent protein,
levels of the Fertile
and pulses (8-14 percent and 20-25 percent protein,
Crescent's wheats
respectively).
New
Children in the
Guinea highlands have the swollen
of a high-bulk but protein-deficient
teristic
young routinely
eat mice, spiders, frogs,
do not bother
bellies
charac-
Guineans old and
and other small animals that peo-
ples elsewhere with access to large domestic
species
New
diet.
mammals
to eat. Protein starvation
mate reason why cannibalism was widespread
or large wild
game
probably also the
is
in traditional
New
ulti-
Guinea
highland societies.
Finally, in
former times
New Guinea's available root crops were limiting
for calories as well as for protein, because they
high elevations where
ago, however, a
new
it
New
New
centuries
Guinea, probably by
way
of the Philippines,
Guinea root crops, the sweet potato can be grown
to higher elevations,
acre cultivated
arrival
Many
had been introduced by Spaniards. Compared with taro and other
presumably older
up
today.
live
at the
root crop of ultimately South American origin, the
sweet potato, reached
where
many New Guineans
do not grow well
was
grows more quickly, and gives higher
and per hour of
labor.
The
a highland population explosion.
had been farming
in the
New
yields per
result of the sweet potato's
That
is,
even though people
Guinea highlands for many thousands of
years before sweet potatoes were introduced, the available local crops had
limited
them
in the
population densities they could attain, and in the eleva-
tions they could occupy.
In short,
New
Guinea
offers
an instructive contrast to the
cent. Like hunter-gatherers of the Fertile Crescent, those of
Fertile Cres-
New
Guinea
did evolve food production independently. However, their indigenous food
production was restricted by the local absence of domesticable cereals,
pulses,
and animals, by the
and by limitations of the
Yet
New
resulting protein deficiency in the highlands,
locally available root crops at high elevations.
Guineans themselves
know
as
much about
the wild plants
and
animals available to them as any peoples on Earth today. They can be
expected to have discovered and tested any wild plant species worth
domesticating.
They
are perfectly capable of recognizing useful additions
I50
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
to their crop larder, as
potato
New
new
when
Guinea
is
arrived.
it
shown by
exuberant adoption of the sweet
their
That same lesson
today, as those tribes
is
being driven
home
again in
with preferential access to introduced
crops and livestock (or with the cultural willingness to adopt them)
expand
expense of tribes without that access or willingness. Thus,
at the
the limits
do with
on indigenous food production
New
in
New
Guinea had nothing to
Guinea peoples, and everything with the
New
Guinea biota
and environment.
Our
other example
strained by the local flora
of indigenous agriculture apparently con-
comes from the eastern United
States. Like
New
Guinea, that area supported independent domestication of local wild
plants.
However,
early developments are
eastern United States than for
much
better understood for the
New Guinea: the crops grown by the earliest
farmers have been identified, and the dates and crop sequences of local
domestication are known. Well before other crops began to arrive from
elsewhere, Native Americans settled in eastern U.S. river valleys and devel-
oped
intensified
food production based on local crops. Hence they were
a position to take advantage of the
ones did they actually cultivate, and
most promising wild
how did the
plants.
in
Which
resulting local crop pack-
age compare with the Fertile Crescent's founder package?
It
turns out that the eastern U.S. founder crops were four plants domes-
ticated in the period
2500-1500
B.C., a full
barley domestication in the Fertile Crescent.
6,000 years
A local
after
wheat and
species of squash pro-
vided small containers, as well as yielding edible seeds. The remaining
three founders were
relative called
grown
solely for their edible seeds (sunflower, a daisy
sumpweed, and
a distant relative of spinach called goose-
foot).
But four seed crops and a container
fall far
short of a complete food
production package. For 2,000 years those founder crops served only as
minor dietary supplements while eastern U.S. Native Americans continued
to
depend mainly on wild foods, especially wild mammals and waterbirds,
and
fish, shellfish,
until the period
maygrass, and
A modern
nuts.
Farming did not supply a major part of
500-200
little
barley)
nutritionist
B.C., after three
their diet
more seed crops (knotweed,
had been brought into
cultivation.
would have applauded those seven eastern
U.S.
APPLES OR INDIANS
I
them were high
8-14 percent
for wheat, 9 percent for corn,
white
rice.
Two
of them, sunflower and
(45-47 percent). Sumpweed,
I
— 17-32 percent, compared with
crops. All of
in protein
5
and even lower
sumpweed, were
in particular,
still
eating those
and
also high in oil
would have been
ultimate dream, being 32 percent protein and 45 percent
we
for barley
a nutritionist's
oil.
Why
aren't
dream foods today?
Alas, despite their nutritional advantage,
most of these eastern U.S.
crops suffered from serious disadvantages in other respects. Goosefoot,
knotweed,
little
barley,
and maygrass had
tiny seeds, with
one-tenth that of wheat and barley seeds. Worse yet,
volumes only
sumpweed
is
a
wind-
pollinated relative of ragweed, the notorious hayfever-causing plant. Like
ragweed's, sumpweed's pollen can cause hayfever where the plant occurs
in
abundant stands.
sumpweed
If
that doesn't
farmer, be aware that
some people and
that handling
Mexican crops
routes after a.d.
very minor for
finally
1.
your enthusiasm for becoming a
has a strong odor objectionable to
it
can cause skin
irritation.
began to reach the eastern United States by trade
Corn
many
it
kill
arrived around a.d. 200, but
centuries. Finally,
its
role
remained
around a.d. 900 a new variety of
corn adapted to North America's short summers appeared, and the arrival
1100 completed Mexico's crop
of beans around a.d.
and squash. Eastern U.S. farming became greatly
trinity of corn, beans,
intensified,
and densely
populated chiefdoms developed along the Mississippi River and
taries. In
some areas
side the far
the original local domesticates
more productive Mexican
replaced them completely.
Indian gardens, because
it
No
trinity,
its
tribu-
were retained along-
but in other areas the trinity
European ever saw sumpweed growing
had disappeared
pean colonization of the Americas began,
in
as a crop by the time that Euroin a.d.
ancient eastern U.S. crop specialties, only
1492.
Among
all
two (sunflower and
those
eastern
squash) have been able to compete with crops domesticated elsewhere and
are
still
grown
are derived
today.
Our modern acorn squashes and summer squashes
from those American squashes domesticated thousands of
years ago.
Thus,
like the case of
instructive.
A priori,
New
Guinea, that of the eastern United States
productive indigenous agriculture.
fall,
flora
and
is
It
has rich
soils, reliable
moderate
rain-
a suitable climate that sustains bountiful agriculture today.
a species-rich
is
the region might have seemed a likely one to support
one that includes productive wild nut
trees (oak
The
and
I
5
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2
hickory). Local Native Americans did develop an agriculture based
local domesticates, did thereby support themselves in villages,
on
and even
developed a cultural florescence (the Hopewell culture centered on what
today Ohio) around 200
several
b.c.-a.d. 400.
They were thus
is
in a position for
thousand years to exploit as potential crops the most useful
avail-
able wild plants, whatever those should be.
Nevertheless, the Hopewell florescence sprang up nearly 9,000 years
after the rise of village living in the Fertile Crescent. Still,
after a.d. 900 that the assembly of the
larger population
produced the
it
was not
until
trinity triggered a
the so-called Mississippian florescence, which
boom,
largest
Mexican crop
towns and most complex
Americans north of Mexico. But that
societies achieved
boom came much
by Native
too late to prepare
Native Americans of the United States for the impending disaster of Euro-
pean colonization. Food production based on eastern U.S. crops alone had
been insufficient to trigger the boom, for reasons that are easy to
The
barley.
specify.
were not nearly as useful as wheat and
area's available wild cereals
Native Americans of the eastern United States domesticated no
locally available wild pulse,
no domesticated animals
no
fiber crop,
no
They had
or nut tree.
fruit
which were probably
at all except for dogs,
domesticated elsewhere in the Americas.
It's
also clear that Native
Americans of the eastern United States were
not overlooking potential major crops
among
the wild species around
them. Even 20th-century plant breeders, armed with
ern science, have had
little
success in exploiting
all
the
power of mod-
North American wild
we have now domesticated pecans as a nut tree and blueberries
and we have improved some Eurasian fruit crops (apples, plums,
plants. Yes,
as a fruit,
grapes, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries) by hybridizing
North American wild
changed our food habits
relatives.
far less
them with
However, those few successes have
than Mexican corn changed food habits
of Native Americans in the eastern United States after a.d. 900.
The farmers most knowledgeable about
Americans themselves, passed judgment on them by
region's Native
carding or deemphasizing them
outcome
eastern U.S. domesticates, the
when
the
also demonstrates that Native
Mexican
trinity arrived.
dis-
That
Americans were not constrained
by cultural conservativism and were quite able to appreciate a good plant
when
they
saw
it.
food production
Thus, as in
in the eastern
New
Guinea, the limitations on indigenous
United States were not due to Native Amer-
15
APPLES OR INDIANS
3
ican peoples themselves, but instead depended entirely
on the American
and environment.
biota
We have now considered examples of three contrasting
which food production did
one extreme;
New Guinea
arise indigenously.
The
and the eastern United
areas, in all of
Fertile Crescent lies at
States
lie
at the opposite
extreme. Peoples of the Fertile Crescent domesticated local plants
earlier.
They domesticated
far
more
species, domesticated far
much
more pro-
much wider range of types of
and dense human popula-
ductive or valuable species, domesticated a
crops, developed intensified food production
tions
more
rapidly,
and
as a result entered the
advanced technology, more complex
demic diseases with which to
We
modern world with more
political organization,
and more
epi-
infect other peoples.
found that these differences between the
Fertile Crescent,
New
Guinea, and the eastern United States followed straightforwardly from the
and animal species available
differing suites of wild plant
tion,
tive
not from limitations of the peoples themselves.
When
crops arrived from elsewhere (the sweet potato in
Mexican
trinity in the eastern
United
for domestica-
more-produc-
New
States), local peoples
Guinea, the
promptly took
advantage of them, intensified food production, and increased greatly in
population. By extension,
I
suggest that areas of the globe where food
production never developed indigenously at
all
— California, Australia, the
—may have offered even
Argentine pampas, western Europe, and so on
less in the
did
New
way
of wild plants and animals suitable for domestication than
Guinea and the eastern United
food production did
arise.
Indeed,
States,
Mark
locally available large-seeded wild grasses
the
worldwide survey of
mentioned
locally available big
the next chapter, agree in showing that
limited indigenous food production
all
were
where
at least a limited
Blumler's worldwide survey of
in this chapter,
mammals
and
to be presented in
those areas of nonexistent or
deficient in wild ancestors of
domesticable livestock and cereals.
Recall that the rise of food production involved a competition between
food production and hunting-gathering.
whether
all
One might
therefore
wonder
these cases of slow or nonexistent rise of food production
might instead have been due to an exceptional local richness of resources
to be
hunted and gathered, rather than to an exceptional availability of
15
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
4
species suitable for domestication. In fact,
food production arose
late or
not at
all
most areas where indigenous
offered exceptionally poor rather
mammals
than rich resources to hunter-gatherers, because most large
of
Australia and the Americas (but not of Eurasia and Africa) had become
extinct
even
toward the end of the
less
Ice Ages.
Food production would have faced
competition from hunting-gathering in these areas than
in the Fertile Crescent.
Hence
it
did
these local failures or limitations of food
production cannot be attributed to competition from bountiful hunting
opportunities.
conclusions
JLest these
be misinterpreted,
we
should end
this
chapter with caveats against exaggerating two points: peoples' readiness
and the constraints imposed by
to accept better crops
and
available wild plants
and animals. Neither that readiness nor those con-
livestock,
locally
straints are absolute.
We've already discussed many examples of
local peoples' adopting
more-productive crops domesticated elsewhere. Our broad conclusion
that people can recognize useful plants,
would
therefore have probably
recognized better local ones suitable for domestication
and
aren't barred
big qualifier
must be added
large areas."
Anyone knowledgeable about human
vations that
if
any had existed,
from doing so by cultural conservatism or taboos. But
merable examples of
to this sentence: "in the long run
societies
societies that refused crops, livestock,
societies,
more
or technology
and other
may
some
The ones
set
that
more open
The
fact
is
hundreds of
to innovation,
do adopt new crops,
and
livestock,
thereby be enabled to nourish themselves better and to
outbreed, displace, conquer, or
new
the adoption of
it.
large areas containing
societies will be
resistant.
That's an important
Our
innu-
don't subscribe to the obvious fallacy that every society
I
that, over entire continents
will be
and over
cite
and other inno-
promptly adopts every innovation that would be useful for
some
can
a
would have been productive.
Naturally,
competing
is
kill
off societies resisting innovation.
phenomenon whose manifestations extend
crops,
and to which we
shall return in
far
beyond
Chapter 13.
other caveat concerns the limits that locally available wild species
on the
rise
of food production. I'm not saying that food production
could never, in any amount of time, have arisen in
actually
all
those areas where
it
had not arisen indigenously by modern times. Europeans today
15
APPLES OR INDIANS
who
note that Aboriginal Australians entered the
Age hunter-gatherers often assume
on that way
in
modern world
as Stone
would have gone
that the Aborigines
forever.
To appreciate
dropped
5
the fallacy, consider a visitor
on Earth
in the
year 3000 B.C.
from Outer Space who
The spaceling would have
observed no food production in the eastern United States, because food
production did not begin there until around 2500 B.C.
3000
B.C.
drawn
and animals of the eastern United
in
wrong. Even
8500
B.C.
the visitor of
States foreclosed food production there
forever, events of the subsequent millennium
tor
Had
the conclusion that limitations posed by the wild plants
a visitor to the Fertile
would have proved
the visi-
Crescent in 9500 B.C. rather than
could have been misled into supposing the Fertile Crescent
permanently unsuitable for food production.
That
all
is,
my thesis
is
not that California, Australia, western Europe, and
the other areas without indigenous food production were devoid of
domesticable species and would have continued to be occupied just by
hunter-gatherers indefinitely
arrived. Instead,
I
if
foreign domesticates or peoples
had not
note that regions differed greatly in their available pool
of domesticable species, that they varied correspondingly in the date
local
when
food production arose, and that food production had not yet arisen
independently in some
fertile
Australia, supposedly the
regions as of
modern
times.
most "backward" continent,
illustrates this
point well. In southeastern Australia, the well-watered part of the conti-
nent most suitable for food production, Aboriginal societies in recent millennia appear to have been evolving
on a trajectory that would eventually
have led to indigenous food production. They had already
villages.
They had begun
production by building
to
manage
their
fish traps, nets,
built winter
environment intensively for
and even long
canals.
Had
fish
Europe-
ans not colonized Australia in 1788 and aborted that independent trajectory,
Aboriginal Australians might within a few thousand years have
become food producers, tending ponds of domesticated
fish
and growing
domesticated Australian yams and small-seeded grasses.
In that light,
chapter.
I
we can now answer the
question implicit in the
title
of this
asked whether the reason for the failure of North American
Indians to domesticate North American apples lay with the Indians or with
the apples.
I'm not thereby implying that apples could never have been domesticated in North America. Recall that apples were historically
among
the
—
156
most
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
difficult fruit trees to cultivate
and among the
last
major ones to be
domesticated in Eurasia, because their propagation requires the
technique of grafting. There
is
no evidence
difficult
for large-scale cultivation of
apples even in the Fertile Crescent and in Europe until classical Greek
times, 8,000 years after the rise of Eurasian food production began. If
Native Americans had proceeded at the same rate in inventing or acquiring
grafting techniques, they too
would eventually have domesticated apples
around the year a.d. 5500, some 8,000 years
tion in
North America around 2500
after the rise of domestica-
B.C.
Thus, the reason for the failure of Native Americans to domesticate
North American apples by
the time Europeans arrived lay neither with the
people nor with the apples. As far as biological prerequisites for apple
domestication were concerned, North American Indian farmers were
Eurasian farmers, and North American wild apples were
like
wild apples. Indeed, some of the supermarket apple varieties
munched by
like
Eurasian
now
being
readers of this chapter have been developed recently by cross-
ing Eurasian apples with wild
North American
apples. Instead, the reason
Native Americans did not domesticate apples lay with the entire suite of
wild plant and animal species available to Native Americans. That
modest potential
for domestication
food production in North America.
was responsible
suite's
for the late start of
CHAPTER
9
Unhappy
Marriages, and the
Zebras,
Anna Karenina
Principle
DOMESTICABLE
ANIMALS ARE ALL ALIKE; EVERY UNDOis undomesticable in its own way.
mesticable animal
If
you think you've already read something
right. Just
make
a few changes,
Tolstoy's great novel
unhappy family
meant
is
and you have the famous
Anna Karenina: "Happy
unhappy
that, in order to be
like that before,
in its
own
first
families are
you're
sentence of
all alike;
every
way." By that sentence, Tolstoy
happy, a marriage must succeed in
many
differ-
ent respects: sexual attraction, agreement about money, child discipline,
and other
religion, in-laws,
tial
respects can
doom
vital issues. Failure in
a marriage even
if it
has
any one of those essen-
all
the other ingredients
needed for happiness.
This principle can be extended to understanding
besides marriage.
cess.
We
much
else
about
life
tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of suc-
For most important things, though, success actually requires avoiding
many
separate possible causes of failure.
The Anna Karenina
principle
explains a feature of animal domestication that had heavy consequences
—
human history namely, that so many seemingly suitable
mammal species, such as zebras and peccaries, have never been
for
big wild
domesti-
cated and that the successful domesticates were almost exclusively Eurasian.
Having
in the preceding
two chapters discussed why so many wild
i
5
7
158
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
plant species seemingly suitable for domestication were never domesticated,
mals.
we shall now tackle the corresponding question for domestic mamOur former question about apples or Indians becomes a question of
zebras or Africans.
In chapter 4 we reminded ourselves of the many ways in which big
mammals were crucial to those human societies possessing them.
Most notably, they provided meat, milk products, fertilizer, land transdomestic
port, leather, military assault vehicles,
germs that
killed previously
plow
and
Many
in
birds
and
birds were domesticated
feathers: the chicken in China, various
species in parts of Eurasia, turkeys in
and the Muscovy duck
as well as
mammals and domestic
have also been useful to humans.
for meat, eggs,
and wool,
unexposed peoples.
In addition, of course, small domestic
insects
traction,
duck and goose
Mesoamerica, guinea fowl
in Africa,
South America. Wolves were domesticated in
Eurasia and North America to become our dogs used as hunting companions, sentinels, pets, and, in
mammals
some
Rodents and other small
domesticated for food included the rabbit in Europe, the guinea
pig in the Andes, a giant rat in
the hutia
societies, food.
on Caribbean
West
Africa,
islands. Ferrets
were domesticated
hunt rabbits, and cats were domesticated
Asia to hunt rodent pests. Small
and possibly a rodent
in
in
called
Europe to
North Africa and Southwest
mammals domesticated
as recently as the
19th and 20th centuries include foxes, mink, and chinchillas grown for
fur
and hamsters kept as
pets.
Even some
insects
have been domesticated,
notably Eurasia's honeybee and China's silkworm moth, kept for honey
and
silk, respectively.
Many
of these small animals thus yielded food, clothing, or warmth.
But none of them pulled plows or wagons, none bore riders, none except
dogs pulled sleds or became war machines, and none of them have been as
important for food as have big domestic mammals. Hence the rest of
chapter will confine
1
itself
he importance of
to the big
this
mammals.
domesticated
mammals
rests
on
surprisingly
few
mammals have been
mammals were difficult
species of big terrestrial herbivores. (Only terrestrial
domesticated, for the obvious reason that aquatic
to maintain
and breed
until the
development of modern Sea World
facili-
ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
15
9
one defines "big" as "weighing over 100 pounds," then only 14
ties.) If
such species were domesticated before the twentieth century (see Table 9.1
for a
list).
became
Of
those Ancient Fourteen, 9 (the
the Arabian camel, Bactrian camel, llama
same ancestral
gaur.
"Minor Nine" of Table
9.1)
important livestock for people in only limited areas of the globe:
Only 5
/
alpaca (distinct breeds of the
donkey, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, banteng, and
species),
became widespread and important around the world.
species
Those Major Five of
mammal
domestication are the cow, sheep, goat, pig,
and horse.
This
may
list
at first
seem to have glaring omissions. What about the
African elephants with which Hannibal's armies crossed the Alps?
about the Asian elephants
today? No,
still
didn't forget them,
I
work animals
used as
and that
raises
in
What
Southeast Asia
an important
distinction.
Elephants have been tamed, but never domesticated. Hannibal's elephants
were, and Asian
work
elephants are, just wild elephants that were cap-
tured and tamed; they were not bred in captivity. In contrast, a domesticated animal
is
defined as an animal selectively bred in captivity and
thereby modified from
the animal's breeding
That
its
wild ancestors, for use by
humans who
control
and food supply.
domestication involves wild animals' being transformed into
is,
something more useful to humans. Truly domesticated animals
differ in
various ways from their wild ancestors. These differences result from
processes:
human
selection of those individual animals
humans than other
individuals of the
same
species,
more
two
useful to
and automatic evolu-
tionary responses of animals to the altered forces of natural selection
operating in
We
already
human environments
saw
in
Chapter 7 that
as
compared with wild environments.
all
of these statements also apply to
plant domestication.
The ways
in
which domesticated animals have diverged from
ancestors include the following.
Many
species
changed
in size:
their wild
cows, pigs,
and sheep became smaller under domestication, while guinea pigs became
larger.
Sheep and alpacas were selected for retention of wool and reduc-
tion or loss of hair, while
cows have been
selected for high milk yields.
Several species of domestic animals have smaller brains
sense organs than their wild ancestors, because they
bigger brains and
more developed
sense organs
and
less
developed
no longer need the
on which
their ancestors
depended to escape from wild predators.
To appreciate
the changes that developed under domestication, just
I
Table
9.1
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 O
The Ancient Fourteen
Domestic
Species of Big Herbivorous
Mammals
The Major Five
Sheep. Wild ancestor: the Asiatic mouflon sheep of West and Central
1.
Asia.
Now worldwide.
2.
Goat. Wild ancestor: the bezoar goat of West Asia.
3.
Cow,
alias
ox or
cattle.
Wild ancestor: the
merly distributed over Eurasia and North Africa.
Now worldwide.
extinct aurochs, for-
Now worldwide.
Wild ancestor: the wild boar, distributed over Eurasia and North
Pig.
4.
now
Now worldwide. Actually an omnivore (regularly eats both animal and
Africa.
plant food), whereas the other 13 of the Ancient Fourteen are
more
strictly
herbivores.
Horse. Wild ancestor:
5.
different subspecies of the
as Przewalski's horse of
now
same
extinct wild horses of southern Russia; a
species survived in the wild to
Mongolia.
modern times
Now worldwide.
The Minor Nine
now
Arabian (one-humped) camel. Wild ancestor:
6.
Arabia and adjacent areas.
lived in
Still
extinct, formerly
largely restricted to Arabia
and north-
ern Africa, though feral in Australia.
Bactrian (two-humped) camel: Wild ancestor:
7.
Central Asia.
same
Still
animals
in
lived in
largely confined to Central Asia.
alpaca. These appear to be well-differentiated breeds of the
species, rather
Andes.
9.
Still
Llama and
8.
now extinct,
than different species. Wild ancestor: the guanaco of the
largely confined to the Andes, although
some
are bred as pack
North America.
Donkey. Wild ancestor: the African wild ass of North Africa and
for-
merly perhaps the adjacent area of Southwest Asia. Originally confined as a
domestic animal to North Africa and western Eurasia, more recently also
used elsewhere.
Reindeer. Wild ancestor: the reindeer of northern Eurasia.
10.
confined as a domestic animal to that area, though
now some
Still
largely
are also used in
Alaska.
11.
Water buffalo. Wild ancestor
domestic animal mainly
in that area,
lives in
Southeast Asia.
Still
though many are also used
others have escaped to the wild in Australia
and other
places.
used as a
in Brazil
and
ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
I
Yak. Wild ancestor: the wild yak of the Himalayas and Tibetan pla-
12.
teau.
6
I
Still
13.
confined as a domestic animal to that area.
Wild ancestor: the banteng
Bali cattle.
Southeast Asia.
14. Mithan.
Still
(a relative
confined as a domestic animal to that area.
Wild ancestor: the gaur (another
Indian and Burma.
of the aurochs) of
Still
relative of the aurochs) of
confined as a domestic animal to that area.
compare wolves, the wild ancestors of domestic dogs, with the many
breeds of dogs.
while others are
Some dogs are much bigger than wolves (Great Danes),
much smaller (Pekingese). Some are slimmer and built for
racing (greyhounds), while others are short-legged and useless for racing
(dachshunds). They vary enormously in hair form and color, and some
are even hairless. Polynesians
Comparing
raised for food.
a
and Aztecs developed dog breeds
dachshund with
a wolf,
suspect that the former had been derived from the latter
already
1
know
specifically
you wouldn't even
if
you
didn't
it.
he wild ancestors
of the Ancient Fourteen were spread unevenly
over the globe. South America had only one such ancestor, which gave
to the llama
Africa
had none
Saharan Africa
visit
at all.
is
Africa today
The
lack of domestic
mammals
especially astonishing, since a
is
to see
its
indigenous to sub-
main reason why
tourists
abundant and diverse wild mammals. In
contrast, the wild ancestors of 13 of the Ancient Fourteen (including
the
Major
rise
and alpaca. North America, Australia, and sub-Saharan
Five)
were confined to Eurasia. (As elsewhere
use of the term "Eurasia" includes in several cases
many
biogeographically and in
aspects of
human
in this
North
culture
all
book,
of
my
Africa,
which
more
closely
is
related to Eurasia than to sub-Saharan Africa.)
Of
course, not
all
throughout Eurasia.
were quite
local,
13 of these wild ancestral species occurred together
No
area had
all
13,
and some of the wild ancestors
such as the yak, confined in the wild to Tibet and adjacent
highland areas. However,
many
parts of Eurasia did have quite a few of
these 13 species living together in the
same
area: for example, seven of the
wild ancestors occurred in Southwest Asia.
This very unequal distribution of wild ancestral species
among
the con-
tinents
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 2
I
became an important reason why Eurasians, rather than peoples of
other continents, were the ones to end up with guns, germs, and
steel.
How can we explain the concentration of the Ancient Fourteen in Eurasia?
One reason
wild
mammal
Let's define a
is
simple. Eurasia has the largest
species,
number
of big terrestrial
whether or not ancestral to a domesticated
species.
"candidate for domestication" as any terrestrial herbivorous
mammal
or omnivorous
species (one not predominantly a carnivore)
weighing on the average over 100 pounds (45 kilograms). Table 9.2 shows
that Eurasia has the
species in
many
most candidates, 72
it
has the most
other plant and animal groups. That's because Eurasia
the world's largest landmass,
habitats ranging
forests, deserts,
species, just as
and
it's
from extensive tropical rain
and marshes,
forests,
through temperate
to equally extensive tundras. Sub-Saharan
Africa has fewer candidates, 51 species, just as
other plant and animal groups
is
also very diverse ecologically, with
— because
it's
it
has fewer species in most
smaller and ecologically less
diverse than Eurasia. Africa has smaller areas of tropical rain forest than
does Southeast Asia, and no temperate habitats at
degrees.
As
almost as
I
discussed in Chapter
many candidates
mals (including
its
horses,
1,
the Americas
as Africa, but
most of
its
all
beyond
may
latitude
37
formerly have had
most of America's big wild mam-
camels, and other species likely to
have been domesticated had they survived) became extinct about 13,000
years ago. Australia, the smallest and most isolated continent, has always
had
far
fewer species of big wild
mammals than
Americas. Just as in the Americas, in Australia
Table 9.2 Mammalian Candidates
has Eurasia, Africa, or the
all
of those few candidates
for Domestication
Continent
Eurasia
Candidates
72
Domesticated species
13
Sub-Saharan
The
Africa
Americas
51
24
Australia
1
1
Percentage of candidates
domesticated
18%
0%
A "candidate" is defined as a species of terrestrial,
mammal weighing on the average over 100 pounds.
4%
0%
herbivorous or omnivorous, wild
ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
I
6 3
except the red kangaroo became extinct around the time of the continent's
colonization by humans.
first
Thus, part of the explanation for Eurasia's having been the main
big
mammal
domestication
didate species of wild
is
that
mammals
it
was
the continent with the
to start out with,
and
didates to extinction in the last 40,000 years. But the
warn
us that that's not the
whole explanation.
centage of candidates actually domesticated
and
cent),
is
especially
low
in
is
of
lost the fewest can-
numbers
in
Table 9.2
also true that the per-
highest in Eurasia (18 per-
sub-Saharan Africa (no species domesticated
out of 51 candidates!). Particularly surprising
African and American
cies of
It's
site
most can-
mammals
is
the large
number
of spe-
that were never domesticated,
despite their having Eurasian close relatives or counterparts that were
Why
domesticated.
zebras?
Why
were Eurasia's horses domesticated, but not Africa's
Eurasia's pigs, but not
species of true wild pigs?
American peccaries or
Africa's three
Why Eurasia's five species of wild cattle
(aurochs,
water buffalo, yak, gaur, banteng), but not the African buffalo or Ameri-
can bison?
Why the Asian mouflon sheep
(ancestor of our domestic sheep),
but not North American bighorn sheep?
Uid
their
all those
enormous
peoples of Africa, the Americas, and Australia, despite
diversity, nonetheless share
some
cultural obstacles to
domestication not shared with Eurasian peoples? For example, did Africa's
abundance of big wild mammals, available to
kill
by hunting, make
it
superfluous for Africans to go to the trouble of tending domestic stock?
The answer
to that question
is
unequivocal: No!
The
interpretation
is
refuted by five types of evidence: rapid acceptance of Eurasian domesticates
by non-Eurasian peoples, the universal human penchant for keeping
pets, the rapid
domestication of the Ancient Fourteen, the repeated inde-
pendent domestications of some of them, and the limited successes of modern efforts at further domestications.
First,
when
Eurasia's
Major Five domestic mammals reached sub-
Saharan Africa, they were adopted by the most diverse African peoples
wherever conditions permitted. Those African herders thereby achieved a
huge advantage over African hunter-gatherers and quickly displaced them.
In particular,
their
Bantu farmers
homeland
in
who
acquired cows and sheep spread out of
West Africa and within
a short time overran the former
hunter-gatherers in most of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. Even without
164
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
acquiring crops, Khoisan peoples
who
acquired cows and sheep around
2,000 years ago displaced Khoisan hunter-gatherers over
ern Africa.
The
The only
of south-
set of
kingdoms dependent on
factor that prevented horses
from spreading beyond
warfare there and turned the area into a
cavalry.
much
West Africa transformed
arrival of the domestic horse in
West Africa was trypanosome diseases borne by
The same pattern repeated
ples lacking native wild
itself
mammal
tsetse flies.
elsewhere in the world, whenever peo-
species suitable for domestication finally
had the opportunity to acquire Eurasian domestic animals. European
horses were eagerly adopted by Native Americans in both North and
South America, within a generation of the escape of horses from European
settlements. For example, by the 19th century
North America's Great
Plains Indians were famous as expert horse-mounted warriors and bison
hunters, but they did not even obtain horses until the late 17th century.
Sheep acquired from Spaniards similarly transformed Navajo Indian
ety
and
led to,
among
soci-
other things, the weaving of the beautiful woolen
blankets for which the Navajo have
become renowned. Within
a decade
of Tasmania's settlement by Europeans with dogs, Aboriginal Tasmanians,
who had
never before seen dogs, began to breed them in large numbers for
use in hunting. Thus,
among
the thousands of culturally diverse native
peoples of Australia, the Americas, and Africa, no universal cultural taboo
stood in the
way
Surely,
some
if
of animal domestication.
local wild
mammal
species of those continents
had been
domesticable, some Australian, American, and African peoples would
have domesticated them and gained great advantage from them,
just as
they benefited from the Eurasian domestic animals that they immediately
adopted when those became available. For instance, consider
ples of
falo.
all
the peo-
sub-Saharan Africa living within the range of wild zebras and buf-
Why
wasn't there at least one African hunter-gatherer tribe that
domesticated those zebras and buffalo and that thereby gained sway over
other Africans, without having to await the arrival of Eurasian horses and
cattle? All these facts indicate that the
mammal
mammals
themselves, not with the local peoples.
rV second type
pets.
explanation for the lack of native
domestication outside Eurasia lay with the locally available wild
of evidence for the same interpretation comes from
Keeping wild animals as
pets,
and taming them, constitute an
initial
ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
from
stage in domestication. But pets have been reported
ditional
human
some
species that
we would
Most
just as pets.
ies
New
in the
Guinea
scarcely have imagined as pets.
villages
where
work,
I
I
often see peo-
possums, and birds ranging from flycatchers to
of these captives are eventually eaten, though
some
are kept
New Guineans even regularly capture chicks of wild cassowarand
(an ostrich-like large, flightless bird)
raise
them
to eat as a deli-
—even though captive adult cassowaries are extremely dangerous and
now and
then disembowel village people.
for use in hunting, although those
occasion to
kill their
human
Some Asian peoples tame
powerful pets have also been
handlers. Ancient Egyptians
and modern Indians, tamed cheetahs for use
show
ancient Egyptians
mammals such
that they further
as gazelles
nas. African elephants
were tamed
danger, and Asian elephants are
unlikely pet
is
grizzly bear),
many
times despite the obvious
same
(the
species as the
American
and eat
in a ritual
first
as
young
ceremony.
stage in the sequence
relations leading to domestication, but only a
end of that sequence
at the other
sur-
being tamed today. Perhaps the most
wild animal species reached the
animal-human
emerged
kill
hoofed
more
as cranes,
which the Ainu people of Japan regularly captured
animals, tamed, and reared to
Thus,
still
European brown bear
the
made by
and most astonishingly hye-
Roman
in
known on
surprisingly)
and hartebeests, birds such
eagles
and Assyrians,
in hunting. Paintings
tamed (not
prisingly giraffes (which can be dangerous),
of
variety of wild animals
than the variety eventually domesticated, and
For example,
cacy
The
continents.
virtually all tra-
far greater
ple with pet kangaroos,
ospreys.
all
5
is
thus tamed
includes
on
societies
6
I
few
as domestic animals. Over a
century ago, the British scientist Francis Galton summarized this discrep-
ancy succinctly:
"It
would appear
chance of being domesticated, that
ago, but that the large remainder,
that every wild animal has
[a]
who
few
failed
.
.
.
had
its
were domesticated long
sometimes
in only
one small
particular, are destined to perpetual wildness."
JJates of domestication
provide a third line of evidence confirm-
ing Galton's view that early herding peoples quickly domesticated
all
mammal
whose
species suitable for being domesticated. All species for
dates of domestication
we have
between about 8000 and 2500
big
archaeological evidence were domesticated
B.C.
—that
is,
within the
first
few thousand
years of the sedentary farming-herding societies that arose after the end
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 6
of the last Ice Age. As summarized in Table 9.3, the era of big
mammal
domestication began with the sheep, goat, and pig and ended with camels.
2500
Since
It's
B.C. there
have been no significant additions.
true, of course, that
some small mammals were
first
domesticated
long after 2500 B.C. For example, rabbits were not domesticated for food
until the
Middle Ages, mice and
rats for laboratory research
20th century, and hamsters for pets not
until the 1930s.
development of domesticated small mammals
isn't surprising,
there are literally thousands of wild species as candidates,
they were of too
little
raising them. But big
By then,
ago.
all
not until the
The continuing
because
and because
value to traditional societies to warrant the effort of
mammal
domestication virtually ended 4,500 years
of the world's 148 candidate big species must have been
tested innumerable times, with the result that only a
few passed the
test
and no other suitable ones remained.
^till A fourth
more
line of
suitable than others
tications of the
same
our genetic material
is
evidence that some
known
cattle
cattle that
species are
much
provided by the repeated independent domes-
species. Genetic evidence
as mitochondrial
had long been suspected, that humped
pean
mammal
based on the portions of
DNA recently confirmed, as
cattle of India
and humpless Euro-
were derived from two separate populations of wild ancestral
had diverged hundreds of thousands of years ago. That
is,
Indian peoples domesticated the local Indian subspecies of wild aurochs,
own Southwest Asian
may have independently
Southwest Asians independently domesticated their
subspecies of aurochs, and North Africans
domesticated the North African aurochs.
Similarly,
the Americas
wolves were independently domesticated to become dogs in
and probably
in several different parts of Eurasia, including
China and Southwest Asia. Modern pigs are derived from independent
sequences of domestication in China, western Eurasia, and possibly other
areas as well. These examples reemphasize that the
species attracted the attention of
Ihe failures of modern
many
different
same few
human
suitable wild
societies.
efforts provide a final type of evidence that
past failures to domesticate the large residue of wild candidate species
arose from shortcomings of those species, rather than from shortcomings
ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
Table
9.3
Approximate Dates of
Domestication of Large
Date
Species
Dog
I
First Attested
Mammal
6 7
Evidence for
Species
Place
(B.C.)
Southwest Asia, China,
10,000
North America
Sheep
8,000
Southwest Asia
Goat
8,000
Southwest Asia
Pig
8,000
China, Southwest Asia
Cow
6,000
Southwest Asia, India,
Horse
4,000
Ukraine
Donkey
4,000
Egypt
Water buffalo
4,000
China?
(?)North Africa
Llama / alpaca
3,500
Andes
Bactrian camel
2,500
Central Asia
Arabian camel
2,500
Arabia
For the other four domesticated large
teng
—there
is
as yet
little
mammal
species
—reindeer, yak,
gaur, and ban-
evidence concerning the date of domestication. Dates and places
shown
are merely the earliest ones attested to date; domestication
earlier
and
may
actually have
begun
at a different location.
of ancient humans. Europeans today are heirs to one of the longest traditions of animal domestication
on Earth
—that which began
in
Southwest
Asia around 10,000 years ago. Since the fifteenth century, Europeans have
spread around the globe and encountered wild
in
Europe. European
settlers,
such as those that
mammal
I
with pet kangaroos and possums, have tamed or
mammals,
just as
some
pets of
many
local
made
serious efforts to domesti-
local species.
In the 19th
elk,
made
found
New Guinea
have indigenous peoples. European herders and farmers
emigrating to other continents have also
cate
species not
encounter in
and 20th centuries
at least six large
moose, musk ox, zebra, and American bison
mammals
—the eland,
—have been the subjects
of especially well-organized projects aimed at domestication, carried out
by modern
scientific
animal breeders and geneticists. For example, eland,
the largest African antelope, have been undergoing selection for
ity
and milk quantity
in
the
meat qual-
Askaniya-Nova Zoological Park
in
the
—
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 8
Ukraine, as well as in England, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa; an
experimental farm for elk (red deer, in British terminology) has been operated by the Rowett Research Institute at Aberdeen, Scotland; and an
experimental farm for moose has operated in the Pechero-Ilych National
Park in Russia. Yet these modern efforts have achieved only very limited
some
U.S. supermar-
and while moose have been ridden, milked, and used
to pull sleds in
successes.
kets,
While bison meat occasionally appears
Sweden and Russia, none of
economic value to
attract
in
these efforts has yielded a result of sufficient
many
ranchers.
It
is
recent attempts to domesticate eland within Africa
resistance
and climate tolerance would give
it
especially striking that
itself,
where
disease
its
a big advantage over intro-
duced Eurasian wild stock susceptible to African diseases, have not caught
on.
Thus, neither indigenous herders with access to candidate species over
thousands of years, nor modern
ful
domesticates of large
were domesticated by
undoubtedly,
if
geneticists,
have succeeded
mammals beyond
they wished,
the Ancient Fourteen,
4,500 years ago. Yet
at least
fulfill
for
many
ing than that imposed
which
species that part of the defini-
For example, the San Diego and Los Angeles zoos are
the last surviving California condors to a
use-
today could
scientists
tion of domestication that specifies the control of breeding
ply.
making
in
and food sup-
now
subjecting
more draconian control of breed-
upon any domesticated
species. All individual con-
dors have been genetically identified, and a computer program determines
which male
shall
endangered
many
mate with which female
to
(in this case,
bird).
maximize genetic
Zoos
human
in order to achieve
diversity
goals
and thereby preserve
are conducting similar breeding
this
programs for
other threatened species, including gorillas and rhinos. But the zoos'
rigorous selection of California condors shows no prospects of yielding an
economically useful product.
Nor do
zoos' efforts with rhinos, although
rhinos offer up to over three tons of meat on the hoof. As
see,
rhinos (and most other big
we
mammals) present insuperable
shall
now
obstacles to
domestication.
In all, of
the world's 148 big wild terrestrial herbivorous
the candidates for domestication
other 134 species
when he spoke
fail?
—only 14 passed the
test.
mammals
Why
To which conditions was Francis Galton
did the
referring,
of those other species as "destined to perpetual wildness"?
ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
The answer follows from
the
cated, a candidate wild species
Lack of any
just as
it
Anna Karenina
single required characteristic
dooms
efforts at building a
counselor to the zebra
To be domesti-
principle.
must possess many
dooms
6 9
I
different characteristics.
efforts at domestication,
happy marriage. Playing marriage
/human couple and
other ill-sorted pairs,
we can
recognize at least six groups of reasons for failed domestication.
Diet. Every time that
an animal eats
a plant or
another animal, the
conversion of food biomass into the consumer's biomass involves an
ciency of
is, it
much
less
takes around 10,000 pounds of corn to
instead
you want
effi-
than 100 percent: typically around 10 percent. That
grow 1,000 pounds of
to
grow
a
1,000-pound cow.
carnivore,
you have
to feed
If
it
10,000 pounds of herbivore grown on 100,000 pounds of corn. Even
among
herbivores and omnivores,
icky in their plant preferences to
As
many
species, like koalas, are too fin-
recommend themselves
a result of this fundamental inefficiency,
has ever been domesticated for food. (No,
we
be tough or tasteless:
it's
not because
its
The
and
I
can
nearest thing to
the dog, originally domesticated as a sentinel
is
meat would
eat carnivorous wild fish all the time,
personally attest to the delicious flavor of lion burger.)
an exception
farm animals.
as
no mammalian carnivore
and hunting
companion, but breeds of dogs were developed and raised for food
in
Aztec Mexico, Polynesia, and ancient China. However, regular dog eating
has been a
last resort
Human
only pigs and dogs.
mammals have
(as in parts of
of meat-deprived
mammal, and
other domestic
is
really a
societies: the
societies blessed
with domestic herbivorous
uncommon
Southeast Asia today). In addition, dogs are not
meat
if
you
efficiently fattened
Growth
Rate.
eater, just
read the
list
of ingredients
his
it
on your bag of
for
To be worth keeping, domesticates must
That eliminates
What would-be
gorillas
food were
to capture
grow
and represent
some
in the
a lot of
would wait 15 years
Modern Asians who want work
them
Problems of Captive Breeding.
the watchful eyes of others;
also
and elephants, even though they are vege-
gorilla or elephant rancher
herd to reach adult size?
much cheaper
strict carni-
on vegetables and garbage.
tarians with admirably nonfinicky food preferences
meat.
delicacy
are so naive as to think that your beloved pet
dog food. The dogs that the Aztecs and Polynesians reared
quickly.
Aztecs had no
and ancient Chinese had
not bothered to eat dogs, except as an
vores but omnivores:
dog
human
the Polynesians
for
elephants find
wild and tame them.
We humans
don't like to have sex under
potentially valuable animal species don't
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
7 o
i
what
like to, either. That's
derailed attempts to domesticate cheetahs, the
swiftest of all land animals, despite
our strong motivation to do so for
thousands of years.
As
I
already mentioned, tame cheetahs were prized by ancient Egyptians
and Assyrians and modern Indians
to dogs.
One Mogul emperor
as hunting animals infinitely superior
of India kept a stable of a thousand cheetahs.
But despite those large investments that
were tamed ones caught
their cheetahs
breed cheetahs in captivity
in
modern zoos achieve
many wealthy
in the wild.
and not
failed,
until
princes made,
The
all
of
princes' efforts to
1960 did even
biologists
their first successful cheetah birth. In the wild,
several cheetah brothers chase a female for several days,
and that rough
courtship over large distances seems to be required to get the female to
become sexually
ovulate or to
receptive.
Cheetahs usually refuse to carry
out that elaborate courtship ritual inside a cage.
A
similar
problem has frustrated schemes to breed the vicuna, an
Andean wild camel whose wool
animal's.
The ancient
is
prized as the finest and lightest of any
Incas obtained vicuna
into corrals, shearing them,
wool by driving wild vicunas
and then releasing them
alive.
Modern mer-
chants wanting this luxury wool have had to resort either to this same
method or simply
money and
to killing wild vicunas. Despite strong incentives of
prestige, all attempts to breed vicunas for
wool production
captivity have failed, for reasons that include vicunas' long
in
and elaborate
courtship ritual before mating, a ritual inhibited in captivity; male vicunas'
fierce intolerance of
round feeding
each other; and their requirement for both a year-
territory
and
a separate year-round sleeping territory.
Nasty Disposition. Naturally, almost any
ciently large
is
species that
is suffi-
capable of killing a human. People have been killed by pigs,
horses, camels,
and
nastier dispositions
Tendencies to
mammal
kill
cattle.
Nevertheless,
some
large animals have
and are more incurably dangerous than are
humans have
disqualified
many
much
others.
otherwise seemingly
ideal candidates for domestication.
One obvious example
delicacy, grizzlies
is
the grizzly bear. Bear
meat
(though also formidable hunters), their vegetable diet
thrive
is
is
very broad, they
on human garbage (thereby creating big problems
and Glacier National Parks), and they grow
behave themselves
tion animal.
an expensive
weigh up to 1,700 pounds, they are mainly vegetarians
in
Yellowstone
relatively fast. If they
would
in captivity, grizzlies would be a fabulous meat producThe Ainu people of Japan made the experiment by routinely
ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
I
7
I
rearing grizzly cubs as part of a ritual. For understandable reasons,
though, the Ainu found
it
prudent to
and eat the cubs
kill
Keeping grizzly bears for longer would be
year.
one
at the age of
suicidal;
I
am
not aware
of any adult that has been tamed.
Another otherwise suitable candidate that
obvious reasons
a ton
and
a trait
is
lives in
whose
the African buffalo.
It
disqualifies itself for equally
grows quickly up to a weight of
herds that have a well-developed dominance hierarchy,
But the African buffalo
virtues will be discussed below.
considered the most dangerous and unpredictable large
Anyone insane enough
was forced
to
kill
to try to domesticate
the buffalo before
it
mammal
is
of Africa.
either died in the effort or
it
got too big and nasty. Similarly,
hippos, as four-ton vegetarians,
would be
weren't so dangerous. They
more people each year than do any other
African
kill
mammals, including even
Few people would
great barnyard animals
lions.
be surprised at the disqualification of those notori-
ously ferocious candidates. But there are other candidates
are not so well
(horses
and
they
if
known. For
whose dangers
instance, the eight species of wild equids
their relatives) vary greatly in disposition,
even though
eight are genetically so close to each other that they will interbreed
Two
of them, the horse
ass (ancestor of the donkey),
were successfully
produce healthy (though usually
and the North African
sterile) offspring.
domesticated. Closely related to the North African ass
also
known
as the onager. Since
its
the cradle of Western civilization
ples
homeland includes
is
as captured
the Asiatic ass,
the Fertile Crescent,
and animal domestication, ancient peo-
must have experimented extensively with onagers.
Sumerian and
later depictions that
We know
from
onagers were regularly hunted, as well
and hybridized with donkeys and horses. Some ancient depic-
tions of horselike animals used for riding or for pulling carts
to onagers.
all
and
However,
all
may
refer
from Romans to modern
writers about them,
zookeepers, decry their irascible temper and their nasty habit of biting
people.
As
a result, although similar in other respects to ancestral donkeys,
onagers have never been domesticated.
Africa's four species of zebras are even worse. Efforts at domestication
went
as far as hitching
in 19th-century
them
to carts: they
were
tried out as draft animals
South Africa, and the eccentric Lord Walter Rothschild
drove through the streets of London in a carriage pulled by zebras. Alas,
zebras
become impossibly dangerous
as they
grow
older. (That's not to
deny that many individual horses are also nasty, but zebras and onagers
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
7 2
I
much more uniformly
are
and not
a person
Zebras have the unpleasant habit of biting
so.)
They thereby
letting go.
injure even
more American zoo-
keepers each year than do tigers! Zebras are also virtually impossible to
lasso with a rope
lassoing horses
fly
—even
cowboys who win rodeo championships by
for
—because of
their unfailing ability to
toward them and then to duck
Hence
it
has rarely
(if
watch the rope noose
head out of the way.
their
ever) been possible to saddle or ride a zebra,
and
South Africans' enthusiasm for their domestication waned. Unpredictably
aggressive behavior
mal
is
ments
on the part of a
also part of the reason
in domesticating elk
Tendency
to Panic. Big
and programmed
why the
and potentially dangerous mam-
initially
modern
so promising
and eland have not been more
mammalian herbivore
from predators or humans
fast,
large
in different
for instant flight
experi-
successful.
species react to danger
ways. Some species are nervous,
when
they perceive a threat. Other
species are slower, less nervous, seek protection in herds, stand their
ground when threatened, and don't run
until necessary.
Most
species of
deer and antelope (with the conspicuous exception of reindeer) are of the
former type, while sheep and goats are of the
latter.
Naturally, the nervous species are difficult to keep in captivity.
into an enclosure, they are likely to panic,
and
either die of
If
put
shock or batter
themselves to death against the fence in their attempts to escape. That's
true, for
example, of gazelles, which for thousands of years were the most
frequently hunted
is
no mammal
game
species in
species that the
some
parts of the Fertile Crescent. There
first settled
peoples of that area had more
opportunity to domesticate than gazelles. But no gazelle species has ever
been domesticated. Just imagine trying to herd an animal that
blindly bashes itself against walls, can leap
up to nearly 30
feet,
bolts,
and can
run at a speed of 50 miles per hour!
Social Structure.
Almost
all
species of domesticated large
mammals
prove to be ones whose wild ancestors share three social characteristics:
they
live in herds;
they maintain a well-developed dominance hierarchy
among herd members; and
the herds occupy overlapping
home
ranges
rather than mutually exclusive territories. For example, herds of wild
horses consist of one stallion, up to half a dozen mares, and their foals.
Mare A
is
dominant over mares
B, C,
D, and E; mare B
is
submissive to
A
C is submissive to B and A but dominant
When the herd is on the move, its members
but dominant over C, D, and E;
over
D
and
E;
and so on.
maintain a stereotyped order:
in the rear, the stallion; in the front, the top-
17
ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
3
ranking female, followed by her foals in order of age, with the youngest
and behind
first;
her, the other
mares
her foals in order of age. In that way,
in
order of rank, each followed by
many
adults can coexist in the herd
without constant fighting and with each knowing
That
social structure
is
its
rank.
humans
ideal for domestication, because
in
effect take
over the dominance hierarchy. Domestic horses of a pack line
follow the
human
leader as they
would normally follow the top-ranking
female. Herds or packs of sheep, goats, cows, and ancestral dogs (wolves)
have a similar hierarchy. As young animals grow up
in
such a herd, they
imprint on the animals that they regularly see nearby. Under wild conditions those are
members
of their
own
species, but captive
young herd
ani-
mals also see humans nearby and imprint on humans as well.
Such
social animals lend themselves to herding. Since they are tolerant
of each other, they can be bunched up. Since they instinctively follow a
dominant leader and
will imprint
on humans
readily be driven by a shepherd or sheepdog.
penned
in
crowded conditions, because they
as that leader, they
Herd animals do
well
can
when
are accustomed to living in
densely packed groups in the wild.
In contrast,
members
of most solitary territorial animal species cannot
be herded. They do not tolerate each other, they do not imprint on
humans, and they are not
cats (solitary
and
instinctively submissive.
territorial in the wild)
themselves to be herded by a
human? Every
not submissive to humans in the
rets
are the sole territorial
way dogs
mammal
Who
following a
cat lover
saw
ever
or allowing
knows
that cats are
instinctively are. Cats
species that
a line of
human
and
fer-
were domesticated,
because our motive for doing so was not to herd them in large groups
raised for food but to keep
While most
it's
them
as solitary hunters or pets.
solitary territorial species thus haven't
been domesticated,
not conversely the case that most herd species can be domesticated.
Most
can't, for
First,
one of several additional reasons.
herds of
many
species don't have overlapping
instead maintain exclusive territories against other herds.
sible to
home
It's
ranges but
no more pos-
pen two such herds together than to pen two males of a
solitary
species.
Second,
many species
in the breeding season,
presence. That's true of
that live in herds for part of the year are territorial
when
they fight and do not tolerate each other's
most deer and antelope
exception of reindeer), and
it's
species (again with the
one of the main factors that has disqualified
17
4
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
'
the social antelope species for
all
domesticated. While one's
first
which Africa
is
famous from being
association to African antelope
is
"vast
dense herds spreading across the horizon," in fact the males of those herds
space themselves into territories and fight fiercely with each other
breeding.
Hence those antelope cannot be maintained
when
crowded enclo-
in
sures in captivity, as can sheep or goats or cattle. Territorial behavior similarly
a
slow growth rate to banish
species, including again
most deer and antelope, do
combines with a
and
fierce disposition
rhinos from the farmyard.
Finally,
many herd
not have a well-defined dominance hierarchy and are not instinctively pre-
pared to become imprinted on a dominant leader (hence to become misim-
many
printed on humans). As a result, though
have been tamed (think of
those true
all
such tame deer and antelope driven
derailed domestication of
same genus
the
as Asiatic
deer and antelope species
Bambi
stories),
in herds like sheep.
one never
sees
That problem also
North American bighorn sheep, which belong
to
mouflon sheep, ancestor of our domestic sheep.
Bighorn sheep are suitable to us and similar to mouflons
in
most respects
except a crucial one: they lack the mouflon's stereotypical behavior
whereby some individuals behave submissively toward other individuals
whose dominance they acknowledge.
Let's
now return
Initially,
to the
problem
I
posed
at the outset of this chapter.
one of the most puzzling features of animal domestication
is
the
seeming arbitrariness with which some species have been domesticated
while their close relatives have not.
It
turns out that
all
but a few candi-
Anna Karenina princiHumans and most animal species make an unhappy marriage, for one
more of many possible reasons: the animal's diet, growth rate, mating
dates for domestication have been eliminated by the
ple.
or
habits, disposition, tendency to panic,
social organization.
ended up
all
in
and
several distinct features of
Only a small percentage of wild mammal
happy marriages with humans, by
species
virtue of compatibility
on
those separate counts.
Eurasian peoples happened to inherit
ticable large wild
mammalian
continents. That outcome, with
asian societies,
history,
stemmed from
and biology.
First,
many more
species of
domes-
herbivores than did peoples of the other
all
of
its
momentous advantages
three basic facts of
Eurasia, befitting
its
for Eur-
mammalian geography,
large area
and ecological
ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
diversity, started
I
7
5
out with the most candidates. Second, Australia and the
Americas, but not Eurasia or Africa, lost most of their candidates in a
massive wave of late-Pleistocene extinctions
—possibly because the mam-
mals of the former continents had the misfortune to be
humans suddenly and
skills
late in
first
exposed to
our evolutionary history, when our hunting
were already highly developed.
Finally, a higher percentage of the
surviving candidates proved suitable for domestication on Eurasia than on
the other continents.
An
examination of the candidates that were never
domesticated, such as Africa's big herd-forming
lar
mammals,
reveals particu-
reasons that disqualified each of them. Thus, Tolstoy would have
approved of the insight offered
Saint
Matthew: "Many are
in
another context by an earlier author,
called, but
few are chosen."
CHAPTER
10
Spacious Skies and
Tilted Axes
ON
THE MAP OF THE WORLD ON PAGE 177 (FIGURE
compare
the shapes
10.1),
and orientations of the continents. You'll be
The Americas span
struck by an obvious difference.
a
much
greater dis-
tance north-south (9,000 miles) than east-west: only 3,000 miles at the
widest, narrowing to a mere
40 miles
the major axis of the Americas
though to a
Eurasia
is
less
north-south. The same
is
east-west.
What
effect, if any,
is
is,
also true,
did those differences in the orien-
on human history?
This chapter will be about what
and
Isthmus of Panama. That
extreme degree, for Africa. In contrast, the major axis of
tation of the continents' axes have
tragic,
at the
I
see as their
enormous, sometimes
consequences. Axis orientations affected the rate of spread of crops
livestock,
and possibly also of writing, wheels, and other inventions.
That basic feature of geography thereby contributed heavily to the very
different experiences of Native Americans, Africans,
last
500
JTood production's spread
geographic differences in the
gins,
and Eurasians
in the
years.
which we considered
rise
in the
proves as crucial to understanding
of guns, germs, and steel as did
its ori-
preceding chapters. That's because, as
i
7
we
17
SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES
CT^l/7°
^A
/i^^
o£>£~
\
r^vAmericas
<
.
^°
Eurasia
P^§
%
^^s
J
1
^,
7
Africa
/0'
H
?
Y
J*
Figure 10.1. Major axes of the continents.
saw
in
few
as
Chapter
as five,
5, there
were no more than nine areas of the globe, perhaps
where food production arose independently.
prehistoric times, food production
became established
Yet, already in
in
many
other
regions besides those few areas of origins. All those other areas became
food producing as a result of the spread of crops, livestock, and knowledge
of
how
ers
to
grow them and,
in
some
cases, as a result of migrations of farm-
and herders themselves.
The main such spreads
to Europe, Egypt
Valley;
of food production were from Southwest Asia
and North Africa, Ethiopia, Central Asia, and the Indus
from the Sahel and West Africa to East and South Africa; from
China to tropical Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, and
Japan; and from Mesoamerica to North America. Moreover, food production even in
livestock,
Just as
its
areas of origin
became enriched by the addition of crops,
and techniques from other areas of
some regions proved much more
origins of food production, the ease of
origin.
suitable than others for the
its
spread also varied greatly
around the world. Some areas that are ecologically very suitable
production never acquired
it
in prehistoric times at all,
of prehistoric food production existed nearby.
examples are the
failure of
for food
even though areas
The most conspicuous such
both farming and herding to reach Native
178
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
American California from the U.S. Southwest or to reach Australia from
New
Guinea and Indonesia, and the
failure of
farming to spread from
South Africa's Natal Province to South Africa's Cape. Even among
all
those areas where food production did spread in the prehistoric era, the
and dates of spread varied considerably. At the one extreme was
rates
its
from Southwest Asia both west to
rapid spread along east-west axes:
Europe and Egypt and east to the Indus Valley
(at
an average rate of about
0.7 miles per year); and from the Philippines east to Polynesia (at 3.2 miles
per year). At the opposite extreme
was
axes: at less than 0.5 miles per year,
Southwest; at
less
slow spread along north-south
its
from Mexico northward to the U.S.
than 0.3 miles per year, for corn and beans from Mexico
northward to become productive
in the eastern
United States around a.d.
900; and at 0.2 miles per year, for the llama from Peru north to Ecuador.
These differences could be even greater
Mexico
tions,
as late as
and
as
3500
B.C., as
still
if
corn was not domesticated in
assumed conservatively
some archaeologists now
ticated considerably earlier, as
many
I
assume, but
if it
for these calcula-
was
instead domes-
most archaeologists used to assume (and
do).
There were also great differences
in the
completeness with which suites
of crops and livestock spread, again implying stronger or weaker barriers
to their spreading. For instance, while
most of Southwest
Asia's founder
crops and livestock did spread west to Europe and east to the Indus Valley,
neither of the Andes' domestic
pig) ever reached
failure cries
mammals
Mesoamerica
in
farming populations and complex
(if
llama
/
alpaca and the guinea
pre-Columbian times. That astonishing
out for explanation. After
Andean domestic animals
(the
Mesoamerica did develop dense
all,
societies, so there
can be no doubt that
they had been available)
would have been
valuable for food, transport, and wool. Except for dogs, Mesoamerica
utterly
without indigenous
mammals to
fill
those needs.
was
Some South Amerman-
ican crops nevertheless did succeed in reaching Mesoamerica, such as
ioc,
sweet potatoes, and peanuts.
What
selective barrier let those crops
through but screened out llamas and guinea pigs?
A
subtler expression of this geographically varying ease of spread
phenomenon termed preemptive domestication. Most
species
is
the
of the wild plant
from which our crops were derived vary genetically from area to
area, because alternative mutations
had become established among the
wild ancestral populations of different areas.
Similarly,
the
changes
required to transform wild plants into crops can in principle be brought
17
SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES
9
about by alternative new mutations or alternative courses of selection to
one can examine a crop widespread
yield equivalent results. In this light,
in prehistoric times
and ask whether
all
of
its
varieties
show
mutation or same transforming mutation. The purpose of
tion
is
to try to figure out whether the crop
was developed
the
same wild
this
examina-
in just
one area
or else independently in several areas.
If
one carries out such a genetic analysis for major ancient
crops,
many
of them prove to include
New
two or more of those
World
alternative
wild variants, or two or more of those alternative transforming mutations.
This suggests that the crop was domesticated independently in at least two
different areas,
and that some
varieties of the
crop inherited the particular
mutation of one area while other varieties of the same crop inherited the
mutation of another area.
beans (Phaseolus lunatus),
peppers of the Capsicum
on
at least
On this
common
conclude that lima
basis, botanists
beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), and
annuum I chinense group were
two separate occasions, once
in
all
chili
domesticated
Mesoamerica and once
in
South
America; and that the squash Cucurbita pepo and the seed plant goosefoot
were also domesticated independently
and once
just
one of the alternative wild variants or alternative
transforming mutations, suggesting that
ular crop stem
What
does
from only
it
imply
if
modern
all
varieties of that partic-
a single domestication.
the
same crop has been repeatedly and indepen-
dently domesticated in several different parts of
just
once in Mesoamerica
United States. In contrast, most ancient Southwest
in the eastern
Asian crops exhibit
at least twice,
once and in a single area?
We
its
wild range, and not
have already seen that plant domestica-
tion involves the modification of wild plants so that they
become more
humans by virtue of larger seeds, a less bitter taste, or other
qualities. Hence if a productive crop is already available, incipient farmers
will surely proceed to grow it rather than start all over again by gathering
useful to
its
not yet so useful wild relative and redomesticating
it.
Evidence for just
a single domestication thus suggests that, once a wild plant had been
domesticated, the crop spread quickly to other areas throughout the wild
plant's range,
preempting the need for other independent domestications
of the same plant. However,
ancestor
when we
find evidence that the
was domesticated independently
the crop spread too slowly to preempt
in different areas,
its
same wild
we
infer that
domestication elsewhere. The
evidence for predominantly single domestications in Southwest Asia, but
frequent multiple domestications in the Americas, might thus provide
8
I
more
than
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O
more
subtle evidence that crops spread
easily out of
Southwest Asia
Americas.
in the
Rapid spread of a crop may preempt domestication not only of the same
wild ancestral species somewhere else but also of related wild species.
you're already growing good peas,
scratch to domesticate the
it's
If
of course pointless to start from
same wild ancestral pea again, but
it's
also
pointless to domesticate closely related wild pea species that for farmers
are virtually equivalent to the already domesticated pea species. All of
Southwest Asia's founder crops preempted domestication of any of their
close relatives throughout the
New
trast, the
whole expanse of western Eurasia. In con-
World presents many
cases of equivalent
and
closely re-
having been domesticated in Meso-
lated, but nevertheless distinct, species
america and South America. For instance, 95 percent of the cotton grown
in the
world today belongs to the cotton species Gossypium hirsutum,
which was domesticated
prehistoric South
in prehistoric times in
Mesoamerica. However,
American farmers instead grew the related cotton Gos-
sypium barbadense. Evidently, Mesoamerican cotton had such
reaching South America that
it
failed in the prehistoric era to
difficulty
preempt the
domestication of a different cotton species there (and vice versa). Chili
peppers, squashes, amaranths, and chenopods are other crops of which
different but related species
were domesticated
America, since no species was able to spread
in
Mesoamerica and South
fast
enough
to
preempt the
others.
We
thus have
many
different
phenomena converging on
clusion: that food production spread
than
in the
more
the
same con-
readily out of Southwest Asia
Americas, and possibly also than in sub-Saharan Africa. Those
phenomena
include food production's complete failure to reach
logically suitable areas; the differences in
and the differences
in
whether the
its
earliest
rate
and
some
eco-
selectivity of spread;
domesticated crops preempted
redomestications of the same species or domestications of close relatives.
What was
it
about the Americas and Africa that made the spread of food
production more
difficult there
lo answer this
question,
than in Eurasia?
let's
begin by examining the rapid spread
of food production out of Southwest Asia (the Fertile Crescent). Soon after
food production arose there, somewhat before 8000
wave of
it
appeared
in other parts of
B.C., a centrifugal
western Eurasia and North Africa
SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES
farther
east.
and farther removed from the
On this page
I
I
how
the
map
B.C.,
B.C.,
Egypt soon
southern Spain by 5200
after
B.C.,
and
west and
(Figure 10.2) assembled
which they
in
wave had reached Greece and Cyprus and
subcontinent by 6500
5400
I
Fertile Crescent, to the
have redrawn the striking
by the geneticist Daniel Zohary and botanist Maria Hopf,
illustrate
8
6000
the Indian
B.C., central
Britain
Europe by
around 3500
B.C. In
each of those areas, food production was initiated by some of the same
suite of
domestic plants and animals that launched
ward
to Ethiopia at
developed
many
some
still-uncertain date.
indigenous crops, and
in the Fertile Cres-
it
package penetrated Africa south-
cent. In addition, the Fertile Crescent
we do
However, Ethiopia
not yet
know whether
it
also
was
these crops or the arriving Fertile Crescent crops that launched Ethiopian
food production.
The spread
of Fertile Crescent crops across western Eurasia
Figure 10.2. The symbols
show
early radiocarbon-dated sites
remains of Fertile Crescent crops have been found.
cent itself
later as
Map 20
(sites
before 7000 B.C.).
one gets farther from the
Note
that dates
=
where
the Fertile Cres-
become progressively
Fertile Crescent. This
of Zohary and Hopf's Domestication of Plants
map
is
in the
based on
Old World
but substitutes calibrated radiocarbon dates for their uncalibrated dates.
8
I
Of
course, not
areas: for
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2
all
pieces of the package spread to
example, Egypt was too
some outlying
established. In
for instance,
different times:
warm
all
for einkorn
those outlying
wheat to become
package arrived
areas, elements of the
at
sheep preceded cereals in southwestern
Europe. Some outlying areas went on to domesticate a few local crops of
own, such
their
as poppies in western
Europe and watermelons possibly
depended
in Egypt.
But most food production
on
Crescent domesticates. Their spread was soon followed by that
Fertile
in outlying areas
initially
of other innovations originating in or near the Fertile Crescent, including
the wheel, writing, metalworking techniques, milking, fruit trees,
and beer
and wine production.
Why
did the same plant package launch food production throughout
western Eurasia?
in
many
areas,
Was
it
because the same
were found useful there
were independently domesticated? No,
occurred in the wild
set of plants
just as in the Fertile Crescent,
that's
not the reason.
First,
and
many
of the Fertile Crescent's founder crops don't even occur in the wild outside
Southwest Asia. For instance, none of the eight main founder crops except
barley grows wild in Egypt. Egypt's Nile Valley provides an environment
similar to the Fertile Crescent's Tigris
package that worked well
and Euphrates
in the latter valleys also
in the Nile Valley to trigger the spectacular rise of
civilization.
But the foods to fuel that spectacular
Valleys.
worked
Hence
well
the
enough
indigenous Egyptian
rise
were originally
absent in Egypt. The sphinx and pyramids were built by people fed on
crops originally native to the Fertile Crescent, not to Egypt.
Second, even for those crops whose wild ancestor does occur outside of
Southwest Asia, we can be confident that the crops of Europe and India
were mostly obtained from Southwest Asia and were not local domesticates.
For example, wild flax occurs west to Britain and Algeria and east
to the
Caspian Sea, while wild barley occurs east even to Tibet. However,
most of the
for
Fertile Crescent's
founding crops,
the world today share only one arrangement of
all
cultivated varieties in
chromosomes out of
the
multiple arrangements found in the wild ancestor; or else they share only
a single mutation (out of
varieties
differ
many possible mutations) by which the cultivated
from the wild ancestor
humans. For instance,
all
in characteristics
cultivated peas share the
same
desirable to
recessive gene that
prevents ripe pods of cultivated peas from spontaneously popping open
and
spilling their peas, as
Evidently,
wild pea pods do.
most of the
Fertile
Crescent's founder crops were never
SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES
domesticated again elsewhere after their
Crescent.
would
Had
initial
3
domestication in the Fertile
they been repeatedly domesticated independently, they
exhibit legacies of those multiple origins in the
mosomal arrangements
ples of the
8
I
or varied mutations.
phenomenon
Hence
form of varied chro-
these are typical
of preemptive domestication that
we
exam-
discussed
above. The quick spread of the Fertile Crescent package preempted any
possible other attempts, within the Fertile Crescent or elsewhere, to
domesticate the same wild ancestors. Once the crop had become available,
there
was no
further need to gather
it
from the wild and thereby
set
it
on
the path to domestication again.
The ancestors of most of
the founder crops have wild relatives, in the
Crescent and elsewhere, that would also have been suitable for
Fertile
domestication. For example, peas belong to the genus Visum, which consists
of
two wild
species:
Visum sativum, the one that became domesticated
to yield our garden peas,
cated. Yet wild peas of
are
common
and
flax all
and Visum fulvum, which was never domesti-
Visum fulvum
taste
good, either fresh or dried, and
wheats, barley,
in the wild. Similarly,
lentil,
chickpea, beans,
have numerous wild relatives besides the ones that became
domesticated.
Some
of those related beans and barleys were indeed domes-
ticated independently in the
Americas or China,
far
from the early
site
of
domestication in the Fertile Crescent. But in western Eurasia only one of
potentially
several
useful
wild
species
was domesticated
—probably
because that one spread so quickly that people soon stopped gathering the
other wild relatives and ate only the crop. Again as
we
discussed above,
the crop's rapid spread preempted any possible further attempts to domesticate its relatives, as well as to
Why was
the
redomesticate
its
ancestor.
spread of crops from the Fertile Crescent so rapid? The
answer depends partly on that east-west axis of Eurasia with which
opened
this chapter. Localities distributed east
&t same
tions.
To
latitude share exactly the
and west of each other
same day length and
its
I
at
seasonal varia-
a lesser degree, they also tend to share similar diseases, regimes
of temperature and rainfall, and habitats or biomes (types of vegetation).
For example, Portugal, northern Iran, and Japan,
same
are
latitude but lying successively
more
all
4,000 miles east or west of each other,
similar to each other in climate than each
even a mere 1,000 miles due south.
located at about the
On
all
is
to a location lying
the continents the habitat type
—
184
known
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
as tropical rain forest
confined to within about 10 degrees
is
lati-
tude of the equator, while Mediterranean scrub habitats (such as Califorchaparral and Europe's maquis)
nia's
lie
between about 30 and 40 degrees
of latitude.
But the germination, growth, and disease resistance of plants are
adapted to precisely those features of climate. Seasonal changes of day
length, temperature,
and
rainfall constitute signals that stimulate seeds to
germinate, seedlings to grow, and mature plants to develop flowers, seeds,
and
Each plant population becomes genetically programmed,
fruit.
through natural selection, to respond appropriately to signals of the seasonal regime under which
it
has evolved. Those regimes vary greatly with
For example, day length
is
equator, but at temperate latitudes
it
latitude.
the winter solstice to the
through the next half of the
constant throughout the year at the
increases as the
months advance from
summer solstice, and it then declines again
year. The growing season
that is, the months
—
with temperatures and day lengths suitable for plant growth
at high latitudes
and longest toward the equator. Plants are
—
is
shortest
also adapted
to the diseases prevalent at their latitude.
Woe
betide the plant
tude of the
enough
ico.
field in
whose
which
it is
genetic
The unfortunate corn plant, following
mismatched to the
lati-
growing farther south,
its
its
in
Mex-
Mexico-adapted genetic pro-
shoots in March, only to find
itself
buried under 10 feet of snow. Should the plant become genetically
reprogrammed so
say, late
June
as to germinate at a time
—the plant would
genes would be telling
it
is
planted! Imagine a Canadian farmer foolish
to plant a race of corn adapted to
gram, would prepare to thrust up
still
program
it
to
grow
still
more appropriate
to
Canada
be in trouble for other reasons.
Its
at a leisurely rate, sufficient only to bring
to maturity in five months. That's a perfectly safe strategy in Mexico's
mild climate, but in Canada a disastrous one that would guarantee the
plant's being killed
by autumn
frosts before
it
had produced any mature
corn cobs. The plant would also lack genes for resistance to diseases of
northern climates, while uselessly carrying genes for resistance to diseases
of southern climates. All those features
make
low-latitude plants poorly
adapted to high-latitude conditions, and vice versa. As a consequence,
most
Fertile
Crescent crops grow well in France and Japan but poorly at
the equator.
Animals too are adapted to latitude-related features of climate. In that
respect
we
are typical animals, as
we know by
introspection.
Some
of us
SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES
8
I
can't stand cold northern winters with their short days
and
5
characteristic
germs, while others of us can't stand hot tropical climates with their
characteristic diseases. In recent centuries overseas colonists
own
from cool
northern Europe have preferred to emigrate to the similarly cool climates
of
North America,
Australia,
and South Africa, and
highlands within equatorial Kenya and
who were
New
to settle in the cool
Guinea. Northern Europeans
sent out to hot tropical lowland areas used to die in droves of
which tropical peoples had evolved some
diseases such as malaria, to
genetic resistance.
why
That's part of the reason
and east so
rapidly: they
Crescent domesticates spread west
Fertile
were already well adapted to the climates of the
regions to which they were spreading. For instance, once farming crossed
from the plains of Hungary into central Europe around 5400
spread so quickly that the
sites
of the
Poland west to Holland (marked by
first
their characteristic pottery
decorations) were nearly contemporaneous.
B.C.,
it
farmers in the vast area from
By the time of
with linear
Christ, cereals
of Fertile Crescent origin were growing over the 8,000-mile expanse from
the Atlantic coast of Ireland to the Pacific coast of Japan.
expanse of Eurasia
Thus, Eurasia's west-east axis allowed
That west-east
on Earth.
the largest land distance
is
Fertile
Crescent crops quickly to
launch agriculture over the band of temperate latitudes from Ireland to the
Indus Valley, and to enrich the agriculture that arose independently in eastern Asia. Conversely, Eurasian crops that were
the Fertile Crescent but at the
when
the Fertile Crescent. Today,
globe by ship and plane,
graphic mishmash.
include chicken
A
(first
same
we
typical
take
latitudes
first
domesticated far from
were able to diffuse back to
seeds are transported over the whole
for granted that our meals are a geo-
it
American fast-food restaurant meal would
domesticated
in
China) and potatoes (from the
Andes) or corn (from Mexico), seasoned with black pepper (from India)
and washed down with
a
though, by 2,000 years ago,
cup of coffee
(of Ethiopian origin). Already,
Romans were
also nourishing themselves with
own hodgepodge of foods that mostly originated elsewhere. Of
Roman crops, only oats and poppies were native to Italy. Roman staples
their
were the
Fertile
Crescent founder package, supplemented by quince
(origi-
nating in the Caucasus); millet and cumin (domesticated in Central Asia);
cucumber, sesame, and
cots, peaches,
and
Rome's apples were
citrus fruit
(from India); and chicken,
foxtail millet (originally
at least native to
rice, apri-
from China). Even though
western Eurasia, they were grown
8
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
by means of grafting techniques that had developed
westward from
in
China and spread
there.
While Eurasia provides the world's widest band of land
latitude,
and hence the most dramatic example of rapid spread of domesti-
cates, there are other
examples as
well. Rivaling in speed the spread of the
Crescent package was the eastward spread of a subtropical package
Fertile
that
same
at the
was
initially
on reaching
assembled
in
South China and that received additions
tropical Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia,
and
New
Guinea. Within 1,600 years that resulting package of crops (including
bananas, taro, and yams) and domestic animals (chickens, pigs, and dogs)
had spread more than 5,000 miles eastward
reach the islands of Polynesia.
A
into the tropical Pacific to
further likely
example
is
the east-west
spread of crops within Africa's wide Sahel zone, but paleobotanists have
yet to
work out
the details.
Contrast the
ease
culties of diffusion
of east- west diffusion in Eurasia with the
along Africa's north-south axis.
Most
diffi-
of the Fertile
Crescent founder crops reached Egypt very quickly and then spread as far
south as the cool highlands of Ethiopia, beyond which they didn't spread.
South Africa's Mediterranean climate would have been ideal for them, but
the 2,000 miles of tropical conditions between Ethiopia
posed an insuperable
and South Africa
barrier. Instead, African agriculture south of the
Sahara was launched by the domestication of wild plants (such as sorghum
and African yams) indigenous
Africa,
and adapted
tively constant
to the
to the Sahel zone
warm
Similarly, the spread
summer
temperatures,
day lengths of those low
southward of
and to
West
tropical
rains,
and
rela-
latitudes.
Fertile Crescent
domestic animals
through Africa was stopped or slowed by climate and disease, especially
by trypanosome diseases carried by
established farther south than
tor.
The advance of
West
cattle, sheep,
tsetse flies.
Africa's
The horse never became
kingdoms north of the equa-
and goats halted for 2,000 years
at the
new types of human econodeveloped. Not until the period a.d.
northern edge of the Serengeti Plains, while
mies and livestock breeds were being
1-200, some 8,000 years after livestock were domesticated in the
Fertile
Crescent, did cattle, sheep, and goats finally reach South Africa. Tropical
African crops had their
in
own
difficulties
spreading south in Africa, arriving
South Africa with black African farmers (the Bantu)
just after those
SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES
Fertile
I
8
7
Crescent livestock did. However, those tropical African crops could
never be transmitted across South Africa's Fish River, beyond which they
were stopped by Mediterranean conditions to which they were not
adapted.
The
result
South African
(otherwise
was
the all-too-familiar course of the last
history.
known
Some
two millennia of
of South Africa's indigenous Khoisan peoples
and Bushmen) acquired livestock but
as Hottentots
remained without agriculture. They became outnumbered and were
whose
replaced northeast of the Fish River by black African farmers,
southward spread halted
at that river.
arrived by sea in 1652, bringing with
Only when European
them
settlers
their Fertile Crescent crop
package, could agriculture thrive in South Africa's Mediterranean zone.
The
collisions of all those peoples
produced the tragedies of modern South
Africa: the quick decimation of the
Khoisan by European germs and guns;
a century of wars between Europeans and blacks; another century of racial
oppression; and now, efforts by Europeans and blacks to seek a
new mode
of coexistence in the former Khoisan lands.
Lontrast also the
ease of diffusion in Eurasia with
its difficulties
along the Americas' north-south axis. The distance between Mesoamerica
and South America
—
say,
between Mexico's highlands and Ecuador's
—
is
only 1,200 miles, approximately the same as the distance in Eurasia separating the Balkans
from Mesopotamia. The Balkans provided
ing conditions for
most Mesopotamian crops and
livestock,
those domesticates as a package within 2,000 years of
Fertile Crescent.
cating those
grow-
and received
assembly
in the
That rapid spread preempted opportunities for domesti-
and related
Andes would
its
ideal
species in the Balkans.
similarly have been suitable for
and domestic animals.
A
Highland Mexico and the
many
of each other's crops
few crops, notably Mexican corn, did indeed
spread to the other region in the pre-Columbian era.
But other crops and domestic animals failed to spread between Mesoamerica and South America. The cool highlands of Mexico would have
provided ideal conditions for raising llamas, guinea pigs, and potatoes,
all
domesticated in the cool highlands of the South American Andes. Yet the
northward spread of those Andean
specialties
was stopped completely by
the hot intervening lowlands of Central America. Five thousand years after
llamas had been domesticated in the Andes, the Olmecs, Maya, Aztecs,
I
and
all
8
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
other native societies of
Mexico remained without pack animals
and without any edible domestic mammals except for dogs.
Mexico and domestic sunflowers
Conversely, domestic turkeys of
of the
eastern United States might have thrived in the Andes, but their southward
spread was stopped by the intervening tropical climates. The mere 700
miles of north-south distance prevented
Mexican corn, squash, and beans
from reaching the U.S. Southwest for several thousand years
domestication in Mexico, and Mexican
did reach
it
in prehistoric times.
domesticated in Mexico,
it
chili
after their
peppers and chenopods never
For thousands of years after corn was
failed to spread
northward into eastern North
America, because of the cooler climates and shorter growing season prevailing there.
At some time between a.d.
1
and a.d. 200, corn
finally
appeared in the eastern United States but only as a very minor crop. Not
until
around a.d. 900,
after
hardy
varieties of
corn adapted to northern
climates had been developed, could corn-based agriculture contribute to
most complex Native American society of North
the flowering of the
America, the Mississippian culture
—a
brief flowering
ended by European-
introduced germs arriving with and after Columbus.
upon
Recall that most Fertile Crescent crops prove,
derive
from only a
single domestication process,
spread so quickly that
the
same or
it
genetic study, to
whose
resulting crop
preempted any other incipient domestications of
related species. In contrast,
many
apparently widespread
Native American crops prove to consist of related species or even of genetically distinct varieties of the
same
species, independently domesticated in
Mesoamerica, South America, and the eastern United
related species replace each other geographically
among
States.
Closely
the amaranths,
beans, chenopods, chili peppers, cottons, squashes, and tobaccos. Different varieties of the
same
among the kidney
annuum I chinense, and the
species replace each other
beans, lima beans, the chili pepper Capsicum
squash Cucurbita pepo. Those legacies of multiple independent domestications
may
provide further testimony to the slow diffusion of crops along
the Americas' north-south axis.
Africa and the Americas are thus the
two
largest landmasses with a
predominantly north-south axis and resulting slow diffusion. In certain
other parts of the world, slow north-south diffusion
was important on
a
smaller scale. These other examples include the snail's pace of crop
exchange between Pakistan's Indus Valley and South India, the slow
spread of South Chinese food production into Peninsular Malaysia, and
SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES
the failure of tropical Indonesian
arrive in prehistoric times in the
New
and
I
8
9
Guinean food production
modern farmlands
to
of southwestern and
southeastern Australia, respectively. Those two corners of Australia are
now the continent's
breadbaskets, but they
lie
more than 2,000
miles south
of the equator. Farming there had to await the arrival from faraway
Europe, on European ships, of crops adapted to Europe's cool climate and
short growing season.
1
have been
because
it is
a
dwelling on latitude, readily assessed by a glance at a map,
major determinant of climate, growing conditions, and ease
However,
of spread of food production.
such determinant, and
latitude
it is
latitude
is
of course not the only
not always true that adjacent places at the same
have the same climate (though they do necessarily have the same
day length). Topographic and ecological
on some continents than on
barriers,
were
others,
much more pronounced
locally important obstacles to
diffusion.
For instance, crop diffusion between the U.S. Southeast and Southwest
was very slow and
latitude. That's
selective
because
although these two regions are at the same
much
of the intervening area of Texas and the
southern Great Plains was dry and unsuitable for agriculture.
ponding example within Eurasia involved the eastern
A
corres-
limit of Fertile Cres-
cent crops, which spread rapidly westward to the Atlantic
Ocean and
eastward to the Indus Valley without encountering a major barrier.
ever, farther
eastward in India the
to predominantly
summer
shift
from predominantly winter
rainfall contributed to a
much more
How-
rainfall
delayed
extension of agriculture, involving different crops and farming techniques,
into the
Ganges plain of northeastern
areas of China were isolated
India.
Still
farther east, temperate
from western Eurasian areas with
similar
climates by the combination of the Central Asian desert, Tibetan plateau,
and Himalayas. The
initial
development of food production
therefore independent of that at the
and gave
same
rise to entirely different crops.
between China and western Eurasia were
the second millennium B.C.,
in
China was
latitude in the Fertile Crescent,
However, even those
at least partly
when West Asian wheat,
barriers
overcome during
barley,
and horses
reached China.
By the same token, the potency of
a 2,000-mile north-south shift as a
barrier also varies with local conditions. Fertile Crescent food production
.
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
9 O
spread southward over that distance to Ethiopia, and Bantu food production spread quickly
from
Africa's Great
Lakes region south to Natal,
because in both cases the intervening areas had similar rainfall regimes
and were
suitable for agriculture. In contrast, crop diffusion
from Indone-
south to southwestern Australia was completely impossible, and diffu-
sia
much
sion over the
shorter distance
from Mexico to the U.S. Southwest
and Southeast was slow, because the intervening areas were
to agriculture.
The
lack of a high-elevation plateau in
deserts hostile
Mesoamerica south
of Guatemala, and Mesoamerica's extreme narrowness south of
and
Panama, were
especially in
at least as
Mexico
important as the latitudinal
gradient in throttling crop and livestock exchanges between the highlands
of
Mexico and
the Andes.
Continental differences in axis orientation affected the diffusion not
only of food production but also of other technologies and inventions. For
example, around 3,000 B.C. the invention of the wheel in or near Southwest Asia spread rapidly west and east across
much
of Eurasia within a
few centuries, whereas the wheels invented independently
Mexico never spread south
betic writing,
B.C.,
in prehistoric
to the Andes. Similarly, the principle of alpha-
developed in the western part of the
Fertile
Crescent by 1500
spread west to Carthage and east to the Indian subcontinent within
about a thousand years, but the Mesoamerican writing systems that
flour-
ished in prehistoric times for at least 2,000 years never reached the Andes.
Naturally, wheels
length in the
way
and writing
aren't directly linked to latitude
food production systems and their consequences. The
parts of
ing
was
ox-drawn
and day
crops are. Instead, the links are indirect, especially via
earliest
wheels were
carts used to transport agricultural produce. Early writ-
restricted to elites supported
by food-producing peasants, and
it
served purposes of economically and socially complex food-producing
societies (such as royal
propaganda, goods inventories, and bureaucratic
record keeping). In general, societies that engaged in intense exchanges of
crops, livestock,
likely to
and technologies related to food production were more
become involved
in other
exchanges as well.
America's patriotic song "America the Beautiful" invokes our spacious
skies,
our amber waves of grain, from sea to shining
song reverses geographic
realities.
As
of native crops and domestic animals
environmental barriers.
No
in Africa, in the
was slowed by
sea. Actually, that
Americas the spread
constricted skies
and
waves of native grain ever stretched from the
Atlantic to the Pacific coast of
North America, from Canada
to Patagonia,
SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES
to stretch
9
I
amber waves of wheat and barley
or from Egypt to South Africa, while
came
I
from the Atlantic to the
Pacific across the spacious skies of
Eurasia. That faster spread of Eurasian agriculture,
compared with
that of
Native American and sub-Saharan African agriculture, played a role
the next part of this
book
will
show)
in the
more rapid
(as
diffusion of Eur-
asian writing, metallurgy, technology, and empires.
To bring up
all
those differences
isn't to
claim that widely distributed
crops are admirable, or that they testify to the superior ingenuity of early
Eurasian farmers. They
compared with
reflect, instead,
the orientation of Eurasia's axis
that of the Americas or Africa.
the fortunes of history.
Around those axes turned
PART THREE
FROM FOOD TO
GUNS, GERMS, AND
STEEL
CHAPTER
11
Lethal Gift of
Livestock
WE
HAVE NOW TRACED HOW FOOD PRODUCTION AROSE
in a few centers, and how it spread at unequal rates from there
to other areas.
answers to
Those geographic differences constitute important ultimate
Yali's
parate degrees of
question about
power and
why
different peoples
affluence.
ended up with
However, food production
not a proximate cause. In a one-on-one
fight, a
dis-
itself is
naked farmer would have
no advantage over a naked hunter-gatherer.
Instead, one part of the explanation for farmer
power
lies in
the
much
denser populations that food production could support: ten naked farmers
certainly
fight.
would have an advantage over one naked hunter-gatherer
The other part
is
in a
that neither farmers nor hunter-gatherers are
naked, at least not figuratively. Farmers tend to breathe out nastier germs,
to
own
better
general,
and
ter able to
explore
weapons and armor,
own more-powerful
to
to live under centralized
governments with
wage wars of conquest. Hence
how
technology in
literate elites bet-
the next four chapters will
the ultimate cause of food production led to the proximate
causes of germs, literacy, technology, and centralized government.
The
and crops
links connecting livestock
germs were unforgettably
me by a hospital case about which I learned through a physiWhen my friend was an inexperienced young doctor, he was
illustrated for
cian friend.
to
1
9
5
room
called into a hospital
mysterious
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
9 6
I
illness. It
to deal with a married couple stressed-out by a
did not help that the couple
communicating with each other, and with
small, timid
man,
my
was
friend.
pneumonia caused by an
sick with
also having difficulty
The husband was
and with only limited command of the English language. Acting
was
tor
his beautiful wife,
from
a long
as transla-
worried about her husband's condition and
frightened by the unfamiliar hospital environment.
stressed-out
week
My
was
friend
stress
my
caused
also
of hospital work, and from trying to figure
out what unusual risk factors might have brought on the strange
The
a
unidentified microbe,
friend to forget everything he
illness.
had been taught about
patient confidentiality: he committed the awful blunder of requesting the
woman
to ask her
husband whether he'd had any sexual experiences that
could have caused the infection.
As the doctor watched, the husband turned
so that he
seemed even smaller,
stammered out words
screamed
in rage
and drew
under
his bedsheets,
herself
up to tower over him. Before the doctor
could stop her, she grabbed a heavy metal bottle, slammed
with
it
and stormed out of the room.
force onto her husband's head,
It
through the man's broken English, what he'd said that so enraged
The answer slowly emerged: he had confessed
visit
full
took a
while for the doctor to revive her husband and even longer to
sheep on a recent
and
barely audible voice. His wife suddenly
a
in
red, pulled himself together
tried to disappear
elicit,
his wife.
to repeated intercourse with
to the family farm; perhaps that
was how he had
contracted the mysterious microbe.
This incident sounds bizarrely one-of-a-kind and of no possible broader
significance. In fact,
human
it
illustrates
an enormous subject of great importance:
diseases of animal origins. Very
sense that this patient did. But
such as our dogs and
cats.
few of us love sheep
in the carnal
most of us platonically love our pet animals,
As
a society,
we
certainly appear to have an
inordinate fondness for sheep and other livestock, to judge from the vast
numbers of them that we keep. For example,
at the time of a recent census,
Australia's 17,085,400 people thought so highly of sheep that they kept
161,600,000 of them.
Some
diseases
a
of us adults, and even
from our
more of our
pets. Usually they
children, pick
up
infectious
remain no more than a nuisance, but
few have evolved into something
far
more
of humanity throughout our recent history
malaria, plague, measles, and cholera
serious.
—smallpox,
The major
flu,
killers
tuberculosis,
—are infectious diseases that evolved
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
9 7
I
from diseases of animals, even though most of the microbes responsible
for
our
own
epidemic
illnesses are
paradoxically
humans. Because diseases have been the biggest
also been
decisive shapers of history. Until
war died of war-borne microbes than of
now
World War
battle
almost confined to
they have
killers of people,
II,
wounds.
more
victims of
All those military
histories glorifying great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the
winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals
and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the
nastiest
germs to
transmit to their enemies.
The grimmest examples of germs'
role in history
come from
the Euro-
pean conquest of the Americas that began with Columbus's voyage of
1492.
Numerous
as
were the Native American victims of the murderous
Spanish conquistadores, they were far outnumbered by the victims of mur-
derous Spanish microbes.
Why was
the exchange of nasty germs between
and Europe so unequal?
Why
American
dis-
eases instead decimate the Spanish invaders, spread back to Europe,
and
the Americas
didn't Native
wipe out 95 percent of Europe's population? Similar questions
the decimation of
many
for the decimation of
arise for
other native peoples by Eurasian germs, as well as
would-be European conquistadores
in the tropics of
Africa and Asia.
human
human history, and behind some
Thus, questions of the animal origins of
broadest pattern of
issues in
human
human
disease
lie
behind the
of the most important
health today. (Think of AIDS, an explosively spreading
disease that appears to have evolved
from a
virus resident in wild
African monkeys.) This chapter will begin by considering what a "disease"
is,
and why some microbes have evolved so
most other species of
living things don't
as to
make
"make
us sick," whereas
us sick. We'll examine
why
many of our most familiar infectious diseases run in epidemics, such as our
AIDS epidemic and the Black Death (bubonic plague) epidemics of
the Middle Ages. We'll then consider how the ancestors of microbes now
current
confined to us transferred themselves from their original animal hosts.
Finally, we'll see
how
insight into the animal origins of our infectious dis-
eases helps explain the
momentous, almost one-way exchange of germs
between Europeans and Native Americans.
JN aturally, we're disposed to
own point of view: what can we do
think about diseases just from our
to save ourselves
and
to
kill
the
198
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
microbes? Let's stamp out the scoundrels, and never mind what their
motives are! In
life
in general,
order to beat him, and
Hence
let's
though, one has to understand the enemy in
that's especially true in medicine.
begin by temporarily setting aside our
sidering disease
human
from the microbes' point of view. After
we
bias
all,
What evolutionary
as
much
fit
does a microbe derive from making us sick in bizarre ways,
a product of natural selection as
And why
us genital sores or diarrhea?
us? That seems especially puzzling
kills its
host
Basically,
individuals
are.
and
self-defeating, since a
microbes evolve
most
effective at
number of new
victims,
kill
microbe that
kills itself.
like other species.
and how
Evolution selects for those
producing babies and
at helping
may be
them spread
defined mathemati-
victims infected per each original patient. That
number depends on how long each
new
bene-
like giving
should microbes evolve so as to
to suitable places to live. For a microbe, spread
cally as the
and con-
microbes are
efficiently the
victim remains capable of infecting
microbe
is
transferred
from one victim
to the next.
Microbes have evolved diverse ways of spreading from one person to
another, and from animals to people.
The germ
that spreads better leaves
selection.
"symptoms" of
in
Many
more babies and ends up favored by natural
clever
disease actually represent
ways
of our
which some damned
microbe modifies our bodies or our behavior such that we become
enlisted to spread microbes.
The most
effortless
way
a
germ could spread
is
by
just waiting to be
transmitted passively to the next victim. That's the strategy practiced by
microbes that wait for one host to be eaten by the next host: for instance,
salmonella bacteria, which
meat; the
worm
contract by eating already infected eggs or
responsible for trichinosis, which gets from pigs to us by
waiting for us to
worm
we
kill
the pig
and eat
it
without proper cooking; and the
causing anisakiasis, with which sushi-loving Japanese and Ameri-
cans occasionally infect themselves by consuming raw
fish.
Those parasites
pass to a person from an eaten animal, but the virus causing laughing
sickness (kuru) in the
New Guinea
another person
who was
highland babies
made
eaten.
It
highlands used to pass to a person from
was transmitted by cannibalism, when
the fatal mistake of licking their fingers after playing
with raw brains that their mothers had just cut out of dead kuru victims
awaiting cooking.
Some microbes
don't wait for the old host to die and get eaten, but
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
I
9 9
instead hitchhike in the saliva of an insect that bites the old host
off to find a
lice,
new
or tsetse
respectively.
flies
The
host.
The
may
free ride
and
be provided by mosquitoes,
flies
fleas,
that spread malaria, plague, typhus, or sleeping sickness,
dirtiest of all tricks for passive carriage is
microbes that pass from a
woman
to her fetus
perpetrated by
and thereby
infect babies
already at birth. By playing that trick, the microbes responsible for syphirubella,
lis,
and now AIDS pose
dilemmas with which
ethical
believers in
a fundamentally just universe have had to struggle desperately.
Other germs take matters into
They modify the anatomy or
erate their transmission.
their
From our
caused by venereal diseases
own
hands, figuratively speaking.
habits of their host in such a
way
open
perspective, the
as to accel-
genital sores
From
like syphilis are a vile indignity.
the
microbes' point of view, however, they're just a useful device to enlist a
host's help in inoculating
microbes into a body cavity of a
new
host.
The
skin lesions caused by smallpox similarly spread microbes by direct or
indirect
indirect, as
when
U.S. whites bent
"belligerent" Native Americans sent
them
gifts
body contact (occasionally very
on wiping out
of blankets
previously used by smallpox patients).
More
cold,
to
vigorous yet
and
pertussis
the strategy practiced by the influenza,
is
(whooping cough) microbes, which induce the victim
cough or sneeze, thereby launching a cloud of microbes toward prospec-
tive
new hosts.
Similarly, the cholera
bacterium induces in
sive diarrhea that delivers bacteria into the
victims, while the virus responsible for
ing matches rabies virus,
dog but drives the dog
as
victim a mas-
Korean hemorrhagic
which not only
fever broad-
gets into the saliva of
into a frenzy of biting
victims. But for physical effort
worms such
its
water supplies of potential new
For modification of a host's behavior, noth-
casts itself in the urine of mice.
to
common
and thus
on the bug's own
hookworms and
many new
part, the prize
still
goes
schistosomes, which actively burrow
through a host's skin from the water or
been excreted in a previous victim's
infecting
an infected
soil into
which
their larvae
had
feces.
Thus, from our point of view, genital sores, diarrhea, and coughing are
"symptoms of
disease."
From
a germ's point of view, they're clever evolu-
tionary strategies to broadcast the germ. That's
ests to
"make
us sick." But
defeating strategy of killing
From
why
its
why
it's
in the
germ's inter-
should a germ evolve the apparently
self-
host?
the germ's perspective, that's just an unintended by-product (fat
consolation to us!) of host symptoms promoting efficient transmission of
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 O O
microbes. Yes, an untreated cholera patient
may
eventually die from pro-
ducing diarrheal fluid at a rate of several gallons per day. At
while, though, as long as the patient
profits
is still
cholera bacterium
alive, the
from being massively broadcast into the water supplies of
victims. Provided that each victim thereby infects
new
than one
happens to
best
healthy,
though the
first
host
dispassionate examination of the germ's interests.
considering our
done by
considering fever as a
own
selfish interests: to stay alive
damned germs. One common
killing the
to develop a fever. Again, we're used to
is
"symptom
of disease," as
if it
developed inevitably
without serving any function. But regulation of body temperature
our genetic control and doesn't
more
next
die.
response of ours to infection
are
its
on the average more
victim, the bacterium will spread, even
Do much for our
Now let's get back to
and
least for a
sensitive to heat than
we
temperature,
just
happen by accident.
our
own
in effect try to
A
is
under
few microbes
bodies are. By raising our body
bake the germs to death before we get
baked ourselves.
Another
common
White blood
cells
response of ours
and other
cells
we
microbes. The specific antibodies that
become cured. As we
such as
rary;
flu
and the
we can
though
immune
kill
system.
foreign
gradually build up against a par-
once we
know from experience, there are some illnesses,
common cold, to which our resistance is only tempo-
microbe infecting us make us
ticular
to mobilize our
is
of ours actively seek out and
less likely to get reinfected
all
eventually contract the illness again. Against other illnesses,
—including measles, mumps,
and the now
—our antibodies stimulated by one infection confer
rubella,
pertussis,
defeated smallpox
life-
long immunity. That's the principle of vaccination: to stimulate our anti-
body production without our having
to
go through the actual experience
of the disease, by inoculating us with a dead or
weakened
strain of
microbe.
Alas,
some
Some have
microbe
clever microbes don't just cave in to our
(its
so-called antigens) that our antibodies recognize.
stant evolution or recycling of
explains
immune
defenses.
learned to trick us by changing those molecular pieces of the
why your
new
having gotten
strains of flu,
flu
The con-
with differing antigens,
two years ago
didn't protect
you
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
2 O
I
against the different strain that arrived this year. Malaria and sleeping
sickness are even
antigens even as
overwhelming
Our
more
slippery customers in their ability rapidly to change
Among
their antigens.
it
the slipperiest of
all is
AIDS, which evolves new
within an individual patient, thereby eventually
sits
his or her
immune
system.
slowest defensive response
through natural selection, which
is
changes our gene frequencies from generation to generation. For almost
any
disease,
others. In
some people prove
resistant than are
an epidemic those people with genes for resistance to that
ular microbe are
As
more
to be genetically
more
likely to survive
partic-
than are people lacking such genes.
a result, over the course of history,
human
populations repeatedly
exposed to a particular pathogen have come to consist of a higher proportion of individuals with those genes for resistance
—
just
because unfortu-
nate individuals without the genes were less likely to survive to pass their
genes on to babies.
Fat consolation, you
may
be thinking again. This evolutionary response
is
not one that does the genetically susceptible dying individual any good.
It
does mean, though, that a
human
population as a whole becomes better
protected against the pathogen. Examples of those genetic defenses include
the protections (at a price) that the sickle-cell gene, Tay-Sachs gene,
gene
cystic fibrosis
may
and
confer on African blacks, Ashkenazi Jews, and
northern Europeans against malaria, tuberculosis, and bacterial diarrheas,
respectively.
In short, our interaction with
birds, doesn't
make
us or the
most
species, as exemplified
hummingbird
by humming-
"sick." Neither
we nor hum-
mingbirds have had to evolve defenses against each other. That peaceful
relationship
was
able to persist because
hummingbirds don't count on us
to spread their babies or to offer our bodies for food.
Hummingbirds
evolved instead to feed on nectar and insects, which they find by using
their
own
wings.
But microbes evolved to feed on the nutrients within our
and they don't have wings
original victim
tricks to let
tricks are
is
dead or
to let
them reach
resistant.
a
new
victim's
what we experience
own,
counter-countertricks.
to
as
bodies,
body once the
Hence many germs have had
to evolve
many
of those
them spread between potential victims, and
countertricks of our
own
"symptoms of
disease."
We've evolved
which the germs have responded by evolving
We and our pathogens are now locked in an escalat-
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 O 2
ing evolutionary contest, with the death of one contestant the price of
defeat,
and with natural
selection playing the role of umpire.
Now
let's
consider the form of the contest: blitzkrieg or guerrilla war?
Suppose that one
infectious disease in
counts the number of cases of some particular
some geographic
area,
change with time. The resulting patterns
certain diseases, like malaria or
and watches how the numbers
differ greatly
hookworm, new
among
diseases.
cases appear any
For
month
of any year in an affected area. So-called epidemic diseases, though, pro-
duce no cases for a long time, then a whole wave of cases, then no more
cases again for a while.
Among
such epidemic diseases, influenza
most Americans,
one personally familiar to
is
certain years being particularly
bad years
great years for the influenza virus). Cholera epidemics
intervals, the
1991 Peruvian epidemic being the
World during
epidemics
make
front-page stories, epidemics used to be far
history
end of the
was
First
modern medicine. The
at longer
one to reach the
the 20th century. Although today's influenza
ing before the rise of
human
first
for us (but
come
more
terrify-
greatest single epidemic in
the one of influenza that killed 21 million people at the
World War. The Black Death (bubonic plague)
killed one-
quarter of Europe's population between 1346 and 1352, with death
ranging up to 70 percent in some
cities.
When
road was being built through Saskatchewan
ince's
and
New
and cholera
Native Americans,
who had
tolls
the Canadian Pacific Rail-
in the early 1880s, that prov-
previously had
little
exposure to whites
their germs, died of tuberculosis at the incredible rate of 9 percent per
year.
The
infectious diseases that visit us as epidemics, rather than as a steady
trickle of cases, share several characteristics. First, they
efficiently
spread quickly and
from an infected person
to nearby healthy people, with the
whole population
exposed within a short time. Second,
result that the
gets
you
either die or recover
who do
recover develop anti-
they're "acute" illnesses: within a short time,
completely. Third, the fortunate ones of us
bodies that leave us
immune
against a recurrence of the disease for a long
time, possibly for the rest of our
restricted to
life.
Finally, these diseases tend to be
humans; the microbes causing them tend not to
live in the soil
or in other animals. All four of these traits apply to what Americans think
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
O
2
3
of as the familiar acute epidemic diseases of childhood, including measles,
rubella,
mumps,
and smallpox.
pertussis,
The reason why
disease run in epidemics
is
symptoms, mean that everybody
No
one
and soon thereafter
is left
alive
who
a
easy to understand. In simplified form, here's
what happens. The rapid spread of microbes, and
infected
make
the combination of those four traits tends to
is
could
human
in a local
either
still
dead or
else
the rapid course of
population
quickly
is
recovered and immune.
be infected. But since the microbe can't
survive except in the bodies of living people, the disease dies out, until a
new crop
of babies reaches the susceptible age
person arrives from the outside to start a
A
classic illustration of
history of measles
on
how
new
—and
until
an infectious
epidemic.
such diseases occur as epidemics
is
and then died
severe epidemic of measles reached the Faeroes in 1781
leaving the islands measles free until an infected carpenter arrived
ship
from Denmark
the
the isolated Atlantic islands called the Faeroes.
in
A
out,
on a
1846. Within three months, almost the whole
Faeroes population (7,782 people) had gotten measles and then either died
or recovered, leaving the measles virus to disappear once again until the
next epidemic. Studies
show
that measles
is
likely to die
out in any
population numbering fewer than half a million people. Only
populations can the disease
persisting until
shift
from one
human
in larger
local area to another, thereby
enough babies have been born
in the originally infected
area that measles can return there.
What's true for measles
in the Faeroes
is
infectious diseases throughout the world.
a
human
population that
packed, that a numerous
is
sufficiently
new crop
infection by the time the disease
sles
and similar diseases are
also
true of our other familiar acute
To
sustain themselves, they need
numerous, and
sufficiently densely
of susceptible children
known
Obviously, crowd diseases
as
crowd
an entire
visitor
could not sustain themselves
Amazonian Indians and
tribelet
— because
may
available for
diseases.
bands of hunter-gatherers and slash-and-burn farmers. As
experience with
is
would otherwise be waning. Hence mea-
tragic
in small
modern
Pacific Islanders confirms,
almost
be wiped out by an epidemic brought by an outside
no one
in the tribelet
had any antibodies against the
microbe. For example, in the winter of 1902 a dysentery epidemic brought
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 O 4
by a
sailor
on the whaling ship Active
killed
51 out of the 56 Sadlermiut
Eskimos, a very isolated band of people living on Southampton Island in
Canadian
the
hood"
Arctic. In addition, measles
diseases are
more
and some of our other
likely to kill infected adults
adults in the tribelet are susceptible. (In contrast,
"child-
than children, and
modern Americans
all
rarely
contract measles as adults, because most of them get either measles or the
vaccine against
it
as children.)
Having
killed
demic then disappears. The small population
only
also
why they can't
why they never
back to
not
from the outside, but
could evolve epidemic diseases of their
own
to give
visitors.
infectious diseases.
Some
tribelet, the epi-
size of tribelets explains
sustain epidemics introduced
That's not to say, though, that small
all
most of the
They do have
human
populations are free from
infections, but only of certain types.
are caused by microbes capable of maintaining themselves in ani-
mals or
in the soil,
with the result that the disease doesn't die out but
remains constantly available to infect people. For example, the yellow
fever virus
rural
is
human
carried by African wild
populations of Africa, whence
lantic slave trade to infect
human
other
was
it
can always infect
carried by the transat-
and people.
populations are chronic diseases
such as leprosy and yaws. Since the disease
kill its
it
New World monkeys
other infections of small
Still
monkeys, whence
may
take a very long time to
victim, the victim remains alive as a reservoir of microbes to infect
members
of the tribelet. For instance, the Karimui Basim of the
Guinea highlands, where
lated population of a
I
worked
in the 1960s,
New
was occupied by an
iso-
few thousand people, suffering from the world's
highest incidence of leprosy
—about 40 percent!
Finally, small
ulations are also susceptible to nonfatal infections against
human pop-
which we don't
develop immunity, with the result that the same person can become reinfected after recovering.
That happens with hookworm and many other
parasites.
All these types of diseases, characteristic of small isolated populations,
must be the oldest diseases of humanity. They were the ones we could
evolve and sustain through the early millions of years of our evolutionary
history,
when
the total
human
population was tiny and fragmented. These
diseases are also shared with, or similar to the diseases of, our closest wild
relatives, the
African great apes. In contrast, the crowd diseases, which
we
discussed earlier, could have arisen only with the buildup of large, dense
human
populations. That buildup began with the rise of agriculture start-
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
ing about 10,000 years ago
many
for
B.C. for
1959
B.C. for leprosy, a.d.
did the
higher
lifestyle
One reason just
human population densities than
mentioned
for epidemic polio,
and
is
crowd
that agriculture sustains
does the hunting-gathering
—on the average, 10 to 100 times higher. In addition, hunter-gathcamp and
accumulated microbes and
amid
their
own
leave behind their
worm
larvae.
own
agriculture
and
on the
as fertilizer
fish
with
into another's drinking water.
Some farming populations make it even easier for
and worms to infect new victims, by gathering
and spreading them
piles of feces
But farmers are sedentary and
sewage, thus providing microbes with a short path
from one person's body
ria
1840
of agriculture launch the evolution of our
rise
erers frequently shift
live
B.C.
AIDS.
infectious diseases?
much
around 1600
deduced from pockmarks on an Egyptian mummy), 400
mumps, 200
for
Why
(as
of cities
rise
fact, the first attested dates for
familiar infectious diseases are surprisingly recent:
smallpox
5
and then accelerated with the
thousand years ago. In
starting several
2 O
fields
their
own
fecal bacte-
their feces
where people work.
and urine
Irrigation
farming provide ideal living conditions for the snails
carrying schistosomiasis and for flukes that burrow through our skin as
we wade through
the feces-laden water. Sedentary farmers
rounded not only by
their feces but also
attracted by the farmers' stored food.
The
become
sur-
by disease transmitting rodents,
forest clearings
made by
African
farmers also provide ideal breeding habitats for malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.
If
cities
the rise of farming
was
was thus
a greater one, as
festered under even
still
a
bonanza
for our microbes, the rise of
more densely packed human populations
worse sanitation conditions. Not
until the
of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally
beginning
become
sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants
countryside was necessary to
dwellers from
crowd
diseases.
world trade routes, which by
tions of Europe, Asia,
for microbes. That's
make up
from the
for the constant deaths of city
Another bonanza was the development of
Roman
times effectively joined the popula-
and North Africa into one giant breeding ground
when smallpox
finally
of Antoninus, which killed millions of
and 180.
self-
reached Rome, as the Plague
Roman
citizens
between a.d. 165
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 O
Similarly,
bubonic plague
appeared
first
in
Europe
as the Plague of Jus-
tinian (a.d. 542-43). But plague didn't begin to hit Europe with
as the Black
Death epidemics
until a.d.
1346,
when
new
a
full
force
route for over-
land trade with China provided rapid transit, along Eurasia's east-west
axis, for flea-infested furs
Europe. Today, our
than the
flights briefer
how an
in
from plague-ridden areas of Central Asia to
made even the longest intercontinental
duration of any human infectious disease. That's
planes have
Aerolineas Argentinas airplane, stopping in Lima (Peru) in 1991,
managed
city of
jet
to deliver dozens of cholera-infected people that
same day
to
my
Los Angeles, over 3,000 miles from Lima. The explosive increase
world
travel
by Americans, and
in
turning us into another melting pot
immigration to the United
—
this time, of
States,
microbes that
we
is
pre-
viously dismissed as just causing exotic diseases in far-off countries.
Ihus, when the human population became sufficiently large and concentrated, we reached the stage in our history at which we could at last
evolve and sustain crowd diseases confined to our own species. But that
conclusion presents a paradox: such diseases could never have existed
before then! Instead, they had to evolve as
new
diseases
new
diseases.
Where
did those
come from?
Evidence has recently been emerging from molecular studies of the
many
ease-causing microbes themselves. For
for
dis-
of the microbes responsible
our unique diseases, molecular biologists can
now
identify
the
microbe's closest relatives. These also prove to be agents of crowd infectious diseases
—but ones confined to various species of our domestic
mals and pets!
Among
populations and don't
ani-
animals, too, epidemic diseases require large, dense
afflict just
any animal: they're confined mainly to
social animals providing the necessary large populations.
Hence when we
domesticated social animals, such as cows and pigs, they were already
afflicted
by epidemic diseases
just
For example, measles virus
rinderpest.
is
waiting to be transferred to us.
most
closely related to the virus causing
That nasty epidemic disease
affects cattle
chewing mammals, but not humans. Measles
The
and many wild cud-
in turn doesn't
afflict cattle.
close similarity of the measles virus to the rinderpest virus suggests
that the latter transferred
measles virus by changing
from
its
cattle to
humans and then evolved
into the
properties to adapt to us. That transfer
at all surprising, considering that
many
peasant farmers
live
and
is
not
sleep
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
close to
cows and
2 O 7
and blood. Our intimacy
their feces, urine, breath, sores,
we domesticated
with cattle has been going on for the 9,000 years since
them
—ample time for the rinderpest virus to discover us nearby. As Table
11.1 illustrates, others of our familiar infectious diseases can similarly be
traced back to diseases of our animal friends.
vJiven our proximity
constantly
bombarded by
their microbes.
natural selection, and only a few of
selves as
human
diseases.
A
we
we must be getting
Those invaders get winnowed by
to the animals
love,
them succeed
quick survey of current diseases
out four stages in the evolution of a specialized
them-
in establishing
human
lets
disease
us trace
from an
animal precursor.
The
first
stage
is
illustrated
scratch fever
from our
cats, leptospirosis
then
cat-
from our dogs,
our chickens and parrots, and brucellosis from our
liable to pick
we now and
They include
by dozens of diseases that
pick up directly from our pets and domestic animals.
up diseases from wild animals, such
psittacosis
cattle.
as the tularemia that
hunters can get from skinning wild rabbits. All those microbes are
an early stage
still
in their evolution into specialized
human
still
at
pathogens. They
don't get transmitted directly from one person to another, and even
their transfer to us
from animals remains uncommon.
In the second stage a former animal pathogen evolves to the point
it
from
We're similarly
where
does get transmitted directly between people and causes epidemics.
Table ii.i Deadly
Gifts
from Our Animal Friends
Animal with Most Closely
Human Disease
Related Pathogen
Measles
cattle (rinderpest)
Tuberculosis
cattle
Smallpox
cattle
(cowpox) or other livestock with
related
pox
viruses
and ducks
Flu
pigs
Pertussis
pigs,
Falciparum malaria
birds (chickens
dogs
and ducks?)
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 O 8
However, the epidemic
any of several reasons, such as being
dies out for
when everybody around has
immune or dies. For example, a
cured by modern medicine, or being stopped
already been infected and either becomes
previously
unknown
O'nyong-nyong
fever termed
fever appeared in East
Africa in 1959 and proceeded to infect several million Africans.
bly arose
from
a virus of
monkeys and was transmitted
to
It
mosquitoes. The fact that patients recovered quickly and became
to further attack helped the
for Americans, Fort
new
proba-
humans by
immune
home
disease die out quickly. Closer to
Bragg fever was the name applied to a new leptospiral
disease that broke out in the United States in the
summer
of 1942 and
soon disappeared.
A fatal disease vanishing for another reason was New Guinea's laughing
by cannibalism and caused by a slow-acting virus
sickness, transmitted
from which no one has ever recovered. Kuru was on
ing
New
its
way to
exterminat-
Guinea's Fore tribe of 20,000 people, until the establishment of
Australian government control around
1959 ended cannibalism and
thereby the transmission of kuru. The annals of medicine are
accounts of diseases that sound
like
full
of
no disease known today, but that once
caused terrifying epidemics and then disappeared as mysteriously as they
had come. The "English sweating sickness," which swept and
terrified
Europe between 1485 and 1552, and the "Picardy sweats" of 18th- and
19th-century France, are just two of the
ished long before
many epidemic
illnesses that
modern medicine had devised methods
van-
for identifying
the responsible microbes.
A
third stage in the evolution of our
major diseases
former animal pathogens that did establish themselves
have not (not
killers
yet?) died out,
of humanity.
The
and that may or may not
is
represented by
in
still
humans, that
become major
future remains very uncertain for Lassa fever,
caused by a virus derived probably from rodents. Lassa fever was
observed in 1969 in Nigeria, where
it
that Nigerian hospitals have been closed
appears. Better established
get
from the
is
Lyme
bite of ticks carried
first
causes a fatal illness so contagious
down
disease, caused
if
even a single case
by a spirochete that we
by mice and deer. Although the
first
known human cases in the United States appeared only as recently as
1962, Lyme disease is already reaching epidemic proportions in many
parts of our country. The future of AIDS, derived from monkey viruses
and
first
documented
in
the virus's perspective).
humans around 1959,
is
even more secure (from
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
The
final stage
of this evolution
2 O 9
represented by the major, long-estab-
is
lished epidemic diseases confined to humans. These diseases must have
been the evolutionary survivors of far more pathogens that tried to make
the
jump
What
to us
from animals
on
actually going
is
animals transforms
—and mostly
into
itself
failed.
an exclusive disease of
in those stages, as
an exclusive disease of humans? One trans-
formation involves a change of intermediate vector: when a microbe
ing
on some arthropod vector
may
microbe
typhus was
for transmission switches to a
initially
from
rats to
human body
microbes discovered that
traveling directly between
lice
people whose
North American
attics
harbor flying
fleas,
which
sufficed
humans. Eventually, typhus
much more
offered a
humans.
Now
mostly deloused themselves, typhus has discovered a
infecting eastern
rely-
host, the
as well. For example,
transmitted between rats by rat
for a while to transfer typhus
method of
new arthropod
be forced to find a
new
flying squirrels
efficient
that Americans have
new
route into us: by
and then transferring
to
squirrels.
In short, diseases represent evolution in progress,
and microbes adapt
by natural selection to new hosts and vectors. But compared with cows'
bodies, ours offer different
new environment,
In that
propagate
itself.
immune
defenses,
lice, feces,
best-studied case involves
Australian rabbits.
rabbit,
and
to
The myxo
which are
new ways.
what happened when myxomatosis
hit
virus, native to a wild species of Brazilian
had been observed to cause a
rabbits,
to live
In several instructive cases doctors or veterinarians have
actually been able to observe microbes evolving those
The
and chemistries.
must evolve new ways
a microbe
lethal
a different species.
epidemic in European domestic
Hence
the virus
was
intentionally
introduced to Australia in 1950 in the hopes of ridding the continent of
its
plague of European rabbits, foolishly introduced in the nineteenth century.
In the
first
year,
myxo produced
a gratifying (to Australian farmers) 99.8
percent mortality rate in infected rabbits. Unfortunately for the farmers,
the death rate then
ally to
Australia.
virus
ones to
The problem was
which
interests,
The
dropped
in the
second year to 90 percent and eventu-
25 percent, frustrating hopes of eradicating rabbits completely from
differed
changed so as to
live
that the
from ours
kill
myxo
virus evolved to serve
as well as
from those of the
its
own
rabbits.
fewer rabbits and to permit lethally infected
longer before dying. As a result, a less lethal
myxo
virus
spreads baby viruses to more rabbits than did the original, highly virulent
myxo.
2
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O
I
For a similar example in humans,
ing evolution of syphilis. Today, our
are genital sores
of
many
was
the
and
and
many
years.
syphilis
pustules often covered
well
known
syphilis
had evolved into
to us today. Apparently, just
syphilis spirochetes that evolved so as to
their victims alive for longer
more
However, when
its
few months. By 1546,
symptoms so
myxomatosis, those
offspring into
associations to syphilis
to the knees, caused flesh to fall off people's faces,
led to death within a
the disease with the
1
two immediate
recorded in Europe in 1495,
body from the head
as with
only to consider the surpris-
a very slowly developing disease, leading to the death
untreated victims only after
first definitely
we have
were thereby able to transmit
keep
their spirochete
victims.
he importance of
lethal
microbes in
human
history
is
New
well
illus-
trated by Europeans' conquest
and depopulation of the
more Native Americans died
bed from Eurasian germs than on the bat-
tlefield
in
World. Far
from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian
resistance by killing
most Indians and
survivors' morale. For instance, in
Mexico with 600 Spaniards,
their leaders
and by sapping the
1519 Cortes landed on the coast of
to conquer the fiercely militaristic Aztec
Empire with a population of many
millions.
That Cortes reached the Aztec
capital of Tenochtitlan, escaped with the loss of "only" two-thirds of his
force,
and managed
to fight his
way back
Spanish military advantages and the
initial
Cortes's next onslaught came, the Aztecs
street
sive
by
with the utmost tenacity.
street
to the coast demonstrates both
naivete of the Aztecs. But
when
were no longer naive and fought
What
gave the Spaniards a deci-
advantage was smallpox, which reached Mexico in 1520 with one
infected slave arriving
from Spanish Cuba. The resulting epidemic pro-
nearly half of the Aztecs, including
Emperor Cuitlahuac.
Aztec survivors were demoralized by the mysterious
illness that killed Indi-
ceeded to
kill
ans and spared Spaniards, as
1618, Mexico's
initial
if
advertising the Spaniards' invincibility.
By
population of about 20 million had plummeted to
about 1.6 million.
Pizarro had similarly grim luck
when he landed on
the coast of Peru in
1531 with 168 men to conquer the Inca Empire of millions. Fortunately
for Pizarro
and unfortunately
around 1526,
killing
much
emperor Huayna Capac and
for the Incas,
smallpox had arrived overland
of the Inca population, including both the
his designated successor.
As we saw
in
Chap-
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
being
ter 3, the result of the throne's
left
2
11
vacant was that two other sons
Huayna Capac, Atahuallpa and Huascar, became embroiled
war that Pizarro exploited to conquer the divided Incas.
of
When we
in the
United States think of the most populous
in a civil
New
World
societies existing in
1492, only those of the Aztecs and the Incas tend to
come
We
to our minds.
some of our
contains
most
North America
also supported
popu-
logical place, the Mississippi Valley,
which
forget that
lous Indian societies in the
best farmland today. In that case, however, conquis-
tadores contributed nothing directly to the societies' destruction; Eurasian
germs, spreading in advance, did everything.
became
the
first
ern United States, in 1540, he
two years
earlier
When Hernando
de Soto
European conquistador to march through the southeast-
came
across Indian
town
abandoned
sites
because the inhabitants had died in epidemics. These epi-
demics had been transmitted from coastal Indians infected by Spaniards
visiting the coast.
The Spaniards' microbes spread
to the interior in
advance of the Spaniards themselves.
De Soto was
still
able to see
some of the densely populated Indian towns
lining the lower Mississippi. After the
end of
his expedition,
it
was
a long
time before Europeans again reached the Mississippi Valley, but Eurasian
microbes were
now
North America and kept spreading. By
established in
the time of the next appearance of Europeans
on the lower
that of French settlers in the late 1600s, almost
towns had vanished. Their
Only
sippi Valley.
mound-building
the
New
relics are the great
we come
recently have
societies
were
still
all
Mississippi,
of those big Indian
mound
sites
of the Missis-
many of the
when Columbus reached
to realize that
largely intact
World, and that they collapsed (probably as a result of disease)
between 1492 and the systematic European exploration of the Mississippi.
When
I
was young, American schoolchildren were taught
that
North
America had originally been occupied by only about one million Indians.
That low number was useful
in justifying the
white conquest of what could
be viewed as an almost empty continent. However, archaeological excavations,
and scrutiny of descriptions
on our
coasts,
For the
tury or
as
New
left
by the very
first
European explorers
now suggest an initial number of around 20
World
million Indians.
as a whole, the Indian population decline in the cen-
two following Columbus's
arrival
is
estimated to have been as large
95 percent.
The main
killers
were Old World germs to which Indians had never
been exposed, and against which they therefore had neither immune nor
12
2
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
and typhus competed
genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza,
top rank
malaria,
for
among the killers. As if these had not been enough, diphtheria,
mumps, pertussis, plague, tuberculosis, and yellow fever came up
close behind. In countless cases, whites
were actually there to witness the
destruction occurring
when
Mandan
with one of the most elaborate cultures in our Great
Indian tribe,
Plains, contracted
River from
1837 the
smallpox from a steamboat traveling up the Missouri
Louis.
St.
the germs arrived. For example, in
The population of one Mandan
plummeted
village
from 2,000 to fewer than 40 within a few weeks.
While
over a dozen major
became established
in the
New
infectious diseases of
Old World
reached Europe from the Americas. The sole possible exception
whose area of
origin remains controversial.
human
syphilis,
that
recall that large,
populations are a prerequisite for the evolution of our crowd
infectious diseases. If recent reappraisals of the
population are correct,
of Eurasia.
is
killer
The one-sidedness of
exchange of germs becomes even more striking when we
dense
origins
World, perhaps not a single major
Some
it
New
world's most populous
was not
World
far
New World
below the contemporary population
Tenochtitlan were
cities like
cities at
pre-Columbian
Why
the time.
among
the
didn't Tenochtitlan have
awful germs waiting for the Spaniards?
One
tions
possible contributing factor
began somewhat
Another
is
later in the
is
that the rise of dense
New
World than
Those
factors
still
India,
and China became linked
don't explain, though,
been reported from the
mummy of a
—the
—never became connected
why
apparently ended up with no lethal crowd epidemics at
DNA has
Old World.
one huge breeding ground for microbes,
fast trade into
way that Europe, North Africa,
times.
in the
most densely populated American centers
that the three
Andes, Mesoamerica, and the Mississippi Valley
by regular
human popula-
the
all.
in the
Roman
in
New
World
(Tuberculosis
Peruvian Indian
who
died
1,000 years ago, but the identification procedure used did not distinguish
human
tuberculosis
bovis) that
Instead,
is
from a
widespread
what must be
closely related
pathogen (Mycobacterium
in wild animals.)
the
main reason
for the failure of lethal
epidemics to arise in the Americas becomes clear
simple
question.
From what microbes could
when we pause
crowd
to ask a
they conceivably have
evolved? We've seen that Eurasian crowd diseases evolved out of diseases
LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK
2
I
3
of Eurasian herd animals that became domesticated. Whereas
animals existed in Eurasia, only
five
cated in the Americas: the turkey in
llama
/
many
such
animals of any sort became domesti-
Mexico and
the U.S. Southwest, the
Muscovy duck
alpaca and the guinea pig in the Andes, the
in tropi-
South America, and the dog throughout the Americas.
cal
In turn,
the
New
we
also
World
saw
reflects the
percent of the big wild
end of the
that this extreme paucity of domestic animals in
last Ice
paucity of wild starting material. About 80
mammals
of the Americas became extinct at the
Age, around 13,000 years ago. The few domesticates
that remained to Native Americans
eases,
compared with cows and
live in
enormous
with which
flocks,
were not
pigs.
likely sources of
Muscovy ducks and
and they're not cuddly species
we have much
(like
crowd
dis-
turkeys don't
young lambs)
may have contrib-
physical contact. Guinea pigs
uted a trypanosome infection like Chagas' disease or leishmaniasis to our
catalog of woes, but that's uncertain.
absence of any
human
disease derived
most surprising
Initially,
from llamas
(or alpacas),
had four
strikes against
them
human
as a source of
the
which
tempting to consider the Andean equivalent of Eurasian livestock.
ever, llamas
is
it's
How-
pathogens:
they were kept in smaller herds than were sheep and goats and pigs; their
total
numbers were never remotely
as large as those of the Eurasian
popu-
beyond the Andes;
lations of domestic livestock, since llamas never spread
people don't drink (and get infected by) llama milk; and llamas aren't kept
indoors, in close association with people. In contrast,
the
New
Guinea highlands often nurse
piglets,
and
human mothers
pigs as well as
in
cows
are frequently kept inside the huts of peasant farmers.
Ihe historical importance
beyond the
collision of the
of animal-derived diseases extends far
Old and the
New
Worlds. Eurasian germs
played a key role in decimating native peoples in
many
other parts of the
world, including Pacific islanders, Aboriginal Australians, and the Khoisan
peoples (Hottentots and Bushmen) of southern Africa. Cumulative mortalities
of these previously unexposed peoples from Eurasian germs ranged
from 50 percent to 100 percent. For instance, the Indian population of
Hispaniola declined from around 8 million,
when Columbus
a.d. 1492, to zero by 1535. Measles reached
returning from a
one-quarter of
all
visit
to Australia in 1875,
Fijians then alive (after
Fiji
and proceeded
most
arrived in
with a Fijian chief
Fijians
to kill
about
had already been
2
killed
ilis,
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
14
by epidemics beginning with the
first
European
visit, in
1791). Syph-
gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and influenza arriving with Captain
Cook
in
1779, followed by a big typhoid epidemic in 1804 and numerous "minor"
epidemics, reduced Hawaii's population from around half a million in
1779
and
to 84,000 in 1853, the year
killed
when smallpox
reached Hawaii
finally
around 10,000 of the survivors. These examples could be
multiplied almost indefinitely.
However, germs did not
New
awaiting Europeans, tropical Asia, Africa, Indonesia, and
tainly did.
New Guinea cer-
Malaria throughout the tropical Old World, cholera
Southeast Asia, and yellow fever in tropical Africa were (and
most notorious of the
to
tropical killers.
European colonization of the
pean colonial partitioning of
accomplished
New
While the
act solely to Europeans' advantage.
World and Australia did not harbor native epidemic diseases
until nearly
They posed the most
tropics,
New
in tropical
still
and they explain why the Euro-
Guinea and most of Africa was not
400 years
after
European partitioning of the
World began. Furthermore, once malaria and yellow
become transmitted
are) the
serious obstacle
to the Americas
by European ship
fever did
they
traffic,
New World tropA familiar example is the role of those two diseases in aborting
emerged as the major impediment to colonization of the
ics as well.
the French effort,
and nearly aborting the ultimately successful American
effort, to construct the
Bearing
all
Panama Canal.
these facts in mind,
about the role of germs
in
let's
try to regain
answering
our sense of perspective
Yali's question.
There
no doubt
is
that Europeans developed a big advantage in weaponry, technology,
political organization
and
over most of the non-European peoples that they
conquered. But that advantage alone doesn't fully explain
how
initially
so
few European immigrants came to supplant so much of the native population of the Americas
and some other parts of the world. That might not
have happened without Europe's
sinister gift to other continents
—the
germs evolving from Eurasians' long intimacy with domestic animals.
CHAPTER
12
Blueprints and
Borrowed Letters
NINETEENTH-CENTURY AUTHORS TENDED
history as a progression
marks of
lurgy,
this transition
from savagery to
was
traditionally the
Pacific islands, subequatorial Africa,
for a small part of
peoples
who
writing.
one most restricted geographically:
expansions of Islam and of colonial Europeans,
lia,
civilization.
Key
hall-
included the development of agriculture, metal-
complex technology, centralized government, and
writing
TO INTERPRET
Mesoamerica. As a
pride themselves
until the
was absent from Austra-
and the whole
New World except
result of that confined distribution,
on being
ing as the sharpest distinction raising
it
Of these,
civilized
have always viewed writ-
them above "barbarians" or "sav-
ages."
Knowledge brings power. Hence writing brings power
ties,
by making
and
in far greater quantity
it
possible to transmit
and
to
modern
socie-
knowledge with far greater accuracy
detail,
from more distant lands and more
remote times. Of course, some peoples (notably the Incas) managed to
administer empires without writing, and "civilized" peoples don't always
defeat "barbarians," as
Roman
armies facing the
European conquests of the Americas,
typical recent
Siberia,
Huns
learned. But the
and Australia
illustrate the
outcome.
Writing marched together with weapons, microbes, and centralized
2-
i
5
2
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
I
modern agent of conquest. The commands of
political organization as a
the
monarchs and merchants who organized colonizing
veyed in writing. The
fleets set their
courses by
fleets
maps and
were con-
written sailing
directions prepared by previous expeditions. Written accounts of earlier
expeditions motivated later ones, by describing the wealth and
fertile
lands
awaiting the conquerors. The accounts taught subsequent explorers what
conditions to expect, and helped them prepare themselves.
The
empires were administered with the aid of writing. While
those types of
all
resulting
information were also transmitted by other means in preliterate societies,
made
writing
more
the transmission easier,
detailed,
more
accurate,
and
persuasive.
Why,
then, did only
some peoples and not others develop
writing, given
overwhelming value? For example, why did no traditional hunters-
its
gatherers evolve or adopt writing?
arise in
Minoan
for
what
much
Of
uses?
human
those peoples
Scandinavians are
literate
theless arise nearly four
The
island empires,
history,
who
diffusion of writing
Why,
from
for instance, did
the Fertile Crescent, but not to the
separate
it,
why
why
all
did
some do
Japanese and
did writing never-
earlier in Iraq?
its sites
it
did writing
under what circumstances, and
did develop
but most Iraqis are not:
thousand years
why
How many
than others? For instance, today almost
earlier
questions.
Among
Crete but not in Polynesian Tonga?
times did writing evolve in
so
more
of origin also raises important
spread to Ethiopia and Arabia from
Andes from Mexico? Did writing
sys-
tems spread by being copied, or did existing systems merely inspire neighboring peoples to invent their
works well
for
one language,
own systems? Given
how do you devise a
language? Similar questions arise whenever one
origins
a writing system that
system for a different
understand the
tries to
and spread of many other aspects of human culture
nology, religion, and food production.
The
—such
as tech-
historian interested in such
questions about writing has the advantage that they can often be answered
in
unique detail by means of the written record
trace writing's
development not only because of
itself.
its
We
but also for the general insights into cultural history that
Ihe three basic
size of the
shall therefore
inherent importance,
it
provides.
strategies underlying writing systems differ in the
speech unit denoted by one written sign: either a single basic
sound, a whole syllable, or a whole word.
Of
these, the
one employed
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
today by most peoples
unique sign (termed a
is
which
the alphabet,
letter) for
2
7
I
would provide
ideally
each basic sound of the language
(a
a
pho-
neme). Actually, most alphabets consist of only about 20 or 30
letters,
and
most languages have more phonemes than
letters.
For
example, English transcribes about
their alphabets
40 phonemes with
Hence most alphabetically written languages, including
to assign several different
phonemes
some phonemes by combinations
to the
same
The second
mere 26
a
letters.
English, are forced
letter
and
to represent
of letters, such as the English two-letter
combinations sh and th (each represented by a single
and Greek alphabets,
have
Russian
letter in the
respectively).
strategy uses so-called logograms,
meaning that one written
sign stands for a whole word. That's the function of
many
signs of Chinese
writing and of the predominant Japanese writing system (termed kanji).
Before the spread of alphabetic writing, systems making
grams were more
glyphs,
The
common and
much
Maya
included Egyptian hieroglyphs,
and Sumerian cuneiform.
third strategy, least familiar to
sign for each syllable. In practice,
most readers of
by one vowel
(like the syllables
this
of the
word
B writing
were
of
common
and
resort to
means of those
in ancient times, as exemplified
Mycenaean Greece. Some
sylla-
one consonant followed
"fa-mi-ly"),
various tricks in order to write other types of syllables by
signs. Syllabaries
book, uses a
most such writing systems (termed
baries) provide distinct signs just for syllables of
Linear
use of logo-
by the
syllabaries persist today, the
most important being the kana syllabary that the Japanese use
for tele-
grams, bank statements, and texts for blind readers.
I've intentionally
writing systems.
sively.
No
termed these three approaches strategies rather than
actual writing system employs one strategy exclu-
Chinese writing
purely alphabetic. Like
is
all
not purely logographic, nor
is
English writing
alphabetic writing systems, English uses
logograms, such as numerals,
$,
%, and +
:
that
is,
many
arbitrary signs, not
made up of phonetic elements, representing whole words. "Syllabic" Linear B had many logograms, and "logographic" Egyptian hieroglyphs
included many syllabic signs as well as a virtual alphabet of individual
letters for
each consonant.
Inventing a writing
rably
more
difficult
system from scratch must have been incompa-
than borrowing and adapting one. The
first
scribes
2
had to
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
on basic
settle
had to
ple, they
I
principles that
how
figure out
to
we now
take for granted. For exam-
decompose a continuous utterance
speech units, regardless of whether those units were taken as words,
into
sylla-
phonemes. They had to learn to recognize the same sound or
bles, or
speech unit through
our normal variations
all
in
speech volume, pitch,
speed, emphasis, phrase grouping, and individual idiosyncrasies of pro-
They had
nunciation.
to decide that a writing system should ignore all
They then had
of that variation.
to devise
ways
to represent sounds by
symbols.
Somehow,
front of
the
scribes solved all those problems, without having in
first
them any example of
was evidently so
task
when people
in history
the final result to guide their efforts. That
difficult that there
have been only a few occasions
invented writing entirely on their own. The two
indisputably independent inventions of writing were achieved by the Su-
merians of Mesopotamia somewhat before 3000 B.C. and by Mexican
Indians before 600 B.C. (Figure 12.1); Egyptian writing of
Chinese writing (by 1300
B.C.)
may
3000
B.C.
and
also have arisen independently. Proba-
other peoples
who
have developed writing since then have bor-
rowed, adapted, or at
least
been inspired by existing systems.
bly
all
The independent invention
ry's oldest
that
we can
trace in greatest detail
is
histo-
writing system, Sumerian cuneiform (Figure 12.1). For thou-
sands of years before
it
jelled,
people in some farming villages of the Fertile
Crescent had been using clay tokens of various simple shapes for accounting purposes, such as recording
In the last centuries before
ogy, format,
3000
and signs rapidly
technological innovation
writing surface.
Initially,
was
numbers of sheep and amounts of
B.C.,
developments
in
led to the first system of writing.
the use of
the clay
flat
whose
in
necessity
is
One such
clay tablets as a convenient
was scratched with pointed
gradually yielded to reed styluses for neatly pressing a
Developments
grain.
accounting technol-
mark
tools,
which
into the tablet.
format included the gradual adoption of conventions
now
universally accepted: that writing should be orga-
nized into ruled rows or columns (horizontal rows for the Sumerians, as
for
modern Europeans);
tion
(left
lines
that the lines should be read in a constant direc-
to right for Sumerians, as for
modern Europeans); and
that the
should be read from top to bottom of the tablet rather than vice
versa.
But the crucial change involved the solution of the problem basic to
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
Locations of
some
scripts
mentioned
in
2
I
9
the text
<^
%^9
/
®/
w^.®
©y H
©v
(§r
\^
l/
yo©
0?^,-.
^C_"^l_ • »•
1
tf
•©
f
Independent or
possibly independent
2.
?3.
??4.
Sumer
Other
Alphabets
origins
1.
West Semitic, Phoenician
9.
5.
Proto-Elamite
Hittite
Mesoamerica
China
10.
Ethiopian
7.
11.
8.
Egypt
13.
Korea (han'gul)
Italy (Roman, Etruscan)
14.
Greece
15.
Ireland
17.
Indus Valley
Easter Island
(ogham)
Syllabaries
6.
12.
16.
Crete (Linear A a ndB)
Japan (kana)
Cherokee
Figure 12.1. The question marks next to China
doubt whether early writing
in those areas
and Egypt denote some
arose completely indepen-
dently or
was stimulated by writing systems that arose elsewhere
"Other"
refers to scripts that
earlier.
were neither alphabets nor syllabaries and
that probably arose under the influence of earlier scripts.
virtually all writing systems:
how
to devise agreed-on visible
represent actual spoken sounds, rather than only ideas or else
pendent of their pronunciation. Early stages
in the
marks that
words
inde-
development of the
solution have been detected especially in thousands of clay tablets exca-
vated from the ruins of the former Sumerian city of Uruk, on the Euphrates
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 2 O
River about 200 miles southeast of modern Baghdad. The
first
Sumerian
writing signs were recognizable pictures of the object referred to (for
instance, a picture of a fish or a bird). Naturally, those pictorial signs consisted
mainly of numerals plus nouns for
were merely accounting reports
visible objects; the resulting texts
in a telegraphic
shorthand devoid of gram-
matical elements. Gradually, the forms of the signs became
especially
when
by combining old signs to produce new meanings:
head was combined with the sign
for example, the sign for
order to produce a sign signifying
for bread in
eat.
Sumerian writing consisted of nonphonetic logograms.
earliest
That's to say,
abstract,
the pointed writing tools were replaced by reed styluses.
New signs were created
The
more
it
language, and
was not based on
it
the specific sounds of the Sumerian
could have been pronounced with entirely different
sounds to yield the same meaning
numeral sign 4
is
any other language
in
—
just as the
variously pronounced four, chetwire, nelja, and
by speakers of English, Russian, Finnish, and Indonesian,
haps the most important single step
in the
empat
respectively. Per-
whole history of writing was
the Sumerians' introduction of phonetic representation, initially by writing
an abstract noun (which could not be readily drawn as a picture) by means
of the sign for a depictable
tion.
to
For instance,
draw
it's
noun
easy to
a recognizable picture of
rian, so a picture of
resulting ambiguity
that
draw
had the same phonetic pronuncia-
a recognizable picture of arrow, hard
life,
but both are pronounced
ti
in
an arrow came to mean either arrow or
was resolved by
the addition
Sume-
life.
The
of a silent sign called a
determinative, to indicate the category of nouns to which the intended
object belonged. Linguists term this decisive innovation, which also underlies
puns today, the rebus
Once Sumerians had
it
for
much more than
principle.
hit
upon
this
phonetic principle, they began to use
just writing abstract
nouns. They employed
it
to
write syllables or letters constituting grammatical endings. For instance, in
English
-tion,
it's
but
not obvious
we could
how
instead
draw
to
draw
a picture of the
common
syllable
a picture illustrating the verb shun,
which
has the same pronunciation. Phonetically interpreted signs were also used
to "spell out" longer words, as a series of pictures each depicting the
of one syllable. That's as
if
sound
an English speaker were to write the word
believe as a picture of a bee followed by a picture of a leaf. Phonetic signs
also permitted scribes to use the
words (such
as tooth, speech,
same
pictorial sign for a set of related
and speaker), but to resolve the ambiguity
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
2 2
1
HHHB|HHHBHBB^B
An example
of Babylonian cuneiform writing, derived ultimately from
Sumerian cuneiform.
with an additional phonetically interpreted sign (such as selecting the sign
for two, each, or peak).
Thus, Sumerian writing came to consist of a complex mixture of three
types of signs: logograms, referring to a whole
signs,
used in effect for spelling syllables,
letters,
word
or name; phonetic
grammatical elements, or
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 2 2
parts of words;
and determinatives, which were not pronounced but were
used to resolve ambiguities. Nevertheless, the phonetic signs in Sumerian
writing
far short of a
fell
syllables lacked
different
complete syllabary or alphabet. Some Sumerian
any written
signs; the
same
pronounced
sign could be
ways; and the same sign could variously be read
in
word, a
as a
syllable, or a letter.
Besides Sumerian cuneiform, the other certain instance of independent
human
origins of writing in
history
comes from Native American
of Mesoamerica, probably southern Mexico.
Old World
believed to have arisen independently of
is
no convincing evidence
societies
Mesoamerican writing
is
writing, because there
for pre-Norse contact of
New
World
societies
with Old World societies possessing writing. In addition, the forms of
Me-
soamerican writing signs were entirely different from those of any Old
World
of
script.
About
them apparently
a
dozen Mesoamerican
scripts are
At the moment, the
still
or most
of the
only partially deciphered.
Mesoamerican
earliest preserved
Zapotec area of southern Mexico around 600
is
all
related to each other (for example, in their numerical
and calendrical systems), and most of them
understood one
known,
Lowland Maya
B.C.,
region,
script
is
from the
but by far the best-
where the oldest known
written date corresponds to a.d. 292.
Despite
is
its
independent origins and distinctive sign forms,
and other western Eurasian writing systems that Sumerian
Sumerian,
grams
is,
Maya writing
organized on principles basically similar to those of Sumerian writing
Maya
inspired. Like
writing used both logograms and phonetic signs. Logo-
for abstract
words were often derived by the rebus
principle.
That
an abstract word was written with the sign for another word pro-
nounced
depicted. Like the signs of Japan's
syllabaries,
Maya
Semitic alphabet,
Maya
kana and Mycenaean Greece's Linear B
Maya
ta, te,
syllabic signs
ti,
"we" resembles a
All of these parallels
to, tu).
Like
letters
of the early
were derived from pictures of the
whose pronunciation began with
syllabic sign
readily
phonetic signs were mostly signs for syllables of one
consonant plus one vowel (such as
object
meaning that could be
similarly but with a different
tail,
that syllable (for example, the
for
which the Maya word
is
neb).
between Mesoamerican and ancient western Eur-
asian writing testify to the underlying universality of
human
creativity.
While Sumerian and Mesoamerican languages bear no special relation to
each other
in
among
the world's languages, both raised similar basic issues
reducing them to writing. The solutions that Sumerians invented before
A
painting of the Rajastbani or Gujarati school, from the Indian subcon-
tinent in the early
Indian scripts,
is
probably derived
1
7th century.
The
script, like
most other modern
derived from ancient India's Brabmi script, which was
in turn
by idea diffusion from the Aramaic alphabet
around the seventh century
B.C. Indian scripts incorporated the alpha-
betic principle but independently devised letter forms, letter sequence,
and vowel treatment without
resort to blueprint copying.
224
3000
B.C.
were reinvented, halfway around the world, by early Mesoamer-
ican Indians before
With
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
600
B.C.
the possible
exceptions of the Egyptian, Chinese, and Easter
Island writing to be considered later,
world, at any time, appear to have been descendants of sys-
where
in the
tems
modified
Mesoamerican
from
writing.
origins of writing
discussed.
other writing systems devised any-
all
is
or
at
One
inspired
least
reason
why
by
the great difficulty of inventing
The other reason
is
Sumerian
or
early
there were so few independent
as
it,
we have
already
that other opportunities for the independent
invention of writing were preempted by Sumerian or early Mesoamerican
writing and their derivatives.
We know
that the development of Sumerian writing took at least hun-
dreds, possibly thousands, of years.
As we
shall see, the prerequisites for
those developments consisted of several features of
human
society that
determined whether a society would find writing useful, and whether the
society could support the necessary specialist scribes.
societies besides those of the Sumerians
of ancient India, Crete, and Ethiopia
ever, the
Many
and early Mexicans
—evolved these
other
human
—such as those
prerequisites.
Sumerians and early Mexicans happened to have been the
New World,
evolve them in the Old World and the
respectively.
Sumerians and early Mexicans had invented writing, the
Howfirst
Once
to
the
details or princi-
ples of their writing spread rapidly to other societies, before they could
go
through the necessary centuries or millennia of independent experimentation with writing themselves. Thus, that potential for other, independent
experiments was preempted or aborted.
The spread of writing has occurred by
ods,
which find
parallels
two contrasting meth-
either of
throughout the history of technology and ideas.
Someone
invents something and puts
would-be
user, then design
it
to use.
How
something similar for your
that other people have already got their
own model
do you, another
own
built
use,
knowing
and working?
Such transmission of inventions assumes a whole spectrum of forms. At
the one
end
lies
"blueprint copying,"
when you copy
able detailed blueprint. At the opposite end
you
receive
Knowing
little
that
it
more than
the basic idea
lies
or modify an avail-
"idea diffusion,"
and have to reinvent the
can be done stimulates you to try to do
it
when
details.
yourself, but
225
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
your eventual
specific solution
may
or
may
not resemble that of the
first
inventor.
To take
a recent example, historians are
still
debating whether blueprint
copying or idea diffusion contributed more to Russia's building of an
atomic bomb. Did Russia's bomb-building efforts depend
blueprints of the already constructed
ted to Russia by spies?
A-bomb
at
Hiroshima
Or was
at last
it
critically
on
American bomb, stolen and transmit-
merely that the .evelation of America's
convinced Stalin of the
feasibility of building
such a bomb, and that Russian scientists then reinvented the principles in
an independent crash program, with
lier
American
little
detailed guidance
from the
ear-
effort? Similar questions arise for the history of the develop-
ment of wheels, pyramids, and gunpowder.
Let's
now examine how
blueprint copying and idea diffusion contributed to the spread of writing
systems.
loDAY,
professional linguists
design
writing
unwritten languages by the method of blueprint copying.
made systems modify
baries.
existing alphabets,
systems
Most such
Government
New
tailor-
though some instead design
For example, missionary linguists are working on modified
alphabets for hundreds of
for
sylla-
Roman
Guinea and Native American languages.
linguists devised the modified
1928 by Turkey for writing Turkish,
Roman
alphabet adopted in
as well as the modified Cyrillic alpha-
many tribal languages of Russia.
few cases, we also know something about
bets designed for
In a
who
the individuals
designed writing systems by blueprint copying in the remote past. For
instance, the Cyrillic alphabet itself (the
one
still
used today in Russia)
descended from an adaptation of Greek and Hebrew
Saint Cyril, a
first
Greek missionary to the Slavs
letters
is
devised by
in the ninth century a.d.
The
preserved texts for any Germanic language (the language family that
includes English) are in the Gothic alphabet created by Bishop Ulfilas, a
missionary living with the Visigoths in what
century a.d. Like Saint Cyril's invention,
mash
about
is
now
Ulfilas's
Bulgaria in the fourth
alphabet was a mish-
of letters borrowed from different sources: about 20 Greek
five
Roman
letters,
and two
letters either
alphabet or invented by Ulfilas himself.
Much more
ing about the individuals responsible for devising
letters,
taken from the runic
often,
we know
noth-
famous alphabets of the
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 2 6
But
past.
compare newly emerged alphabets of the past
possible to
it's still
with previously existing ones, and to deduce from
existing ones served as models. For the
B
the Linear
1400
At
syllabary of
that
Mycenaean Greece had been adapted by around
from the Linear
B.C.
forms which
letter
same reason, we can be sure
A
syllabary of
Minoan
Crete.
of the hundreds of times when an existing writing system of one
all
language has been used as a blueprint to adapt to a different language,
some problems have
same
when
guage do not
the
exist in the
many
other European languages express by the letters
b,
so the Finns dropped these letters from their version of
and
Roman
alphabet. There has also been a frequent reverse problem, of
z,
more
"new" sounds present
in the lending language.
in several different
letters (like the
mark
an existing
to
in the
borrowing
lan-
That problem has been solved
ways: such as using an arbitrary combination of two
English th to represent a sound for which the
Greek and runic alphabets used a
o,
simply be
g, w, x,
guage but absent
ing
may
inherited letters or signs
borrowing language. For example, Finnish lacks
devising letters to represent
or
no two languages have exactly the
the sounds that those letters represent in the lending lan-
the sounds that
c, f,
Some
of sounds.
sets
dropped,
arisen, because
adding a small distinguish-
single letter);
letter (like the
Spanish
tilde n, the
German umlaut
and the proliferation of marks dancing around Polish and Turkish
ters);
modern Czechs
use (such as
express the Czech sound
ancestors did
when
ts);
recycling the letter c of the
or just inventing a
they created the
The Roman alphabet
itself
was
new
Roman alphabet to
new letter
letters
/,
u,
(as
our medieval
and w).
the end product of a long sequence of
blueprint copying. Alphabets apparently arose only once in
among
tory:
let-
co-opting existing letters for which the borrowing language had no
human
modern
speakers of Semitic languages, in the area from
his-
Syria
to the Sinai, during the second millennium B.C. All of the hundreds of
historical
and now existing alphabets were ultimately derived from that
ancestral Semitic alphabet, in a few cases (such as the Irish
bet)
by idea diffusion, but
letter
in
ogham
alpha-
most by actual copying and modification of
forms.
That evolution of the alphabet can be traced back to Egyptian hieroglyphs, which included a complete set of
24
signs for the
24 Egyptian
consonants. The Egyptians never took the logical (to us) next step of discarding
all
their
logograms, determinatives, and signs for pairs and
trios
of consonants, and using just their consonantal alphabet. Starting around
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
1700
B.C.,
2 2 7
though, Semites familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphs did begin
to experiment with that logical step.
Restricting signs to those for single consonants
was only
three crucial innovations that distinguished alphabets
systems.
The second was
Our
of
first
memorize the alphabet by placing
to help users
the letters in a fixed sequence
the
from other writing
and giving them easy-to-remember names.
English names are mostly meaningless monosyllables ("a," "bee,"
"cee," "dee,"
and so
on). But the Semitic
words
Semitic languages: they were the
= house,
beth
words were
they
gimel
named
daleth
= door, and
is,
the
first letter
for the object
of the
{'a, b, g, d,
forms of the Semitic
letters
those same objects.
All
and so
for the object
was
which
also the
on). In addition, the earliest
many cases to have been pictures of
features made the forms, names, and
appear
these
sequence of Semitic alphabet
word
in
= ox,
so on). These Semitic
related "acrophonically" to the Semitic consonants to
refer: that
letter
= camel,
names did possess meaning
for familiar objects ('aleph
in
letters
Many modern
easy to remember.
al-
phabets, including ours, retain with minor modifications that original
sequence (and, in the case of Greek, even the
beta,
gamma,
delta,
letters' original
and so on) over 3,000 years
cation that readers will already have noticed
g became the Roman and English
c,
is
while the
later.
names: alpha,
One minor
that the Semitic
Romans
modifi-
and Greek
invented a
new g
in its present position.
The
third
and
last
innovation leading to modern alphabets was to pro-
vide for vowels. Already in the early days of the Semitic alphabet, experi-
ments began with methods for writing vowels by adding small extra
to indicate selected vowels, or else by dots, lines, or
hooks sprinkled over
the consonantal letters. In the eighth century B.C. the Greeks
first
people to indicate
all
-
t
-
became
vowels systematically by the same types of
used for consonants. Greeks derived the forms of their vowel
17
letters
letters
the
letters
a
-
e
-
o by "co-opting" five letters used in the Phoenician alphabet for
consonantal sounds lacking in Greek.
From
those earliest Semitic alphabets, one line of blueprint copying and
evolutionary modification led via early Arabian alphabets to the
Ethiopian alphabet.
A far more
maic alphabet, used for
official
modern Arabic, Hebrew,
line
important
line
evolved by
way
modern
of the Ara-
documents of the Persian Empire, into the
Indian,
and Southeast Asian alphabets. But the
most familiar to European and American readers
is
the one that led
via the Phoenicians to the Greeks by the early eighth century B.C., thence
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 2 8
to the Etruscans in the
same
Romans, whose alphabet with
this
and
century,
in the next century to the
slight modifications
is
the one used to print
book. Thanks to their potential advantage of combining precision
now
with simplicity, alphabets have
been adopted
most areas of the
in
modern world.
While
blueprint copying and
modification are the most straight-
forward option for transmitting technology, that option
unavailable. Blueprints
may
may be unreadable to
Word may trickle through
away, but the details may not get
in the technology.
about an invention made somewhere
far
transmitted. Perhaps only the basic idea
is
known: someone has succeeded,
in achieving a certain final result.
theless inspire others,
sometimes
be kept secret, or they
someone not already steeped
somehow,
is
That knowledge may never-
by idea diffusion, to devise
their
own
routes to such
a result.
A striking example from the history of writing is the origin of the syllabary devised in Arkansas around 1820 by a Cherokee Indian named
Sequoyah, for writing the Cherokee language. Sequoyah observed that
white people
made marks on
paper, and that they derived great advantage
by using those marks to record and repeat lengthy speeches. However, the
detailed operations of those
marks remained a mystery
most Cherokees before 1820) Sequoyah was
illiterate
to him, since (like
and could neither
speak nor read English. Because he was a blacksmith, Sequoyah began by
devising an accounting system to help
debts.
He drew
of various sizes to represent the
Cherokee language.
them up
He
as too complicated
to
Sequoyah
realized that
artistically
call syllables.
He
initially
demanding.
word, and again became
of signs and
lines
still
He
next
dissatis-
needed more.
words were made up of modest numbers
of different sound bites that recurred in
would
and
go on to design a system for writing
and too
when he had coined thousands
Finally,
his customers'
circles
again began by drawing pictures, but gave
started to invent separate signs for each
fied
drew
amount of money owed.
Around 1810, Sequoyah decided
the
him keep track of
a picture of each customer; then he
many
different
words
—what we
devised 200 syllabic signs and gradually
reduced them to 85, most of them for combinations of one consonant and
one vowel.
As one source of the
signs themselves,
Sequoyah practiced copying the
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
2 2 9
Re
T
(fro
Ou
lv
x
ge
Jg.
jnLgo
J gu
Egv
°^ha
The
tA/hi
Tho
Thu
Via
(Pie
f,
do
Miu
iV^ma
(Jlme
Jmo
T7
t/na TrhnaVXnah
* i-ne
Hmi
Rn
JLqua
CUque
'fo-
Da
Oka
0~ga
mu
Onv
xnu
quo CC/quu
Oquv
Rsv
JLso
C
Vdo
Sdu
(5°dv
Jtlo
-^Pt.u
_Ptlv
Ifts
XVtso
(Jtsu
Vr'tsv
i£?we
@w
e^wo
•y
3ve
V5y.
iiyo
VTyu
jbse
Lda Wta
5de
O&dla Jjtla
Iitle
Cftii
K9
Ttse
(jtwa
C0ya
The
T
bs
tJsa o£)s
tsa
Zno
hLv
bt
1
*l
tl
su
Owv
Byv
wu
of signs that Sequoyah devised to represent syllables of the Chero-
set
kee language.
letters
from an English
About two dozen of
those
letters,
his
spelling
book given
Cherokee
to
syllabic signs
him by
a schoolteacher.
were taken
directly
from
though of course with completely changed meanings, since
Sequoyah did not know the English meanings. For example, he chose the
shapes D, R, b, h to represent the Cherokee syllables
tively,
He
signs (j
,
W, and
U
letters,
to represent the syllables yu, sa,
other signs were entirely of his creation, such as
and nu,
respectively. Sequoyah's syllabary
sional linguists for
which
and
ni,
respec-
while the shape of the numeral 4 was borrowed for the syllable
coined other signs by modifying English
Still
a, e, si,
it
its
good
fit
to
is
se.
such as designing the
and
r,
I
,
na, respectively.
and
n
for ho,
li,
widely admired by profes-
Cherokee sounds, and for the ease with
can be learned. Within a short time, the Cherokees achieved
almost 100 percent literacy in the syllabary, bought a printing press, had
Sequoyah's signs cast as type, and began printing books and newspapers.
Cherokee writing remains one of the best-attested examples of a
that arose through idea diffusion.
We know
script
that Sequoyah received paper
230
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
and other writing materials, the idea of a writing system, the idea of using
separate marks, and the forms of several dozen marks. Since, however, he
could neither read nor write English, he acquired no details or even principles
from the
around him. Surrounded by alphabets he
existing scripts
could not understand, he instead independently reinvented a syllabary,
unaware that the Minoans of Crete had already invented another syllabary
3,500 years previously.
Sequoyah's example can
probably led to
many writing
serve as a
model
for
how
idea diffusion
systems of ancient times as well. The han'gul
alphabet devised by Korea's King Sejong in a.d. 1446 for the Korean lan-
guage was evidently inspired by the block format of Chinese characters
and by the alphabetic principle of Mongol or Tibetan Buddhist writing.
However, King Sejong invented the forms of han'gul
unique features of
his alphabet, including the
letters
grouping of
and
letters
several
by
sylla-
bles into square blocks, the use of related letter shapes to represent related
vowel or consonant sounds, and shapes of consonant
the position in
nant.
which the
lips
letters that depict
or tongue are held to pronounce that conso-
The ogham alphabet used
in Ireland
and parts of
Celtic Britain
from
around the fourth century a.d. similarly adopted the alphabetic principle
from existing European alphabets) but again devised unique
(in this case,
letter
We
forms, apparently based on a five-finger system of hand signals.
can confidently attribute the han'gul and ogham alphabets to idea
diffusion rather than to independent invention in isolation, because
know
that both societies were in close contact with societies possessing
writing and because
tion. In contrast,
earliest
it is
we can
clear
which foreign
first
scripts furnished the inspira-
confidently attribute Sumerian cuneiform and the
Mesoamerican writing
times of their
tive
we
to independent invention, because at the
appearances there existed no other script in their respec-
hemispheres that could have inspired them.
gins of writing
on Easter
The Polynesians
Island, in China,
living
unique script of which the
about a.d. 1851, long
on Easter
earliest
after
and
Still
debatable are the ori-
in Egypt.
Island, in the Pacific
Ocean, had a
preserved examples date back only to
Europeans reached Easter
in
1722. Perhaps
writing arose independently on Easter before the arrival of Europeans,
although no examples have survived. But the most straightforward
pretation
is
to take the facts at face value,
inter-
and to assume that Easter
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
2 3
I
-g-fflLHl
-tfOfl-fc
VOW
XfEMtl
fexM
tihOfW
*fe
JtKHOIbil
aHsl
Sf-gr
/l-brHN
*x|d|
-fchoite
•£01
tf
¥01
A Korean
text (the
&
x| ul
rt-&
<aoi
x| lH|
poem "Flowers on
trating the remarkable
the Hills" by
So-Wol Kim),
illus-
Han'gul writing system. Each square block
sents a syllable, but each
component
repre-
sign within the block represents a
letter.
Islanders
were stimulated to devise a
script after seeing the written procla-
mation of annexation that a Spanish expedition handed to them
in the
year 1770.
As
for Chinese writing,
earlier precursors,
it
first
attested
around 1300
B.C. but
with possible
too has unique local signs and some unique principles,
and most scholars assume that
it
evolved independently. Writing had
developed before 3000 B.C. in Sumer, 4,000 miles west of early Chinese
urban centers, and appeared by 2200
west, but
no
early writing systems are
the Indus Valley
B.C. in the
Indus Valley, 2,600 miles
known from the whole
and China. Thus, there
is
area between
no evidence that the
earliest
Chinese scribes could have had knowledge of any other writing system to
inspire them.
Egyptian hieroglyphics, the most famous of
are also usually
assumed
all
ancient writing systems,
to be the product of independent invention, but
the alternative interpretation of idea diffusion
is
more
feasible than in the
!
2 3
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2.
case of Chinese writing. Hieroglyphic writing appeared rather suddenly, in
nearly full-blown form, around
3000
Egypt lay only 800 miles west
B.C.
of Sumer, with which Egypt had trade contacts.
I
find
suspicious that
it
evidence of a gradual development of hieroglyphs has
come down
no
to us,
even though Egypt's dry climate would have been favorable for preserving
experiments in writing, and though the similarly dry climate of
earlier
Sumer has yielded abundant evidence of
cuneiform for at
the development of Sumerian
least several centuries before
3000
B.C. Equally suspicious
the appearance of several other, apparently independently designed,
is
writing systems in Iran, Crete, and Turkey (so-called proto-Elamite writing,
Cretan pictographs, and Hieroglyphic
rise
of Sumerian and Egyptian writing. Although each of those systems
used distinctive
sets of signs
ples involved could hardly
Hittite, respectively), after the
not borrowed from Egypt or Sumer, the peo-
have been unaware of the writing of their neigh-
boring trade partners.
It
would be
human
a remarkable coincidence
existence without writing,
if,
after millions of years of
those Mediterranean and
all
Near
East-
ern societies had just happened to hit independently on the idea of writing
within a few centuries of each other. Hence a possible interpretation seems
to
me
tians
8
idea diffusion, as in the case of Sequoyah's syllabary. That
m
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>4l
rj£.
A.
**
"*-
"*"
X
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is,
Egyp-
and other peoples may have learned from Sumerians about the idea
*J
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**
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f
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y<
&
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1,61
^
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&
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Aw example of Chinese
-*-
%
^fe
^
fit
**-
q^-
f % !
*-
^
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"4
J*L
fl
~^ i'f
writing: a handscroll by
Wu
J-fe
-ffc
f*.
Li,
-^^
rf«:
^
-^
^l-
from a.d. 1679.
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
An example of Egyptian
2 3
3
hieroglyphs: the funerary papyrus of Princess
Entiu-ny.
of writing and possibly about
other principles and
Let us now
ter:
why
all
some of
the principles,
and then devised
the specific forms of the letters for themselves.
return to the
main question with which we began
did writing arise in and spread to
some
societies,
this
chap-
but not to
many
others? Convenient starting points for our discussion are the limited capabilities, uses,
and users of early writing systems.
Early scripts were incomplete, ambiguous, or complex, or
all
three.
For
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
2 3 4
example, the oldest Sumerian cuneiform writing could not render normal
prose but was a mere telegraphic shorthand, whose vocabulary was
restricted to
and
few
a
names, numerals, units of measure, words for objects counted,
adjectives. That's as
forced to write "John
necessary words and
fat
27
if
modern American court
a
grammar
clerk
were
because English writing lacked the
fat sheep,"
to write
"We
order John to deliver the 27
sheep that he owes to the government." Later Sumerian cuneiform did
become capable of rendering
prose, but
it
did so by the messy system that
I've already described, with mixtures of logograms, phonetic signs, and
unpronounced determinatives
B, the writing of
totaling hundreds of separate signs. Linear
Mycenaean Greece, was
a syllabary of about
at least simpler, being
90 signs plus logograms. Offsetting that
based on
virtue, Linear
B was
quite ambiguous.
and
used the same sign for several related consonants (for instance, one
it
sign for both
and k and
/
kb).
and
r,
It
omitted any consonant at the end of a word,
another for p and b and pb, and
nese people speak English without distinguishing
fusion
if
"lap," "lab,"
I
mentioned!
and "laugh"
related limitation
/
and
r:
imagine the con-
is
as
It's
if
we were
to spell the
words "rap,"
identically.
that few people ever learned to write these early
Knowledge of writing was confined
scripts.
another for g
our alphabet did the same while similarly homogenizing the other
consonants that
A
still
We know how confusing we find it when native-born Japa-
employ of the king or temple. For
to professional scribes in the
instance, there
is
no
hint that Linear
B
was used or understood by any Mycenaean Greek beyond small cadres of
palace bureaucrats. Since individual Linear
by
their
served Linear
work
B
scribes can be distinguished
handwriting on preserved documents,
B documents from
we can
the palaces of Knossos
say that
all
pre-
and Pylos are the
of a mere 75 and 40 scribes, respectively.
The
uses of these telegraphic, clumsy,
restricted as the
number
Sumerians of 3000
Instead, the
first
B.C.
of their users.
thought and
ambiguous
early scripts
Anyone hoping
felt
is
were as
to discover
how
in for a disappointment.
Sumerian texts are emotionless accounts of palace and
temple bureaucrats. About 90 percent of the tablets in the
Sumerian archives, from the
city of
Uruk, are
earliest
known
clerical records of
goods
in,
workers given rations, and agricultural products distributed. Only
later, as
Sumerians progressed beyond logograms to phonetic writing, did
paid
they begin to write prose narratives, such as propaganda and myths.
Mycenaean Greeks never even reached
that propaganda-and-myths
235
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
One-third of
stage.
all
Linear B tablets from the palace of Knossos are
accountants' records of sheep and wool, while an inordinate proportion
of writing at the palace of Pylos consists of records of flax. Linear
ambiguous that
inherently so
whose context and
Not
a trace of
its
remained
it
word
limited
restricted to palace accounts,
made
choices
B was
the interpretation clear.
use for literature has survived.
The
and Odyssey
Iliad
were composed and transmitted by nonliterate bards for nonliterate
listen-
ers, and not committed to writing until the development of the Greek
alphabet hundreds of years
later.
Mesoamerican,
Similarly restricted uses characterize early Egyptian,
and Chinese writing. Early Egyptian hieroglyphs recorded
religious
and
propaganda and bureaucratic accounts. Preserved Maya writing was
state
similarly devoted to propaganda, births
kings,
and astronomical observations of
and accessions and
priests.
The
victories of
oldest preserved Chi-
nese writing of the late Shang Dynasty consists of religious divination
about dynastic
"The
text:
affairs, incised into so-called oracle
heating], said:
auspicious.'
To
meaning of the crack
king, reading the
'If
the child
is
A sample
bones.
[in a
born on a keng day,
it
Shang
bone cracked by
will be extremely
"
us today,
it is
tempting to ask
why
societies
with early writing sys-
tems accepted the ambiguities that restricted writing to a few functions
and
a
few
scribes.
But even to pose that question
between ancient perspectives and our
The intended
is
to illustrate the
provided a positive disincen-
ambiguous writing systems. The kings and
Sumer wanted writing
numbers of sheep owed
in taxes, not
main function was "to
by the masses to write poetry and
facilitate the
writing systems grew simpler and
For instance, with the
1200
acy.
fall
of
it,
ancient writ-
human
came only much
enslavement of other
beings." Personal uses of writing by nonprofessionals
later, as
priests of
to be used by professional scribes to record
hatch plots. As the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss put
ing's
gap
expectations of mass literacy.
restricted uses of early writing
tive for devising less
ancient
own
more
expressive.
Mycenaean Greek
civilization,
around
B.C.,
Linear B disappeared, and Greece returned to an age of preliter-
When
writing finally returned to Greece, in the eighth century B.C.,
the
new Greek
ing
was no longer an ambiguous
alphabet
writing,
its
users,
and
its
uses were very different.
syllabary
The
writ-
mixed with logograms but an
borrowed from the Phoenician consonantal alphabet and
improved by the Greek invention of vowels. In place of
lists
of sheep, legi-
and read only
ble only to scribes
the
moment
of
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
2 3
its
in palaces,
Greek alphabetic writing from
appearance was a vehicle of poetry and humor, to be
read in private homes. For instance, the
first
preserved example of Greek
alphabetic writing, scratched onto an Athenian wine jug of about 740 B.C.,
is
a line of poetry announcing a dancing contest:
performs most nimbly will win
"Whoever of
this vase as a prize."
all
dancers
The next example
am
three lines of dactylic hexameter scratched onto a drinking cup: "I
Nestor's delicious drinking cup.
Whoever drinks from
the desire of fair-crowned Aphrodite seize him."
Roman
examples of the Etruscan and
this
The
cup swiftly
is
will
earliest preserved
alphabets are also inscriptions on
drinking cups and wine containers. Only later did the alphabet's easily
learned vehicle of private communication become co-opted for public or
bureaucratic purposes. Thus, the developmental sequence of uses for
alphabetic writing
grams and
was
the reverse of that for the earlier systems of logo-
syllabaries.
Ihe limited uses
appeared so
late in
and users of early writing suggest why writing
human
dent inventions of writing
evolution. All of the likely or possible indepen(in
Sumer, Mexico, China, and Egypt), and
all
of the early adaptations of those invented systems (for example, those in
Crete, Iran, Turkey, the Indus Valley,
societies
stratified
whose necessary
and the Maya
area), involved socially
with complex and centralized political institutions,
relation to food production
we
shall explore in a later
chapter. Early writing served the needs of those political institutions (such
as record keeping
and royal propaganda), and the users were
bureaucrats nourished by stored food surpluses
peasants. Writing
societies,
and the
full-time
grown by food-producing
was never developed or even adopted by hunter-gatherer
because they lacked both the institutional uses of early writing
social
and agricultural mechanisms
for generating the food sur-
pluses required to feed scribes.
Thus, food production and thousands of years of societal evolution
lowing
its
fol-
adoption were as essential for the evolution of writing as for
the evolution of microbes causing
human epidemic
diseases. Writing arose
independently only in the Fertile Crescent, Mexico, and probably China
precisely because those
in their respective
were the
hemispheres.
first
areas where food production emerged
Once writing had been invented by those
BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS
few
societies,
societies
it
2 3 7
then spread, by trade and conquest and religion, to other
with similar economies and political organizations.
While food production was thus a necessary condition for the evolution
or early adoption of writing,
ning of this chapter,
ties
I
it
was not
mentioned the
a sufficient condition.
failure of
At the begin-
some food-producing
socie-
with complex political organization to develop or adopt writing before
modern
times.
Those
moderns accustomed
cases, initially so puzzling to us
to viewing writing as indispensable to a
complex
society, included
one of
the world's largest empires as of a.d. 1520, the Inca Empire of South
America. They also included Tonga's maritime proto-empire, the Hawaiian state emerging in the late 18th century,
all
of the states and chiefdoms
of subequatorial Africa and sub-Saharan West Africa before the arrival
North American
of Islam, and the largest native
Mississippi Valley and
tributaries.
its
Why
did
all
societies, those of the
those societies
fail
to
acquire writing, despite their sharing prerequisites with societies that did
do so?
Here we have to remind ourselves that the vast majority of
with writing acquired
inspired by
them
themselves.
The
by borrowing
it
to develop
societies
it,
it
societies
from neighbors or by being
rather than by independently inventing
without writing that
I
just
it
mentioned are ones
on food production than did Sumer, Mexico, and
that got a later start
China. (The only uncertainty in this statement concerns the relative dates
for the onset of food production in
Mexico and
in the
Andes, the eventual
Inca realm.) Given enough time, the societies lacking writing might also
have eventually developed
to Sumer,
it
on
their
own. Had they been located nearer
Mexico, and China, they might instead have acquired writing
or the idea of writing from those centers, just as did India, the
most other
societies
ters of writing to
have acquired
The importance of
isolation
it
before
modern
most obvious
is
both of which were separated by
at least
nearest societies with writing.
The other
point that distance as the crow
flies is
tion for
humans. The Andes, West
from
respectively.
societies
first
cen-
times.
for
Hawaii and Tonga,
4,000 miles of ocean from the
societies illustrate the
important
not an appropriate measure of isola-
Africa's
kingdoms, and the mouth of
the Mississippi River lay only about 1,200, 1,500,
tively,
Maya, and
with writing. But they were too far from the
and 700
miles, respec-
with writing in Mexico, North Africa, and Mexico,
These distances are considerably
less
than the distances the
238
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
alphabet had to travel from
its
homeland on the eastern shores of the Med-
iterranean to reach Ireland, Ethiopia, and Southeast Asia within 2,000
years of
invention. But
its
barriers that
crows can
fly
humans
over.
The
are slowed by ecological
states of
and water
North Africa (with
writing)
and West Africa (without writing) were separated from each other by
Saharan desert unsuitable for agriculture and
ern
Mexico
similarly separated the
the
Andes required
The
deserts of north-
Communication between southern
the chiefdoms of the Mississippi Valley.
Mexico and
cities.
urban centers of southern Mexico from
either a sea
voyage or
else a
long chain of
overland contacts via the narrow, forested, never urbanized Isthmus of
Darien. Hence the Andes, West Africa, and the Mississippi Valley were
effectively rather isolated
from
societies
with writing.
That's not to say that those societies without writing were totally isolated.
West Africa eventually did
receive Fertile Crescent domestic animals
across the Sahara, and later accepted Islamic influence, including Arabic
from Mexico to the Andes and, more slowly, from
writing.
Corn
Mexico
to the Mississippi Valley. But
diffused
the north-south axes
and ecological
we
already
saw
in
Chapter 10 that
barriers within Africa
cas retarded the diffusion of crops and domestic animals.
writing illustrates strikingly the similar
ways
in
and the Ameri-
The
history of
which geography and
ogy influenced the spread of human inventions.
ecol-
CHAPTER
Necessity's
ON
JULY
ancient
13
Mother
1908, ARCHAEOLOGISTS EXCAVATING THE
3,
Minoan
palace at Phaistos,
on the
chanced upon one of the most remarkable objects
ogy.
At
first
glance
circular disk of
tion
it
seemed unprepossessing:
hard-baked
showed each
clay,
6V2 inches
just a small, flat, unpainted,
in diameter. Closer
side to be covered with writing, resting
that spiraled clockwise in five coils
of 241 signs or letters
groups of several
was
from the
rim to
disk's
fill
up
of space
all
on
its
examina-
a curved line
center.
A total
neatly divided by etched vertical lines into
signs, possibly constituting
words. The writer must have
planned and executed the disk with care, so as to
and
island of Crete,
in the history of technol-
start writing at the
rim
the available space along the spiraling line, yet not run out
on reaching the center (page 240).
Ever since
of writing.
it
was unearthed,
The number of
than an alphabet, but
distinct signs (45) suggests a syllabary rather
it is still
undeciphered, and the forms of the signs
known
are unlike those of any other
the strange script has turned
remains unknown whether
the disk has posed a mystery for historians
up
it
writing system.
in the
89 years since
Not another
its
scrap of
discovery. Thus,
represents an indigenous Cretan
it
script or a
foreign import to Crete.
For historians of technology, the Phaistos disk
2 3 9
is
even more baffling;
its
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 4 o
One
side of the two-sided Phaistos Disk.
estimated date of 1700 B.C. makes
it
in the world. Instead of being etched
later
Linear
far the earliest printed
by hand, as were
A and Linear B scripts, the
clay (subsequently
The
by
disk's signs
all
document
texts of Crete's
were punched into
baked hard) by stamps that bore a sign as raised
printer evidently
had a
set of at least
45 stamps, one
soft
type.
for each sign
appearing on the disk. Making these stamps must have entailed a great
deal of work,
and they surely weren't manufactured
just to print this single
document. Whoever used them was presumably doing a
With those stamps,
neatly than
if
their
lot of writing.
owner could make copies much more quickly and
he or she had written out each of the
script's
complicated
signs at each appearance.
The Phaistos
disk anticipates humanity's next efforts at printing,
similarly used cut type or blocks but applied
them
which
to paper with ink, not
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
to clay without ink.
However, those next
2 4
I
efforts did not
appear
until
2,500
Why
years later in China and 3,100 years later in medieval Europe.
was
the disk's precocious technology not widely adopted in Crete or elsewhere
in the ancient
around 1700
Mediterranean?
B.C. in Crete
Why
and not
was
printing
its
some other time
at
Mexico, or any other ancient center of writing?
method invented
Mesopotamia,
in
Why did it then take thou-
sands of years to add the ideas of ink and a press and arrive at a printing
press?
The
disk thus constitutes a threatening challenge to historians.
If
inventions are as idiosyncratic and unpredictable as the disk seems to suggest,
then efforts to generalize about the history of technology
doomed from
may
be
the outset.
Technology, in the form of weapons and transport, provides the direct
means by which
certain peoples have
quered other peoples. That makes
pattern. But
why were
it
expanded
and con-
their realms
the leading cause of history's broadest
Eurasians, rather than Native Americans or sub-
Saharan Africans, the ones to invent firearms, oceangoing
ships,
and
steel
equipment? The differences extend to most other significant technological
advances, from printing presses to glass and steam engines.
those inventions Eurasian?
tralians in a.d.
1800
still
Why
were
all
New
Why
were
all
Guineans and Native Aus-
using stone tools like ones discarded thousands
of years ago in Eurasia and
most of Africa, even though some of the
world's richest copper and iron deposits are in
respectively? All those facts explain
why
so
New
many
Guinea and Australia,
laypeople assume that
Eurasians are superior to other peoples in inventiveness and intelligence.
If,
on the other hand, no such
difference in
human
neurobiology exists
to account for continental differences in technological development,
does account for them?
An
alternative view rests
invention. Technological advances
on the heroic theory of
seem to come disproportionately from
a few very rare geniuses, such as Johannes Gutenberg,
Thomas
what
James Watt,
Edison, and the Wright brothers. They were Europeans, or
descendants of European emigrants to America. So were Archimedes and
other rare geniuses of ancient times. Could such geniuses have equally well
been born
in
Tasmania or Namibia? Does the history of technology
depend on nothing more than accidents of the birthplaces of a few inventors?
Still
another alternative view holds that
it is
a matter not of individual
inventiveness but of the receptivity of whole societies to innovation.
societies
seem hopelessly conservative, inward looking, and
Some
hostile to
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
242.
change. That's the impression of
help Third
many Westerners who have attempted
perfectly intelligent as individuals; the
their societies.
problem seems instead to
lie
with
How else can one explain why the Aborigines of northeast-
ern Australia failed to adopt
by Torres
to
World peoples and ended up discouraged. The people seem
bows and arrows, which they saw being used
whom they traded?
with
Straits islanders
Might
all
the societies
of an entire continent be unreceptive, thereby explaining technology's slow
we
pace of development there? In
this
with a central problem of
book: the question of
this
chapter
shall finally
why
come
to grips
technology did
evolve at such different rates on different continents.
1 he starting point for our discussion
in the saying "Necessity
supposedly arise
is
when
is
is
the
common view expressed
mother of invention." That
the
a society has an unfulfilled need:
is,
inventions
some technology
widely recognized to be unsatisfactory or limiting. Would-be inventors,
motivated by the prospect of money or fame, perceive the need and try to
meet
it.
Some
inventor finally comes up with a solution superior to the
existing, unsatisfactory technology. Society adopts the solution
patible with the society's values
Quite a few inventions do conform to
government
set
this
commonsense view of
mother. In 1942, in the middle of World
sity as invention's
up the Manhattan Project with the
inventing the technology required to build an atomic
Germany could do
$2
so.
That project succeeded
billion (equivalent to over
if it is
com-
and other technologies.
$20
War
II,
neces-
the U.S.
explicit goal
bomb
of
before Nazi
in three years, at a cost of
billion today).
Other instances are
Eli
Whitney's 1794 invention of his cotton gin to replace laborious hand
grown
cleaning of cotton
in the U.S. South,
tion of his steam engine to solve the
and James Watt's 1769 inven-
problem of pumping water out of
British coal mines.
These familiar examples deceive us into assuming that other major
inventions were also responses to perceived needs. In fact,
many
or most
inventions were developed by people driven by curiosity or by a love of
tinkering, in the absence of
any
initial
demand
for the product they
had
in
mind. Once a device had been invented, the inventor then had to find an
application for
it.
Only
consumers come to
to serve
after
feel that
it
had been
in use for a considerable time did
they "needed"
it.
Still
other devices, invented
one purpose, eventually found most of their use for other, unantic-
ipated purposes.
It
may come
in search of a use include
of
modern
internal
times, ranging
as a surprise to learn that these inventions
most of the major technological breakthroughs
from the airplane and automobile, through the
combustion engine and
Thus, invention
transistor.
243
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
is
electric light bulb, to the
phonograph and
often the mother of necessity, rather than
vice versa.
A
good example
most
is
the history of
Thomas
Edison's phonograph, the
original invention of the greatest inventor of
Edison built
his first
which
ing ten uses to
the last
phonograph
his invention
words of dying people, recording books
list
years he changed his
When
propos-
A
few years
had no commercial
mind and did
for blind people to hear,
Reproduction of music was
spelling.
of priorities.
assistant that his invention
times.
article
might be put. They included preserving
announcing clock time, and teaching
not high on Edison's
modern
1877, he published an
in
later
enter business to
but for use as office dictating machines.
When
Edison told
value. Within another
sell
his
few
phonographs
other entrepreneurs created
jukeboxes by arranging for a phonograph to play popular music at the
drop of a coin, Edison objected to
this
debasement, which apparently
detracted from serious office use of his invention. Only after about 20
years did Edison reluctantly concede that the
was
The motor
However,
Otto
it
main use of
phonograph
his
and play music.
to record
vehicle
is
another invention whose uses seem obvious today.
was not invented
in
built his first gas engine, in
response to any demand.
When
Nikolaus
1866, horses had been supplying people's
land transportation needs for nearly 6,000 years, supplemented increasingly by
steam-powered railroads for several decades. There was no
in the availability of horses,
no
dissatisfaction with railroads.
Because Otto's engine was weak, heavy, and seven
recommend
itself
over horses.
crisis
Not
until
feet tall,
it
did not
1885 did engines improve to the
point that Gottfried Daimler got around to installing one on a bicycle to
create the
first
In 1905,
motorcycle; he waited until 1896 to build the
motor
vehicles
were
still
first
truck.
expensive, unreliable toys for the rich.
Public contentment with horses and railroads remained high until
War
I,
when
the military concluded that
it
really did
need trucks. Intensive
postwar lobbying by truck manufacturers and armies
public of
its
own
drawn wagons
cities,
World
finally
convinced the
needs and enabled trucks to begin to supplant horse-
in industrialized countries.
the changeover took 50 years.
Even
in the largest
American
2 4 4
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
'
Inventors often have to persist at their tinkering for a long time in the
absence of public demand, because early models perform too poorly to be
useful.
The
first
cameras, typewriters, and television sets were as awful as
Otto's seven-foot-tall gas engine.
That makes
it
difficult for
an inventor to
foresee whether his or her awful prototype might eventually find a use
more time and expense
thus warrant
States issues
to develop
it.
Each
and
year, the United
about 70,000 patents, only a few of which ultimately reach
the stage of commercial production. For each great invention that
ulti-
mately found a use, there are countless others that did not. Even inventions
which they were
that meet the need for
more valuable
at
steam engine to
his
initially
designed
may
later
prove
meeting unforeseen needs. While James Watt designed
pump
to cotton mills, then (with
water from mines,
it
much greater profit)
soon was supplying power
propelling locomotives and
boats.
Ihus, the commonsense view
of invention that served as our start-
ing point reverses the usual roles of invention
and need.
It
also overstates
the importance of rare geniuses, such as Watt and Edison. That "heroic
theory of invention," as
it is
termed,
is
encouraged by patent law, because
an applicant for a patent must prove the novelty of the invention submitted. Inventors thereby
previous work.
one that
arises
From
have a financial incentive to denigrate or ignore
a patent lawyer's perspective, the ideal invention
without any precursors,
like
Athene springing
fully
is
formed
from the forehead of Zeus.
In reality, even for the
most famous and apparently
decisive
modern
"X
invented
inventions, neglected precursors lurked behind the bald claim
Y." For instance,
we
are regularly told, "James
Watt invented the steam
engine in 1769," supposedly inspired by watching steam
kettle's spout.
Unfortunately for this splendid
fiction,
idea for his particular steam engine while repairing a
Newcomen's steam
lier
engine, which
Newcomen had
rise
Newcomen's
a tea-
model of Thomas
invented 57 years ear-
and of which over a hundred had been manufactured
the time of Watt's repair work.
from
Watt actually got the
in
England by
engine, in turn, followed the
steam engine that the Englishman Thomas Savery patented
in
1698, which
followed the steam engine that the Frenchman Denis Papin designed (but
did not build) around 1680, which in turn had precursors in the ideas of
the
Dutch
scientist Christiaan
245
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
Huygens and
others. All this
is
not to deny
that Watt greatly improved Newcomen's engine (by incorporating a separate
steam condenser and a double-acting cylinder),
greatly
improved
just as
Newcomen had
Savery's.
Similar histories can be related for
quately documented.
all
modern inventions
The hero customarily
that are ade-
credited with the invention fol-
lowed previous inventors who had had similar aims and had already
produced designs, working models, or
(as in the case of the
Newcomen
steam engine) commercially successful models. Edison's famous "invention" of the incandescent light bulb on the night of October 21, 1879,
improved on many other incandescent
tors
between 1841 and 1878.
ered airplane
Lilienthal
light bulbs
Similarly, the
was preceded by
the
patented by other inven-
Wright brothers' manned pow-
manned unpowered
gliders of
Otto
and the unmanned powered airplane of Samuel Langley; Samuel
Morse's telegraph was preceded by those of Joseph Henry, William Cooke,
and Charles Wheatstone; and
Eli
Whitney's gin for cleaning short-staple
(inland) cotton extended gins that
had been cleaning long-staple
(Sea
Island) cotton for thousands of years.
All this
not to deny that Watt, Edison, the Wright brothers, Morse,
is
and Whitney made big improvements and thereby increased or inaugurated commercial success.
The form of
the invention eventually adopted
might have been somewhat different without the recognized inventor's
contribution. But the question for our purposes
tern of
world history would have been altered
is
whether the broad pat-
significantly
inventor had not been born at a particular place and time.
clear: there
tors
some genius
The answer
is
has never been any such person. All recognized famous inven-
had capable predecessors and successors and made
ments
if
at a time
when
society
shall see, the tragedy of the
Phaistos disk
was
was capable of using
hero
who
their
improve-
their product.
As we
perfected the stamps used for the
that he or she devised something that the society of the
time could not exploit on a large scale.
iVYy examples so
far
have been drawn from modern technologies,
because their histories are well known.
My two main conclusions are that
technology develops cumulatively, rather than in isolated heroic acts, and
that
it
finds
most of
its
uses after
it
has been invented, rather than being
24
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
invented to meet a foreseen need. These conclusions surely apply with
much
greater force to the
When
Ice
dues
undocumented history of ancient technology.
Age hunter-gatherers noticed burned sand and limestone
in their hearths,
it
was impossible
for
dipitous accumulation of discoveries that
windows (around
glass
glazes (around
4000
a.d.
them
would
by way of the
1),
lead to the
first
B.C.),
and the
first
first
Roman
objects with surface
B.C.), the first free-standing glass objects
Mesopotamia (around 2500
resi-
to foresee the long, seren-
of Egypt and
glass vessels (around
1500
B.C.).
We know nothing about how those earliest known
selves
were developed. Nevertheless, we can
toric invention
as the
surface glazes them-
methods of
infer the
prehis-
by watching technologically "primitive" people today, such
New Guineans with whom I work. I already mentioned their knowl-
edge of hundreds of local plant and animal species and each species' edibil-
New
medical value, and other uses.
ity,
dozens of rock types
behavior
when
in their
"invention" going on whenever
an area away from
their
in the forest, tinker
and
home.
me
similarly about
struck or flaked, and uses. All of that knowledge
acquired by observation and by
to bring
Guineans told
environment and each type's hardness, color,
I
local people
trial
take
I
and
New
error.
I
me
Guineans to work with
ers.
society.
in
homes. They constantly pick up unfamiliar things
with them, and occasionally find them useful enough
see the
come
same process when
to scavenge
what
am
I
is left.
abandoning a campsite,
They play with my
carded objects and try to figure out whether they might be useful in
Guinea
is
see that process of
Discarded
tin
dis-
New
cans are easy: they end up reused as contain-
Other objects are tested for purposes very different from the one for
which they were manufactured.
How
would
that yellow
number 2
pencil
look as an ornament, inserted through a pierced ear-lobe or nasal septum?
Is
that piece of broken glass sufficiently sharp
and strong to be
useful as a
knife? Eureka!
The raw substances
available to ancient peoples were natural materials
such as stone, wood, bone, skins,
all
existing in great variety.
to
work
From
fiber, clay,
particular types of stone,
particular clays into pottery
sand, limestone, and minerals,
those materials, people gradually learned
and
wood, and bone
into tools; to convert
bricks; to convert certain mixtures of
sand, limestone, and other "dirt" into glass; and to
soft metals such as
finally to
work
available pure
copper and gold, then to extract metals from ores, and
work hard metals such
as bronze
and
iron.
NECESSITY'S
A
good
247
MOTHER
illustration of the histories of trial
and error involved
is
fur-
nished by the development of gunpowder and gasoline from raw materials.
Combustible natural products inevitably make themselves noticed, as
when
a resinous log explodes in a campfire.
By 2000
B.C.,
Mesopotamians
were extracting tons of petroleum by heating rock asphalt. Ancient Greeks
discovered the uses of various mixtures of petroleum, pitch, resins, sulfur,
and quicklime
weapons, delivered by catapults, arrows,
as incendiary
firebombs, and ships. The expertise at distillation that medieval Islamic
alchemists developed to produce alcohols and perfumes also
let
them
dis-
petroleum into fractions, some of which proved to be even more power-
till
incendiaries. Delivered in grenades, rockets,
ful
and torpedoes, those
incendiaries played a key role in Islam's eventual defeat of the Crusaders.
By then, the Chinese had observed that
charcoal, and saltpeter, which
An
cially explosive.
a particular mixture of sulfur,
became known
as
gunpowder, was espe-
1100 describes
Islamic chemical treatise of about a.d.
seven gunpowder recipes, while a treatise from a.d. 1280 gives more than
70 recipes that had proved suitable for diverse purposes (one for rockets,
another for cannons).
As
postmedieval petroleum
for
found the middle
ists
19th-century chemists
distillation,
distillate fraction useful as fuel for oil
lamps. The chem-
discarded the most volatile fraction (gasoline) as an unfortunate waste
product
—
engines.
until
Who
was found
it
tion, originated as yet
is
tance.
has discovered a use for a
to persuade society to adopt
more powerful device
fuel of
modern
for doing
technology, the
Merely having a bigger,
it.
something
new
is
after
faster,
no guarantee of ready accep-
Innumerable such technologies were either not adopted
adopted only
civiliza-
another invention in search of a use?
vJnce an inventor
next step
to be an ideal fuel for internal-combustion
today remembers that gasoline, the
at all or
prolonged resistance. Notorious examples include the
U.S. Congress's rejection of funds to develop a supersonic transport in
1971, the world's continued rejection of an
efficiently
keyboard, and Britain's long reluctance to adopt
it
that
same
The
What
is
promotes an invention's acceptance by a society?
Let's begin
the
designed typewriter
electric lighting.
by comparing the acceptability of different inventions within
society.
first
It
turns out that at least four factors influence acceptance.
and most obvious factor
is
relative
economic advantage com-
248
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
pared with existing technology. While wheels are very useful in modern
industrial societies, that has not been so in
some other
societies.
Ancient
Native Mexicans invented wheeled vehicles with axles for use as toys, but
not for transport. That seems incredible to us, until
Mexicans lacked domestic animals to hitch to
which therefore offered no advantage over human
A
second consideration
economic
is
social value
and
we
reflect that ancient
their
wheeled
porters.
prestige,
which can override
benefit (or lack thereof). Millions of people today
jeans for double the price of equally durable generic jeans
social cachet of the designer label counts for
Similarly,
Japan continues to use
its
more than
Still
— because the prestige attached to kanji
another factor
is
buy designer
—because the
the extra cost.
horrendously cumbersome kanji writ-
ing system in preference to efficient alphabets or Japan's
syllabary
vehicles,
is
own efficient kana
so great.
compatibility with vested interests. This book, like
probably every other typed document you have ever read, was typed with
a
QWERTY keyboard, named for the left-most six letters in its upper row.
Unbelievable as
1873
may now
it
sound, that keyboard layout was designed in
as a feat of anti-engineering.
employs a whole
It
series of perverse
tricks designed to force typists to type as slowly as possible,
ing the
on the
commonest
left side
letters
over
all
of those seemingly counterproductive features
the typewriters of 1873
jammed
cession, so that manufacturers
if
to slow
down
typists.
When
problem of jamming,
keyboard showed that
efficiently laid-out
is
that
adjacent keys were struck in quick suc-
had
in typewriters eliminated the
with an
such as scatter-
keyboard rows and concentrating them
(where right-handed people have to use their weaker hand).
The reason behind
ments
all
it
would
improve-
trials in
let
1932
us double
our typing speed and reduce our typing effort by 95 percent. But
QWERTY keyboards were solidly entrenched by then. The vested interests
of hundreds of millions of QWERTY typists, typing teachers, typewriter
and computer salespeople, and manufacturers have crushed
toward keyboard
moves
efficiency for over 60-years.
While the story of the
QWERTY
similar cases have involved
does Japan
all
now dominate
consumer products, to
much
keyboard may sound funny, many
heavier economic consequences.
the world
a degree that
Why
market for transistorized electronic
damages the United
States's
balance
of payments with Japan, even though transistors were invented and pat-
ented in the United States? Because Sony bought transistor licensing rights
from Western
Electric at a time
when
the
American
electronics
consumer
industry
with
its
249
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
was churning out vacuum tube models and
own
products.
Why
were
into the 1920s, long after U.S.
street lighting?
British cities
and German
still
cities
reluctant to
had converted
to electric
Because British municipal governments had invested heav-
gas lighting and placed regulatory obstacles in the
ily in
compete
using gas street lighting
way of the compet-
ing electric light companies.
The remaining consideration
is
which
the ease with
when
firearms
Derby and
their
had not
affecting acceptance of
yet reached
earl of Salisbury
new
technologies
advantages can be observed. In a.d. 1340,
most of Europe, England's
happened to be present
in
earl of
Spain at the battle
of Tarifa, where Arabs used cannons against the Spaniards. Impressed by
what they saw,
the earls introduced cannons to the English army,
which
adopted them enthusiastically and already used them against French
diers at the battle of
Crecy
six years later.
Ihus, wheels, designer jeans, and
why the same society
the varied reasons
inventions. Conversely, the
among contemporary
We
World
than are Westernized industrial
world, some areas are
if
QWERTY
is
are
all
faster
illustrate
all
also varies greatly
familiar with the supposed gen-
societies are less receptive to innovation
societies.
much more
Even within the industrialized
receptive than others. Such differences,
they existed on a continental scale, might explain
oped
keyboards
not equally receptive to
same invention's reception
societies.
eralization that rural Third
sol-
on some continents than on
nal Australian societies were for
why
technology devel-
others. For instance,
if all
some reason uniformly
Aborigi-
resistant to
change, that might account for their continued use of stone tools after
metal tools had appeared on every other continent.
receptivity
A
among
laundry
list
How do
differences in
societies arise?
of at least 14 explanatory factors has been proposed by
historians of technology.
One
is
long
life
expectancy, which in principle
should give prospective inventors the years necessary to accumulate technical
knowledge, as well as the patience and security to embark on long
development programs yielding delayed rewards. Hence the greatly
increased
life
expectancy brought by modern medicine
may have
contrib-
uted to the recently accelerating pace of invention.
The next
(1)
The
five factors
availability of
involve economics or the organization of society:
cheap slave labor
in classical times
supposedly
dis-
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
5°
2
couraged innovation then, whereas high wages or labor scarcity
now
stim-
ulate the search for technological solutions. For example, the prospect of
changed immigration
policies that
would cut
off the supply of
cheap Mexi-
can seasonal labor to Californian farms was the immediate incentive for
the development of a machine-harvestable variety of tomatoes in California. (2) Patents
and other property laws, protecting ownership
inventors, reward innovation
protection discourages
it
in
in the
modern West, while
modern China.
(3)
Modern
rights of
the lack of such
industrial societies
provide extensive opportunities for technical training, as medieval Islam
did and
modern Zaire does
Roman economy was
not. (4)
Modern
rewarding to invest capital
capitalism
way
not, organized in a
in technological
is,
and the ancient
made
that
development.
it
potentially
(5)
The strong
individualism of U.S. society allows successful inventors to keep earnings
for themselves,
whereas strong family
someone who begins
expecting to
move
money
to earn
New
ties in
will be joined
Guinea ensure that
by a dozen
relatives
and be fed and supported.
in
Another four suggested explanations are ideological, rather than eco-
nomic or organizational:
innovation,
scientific
is
Risk-taking behavior, essential for efforts at
(1)
more widespread
outlook
is
some
in
societies
than in others.
a unique feature of post-Renaissance
that has contributed heavily to
its
modern
European
(2)
The
society
technological preeminence. (3)
Tolerance of diverse views and of heretics fosters innovation, whereas a
strongly traditional outlook (as in China's emphasis
classics) stifles
it.
cal innovation:
some branches of Judaism and
be especially compatible with
and Brahmanism may be
it,
Christianity are claimed to
while some branches of Islam, Hinduism,
especially incompatible with
All ten of these hypotheses are plausible. But
necessary association with geography.
tain religions
on ancient Chinese
(4) Religions vary greatly in their relation to technologi-
If
it.
none of them has any
patent rights, capitalism, and cer-
do promote technology, what
selected for those factors in
postmedieval Europe but not in contemporary China or India?
At
seems
least the direction in
clear.
which those ten factors influence technology
The remaining four proposed
ernment, climate, and resource abundance
factors —war, centralized gov—appear to act
inconsistently:
sometimes they stimulate technology, sometimes they inhibit
Throughout
history,
cal innovation.
war has
For instance, the enormous investments made
weapons during World War
it.
(1)
often been a leading stimulant of technologi-
II
and
in airplanes
in nuclear
and trucks during World
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
War
I
new
launched whole
fields
2
I
5
of technology. But wars can also deal
devastating setbacks to technological development. (2) Strong centralized
government boosted technology
and crushed
China
in
it
assume that technology
in late- 19th-century
Germany and Japan,
Many
northern Europeans
1500.
after a.d.
(3)
thrives in a rigorous climate
where survival
is
impossible without technology, and withers in a benign climate where
clothing
site
is
view
unnecessary and bananas supposedly
is
fall
off the trees.
An oppo-
that benign environments leave people free from the constant
struggle for existence, free to devote themselves to innovation. (4) There
has also been debate over whether technology
or by scarcity of environmental resources.
ulate the
development of inventions
water mill technology
why
in rainy
its
more
many
its
same
effect in
stim-
such as
—but
rivers
rapidly in even rainier
forests has
been suggested as the
early lead in developing coal technology, but
deforestation have the
why
didn't
China?
This discussion does not exhaust the
why
Abundant resources might
northern Europe, with
The destruction of Britain's
reason behind
stimulated by abundance
utilizing those resources,
didn't water mill technology progress
New Guinea?
is
of reasons proposed to explain
list
societies differ in their receptivity to
new
technology.
Worse
yet, all
of these proximate explanations bypass the question of the ultimate factors behind them. This
may seem
like a
discouraging setback in our
attempt to understand the course of history, since technology has undoubtedly been one of history's strongest forces.
However,
I
shall
now
argue
that the diversity of independent factors behind technological innovation
actually
makes
it
easier,
lor the purposes
list is
not harder, to understand history's broad pattern.
of this book, the key question about the laundry
whether such factors differed systematically from continent to conti-
nent and thereby led to continental differences in technological develop-
ment. Most laypeople and
that the answer
is
yes.
many
historians assume, expressly or tacitly,
For example,
it is
widely believed that Australian
Aborigines as a group shared ideological characteristics contributing to
their technological
tive, living in
backwardness: they were (or are) supposedly conserva-
an imagined past Dreamtime of the world's creation, and not
focused on practical ways to improve the present.
A
leading historian of
Africa characterized Africans as inward looking and lacking Europeans'
drive for expansion.
2
But
such claims are based on pure speculation. There has never been
all
many
a study of
two
of
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2
J
societies
continents,
under similar socioeconomic conditions on each
demonstrating
systematic
ideological
between the two continents' peoples. The usual reasoning
lar:
because technological differences
ideological differences
In reality,
I
is
is
exist, the existence of
differences
instead circu-
corresponding
inferred.
regularly observe in
New
Guinea that native
societies there
differ greatly from each other in their prevalent outlooks. Just like indus-
New
Europe and America, traditional
trialized
Guinea has conservative
new ways, living side by side with innovative societies
adopt new ways. The result, with the arrival of Western
societies that resist
that selectively
technology,
is
that the
more entrepreneurial
Western technology to overwhelm
For example, when Europeans
New Guinea,
in the
tacted Stone
Age
In
now
exploiting
their conservative neighbors.
reached the highlands of eastern
first
1930s, they "discovered" dozens of previously uncon-
tribes, of
which the Chimbu
aggressive in adopting Western technology.
tlers
societies are
tribe
proved especially
When Chimbus saw
white
planting coffee, they began growing coffee themselves as a cash crop.
1964
I
met
a 50-year-old
tional grass skirt,
become
Chimbu man, unable
and born into a society
by growing coffee, used
rich
$100,000 cash, and bought
still
to read, wearing a tradi-
using stone tools,
who had
buy a sawmill
his profits to
a fleet of trucks to transport his coffee
timber to market. In contrast, a neighboring highland people with
I
set-
worked
for eight years, the Daribi, are especially conservative
terested in
new
When
technology.
area, they briefly looked at
doing; the
Chimbus
tions,
On
it
and
the
first
just
are
now moving
whom
and unin-
helicopter landed in the Daribi
went back
Chimbus would have been bargaining
to
what they had been
to charter
into the Daribi area, taking
and reducing the Daribi to working
for
and
it
it.
As
a result,
over for planta-
for them.
every other continent as well, certain native societies have proved
very receptive, adopted foreign ways and technology selectively, and integrated them successfully into their
became the
own
society. In Nigeria the
local entrepreneurial equivalent of
Today the most numerous Native American
the Navajo,
tribes.
tively
who on European
arrival
were
But the Navajo proved especially
New
Guinea's Chimbus.
tribe in the
just
resilient
Ibo people
United States
is
one of several hundred
and able
to deal selec-
with innovation. They incorporated Western dyes into their weav-
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
ing,
became
silversmiths
continuing to
Among
2 5 3
and ranchers, and now drive trucks while
live in traditional dwellings.
the supposedly conservative Aboriginal Australians as well,
there are receptive societies along with conservative ones. At the one
extreme, the Tasmanians continued to use stone tools superseded tens of
thousands of years
earlier in
Australia too. At the
Europe and replaced
in
most of mainland
opposite extreme, some aboriginal
fishing
groups of
southeastern Australia devised elaborate technologies for managing fish
populations, including the construction of canals, weirs, and standing
traps.
Thus, the development and reception of inventions vary enormously
from society to society on the same continent. They also vary over time
within the same society. Nowadays, Islamic societies in the Middle East are
relatively conservative
and not
at the forefront of technology.
But medieval
Islam in the same region was technologically advanced and open to innovation.
It
achieved far higher literacy rates than contemporary Europe;
it
assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that
many
classical
copies;
it
Greek books are
now known
to us only through Arabic
invented or elaborated windmills, tidal mills, trigonometry, and
lateen sails;
it
made major advances
cal engineering,
and
irrigation
in metallurgy,
methods; and
powder from China and transmitted them
the flow of technology
it
mechanical and chemi-
adopted paper and gun-
to Europe. In the
was overwhelmingly from Islam
than from Europe to Islam as
it is
today.
Only
after
Middle Ages
to Europe, rather
around a.d. 1500 did
the net direction of flow begin to reverse.
Innovation in China too fluctuated markedly with time. Until around
a.d.
1450,
China was technologically much more innovative and
advanced than Europe, even more so than medieval Islam. The long
Chinese inventions includes canal lock gates, cast iron, deep
cient animal harnesses,
gunpowder,
kites,
list
of
drilling, effi-
magnetic compasses, movable
type, paper, porcelain, printing (except for the Phaistos disk), sternpost
rudders, and wheelbarrows. China then ceased to be innovative for rea-
sons about which
we
of western Europe
the
modern world
advanced
World
in
shall speculate in the Epilogue. Conversely,
and
its
we
think
derived North American societies as leading
in technological innovation,
but technology was
less
western Europe than in any other "civilized" area of the Old
until the late
Middle Ages.
2
Thus,
untrue that there are continents whose societies have tended
it is
to be innovative
vative.
and
On
and continents whose
any continent,
at
societies
have tended to be conser-
any given time, there are innovative
On
same
region.
reflection, these conclusions are precisely
a society's innovativeness
Without
determined by
is
knowledge of
a detailed
becomes unpredictable. Hence
cific
reasons
why
the
why
though,
receptivity
Chimbus,
ogy than were
it
Ibos,
as a
portion of societies
Where do
is
To
what
variable.
whole continent)
likely to
innovations
is
new
technol-
the specific reasons were in each of
by converting
random
to
the student of broad historical patterns,
at
make
the histori-
societal variation in innova-
That means
that, over a large
any particular time, some pro-
be innovative.
actually
come from? For
the few past ones that were completely isolated,
nology
China, and Europe, and
factors affecting innovativeness
tiveness into essentially a
enough area (such
in Islam,
and Navajo were more receptive
an's task paradoxically easier,
factors.
social scientists continue to debate the spe-
difference
The myriad
what one would expect
many independent
of those factors, innovativeness
all
changed
their neighbors.
makes no
those cases.
The
societies
also conservative ones. In addition, receptivity to innovation fluctu-
ates in time within the
if
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
4
5
not invented locally but
instead
is
much
all societies
or most
except
new
borrowed from other
tech-
societies.
importance of local invention and of borrowing depends
relative
mainly on two factors: the ease of invention of the particular technology,
and the proximity of the particular society to other
Some
raw
in
Such inventions developed on many independent occasions
materials.
world
societies.
inventions arose straightforwardly from a handling of natural
history, at different places
have already considered
at length,
nine independent origins. Another
is
and times. One example, which we
is
plant domestication, with at least
pottery,
which may have arisen from
observations of the behavior of clay, a very widespread natural material,
when
dried or heated. Pottery appeared in Japan around 14,000 years ago,
in the Fertile
Amazonia,
Crescent and China by around 10,000 years ago, and in
Africa's Sahel zone, the U.S. Southeast,
An example
of a
not suggest
itself
Chapter 12,
it
much more
difficult
invention
and Mexico
is
writing,
thereafter.
which does
by observation of any natural material. As we saw
had only a few independent
origins,
in
and the alphabet arose
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
2
5
5
apparently only once in world history. Other difficult inventions include
the water wheel, rotary quern, tooth gearing, magnetic compass, windmill,
of which were invented only once or twice in the
and camera obscura,
all
Old World and never
in the
New World.
Such complex inventions were usually acquired by borrowing, because
more
they spread
A
locally.
clear
rapidly than they could be independently invented
example
B.C. near the Black Sea,
over
much
the wheel,
is
which
is first
of Europe and Asia. All those early
peculiar design: a solid
around 3400
attested
and then turns up within the next few centuries
wooden
Old World wheels
are of a
constructed of three planks fastened
circle
together, rather than a rim with spokes. In contrast, the sole wheels of
Native American societies (depicted on Mexican ceramic vessels) consisted
of a single piece, suggesting a second independent invention of the wheel
New World
one would expect from other evidence for the isolation of
as
from Old World
No
civilizations.
one thinks that that same peculiar Old World wheel design
appeared repeatedly by chance
at
many
separate sites of the
Old World
within a few centuries of each other, after 7 million years of wheelless
human
history. Instead, the utility of the
rapidly east and west over the
wheel surely caused
Old World from
its
it
to diffuse
sole site of invention.
Other examples of complex technologies that diffused east and west
ancient
Old World, from
a single
pulleys, rotary querns, windmills
ple of technological diffusion
via
Panama
When
is
West Asian source, include door
in the
locks,
— and the alphabet. A New World exam-
metallurgy,
which spread from the Andes
Mesoamerica.
to
a widely useful invention does crop
tends to spread in either of
up
two ways. One way
or learn of the invention, are receptive to
it,
is
in
one
society,
it
then
that other societies see
and adopt
it.
The second
is
that societies lacking the invention find themselves at a disadvantage visa-vis the inventing society,
the disadvantage
muskets among
is
and they become overwhelmed and replaced
sufficiently great.
New
A
simple example
Zealand's Maori tribes.
One
is
if
the spread of
tribe, the
Ngapuhi,
adopted muskets from European traders around 1818. Over the course of
the next 15 years,
New
Zealand was convulsed by the so-called Musket
Wars, as musketless tribes either acquired muskets or were subjugated by
tribes already
armed with them. The outcome was
had spread throughout the whole of
Maori
tribes
now had
muskets.
New
that
musket technology-
Zealand by 1833:
all
surviving
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
1 5 6
When
invented
do adopt a new technology from the
societies
the diffusion
it,
may
occur in
many
society that
They
different contexts.
include peaceful trade (as in the spread of transistors from the United
Japan
States to
smuggling of silkworms from
in 1954), espionage (the
Southeast Asia to the Mideast in a.d. 552), emigration (the spread of
French glass and clothing manufacturing techniques over Europe by the
200,000 Huguenots expelled from France
case of the last
made
Islam,
was
possible
in 1685),
when an Arab army
defeated a Chinese
battle of Talas River in Central Asia in a.d. 751,
among
the prisoners of war,
and war.
A
crucial
papermaking techniques to
the transfer of Chinese
army
at the
found some papermakers
and brought them to Samarkand
to set
up
paper manufacture.
In Chapter 12
we saw
that cultural diffusion can involve either detailed
"blueprints" or just vague ideas stimulating a reinvention of details. While
Chapter 12
illustrated those alternatives for the spread of writing, they
also apply to the diffusion of technology.
The preceding paragraph gave
examples of blueprint copying, whereas the transfer of Chinese porcelain
technology to Europe provides an instance of long-drawn-out idea diffusion. Porcelain, a fine-grained translucent pottery,
When
around the 7th century a.d.
Road
in the
tured),
it
was invented
in
China
began to reach Europe by the
14th century (with no information about
Silk
how it was manufac-
was much admired, and many unsuccessful attempts were made
to imitate
it.
after lengthy
and
it
Not
until
1707 did
the
German
alchemist Johann Bottger,
experiments with processes and with mixing various minerals
clays together, hit
upon
the solution
Meissen porcelain works. More or
less
France and England led to Sevres,
and
establish the
independent
later
now famous
experiments in
Wedgwood, and Spode
porcelains.
Thus, European potters had to reinvent Chinese manufacturing methods
for themselves, but they
were stimulated to do so by having models of the
desired product before them.
.Depending on their
geographic location, societies differ in
readily they can receive technology by diffusion
most
isolated people
on Earth
in recent history
from other
societies.
how
The
were the Aboriginal Tasma-
100 miles from
nians, living without oceangoing watercraft
on an
Australia, itself the most^ isolated continent.
The Tasmanians had no con-
tact
island
with other societies for 10,000 years and acquired no
new technology
257
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
what they invented themselves. Australians and
other than
New Guineans,
separated from the Asian mainland by the Indonesian island chain,
received only a trickle of inventions from Asia.
ble to receiving inventions
The
societies
by diffusion were those embedded
most
accessi-
in the
major
continents. In these societies technology developed most rapidly, because
own
they accumulated not only their
inventions but also those of other
For example, medieval Islam, centrally located in Eurasia,
societies.
acquired inventions from India and China and inherited ancient Greek
learning.
The importance of
possible,
is
diffusion,
strikingly illustrated
of societies that
and of geographic location
in
making
it
by some otherwise incomprehensible cases
abandoned powerful technologies.
We tend to assume that
useful technologies, once acquired, inevitably persist until superseded by
better ones. In reality, technologies
must be not only acquired but also
maintained, and that too depends on
society goes through social
less things
become valued or
when almost
days,
cannot imagine a
fad's
unpredictable factors.
fads, in
Any
which economically
useful things devalued temporarily.
all societies
actually be discarded.
many
movements or
on Earth are connected to each
use-
Nowawe
other,
going so far that an important technology would
A society that temporarily turned against a powerful
technology would continue to see
being used by neighboring societies
it
and would have the opportunity to reacquire
it
conquered by neighbors
But such fads can persist in
if it
failed to
do
so).
by diffusion (or would be
isolated societies.
A
famous example involves Japan's abandonment of guns. Firearms
reached Japan in a.d. 1543,
when two Portuguese
adventurers armed with
harquebuses (primitive guns) arrived on a Chinese cargo ship. The Japanese were so impressed by the
new weapon
that they
commenced
indige-
nous gun production, greatly improved gun technology, and by a.d. 1600
owned more and
better guns than
any other country
in the world.
But there were also factors working against the acceptance of firearms
in Japan.
whom
The country had
swords rated as
class
a
numerous warrior
class, the
symbols and works of
samurai, for
art (and as
means
for
subjugating the lower classes). Japanese warfare had previously involved
single
combats between samurai swordsmen,
ritual speeches,
became
and then took pride
lethal in the presence of
away with guns.
In addition, guns
who
stood in the open,
in fighting gracefully.
made
Such behavior
peasant soldiers ungracefully blasting
were a foreign invention and grew to
258
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
be despised, as did other things foreign in Japan after 1600. The samuraicontrolled government began by restricting gun production to a few
cities,
then introduced a requirement of a government license for producing a
gun, then issued licenses only for guns produced for the government, and
reduced government orders for guns, until Japan was almost with-
finally
out functional guns again.
Contemporary European
and
rulers also included
tried to restrict their availability.
some who despised guns
But such measures never got far
in
Europe, where any country that temporarily swore off firearms would be
promptly overrun by gun-toting neighboring countries. Only because
Japan was a populous, isolated island could
it
get
new military technology. Its safety
when the visit of Commodore Perry's
away with
its
rejection
came
of the powerful
in isolation
end
U.S. fleet bristling with
1853,
in
cannons convinced Japan of
its
to an
need to resume gun manufacture.
That rejection and China's abandonment of oceangoing ships
(as well as
of mechanical clocks and water-driven spinning machines) are well-known
historical instances of technological reversals in isolated or semi-isolated
societies.
case
and
is
Other such reversals occurred
that of Aboriginal Tasmanians,
fishing to
become the
in prehistoric times.
who abandoned
The extreme
even bone tools
society with the simplest technology in the
mod-
may have adopted and
ern world (Chapter 15). Aboriginal Australians
then abandoned bows and arrows. Torres Islanders abandoned canoes,
Gaua
while
Islanders
abandoned and then readopted them. Pottery was
abandoned throughout Polynesia. Most Polynesians and many Melanesians
the
abandoned the use of bows and arrows
bow and arrow and the kayak,
bow drill, and dogs.
in
war. Polar Eskimos
while Dorset Eskimos lost the
lost
bow and
arrow,
These examples,
at first so bizarre to us, illustrate well the roles of geog-
raphy and of diffusion
in the history of technology.
Without
diffusion,
fewer technologies are acquired, and more existing technologies are
Decause technology begets more
lost.
technology, the importance of
an invention's diffusion potentially exceeds the importance of the original
invention. Technology's history exemplifies
lytic process: that is,
one that speeds up
because the process catalyzes
itself.
what
is
termed an autocata-
at a rate that increases
with time,
The explosion of technology
since the
Industrial Revolution impresses us today, but the medieval explosion
was
equally impressive
One
why
reason
which
that of the Bronze Age,
compared with
dwarfed that of the Upper
259
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
in turn
Paleolithic.
technology tends to catalyze
itself is
that advances
depend upon previous mastery of simpler problems. For example, Stone
Age farmers did not proceed
and working
directly to extracting
iron,
which requires high-temperature furnaces. Instead, iron ore metallurgy
grew out of thousands of years of human experience with natural outcrops
of pure metals soft enough to be
per and gold).
hammered
into shape without heat (cop-
also grew out of thousands of years of development of
It
make
simple furnaces to
pottery,
and then
to extract copper ores
and work
copper alloys (bronzes) that do not require as high temperatures as does
iron. In
both the
Fertile
Crescent and China, iron objects became
common
only after about 2,000 years of experience of bronze metallurgy.
World
societies
started
making iron ones
cated the
had
begun making bronze
just
New World's
at the time
make
it
for autocatalysis
possible to generate
recombination. For instance,
eval
Europe
that
unknown
tion
is
why
and had not
that
is
still
other
new technologies and
new technologies by
1455, but not after
his Bible in a.d.
1700
printer printed the Phaistos disk in
partly that medieval
European
printers
B.C.?
The explana-
were able to combine
technological advances, most of which were unavailable to the
Of those advances
the Phaistos disk.
presses, inks,
and
yet
did printing spread explosively in medi-
Gutenberg printed
after
artifacts
the arrival of Europeans trun-
independent trajectory.
The other main reason
materials
when
New
scripts
—
in paper,
—paper and the idea
movable
six
maker of
type, metallurgy,
of movable type reached
Europe from China. Gutenberg's development of typecasting from metal
dies, to
overcome the potentially
fatal
problem of nonuniform type
depended on many metallurgical developments:
steel for letter
punches,
brass or bronze alloys (later replaced by steel) for dies, lead for molds,
a tin-zinc-lead alloy for type. Gutenberg's press
presses in use for
making wine and
improvement on existing
inherited
inks.
scripts that
from three millennia of alphabet development
printing with
movable
type, because only a
and
was derived from screw
olive oil, while his ink
The alphabetic
size,
few dozen
was an
oil-based
medieval Europe
lent themselves to
letter
forms had to
be cast, as opposed to the thousands of signs required for Chinese writing.
In all six respects, the
less
maker of
the Phaistos disk
had access to much
powerful technologies to combine into a printing system than did
Gutenberg. The disk's writing
medium was
clay,
which
is
much
bulkier
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 6 O
and heavier than paper. The metallurgical
disk
had
skills, inks,
to be
punched by hand rather than by
and pressed. The
into a metal frame, inked,
cast
Gutenberg. As a
movable type locked
disk's script
with more signs, of more complex form, than the
clumsier,
and presses of 1700
were more primitive than those of a.d. 1455 Germany, so the
B.C. Crete
Roman
was printed
when knowledge
at a time
few palace or temple
scribes.
the disk maker's beautiful product,
the dozens of
hand punches
and
Hence
there
drawbacks, the
was condemand for
of writing
was
little
incentive to invest in
little
required. In contrast, the potential
ket for printing in medieval Europe induced
numerous
making
mass mar-
investors to lend
to Gutenberg.
.Human technology developed
from the
by two and a half million years ago, to the 1996
my
much
technology was
result, the Phaistos disk's printing
berg's printing press. In addition to all those technological
money
a syllabary
and offered fewer advantages over writing by hand, than Guten-
Phaistos disk
fined to a
was
alphabet used by
first
stone tools, in use
laser printer that replaced
already outdated 1992 laser printer and that
was used
to print this
book's manuscript. The rate of development was undetectably slow at the
beginning,
ible
change
made
when hundreds
in
of thousands of years passed with no discern-
our stone tools and with no surviving evidence for
artifacts
of other materials. Today, technology advances so rapidly that
it is
reported in the daily newspaper.
In this long history of accelerating development, one can single out
especially significant jumps.
The
first,
50,000 years ago, probably was made possible by genetic changes
bodies: namely, by evolution of the
two
occurring between 100,000 and
in
our
modern anatomy permitting modern
speech or modern brain function, or both. That jump led to bone tools,
single-purpose stone tools, and
compound
from our adoption of a sedentary
tools.
lifestyle,
The second jump
which happened
resulted
at different
times in different parts of the world, as early as 13,000 years ago in
some
areas and not even today in others. For the most part, that adoption
was
linked to our adoption of food production, which required us to remain
close to our crops, orchards,
and stored food surpluses.
Sedentary living was decisive for the history of technology, because
enabled people to accumulate nonportable possessions.
Nomadic
it
hunter-
NECESSITY'S
MOTHER
2 6
I
gatherers are limited to technology that can be carried.
and lack vehicles or draft animals,
weapons, and a bare minimum of other absolute
to carry.
You
can't be
some
further development.
to babies,
necessities small
enough
burdened with pottery and printing presses as you
camp. That practical
shift
early appearance of
you move often
If
you confine your possessions
difficulty
probably explains the tantalizingly
technologies, followed by a long delay in their
For example, the
ceramics are fired clay figurines
made
attested precursors of
earliest
in the area of
kia 27,000 years ago, long before the oldest
known
modern Czechoslova(from
fired clay vessels
Japan 14,000 years ago). The same area of Czechoslovakia
at the
same
time has yielded the earliest evidence for weaving, otherwise not attested
known basket appears around 13,000 years ago and the
known woven cloth around 9,000 years ago. Despite these very
until the oldest
oldest
early
first steps,
neither pottery nor weaving took off until people
became
sedentary and thereby escaped the problem of transporting pots and
looms.
Besides permitting sedentary living and hence the accumulation of possessions,
food production was decisive
another reason.
It
became
technology for
in the history of
possible, for the
first
human
time in
evolution,
to develop economically specialized societies consisting of non-food-pro-
we
ducing specialists fed by food-producing peasants. But
already saw, in
Part 2 of this book, that food production arose at different times in different continents. In addition, as we've seen in this chapter, local technology
depends, for both
tion but also
its
origin
and
its
maintenance, not only on local inven-
on the diffusion of technology from elsewhere. That consider-
ation tended to cause technology to develop
most rapidly on continents
with few geographic and ecological barriers to diffusion, either within that
continent or on other continents. Finally, each society on a continent represents
one more opportunity to invent and adopt a technology, because
societies
Hence,
vary greatly in their innovativeness for
all
productive regions with large
tors,
and many competing
Let us
many
human
populations,
many
the
potential inven-
societies.
now summarize how
variations in these three factors
onset of food production, barriers to diffusion, and
size
separate reasons.
other things being equal, technology develops fastest in large
human
—time of
population
—led straightforwardly to the observed intercontinental differences
development of technology. Eurasia
(effectively
including
in
North
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 6 2
Africa)
is
number
the world's largest landmass, encompassing the largest
of competing societies.
It
was
food production began the
also the
landmass with the two centers where
earliest: the Fertile
many
east-west major axis permitted
Crescent and China.
Its
inventions adopted in one part of
Eurasia to spread relatively rapidly to societies at similar latitudes and
climates elsewhere in Eurasia.
Its
breadth along
its
minor axis (north-
south) contrasts with the Americas' narrowness at the Isthmus of Panama.
It
lacks the severe ecological barriers transecting the major axes of the
Americas and Africa. Thus, geographic and ecological barriers to diffusion
Thanks
of technology were less severe in Eurasia than in other continents.
to
its
all
these factors, Eurasia
was the continent on which technology
post-Pleistocene acceleration earliest
and resulted
started
in the greatest local
accumulation of technologies.
North and South America
tinents, but they
lar historical
are conventionally regarded as separate con-
have been connected for several million years, pose simi-
problems, and
may
be considered together for comparison
with Eurasia. The Americas form the world's second-largest landmass,
nificantly smaller
phy and by ecology: the Isthmus of Panama, only 40 miles wide,
transects the Americas geographically, as
and the northern Mexican desert
ests
rated advanced
sig-
than Eurasia. However, they are fragmented by geogra-
human
societies of
virtually
do the isthmus's Darien rain
ecologically.
The
for-
latter desert sepa-
Mesoamerica from those of North
America, while the isthmus separated advanced societies of Mesoamerica
from those of the Andes and Amazonia. In addition, the main
Americas
is
axis of the
north-south, forcing most diffusion to go against a gradient
of latitude (and climate) rather than to operate within the
same
latitude.
For example, wheels were invented in Mesoamerica, and llamas were
domesticated in the central Andes by 3000
B.C.,
but 5,000 years later the
Americas' sole beast of burden and sole wheels had
still
not encountered
each other, even though the distance separating Mesoamerica's
eties
less
from the northern border of the Inca Empire (1,200
soci-
was
far
than the 6,000 miles separating wheel- and horse-sharing France and
China. Those factors seem to
cal lag
me
to account for the Americas' technologi-
behind Eurasia.
Sub-Saharan Africa
is
the world's third largest landmass, considerably
smaller than the Americas. Throughout most of
more
is
Maya
miles)
accessible to Eurasia than
still
a
human
history
it
was
far
were the Americas, but the Saharan desert
major ecological barrier separating sub-Saharan Africa from
263
MOTHER
NECESSITY'S
Eurasia plus North Africa. Africa's north-south axis posed a further obstacle to the diffusion of technology,
Africa
both between Eurasia and sub-Saharan
and within the sub-Saharan region
latter obstacle,
itself.
As an
pottery and iron metallurgy arose
Saharan Africa's Sahel zone (north of the equator)
illustration of the
in or
reached sub-
at least as early as they
reached western Europe. However, pottery did not reach the southern
of Africa until around a.d.
1,
and metallurgy had not
to the southern tip by the time that
Finally, Australia
is
its
capacity to support
yet diffused overland
on
arrived there from Europe
the smallest continent.
productivity of most of Australia
regards
it
makes
human
it
The very low
effectively
populations.
tip
It is
ships.
rainfall
and
even smaller as
most
also the
iso-
lated continent. In addition, food production never arose indigenously in
Australia.
still
Those factors combined to leave Australia the
without metal
artifacts in
modern
sole continent
times.
Table 13.1 translates these factors into numbers, by comparing the continents with respect to their areas
The
and
their
modern human populations.
continents' populations 10,000 years ago, just before the rise of food
production, are not
many
known
but surely stood in the same sequence, since
of the areas producing the most food today
would
also have been
productive areas for hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago. The differences in
population are glaring: Eurasia's (including North Africa's)
is
times that of the Americas, nearly 8 times that of Africa's, and
that of Australia's. Larger populations
competing
societies.
Table
13.1
by
mean more
itself
goes
nearly 6
230 times
inventors and
a
long
more
way toward
explaining the origins of guns and steel in Eurasia.
All these effects that continental differences in area, population, ease of
Table 13.1
Human
Populations of the Continents
Continent
Eurasia and North Africa
1990
Area
Population
(square miles)
4,120,000,000
24,200,000
(4,000,000,000)
(21,500,000)
(120,000,000)
(2,700,000)
North America and South America
736,000,000
16,400,000
Sub-Saharan Africa
535,000,000
9,100,000
18,000,000
3,000,000
(Eurasia)
(North Africa)
Australia
2 6 4
diffusion,
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
and onset of food production exerted on the
became exaggerated, because technology catalyzes
erable initial advantage thereby
1492
—for reasons of Eurasia's
tinctive
tial
human
Edisons.
intellect.
The
was
of technology
Eurasia's consid-
translated into a huge lead as of a.d.
distinctive
New
rise
itself.
geography rather than of
Guineans
whom I know include
dis-
poten-
But they directed their ingenuity toward technological
problems appropriate to
their situations: the
out any imported items in the
of inventing phonographs.
problems of surviving with-
New Guinea jungle, rather than the problem
CHAPTER
14
From Egalitarianism
to Kleptocracy
WHILE WAS FLYING WITH MISSIONARY FRIENDS
INover1979,
remote swamp-filled basin of New Guinea, noticed few huts
I
a
a
I
many miles apart. The pilot explained to me that, somewhere in that
muddy expanse below us, a group of Indonesian crocodile hunters had
recently come across a group of New Guinea nomads. Both groups had
panicked, and the encounter had ended with the Indonesians shooting several of the
nomads.
My missionary friends
guessed that the
tacted group called the Fayu,
known
nomads belonged
to the outside
to
an uncon-
world only through
accounts by their terrified neighbors, a missionized group of erstwhile
nomads
called the Kirikiri. First contacts
between outsiders and
Guinea groups are always potentially dangerous, but
especially inauspicious. Nevertheless,
It
tell
remarkable
He
returned, alive but
story.
turned out that the Fayu normally lived as single families, scattered
through the
ate
a
beginning was
my friend Doug flew in by helicopter
to try to establish friendly relations with the Fayu.
shaken, to
this
New
swamp and coming together once
exchanges of brides. Doug's
visit
or twice each year to negoti-
coincided with such a gathering, of a
few dozen Fayu. To
us, a
few dozen people constitute a small, ordinary
gathering, but to the
Fayu
it
was
a rare, frightening event.
2 6
Murderers sud-
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
1 6 6
denly found themselves face-to-face with their victim's relatives. For example,
raised his ax
by
man
one Fayu
spotted the
and rushed
friends; then the
was
also wrestled
man who had
killed his father.
The son
murderer but was wrestled to the ground
at the
murderer came
at the prostrate
down. Both men were
son with an ax and
held, screaming in rage, until
they seemed sufficiently exhausted to be released. Other
men
periodically
shouted insults at each other, shook with anger and frustration, and
pounded
the
ground with
their axes.
days of the gathering, while
That tension continued
Doug prayed
that the visit
for the several
would not end
in
violence.
The Fayu
consist of about
400 hunter-gatherers, divided
and wandering over a few hundred square
miles.
into four clans
According to
their
own
account, they had formerly numbered about 2,000, but their population
had been greatly reduced
political
and
social
as a result of
Fayu
killing
Fayu. They lacked
mechanisms, which we take for granted, to achieve
peaceful resolution of serious disputes. Eventually, as a result of Doug's
visit,
one group of Fayu invited a courageous husband-and-wife mission-
ary couple to live with them.
The couple has now
resided there for a dozen
The Fayu
years and gradually persuaded the Fayu to renounce violence.
are thereby being brought into the
modern world, where they
face an
uncertain future.
of New Guineans and
Many other previously uncontacted groups
owed
zonian Indians have similarly
into
modern
Ama-
to missionaries their incorporation
society. After the missionaries
come
teachers and doctors,
bureaucrats and soldiers. The spreads of government and of religion have
thus been linked to each other throughout recorded history, whether the
spread has been peaceful
latter case
it is
that justifies
it.
(as eventually
with the Fayu) or by force. In the
often government that organizes the conquest, and religion
While nomads and tribespeople occasionally defeat orga-
nized governments and religions, the trend over the past 13,000 years has
been for the nomads and tribespeople to
At the end of the
last Ice
Age,
societies similar to that of the
much more complex
society.
of the world's land area
much
lose.
of the world's population lived in
Fayu today, and no people then
As
recently as a.d. 1500, less than
was marked
lived in a
20 percent
off by boundaries into states run by
bureaucrats and governed by laws. Today,
all
land except Antarctica's
is
so divided. Descendants of those societies that achieved centralized gov-
ernment and organized
religion earliest
ended up dominating the modern
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
2 6 J
world. The combination of government and religion has thus functioned,
together with germs, writing, and technology, as one of the four
of proximate agents leading to history's broadest pattern.
ernment and religion
Jlayu
fer in the
societies.
Modern American
extremes along the
society
between rich and poor, and many other
social institutions.
some
states represent opposite
and the Fayu
presence or absence of a professional police force,
distinctions
and
human
sets
did gov-
arise?
bands and modern
spectrum of
main
How
Did
arise before others?
all
money,
cities,
political,
dif-
economic,
of those institutions arise together, or did
We can infer the answer to this question
by com-
paring modern societies at different levels of organization, by examining
written accounts or archaeological evidence about past societies, and by
how
observing
a society's institutions change over time.
Cultural anthropologists attempting to describe the diversity of
societies often divide
them
into as
many
as half a
human
dozen categories. Any
such attempt to define stages of any evolutionary or developmental contin-
uum
is
—whether of musical
styles,
human
doubly doomed to imperfection.
some previous
example,
is
First,
life
stages, or
human
societies
because each stage grows out of
stage, the lines of
demarcation are inevitably arbitrary. (For
a 19-year-old person
an adolescent or a young adult?) Second,
developmental sequences are not invariant, so examples pigeonholed
under the same stage are inevitably heterogeneous. (Brahms and Liszt
would turn
as
in their graves to
know
that they are
now grouped
composers of the romantic period.) Nevertheless,
stages provide a useful shorthand for discussing the diversity of
human
spirit, we
of
band,
societies,
most or
is
all
based on just four categories
chiefdom, and state (see Table 14.1)
Bands are the
of
—to understand
tiniest societies, consisting typically
them
close relatives by birth or
still
living
societies.
of 5 to 80 people,
by marriage. In
an extended family or several related extended
New
music and
provided one bears in mind the above caveats. In that
shall use a simple classification
tribe,
together
arbitrarily delineated
effect, a
families. Today,
band
bands
autonomously are almost confined to the most remote parts of
Guinea and Amazonia, but within modern times there were many
others that have only recently fallen under state control or been assimilated or exterminated.
ern
African
San
They include many or most African Pygmies, south-
hunter-gatherers
(so-called
Bushmen),
Aboriginal
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 8
Table 14.1 Types of
Societies
Band
Tribe
Chiefdotn
State
dozens
hundreds
thousands
over 50,000
nomadic
fixed: 1
fixed: 1 or
Membership
Number
of
people
Settlement
pattern
Basis of relation-
kin
kin-based
1
1
"egalitarian"
"egalitarian"
class
and
fixed:
many
villages
and
and cities
and
class
resi-
dence
clans
ships
Ethnicities
more
villages
village
residence
1
1
or
more
languages
Government
Decision making,
or
leadership
none, or
2
Monopoly
force
of
centralized
hereditary
big-man
none
none
Bureaucracy
centralized,
1
many
or
levels
levels
no
no
yes
yes
informal
informal
centralized
laws, judges
no
no
no -» para-
capital
and
information
Conflict resolution
Hierarchy of
mount
settlement
and Indians of some resource-poor areas of
Australians, Eskimos (Inuit),
the Americas such as Tierra del Fuego
modern bands
those
settled
are or
Bands lack many
ety.
and the northern boreal
still
all
They have no permanent
humans
lived in
bands
until at least
did as recently as 11,000 years ago.
institutions that
we
take for granted in our
single base of residence.
by age and
no formal
flicts
is
no regular economic
among
and
is
sub-
There are
treaties, to resolve
within and between bands. Band organization
soci-
specialization, except
sex: all able-bodied individuals forage for food.
institutions, such as laws, police,
own
The band's land
used jointly by the whole group, instead of being partitioned
groups or individuals. There
forests. All
were nomadic hunter-gatherers rather than
food producers. Probably
40,000 years ago, and most
village
is
con-
often described as
269
FROM EGALITARI ANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
Band
Tribe
Chiefdom
State
no
no
yes
yes -»
no -» yes
no
yes -» intensive
intensive
Division of labor
no
no
no —> yes
yes
Exchanges
reciprocal
reciprocal
redistributive
redistribu-
Religion
Justifies klepto-
no
cracy?
Economy
Food production
("tribute")
tive
("taxes")
Control of land
band
clan
chief
no
no
yes,
various
Society
Stratified
by kin
yes,
not
by kin
Slavery
Luxury goods
no
no
no
no
small-scale
large-scale
yes
yes
no
no
no -> yes
yes
no
no
no
often
for elite
Public architecture
Indigenous
lit-
eracy
A horizontal arrow indicates that the attribute varies
ties
between
less
and more complex
socie-
of that type.
"egalitarian": there
is
no formalized
social stratification into
upper and
lower classes, no formalized or hereditary leadership, and no formalized
monopolies of information and decision making. However, the term
mean
"egalitarian" should not be taken to
in prestige
means
ties
and contribute equally
that any
all
band members
to decisions. Rather, the
is
New
There,
term merely
skills.
swampy lowland area
known as the Lakes Plains.
experience with bands comes from the
Guinea where the Fayu
I still
are equal
informal and acquired through quali-
such as personality, strength, intelligence, and fighting
My own
of
band "leadership"
that
live, a
region
encounter extended families of a few adults with their depen-
dent children and elderly, living in crude temporary shelters along streams
and traveling by canoe and on
foot.
Why
do peoples of the Lakes Plains
27O
continue to
live as
and almost
all
larger groups?
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
nomadic bands, when most other
New Guinea peoples,
other peoples elsewhere in the world,
The explanation
is
would permit many people
trations of resources that
now
live in settled
that the region lacks dense local concento live together,
that (until the arrival of missionaries bringing crop plants)
and
it
also lacked
native plants that could have permitted productive farming.
The bands'
food staple
the
is
palm
the sago
move when
are kept
limited
tions
when
must
they have cut the mature sago
low by diseases
swamp
in the
yields a starchy pith
are nomadic, because they
whose core
tree,
palm reaches maturity. The bands
trees in
an area. Band numbers
by the lack of raw materials
(especially malaria),
(even stone for tools must be obtained by trade), and by the
amount of food
on the resources
that the
swamp
yields for
accessible to existing
humans. Similar
human
limita-
technology prevail in
the regions of the world recently occupied by other bands.
Our
closest
animal
relatives, the gorillas
and chimpanzees and bonobos
humans presumably
of Africa, also live in bands. All
did so too, until
improved technology for extracting food allowed some hunter-gatherers
to settle in
permanent dwellings
the political, economic,
and
in
some resource-rich
Ihe
last
first of those
differs in
few tens of thousands of years.
stages
beyond the band
is
termed the
tribe,
which
being larger (typically comprising hundreds rather than dozens
even chiefdoms consist of herders
Tribal organization
is
who move
exemplified by
else a close-knit cluster of villages.
thus often
much
smaller than
define as a tribe
For example,
in
By
I
and
Guinea highlanders, whose
government was a
village or
This political definition of "tribe"
linguists
and
is
cultural anthropologists
culture.
began to work among a group of highlanders
linguistic
and
12,000 Fore, speaking two mutually
villages of several
tribes
—namely, a group that shares language and
1964
as the Fore.
what
some
seasonally.
New
political unit before the arrival of colonial
known
is
we inherited from our
Our developments beyond it all
of people) and usually having fixed settlements. However,
would
The band
social organization that
millions of years of evolutionary history.
took place within the
areas.
cultural standards, there
intelligible dialects
and
hundred people each. But there was no
were then
living in
65
political unity
whatsoever among villages of the Fore language group. Each hamlet was
involved in a kaleidoscopically changing pattern of
war and
shifting
alii-
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
ances with
2 7
I
neighboring hamlets, regardless of whether the neighbors
all
were Fore or speakers of a different language.
national states,
and now variously subordinated to
independent
recently
Tribes,
still
occupy much of
New
evidence
cal
inferred
is
were
that
settlements
of
Ama-
Guinea, Melanesia, and
zonia. Similar tribal organization in the past
from archaeologi-
archaeological hallmarks of chiefdoms that
lacked
but
substantial
the
That
shall explain below.
I
evidence suggests that tribal organization began to emerge around 13,000
years ago in the Fertile Crescent and later in
site
for living in settlements
is
some other
A prerequi-
areas.
food production or
either
else a
productive
environment with especially concentrated resources that can be hunted
and gathered within
tribes,
a small area. That's
began to proliferate
why
in the Fertile
and by inference
settlements,
Crescent at that time,
when
cli-
mate changes and improved technology combined to permit abundant harvests of wild cereals.
band by
Besides differing from a
larger
numbers, a
virtue of
tribe also differs in that
its
and
settled residence
consists of
it
its
more than one
formally recognized kinship group, termed clans, which exchange marriage partners.
Land belongs
to a particular clan, not to the
However, the number of people
knows everyone
else
For other types of
an upper
limit for
in a tribe
whole
tribe.
low enough that everyone
is still
by name and relationships.
human groups
group
as well, "a
few hundred" seems to be
compatible with everyone's knowing every-
size
know
body. In our state society, for instance, school principals are likely to
all
their students
but not
if it
zation of
by name
the school contains a few hundred children,
if
contains a few thousand children.
human government
One
reason
more than
a few
hundred members
the difficult issue of conflict resolution between strangers
conflict resolution in tribes
else,
members make
is
that almost everyone
police, laws,
will share
becoming
many
kin,
who
violent. In traditional
ties
and other
of larger societies unnecessary, since any
ment
becomes
is
that
increas-
A fact further diffusing potential problems
by blood or marriage or both. Those
tribal
the organi-
tends to change from that of a tribe to that
of a chiefdom in societies with
ingly acute in larger groups.
why
two
is
of
related to everyone
of relationships binding
all
conflict-resolving institutions
villagers getting into
apply pressure on them to keep
an arguit
from
New Guinea society, if a New Guinean
New Guinean while both were away
happened to encounter an unfamiliar
from
their respective villages, the
two engaged
in a
long discussion of their
2 7
an attempt to establish some relationship and hence some rea-
relatives, in
son
why
the
Despite
ties
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2.
two should not attempt
all
to kill each other.
many similari-
of these differences between bands and tribes,
remain. Tribes
still
have an informal, "egalitarian" system of govern-
ment. Information and decision making are both communal. In the
Guinea highlands,
village
have watched village meetings where
I
were present,
all
adults in the
on the ground, and individuals made speeches,
sitting
Many
without any appearance of one person's "chairing" the discussion.
highland villages do have someone
influential
filled
and
man
New
known
most
as the "big-man," the
of the village. But that position
not a formal
is
office to
be
power. The big-man has no independent
carries only limited
decision-making authority, knows no diplomatic secrets, and can do no
more than attempt
by
tus
their
own
to
sway communal
decisions.
attributes; the position
is
Big-men achieve that
sta-
not inherited.
Tribes also share with bands an "egalitarian" social system, without
ranked lineages or
classes.
a traditional tribe or
or her
own
many
others.
is
same type of
naked, as everyone
no member of
status not inherited;
his
from
therefore impossible for an outsider to guess,
appearances, which of
in the
is
because each individual has debts and obligations to
efforts,
It
Not only
band can become disproportionately wealthy by
all
the adult
men
hut, wears the
in a village
the big-man: he lives
is
same clothes or ornaments, or
is
as
else.
Like bands, tribes lack a bureaucracy, police force, and taxes. Their
economy
is
rather than
Economic
based on reciprocal exchanges between individuals or families,
on
a redistribution of tribute paid to
specialization
is
some
central authority.
slight: full-time crafts specialists are lacking,
and every able-bodied adult (including the big-man) participates
ing, gathering, or
hunting food.
past a garden in the
me
in the distance,
Solomon
I
recall
Islands,
and realized to
my
one occasion when
saw
a
man
I
in
grow-
was walking
digging and waving at
astonishment that
it
was
a friend of
mine named Faletau. He was the most famous wood carver of the Solomons, an
sity to
artist
grow
specialists,
of great originality
his
own
—but that did not
free
him of the
neces-
sweet potatoes. Since tribes thus lack economic
they also lack slaves, because there are no specialized menial
jobs for a slave to perform.
Just as musical composers of the classical period range
from C.
P.
E.
Bach to Schubert and thereby cover the whole spectrum from baroque
composers to romantic composers,
tribes also
shade into bands at one
273
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
extreme and into chiefdoms at the opposite extreme. In particular, a
tribal
big-man's role in dividing the meat of pigs slaughtered for feasts points to
and redistributing food and goods
the role of chiefs in collecting
reconstrued as tribute
public architecture
—
—now
chiefdoms. Similarly, presence or absence of
in
supposedly one of the distinctions between tribes and
is
New
chiefdoms, but large
Guinea
villages often
have cult houses (known
tamburan, on the Sepik River) that presage the temples of
as haus
chief-
doms.
Although
logically
a
few
bands and
tribes survive
today on remote and eco-
marginal lands outside state control, fully independent chiefdoms
had disappeared by the early twentieth century, because they tended to
occupy prime land coveted by
were
states.
However,
as of a.d. 1492, chiefdoms
widespread over much of the eastern United
still
States, in productive
areas of South and Central America and sub-Saharan Africa that
yet been
subsumed under native
different
As regards population
ple.
had not
The archae-
B.C. in
Mesoamerica
distinctive features of chiefdoms, very
from modern European and American
from bands and simple
tribes,
in all of Polynesia.
and by around 1000
B.C. in the Fertile Crescent
and the Andes. Let us consider the
time,
and
below suggests that chiefdoms arose by around
ological evidence discussed
5500
states,
states and, at the
same
tribal societies.
size,
chiefdoms were considerably larger than
ranging from several thousand to several tens of thousands of peo-
That
size created serious potential for internal conflict
any person
because, for
living in a chiefdom, the vast majority of other people in the
chiefdom were neither closely related by blood or marriage nor known by
name. With the
rise
of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to
learn, for the first time in history,
without attempting to
kill
how
them.
Part of the solution to that problem
exercise a
man, a
monopoly on
to encounter strangers regularly
was
for
one person, the
the right to use force. In contrast to a tribe's big-
chief held a recognized office, filled by hereditary right. Instead of
was
a
permanent
and had
a
monopoly
the decentralized anarchy of a village meeting, the chief
centralized authority,
on
chief, to
critical
made
all
significant decisions,
information (such as what a neighboring chief was privately
threatening, or
what harvest
the gods
had supposedly promised). Unlike
big-men, chiefs could be recognized from afar by visible distinguishing
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
2 7 4
features, such as a large fan
Southwest
form
ritual
Pacific.
marks of
chief's orders
worn over
A commoner
on Rennell Island
the back
respect, such as (on
Hawaii) prostrating oneself. The
might be transmitted through one or two
levels of
bureau-
many of whom were themselves low-ranked chiefs. However,
crats,
trast to state bureaucrats,
than specialized
roles. In
in the
encountering a chief was obliged to per-
in con-
chiefdom bureaucrats had generalized rather
Polynesian Hawaii the same bureaucrats (termed
konohiki) extracted tribute and oversaw irrigation and organized labor
corvees for the chief, whereas state societies have separate tax collectors,
water
A
district
managers, and draft boards.
chiefdom's large population in a small area required plenty of food,
obtained by food production in most cases, by hunting-gathering in a few
especially rich areas. For example,
American Indians of the
Pacific
North-
west coast, such as the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Tlingit Indians, lived under
chiefs in villages
without any agriculture or domestic animals, because the
and sea were so
rivers
erated by
rich in
some people,
salmon and
and
the chiefs, their families, bureaucrats,
made
halibut.
relegated to the rank of
canoes, adzes, or spittoons or
crafts specialists,
worked
Luxury goods, consisting of those
The food
surpluses gen-
commoners, went
who
to feed
variously
as bird catchers or tattooers.
specialized crafts products or else
rare objects obtained by long-distance trade,
were reserved for
chiefs.
For
example, Hawaiian chiefs had feather cloaks, some of them consisting of
tens of thousands of feathers
their
and requiring many human generations
for
manufacture (by commoner cloak makers, of course). That concen-
tration of luxury
goods often makes
archaeologically, by the fact that
much
richer
it
possible to recognize chiefdoms
some graves
(those of chiefs) contain
goods than other graves (those of commoners),
to the egalitarian burials of earlier
human
chiefdoms can also be distinguished from
history.
Some
tribal villages
in contrast
ancient complex
by the remains of
elaborate public architecture (such as temples) and by a regional hierarchy
of the paramount chief) being obvi-
of settlements, with one
site (the site
ously larger and having
more administrative buildings and
other
artifacts
than
sites.
Like tribes, chiefdoms consisted of multiple hereditary lineages living at
one
site.
However, whereas the
clans, in a
chiefdom
all
members
quisites. In effect, the society
moner
classes,
lineages of tribal villages are equal-ranked
of the chief's lineage had hereditary per-
was divided
into hereditary chief
and com-
with Hawaiian chiefs themselves subdivided into eight
275
FROM EG ALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
hierarchically ranked lineages, each concentrating
own
its
marriages within
its
lineage. Furthermore, since chiefs required menial servants as well as
specialized craftspeople, chiefdoms differed
from
tribes in
having
many
jobs that could be filled by slaves, typically obtained by capture in raids.
The most
distinctive
on the reciprocal exchanges
reliance solely
tribes,
economic feature of chiefdoms was
their shift
characteristic of
from
bands and
A gives B a gift while expecting that B at some unspecified
will give a gift of comparable value to A. We modern state
by which
future time
dwellers indulge in such behavior
our flow of goods
is
on birthdays and holidays, but most of
achieved instead by buying and selling for
money
according to the law of supply and demand. While continuing reciprocal
exchanges and without marketing or money, chiefdoms developed an addi-
new system termed
tional
would involve
a redistributive economy.
a chief receiving
at harvest time
A
simple example
from every farmer
chiefdom, then throwing a feast for everybody and serving bread or
in the
else storing the
wheat and gradually giving
When
between harvests.
the chiefly lineages
to
out again in the months
goods received from com-
them but was retained and consumed by
and craftspeople, the redistribution became
precursor of taxes that
commoners
it
a large portion of the
moners was not redistributed
made
appearance
its first
in
chiefdoms.
tribute, a
From
the
the chiefs claimed not only goods but also labor for construc-
tion of public works,
(for
wheat
which again might return to
benefit the
commoners
example, irrigation systems to help feed everybody) or instead bene-
fited
mainly the chiefs
We
(for instance, lavish tombs).
have been talking about chiefdoms generically, as
if
they were
all
the same. In fact, chiefdoms varied considerably. Larger ones tended to
have more powerful
tions
chiefs,
more
more ranks of
layers of bureaucrats,
instance, societies
chiefly lineages, greater distinc-
hereditary.
The
crats or public
and grander public
on small Polynesian
lar to tribal societies
to the
chiefs,
between chiefs and commoners, more retention of tribute by the
islands
were
architecture. For
effectively rather simi-
with a big-man, except that the position of chief was
chief's
hut looked
like
any other hut, there were no bureau-
works, the chief redistributed most goods he received back
commoners, and land was controlled by the community. But on the
largest Polynesian islands, such as
Hawaii, Tahiti, and Tonga, chiefs were
recognizable at a glance by their ornaments, public works were erected by
large labor forces,
most
was controlled by them.
tribute
A
was
retained by the chiefs, and
further gradation
among
societies
all
land
with ranked
27
lineages
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
^
was from those where
the political unit
village, to those consisting of a regional
the largest village with a
with lesser
Dy
paramount
was
a single
autonomous
assemblage of villages in which
chief controlled the smaller villages
chiefs.
it should be obvious that chiefdoms introduced the dilemma
now,
fundamental to
centrally governed, nonegalitarian societies.
all
At
best,
they do good by providing expensive services impossible to contract for on
an individual
basis.
At worst, they function unabashedly as kleptocracies,
from commoners to upper
transferring net wealth
selfish
These noble and
classes.
functions are inextricably linked, although
some governments
emphasize much more of one function than of the other. The difference
between a kleptocrat and a wise statesman, between a robber baron and a
public benefactor,
is
merely one of degree: a matter of
percentage of the tribute extracted from producers
and how much the commoners
uted tribute
is
We
put.
because he keeps too
and
redistributes too
Zaire).
We
is
like the public uses to
consider President
Mobutu
just
how
large a
retained by the
which the
elite,
redistrib-
of Zaire a kleptocrat
much
tribute (the equivalent of billions of dollars)
little
tribute (no functioning telephone system in
consider George Washington a statesman because he spent tax
money on widely admired programs and
dent. Nevertheless,
much more
did not enrich himself as presi-
George Washington was born into wealth, which
unequally distributed in the United States than in
is
New Guinea
villages.
For any ranked
ask:
why do
the
society,
whether a chiefdom or a
commoners
state,
one thus has to
tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their
hard
labor to kleptocrats? This question, raised by political theorists from Plato
to
Marx,
with
is
little
raised
anew by
voters in every
modern
election. Kleptocracies
public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by
downtrodden commoners or by upstart would-be replacement kleptocrats
seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to
fruits stolen.
For example, Hawaiian history was repeatedly punctuated
by revolts against repressive
ising less oppression. This
Hawaii,
until
gles in the
What
we
reflect
on
chiefs, usually led
may sound funny
all
the misery
still
by younger brothers promto us in the context of old
being caused by such strug-
modern world.
should an
elite
do
to gain popular support while
still
maintaining
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
a
more comfortable
lifestyle
2 7 7
than commoners? Kleptocrats throughout the
ages have resorted to a mixture of four solutions:
1.
Disarm the populace, and arm the
much
That's
elite.
easier in these
days of high-tech weaponry, produced only in industrial plants and easily
monopolized by an
made
2.
at
elite,
than in ancient times of spears and clubs easily
home.
Make
the
as
it is
3.
for
much
masses happy by redistributing
received, in popular ways. This principle
American
was
as valid for
of the tribute
Hawaiian
chiefs
politicians today.
Use the monopoly of force to promote happiness, by maintaining
public order and curbing violence. This
is
potentially a big
and underap-
preciated advantage of centralized societies over noncentralized ones.
Anthropologists formerly idealized band and tribal societies as gentle and
nonviolent, because visiting anthropologists observed no murder in a band
of 25 people in the course of a three-year study.
Of course
they didn't:
it's
easy to calculate that a band of a dozen adults and a dozen children, subject to the inevitable
deaths occurring
than murder, could not perpetuate
adults
anyway
itself if in
murdered another adult every three
for the usual reasons other
addition one of
years.
its
Much more
dozen
extensive
long-term information about band and tribal societies reveals that murder
is
a leading cause of death. For example,
I
happened
to be visiting
New
woman anthropologist was interviewing Iyau women about their life histories. Woman after woman, when
asked to name her husband, named several sequential husbands who had
died violent deaths. A typical answer went like this: "My first husband
was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who
wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed
by the brother of my second husband, seeking to avenge his murder." Such
biographies prove common for so-called gentle tribespeople and contribGuinea's Iyau people at a time
when
a
uted to the acceptance of centralized authority as tribal societies grew
larger.
4.
The remaining way
struct
for kleptocrats to gain public support
is
to con-
an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy. Bands and tribes
already had supernatural beliefs, just as do
But the supernatural
beliefs of
bands and
modern
established religions.
tribes did
not serve to
central authority, justify transfer of wealth, or maintain peace
unrelated individuals.
and became
When
justify
between
supernatural beliefs gained those functions
institutionalized, they
were thereby transformed into what we
278
term a
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
Hawaiian
religion.
were typical of
chiefs
chiefs elsewhere, in
asserting divinity, divine descent, or at least a hotline to the gods.
The
chief
claimed to serve the people by interceding for them with the gods and
reciting the ritual formulas required to obtain rain,
good
harvests,
and
success in fishing.
Chiefdoms
characteristically
have an ideology, precursor to an
The
tionalized religion, that buttresses the chief's authority.
either
or
combine the
may
offices of political leader
and
is
is,
whose
priests)
to provide ideological justification for the chiefs.
much
may
priest in a single person,
support a separate group of kleptocrats (that
function
institu-
chief
That
is
why
collected tribute to constructing temples
and
other public works, which serve as centers of the official religion and
visi-
chiefdoms devote so
ble signs of the chief's
power.
Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized
religion brings
two other important
benefits to centralized societies. First,
shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of
viduals are to live together without killing each other
with a bond not based on kinship. Second,
than genetic
members who
becomes much more
unrelated indi-
gives people a motive, other
self-interest, for sacrificing their lives
the cost of a few society
society
it
how
—by providing them
on behalf of
others.
die in battle as soldiers, the
At
whole
conquering other societies or
effective at
resisting attacks.
Ihe political, economic,
and
us today are those of states, which
except for Antarctica.
Many
early states
and many modern
literate elites,
social institutions
now
states
most familiar to
rule all of the world's land area
and
have
all
modern ones have had
literate
masses as well. Van-
ished states tended to leave visible archaeological hallmarks, such as ruins
of temples with standardized designs, at least four levels of settlement
sizes,
and pottery
thereby
know
around 300
styles
covering tens of thousands of square miles.
that states arose
B.C. in
around 3700
B.C. in
We
Mesopotamia and
Mesoamerica, over 2,000 years ago
in the
Andes,
China, and Southeast Asia, and over 1,000 years ago in West Africa. In
modern times
the formation of states out of chiefdoms has been observed
repeatedly. Thus,
their
we possess much more
information about past states and
formation than about past chiefdoms,
Protostates extend
many
tribes,
features of large
and bands.
paramount
(multivillage)
279
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
chiefdoms. They continue the increase in size from bands to tribes to chief-
doms. Whereas chiefdoms' populations range from a few thousand to
few tens of thousands, the populations of most modern
million,
and China's exceeds one
may become
the state's capital
side the capital
doms.
Cities
may
differ
billion.
city.
The paramount
villages
in
a
exceed one
chief's location
Other population centers of
also qualify as true cities,
from
states
states out-
which are lacking
in chief-
monumental public works,
their
palaces of rulers, accumulation of capital from tribute or taxes, and concentration of people other than food producers.
Early states had a hereditary leader with a
title
equivalent to king, like
monopoly
a super paramount chief and exercising an even greater
of infor-
mation, decision making, and power. Even in democracies today, crucial
knowledge
is
available to only a few individuals,
who
control the flow of
information to the rest of the government and consequently control decisions.
For instance,
in the
Cuban
Missile Crisis of 1962, information and
discussions that determined whether nuclear
lion people
were
war would engulf
half a bil-
confined by President Kennedy to a ten-member
initially
executive committee of the National Security Council that he himself
appointed; then he limited final decisions to a four-member group consisting of himself
and three of
Central control
form of
tribute
is
more
his cabinet ministers.
far-reaching,
doms. Economic specialization
not even farmers remain
strophic
when
removal of
state
Roman
and 411. Even the
trol of their
and economic redistribution
(renamed taxes) more extensive,
is
more extreme,
self-sufficient.
government
Hence
collapses, as
troops, administrators,
earliest
Mesopotamian
in states
to the point
the effect
happened
on
in the
than in chief-
where today
society
in Britain
is
cata-
upon
the
and coinage between a.d. 407
states exercised centralized
con-
economies. Their food was produced by four specialist groups
(cereal farmers, herders, fishermen,
from each of which the
state
and orchard and garden growers),
took the produce and to each of which
it
gave
out the necessary supplies, tools, and foods other than the type of food
that this
group produced. The
the cereal farmers, took
state supplied seeds
wool from
the herders, exchanged the
long-distance trade for metal and other essential
out food rations to the laborers
who
and plow animals
raw
materials,
to
wool by
and paid
maintained the irrigation systems on
which the farmers depended.
Many, perhaps most,
early states adopted slavery
on
a
much
larger scale
than did chiefdoms. That was not because chiefdoms were more kindly
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 8 O
disposed toward defeated enemies but because the greater economic specialization of states, with
more mass production and more
public works,
provided more uses for slave labor. In addition, the larger scale of state
warfare
made more
A chiefdom's
in states, as
captives available.
one or two
anyone
who
levels of administration are greatly multiplied
has seen an organizational chart of any govern-
ment knows. Along with the
there
is
proliferation of vertical levels of bureaucrats,
also horizontal specialization. Instead of konohiki carrying out
every aspect of administration for a Hawaiian
have several separate departments, each with
district, state
its
own
governments
hierarchy, to handle
and so on. Even small
water management, taxes, military
draft,
states
have
more complex bureaucracies than
large chiefdoms. For instance, the
West
African state of Maradi had a central administration with over 130
titled
offices.
Internal conflict resolution within states has
become
increasingly for-
malized by laws, a judiciary, and police. The laws are often written,
many
because
Incas) have
same time
states (with
had
conspicuous exceptions, such as that of the
having been developed around the
literate elites, writing
as the formation of the earliest states in both
Mesopotamia and
Mesoamerica. In contrast, no early chief dom not on the verge of statehood
developed writing.
Early states had state religions and standardized temples.
Many
early
kings were considered divine and were accorded special treatment in innu-
merable respects. For example, the Aztec and Inca emperors were both
carried about in
litters;
and swept the ground
servants
clear;
went ahead of the Inca emperor's
and the Japanese language includes
forms of the pronoun "you" for use only
in addressing the
litter
special
emperor. Early
kings were themselves the head of the state religion or else had separate
high priests. The Mesopotamian temple was the center not only of religion
but also of economic redistribution, writing, and crafts technology.
All these features of states carry to
led
from
from chiefdoms
tinction
is
an extreme the developments that
tribes to chiefdoms. In addition,
in several
new
directions.
that states are organized
on
though, states have diverged
The most fundamental such
political
the kinship lines that defined bands, tribes,
and
territorial lines,
dis-
not on
and simple chiefdoms. Further-
more, bands and tribes always, and chiefdoms usually, consist of a single
ethnic
and
linguistic group. States,
though
—
especially so-called empires
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
formed by amalgamation or conquest of
states
2 8
—are regularly multiethnic
on the
State bureaucrats are not selected mainly
and multilingual.
I
basis of
kinship, as in chiefdoms, but are professionals selected at least partly
and
the basis of training
leadership often
ability. In later states, including
became nonhereditary, and many
states
entire system of formal hereditary classes carried over
Over
the past
complex ones. Obviously, that
with innumerable
complex
human
in
more
1,000 amalgamations for 999
from our daily newspaper that large
units
USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia) can
instance, the former
society
units by larger,
no more than an average long-term trend,
shifts in either direction:
We know
reversals.
is
less
abandoned the
from chiefdoms.
13,000 years the predominant trend
has been the replacement of smaller,
on
most today, the
grate into smaller units, as did Alexander of
(for
disinte-
Macedon's empire over 2,000
More complex units don't always conquer less complex ones
may succumb to them, as when the Roman and Chinese Empires were
overrun by "barbarian" and Mongol chiefdoms, respectively. But the long-
years ago.
but
term trend has
still
been toward large, complex
culminating in
societies,
states.
Obviously, too, part of the reason for states' triumphs over simpler entities
when
the
two
collide
that states usually enjoy an advantage of
is
weap-
onry and other technology, and a large numerical advantage in population.
But there are also two other potential advantages inherent in chiefdoms
and
states. First, a centralized decision
trating troops
fervor of
The
state
states
make
latter willingness
modern
forget
many
states,
what
has
its
maker has
and resources. Second, the
is
the advantage at concen-
and
official religions
patriotic
their troops willing to fight suicidally.
one so strongly programmed into us
citizens of
by our schools and churches and governments, that we
a radical break
slogan urging
the state: Britain's "For
it
its
marks with previous human
citizens to be
prepared to die
history.
if
Every
necessary for
King and Country," Spain's "Por Dios y Espafia,"
and so on. Similar sentiments motivated 16th-century Aztec warriors:
"There
is
nothing
precious to
far off
I
see
like
death in war, nothing
Him [the Aztec national god
it, my heart yearns for it!"
Such sentiments are unthinkable
in
like the
flowery death so
Huitzilopochtli]
bands and
who
tribes. In all the
gives
life:
accounts
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 8 2
that
my New
me
Guinea friends have given
of their former tribal wars,
there has been not a single hint of tribal patriotism, of a suicidal charge,
or of any other military conduct carrying an accepted risk of being killed.
Instead, raids are initiated by
mize
ambush or by
at all costs the risk that
superior force, so as to mini-
one might die for one's
attitude severely limits the military options of tribes,
what makes
societies. Naturally,
gerous opponents
patriotic
and
village.
But that
compared with
state
religious fanatics such dan-
not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their
is
willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their
number
in order to
annihilate or crush their infidel enemy. Fanaticism in war, of the type that
drove recorded Christian and Islamic conquests, was probably
on Earth
unknown
chiefdoms and especially states emerged within the
until
last
6,000 years.
ilow did
small,
centralized ones in
noncentralized, kin-based societies evolve into large
which most members are not
closely related to each
other? Having reviewed the stages in this transformation from bands to
we now
states,
ask what impelled societies thus to transform themselves.
At many moments
have arisen independently
in history, states
cultural anthropologists say, "pristinely," that
is,
—
or, as
absence of any
in the
preexisting surrounding states. Pristine state origins took place at least
once, possibly
many
North America.
times,
on each of the continents except Australia and
Prehistoric states included those of
Mesopotamia, North
China, the Nile and Indus Valleys, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and West
Africa. Native states in contact with
chiefdoms repeatedly
Tahiti,
more
and
and many parts of
states
have arisen from
Madagascar, Hawaii,
Chiefdoms have arisen
Africa.
same regions and
often, in all of the
Pacific
European
in the last three centuries in
in
pristinely even
North America's Southeast
Northwest, the Amazon, Polynesia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
All these origins of
complex
societies give us a rich
database for under-
standing their development.
Of
the
many
theories addressing the
plest denies that there
is
the natural condition of
error
human
— Greek
all
state origins, the sim-
solve. Aristotle considered states
society, requiring
was understandable, because
have been acquainted
problem of
any problem to
no explanation. His
the societies with
which he would
societies of the fourth century B.C.
—were
283
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
states.
was
However, we now know
that, as of a.d.
1492,
much
of the world
instead organized into chiefdoms, tribes, or bands. State formation
does demand an explanation.
The next theory
is
the
most familiar one. The French philosopher Jean-
Jacques Rousseau speculated that states are formed by a social contract, a
rational decision reached
to the
agreement that
societies,
when people
they would be
calculated their self-interest,
came
better off in a state than in simpler
and voluntarily did away with
their simpler societies.
But obser-
vation and historical records have failed to uncover a single case of a state's
being formed in that ethereal atmosphere of dispassionate farsightedness.
Smaller units do not voluntarily abandon their sovereignty and merge into
They do so only by conquest, or under external
larger units.
A
third theory,
still
duress.
popular with some historians and economists,
sets
out from the undoubted fact that, in both Mesopotamia and North China
and Mexico,
began to be constructed around
large-scale irrigation systems
the time that states started to emerge.
complex system
The theory
for irrigation or hydraulic
ized bureaucracy to construct
management
and maintain
it.
any
also notes that
big,
requires a central-
The theory then
turns an
observed rough correlation in time into a postulated chain of cause and
effect.
Supposedly, Mesopotamians and North Chinese and Mexicans
foresaw the advantages that a large-scale irrigation system would bring
them, even though there was at the time no such system within thousands
of miles (or anywhere
on Earth)
to illustrate for
Those farsighted people chose to merge
into a larger state capable of blessing
However,
this
same objections
specifically,
it
their inefficient little
them with
chiefdoms
large-scale irrigation.
"hydraulic theory" of state formation
is
subject to the
leveled against social contract theories in general.
More
addresses only the final stage in the evolution of complex
societies. It says
tribes to
them those advantages.
nothing about what drove the progression from bands to
chiefdoms during
scale irrigation
all
the millennia before the prospect of large-
loomed up on the horizon. When
examined
historical or archaeologi-
in detail, they fail to
support the view of irrigation
as the driving force for state formation. In
Mesopotamia, North China,
cal dates are
Mexico, and Madagascar, small-scale irrigation systems already existed
before the rise of states. Construction of large-scale irrigation systems did
not accompany the emergence of states but
came only
significantly later in
each of those areas. In most of the states formed over the
Maya
area of
284
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
Mesoamerica and the Andes,
irrigation systems
always remained small-
communities could build and maintain themselves.
scale ones that local
Thus, even in those areas where complex systems of hydraulic manage-
ment did emerge, they were
a secondary
consequence of
states that
must
have formed for other reasons.
What seems
formation
is
to
me
to point to a fundamentally correct view of state
an undoubted
fact of
much wider validity than the correlation
between irrigation and the formation of some
of the regional population
plexity.
As we have
seen,
states
—namely, that the
the strongest single predictor of societal
is
bands number a few dozen individuals,
size
com-
tribes a
few hundred, chiefdoms a few thousand to a few tens of thousands, and
states generally over
about 50,000. In addition to that coarse correlation
between regional population
on), there
tion
and
is
size
and type of society (band,
tribe,
and so
a finer trend, within each of those categories, between popula-
societal complexity: for instance, that
most
lations prove to be the
chiefdoms with large popu-
centralized, stratified,
and complex ones.
These correlations suggest strongly that regional population
size or
population density or population pressure has something to do with the
formation of complex
how
societies.
But the correlations do not
tell
us precisely
population variables function in a chain of cause and effect whose
a complex society. To trace out that chain, let us now remind
how large dense populations themselves arise. Then we can
examine why a large but simple society could not maintain itself. With
that as background, we shall finally return to the question of how a sim-
outcome
is
ourselves
pler society actually
becomes more complex as the regional population
increases.
We have seen that
large or dense populations arise only under condi-
tions of food production, or at least under exceptionally productive conditions for hunting-gathering.
reached the organizational
of states:
all states
and
hunter-gatherer societies
chiefdoms, but none reached the level
nourish their citizens by food production. These consid-
erations, along with the just
ulation size
Some productive
level of
mentioned correlation between regional pop-
societal complexity,
have led to a protracted chicken-or-
egg debate about the causal relations between food production, population variables,
is
and
societal complexity. Is
the cause, triggering population
it
intensive food production that
growth and somehow leading to
a
com-
285
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
Or are large populations and complex societies
somehow leading to intensification of food production?
plex society?
cause,
instead the
Posing the question in that either-or form misses the point. Intensified
food production and societal complexity stimulate each other, by autocatalysis.
That
nisms that
intensified
is,
population growth leads to societal complexity, by mecha-
we
complexity in turn leads to
shall discuss, while societal
food production and thereby to population growth. Complex
centralized societies are uniquely capable of organizing public
works
(including irrigation systems), long-distance trade (including the importation of metals to
make
groups of economic
cereal,
and
better agricultural tools),
activities of different
specialists (such as feeding herders
and transferring the herders' livestock to farmers
with farmers'
for use as
plow
animals). All of these capabilities of centralized societies have fostered
intensified
food production and hence population growth throughout
his-
tory.
In addition, food production contributes in at least three
cific
features of
inputs of labor.
complex
When
becomes available
to build public
societies.
First,
it
ways
to spe-
involves seasonally pulsed
the harvest has been stored, the farmers' labor
for a centralized political authority to harness
works advertising
mids), or to build public
state
power (such
—
in order
as the Egyptian pyra-
works that could feed more mouths (such
as
Polynesian Hawaii's irrigation systems or fishponds), or to undertake wars
of conquest to form larger political entities.
Second, food production
may
be organized so as to generate stored food
which permit economic
surpluses,
The surpluses can be used
bureaucrats, and other
to feed
members
specialization
all tiers
of the
and
social stratification.
of a complex society: the chiefs,
elite;
the scribes, craftspeople,
and
other non-food-producing specialists; and the farmers themselves, during
times that they are drafted to construct public works.
Finally,
living,
food production permits or requires people to adopt sedentary
which
is
a prerequisite for accumulating substantial possessions,
developing elaborate technology and crafts, and constructing public
works. The importance of fixed residence to a complex society explains
why
missionaries and governments, whenever they
make
previously uncontacted nomadic tribes or bands in
Amazon,
universally have
two immediate
goals.
obvious one of "pacifying" the nomads: that
killing missionaries, bureaucrats, or
One
is,
first
New
contact with
Guinea or the
goal, of course,
is
the
dissuading them from
each other. The other goal
is
to induce
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 8 6
nomads
the
to settle in villages, so that the missionaries
and bureaucrats
can find the nomads, bring them services such as medical care and schools,
and proselytize and control them.
Ihus, food production, which increases population size,
many ways to make features of complex societies possible.
in
that
band or
How
can
we account
tribal organization just
for the empirical observation
does not work for societies of hun-
dreds of thousands of people, and that
complex centralized organization?
But that
make complex
doesn't prove that food production and large populations
societies inevitable.
also acts
We
existing large societies have
all
can
cite at least
four obvious rea-
sons.
One
reason
is
the
problem of conflict between unrelated
problem grows astronomically
as the
number
society increases. Relationships within a
of people
strangers.
band of 20 people involve only
190 two-person interactions (20 people times 19 divided by
of 2,000
murder
2),
would have 1,999,000 dyads. Each of those dyads
bomb
potential time
in
band and
killing, starting
That
making up the
that could explode in a
but a band
represents a
murderous argument. Each
tribal societies usually leads to
an attempted revenge
one more unending cycle of murder and countermurder
that destabilizes the society.
where everyone
In a band,
is
closely related to everyone else, people
related simultaneously to both quarreling parties step in to mediate quarrels.
least
In a tribe,
where many people are
knows everybody
else
still
close relatives
by name, mutual
relatives
and everyone
and mutual
at
friends
mediate the quarrel. But once the threshold of "several hundred," below
which everyone can know everyone
bers of dyads
become
else,
has been crossed, increasing num-
pairs of unrelated strangers.
When
strangers fight,
few people present will be friends or relatives of both combatants, with
self-interest in
stopping the
fight. Instead,
many
onlookers will be friends
or relatives of only one combatant and will side with that person, escalating the two-person fight into a general brawl.
continues to leave conflict resolution to
blow up. That
exist only
if
factor alone
all
of
Hence
its
would explain why
a large society that
members
is
societies of
guaranteed to
thousands can
they develop centralized authority to monopolize force and
resolve conflicts.
A
second reason
is
the growing impossibility of
communal
decision
287
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
making with increasing population
adult population
is still
possible in
size.
New
news and information quickly spread
everyone
else in a
wants to speak
prerequisites for
we
all
decision
Even now,
know
that a
A
if it is
to transfer
and that everyone who
so.
But
all
those
in
much
making become unattainable
in these
days of microphones and loud-
Hence
is
no way
to resolve issues for
a large society
must be structured
economic considerations. Any society requires
goods between
more of some
to acquire
enough that
to reach decisions effectively.
third reason involves
means
village,
group meeting
a group of thousands of people.
and centralized
villages small
meeting has the opportunity to do
communal
larger communities.
speakers,
Guinea
to everyone, that everyone can hear
meeting of the whole
at the
Decision making by the entire
its
essential
members. One individual may happen
commodity on one day and
less
on
another. Because individuals have different talents, one individual consistently tends to
wind up with an excess of some
essentials
and
a deficit of
few pairs of members, the resulting neces-
others. In small societies with
sary transfers of goods can be arranged directly between pairs of individu-
or families, by reciprocal exchanges. But the same mathematics that
als
makes
direct pairwise conflict resolution inefficient in large societies
direct pairwise
economic transfers also
function economically only
tion to a reciprocal
if
inefficient.
they have a redistributive
economy. Goods
in excess of
must be transferred from the individual to
A
ties
final
economy
in addi-
an individual's needs
a centralized authority,
then redistributes the goods to individuals with
makes
Large societies can
which
deficits.
consideration mandating complex organization for large socie-
has to do with population densities. Large societies of food producers
have not only more members but also higher population densities than do
small bands of hunter-gatherers. Each
pies a large territory, within
essential to
band of
a few
dozen hunters occu-
which they can acquire most of the resources
them. They can obtain their remaining necessities by trading
with neighboring bands during intervals between band warfare. As population density increases, the territory of that band-sized population of a
few dozen would shrink to a small area, with more and more of
necessities
life's
having to be obtained outside the area. For instance, one
couldn't just divide Holland's 16,000 square miles and 16,000,000 people
into
800,000 individual
ing as
home
to an
territories,
each encompassing 13 acres and serv-
autonomous band of 20 people who remained
sufficient confined within their
self-
13 acres, occasionally taking advantage of
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 8 8
come
a temporary truce to
to the borders of their tiny territory in order to
exchange some trade items and brides with the next band. Such
spatial
realities require that densely populated regions support large and
com-
plexly organized societies.
Considerations of conflict resolution, decision making, economics, and
space thus converge in requiring large societies to be centralized. But centralization of
power
inevitably opens the
door
—for those who hold the
power, are privy to information, make the decisions, and redistribute the
goods
—to exploit the resulting opportunities to reward themselves and
their relatives.
To anyone
that's obvious.
As early
power gradually
familiar with
any modern grouping of people,
societies developed, those acquiring centralized
established themselves as an
one of several formerly equal-ranked
elite,
perhaps originating as
village clans that
became "more
equal" than the others.
Ihose are the
reasons
why
organization and instead are complex kleptocracies. But
with the question of
gamate into
large,
lution, decision
how
band
large societies cannot function with
we
are
still left
small, simple societies actually evolve or amal-
complex ones. Amalgamation, centralized
conflict reso-
making, economic redistribution, and kleptocratic religion
don't just develop automatically through a Rousseauesque social contract.
What
drives the
amalgamation?
In part, the answer depends
upon evolutionary reasoning.
outset of this chapter that societies classified in the
identical to each other, because
all
I
said at the
same category
humans and human groups
nitely diverse.
For example, among bands and
are inevitably
more
tribes, the
are not
are
infi-
big-men of some
charismatic, powerful, and skilled in reaching deci-
sions than the big-men of others.
Among
large tribes, those with stronger
big-men and hence greater centralization tend to have an advantage over
those with less centralization. Tribes that resolve conflicts as poorly as did
the
Fayu tend to blow apart again into bands, while ill-governed
doms blow
chief-
apart into smaller chiefdoms or tribes. Societies with effective
conflict resolution,
sound decision making, and harmonious economic
redistribution can develop better technology, concentrate their military
power,
seize larger
and more productive
territories,
and crush autonomous
smaller societies one by one.
Thus, competition between societies at one
level of
complexity tends to
Plate
1 7.
An Oyana man from
tropical northern South America. Plates
17-20 depict Native South Americans.
Plate 18.
A Yanomamo girl from
tropical northern South America.
Plate 19.
A
Fuegian
man from
the southern tip of South America.
Plate 20.
A Quechua man from
the
Andean highlands of South America.
Plate 21.
A man from
western Europe (Spain). Plates 21-24
illustrate
speakers of Indo-European languages, from the western half of Eurasia.
Plate 22. Another western European: former president Charles de Gaulle
of France.
Plate 23. Above:
man and
two Scandinavian women (Swedish
actress Ingrid Berg-
her daughter). Below: an Armenian man, from western Asia.
Plate 24.
Afghan
soldiers,
from central
Asia.
Plate 25.
A
Khoisan
southern Africa.
woman from
the Kalahari Desert of Botswana,
Plate 26.
A
ern Africa.
Kboisan
man from
the Kalahari Desert of Botswana, south-
Plate 27.
A pygmy girl from
the Ituri forest of equatorial Africa.
Plate
28 A group of pygmies from the
Ituri forest
of equatorial Africa.
Plate 29.
An
man from
East African speaker of a Nilo-Saharan language: a Nuer
the Sudan.
Plate 30.
An
East African speaker of an Afro-Asiatic language: Ethiopia's
Haile Gebreselassie, winning the men's 10,000-meter race at the 1996
Olympic Games,
just
ahead of Kenya's Paul Tergat.
Plate 31.
a
An
East African speaker of a non-Bantu Niger-Congo language:
Zande woman of the Sudan.
Plate 32.
A
speaker of a Bantu Niger-Congo language: President Nelson
Mandela of South
Africa.
289
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
lead to societies
on the next
conquer or combine with
level of
complexity //conditions permit. Tribes
tribes to reach the size of chiefdoms,
quer or combine with other chiefdoms to reach the
conquer or combine with other
large units potentially enjoy
and
that's a big "if"
with their larger
states to
which
become empires. More
generally,
an advantage over individual small units if—
—the large units can solve the problems that come
such as perennial threats from upstart claimants to
size,
commoner resentment
leadership,
which con-
size of states,
of kleptocracy, and increased problems
associated with economic integration.
The amalgamation of smaller
umented
units into larger ones has often been doc-
historically or archaeologically.
Contrary to Rousseau, such
amalgamations never occur by a process of unthreatened
freely deciding to
zens. Leaders of
merge,
in
societies
little
order to promote the happiness of their
little societies,
citi-
as of big ones, are jealous of their indepen-
dence and prerogatives. Amalgamation occurs instead in either of two
ways: by merger under the threat of external force, or by actual conquest.
Innumerable examples are available to
each
illustrate
mode
of
amalgam-
ation.
Merger under the threat of external force
is
mation of the Cherokee Indian confederation
well illustrated by the for-
The
in the U.S. Southeast.
Cherokees were originally divided into 30 or 40 independent chiefdoms,
each consisting of a village of about 400 people. Increasing white
ment
between Cherokees and whites.
led to conflicts
Cherokees robbed or assaulted white
unable to discriminate
among
settlers
and
When
settle-
individual
traders, the whites
the different Cherokee chiefdoms
and
were
retali-
ated indiscriminately against any Cherokees, either by military action or
by cutting off trade. In response, the Cherokee chiefdoms gradually found
themselves compelled to join into a single confederacy in the course of the
18th century.
leader, a chief
first
Initially,
named Moytoy, who was succeeded
task of these leaders
whites,
and
1730 chose an
the larger chiefdoms in
was
to punish individual
to deal with the white government.
kees regularized their decision
in
1741 by
Cherokees
overall
his son.
The
who attacked
Around 1758
the Chero-
making with an annual council modeled on
previous village councils and meeting at one village (Echota), which
thereby became a de facto "capital." Eventually, the Cherokees became
literate (as
we saw
in
Chapter 12) and adopted a written constitution.
The Cherokee confederacy was thus formed not by conquest but by
amalgamation of previously jealous smaller
entities,
the
which merged only
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 9
when
the
much
threatened with destruction by powerful external forces. In
same way,
an example of
in
state
formation described in every Ameri-
can history textbook, the white American colonies themselves, one of
which (Georgia) had precipitated the formation of the Cherokee
were impelled to form
a nation of their
own when
state,
threatened with the
powerful external force of the British monarchy. The American colonies
were
initially as jealous
their first attempt at
autonomy
of their
amalgamation under the
(1781) proved unworkable because
ex-colonies.
Only
it
Cherokee chiefdoms, and
Articles of Confederation
much autonomy
reserved too
further threats, notably Shays's Rebellion of
the unsolved burden of
tance to sacrifice
as the
war
debt,
1786 and
overcame the ex-colonies' extreme
autonomy and pushed them
strong federal constitution in 1787.
reluc-
into adopting our current
The 19th-century
many's jealous principalities proved equally
to the
difficult.
unification of Ger-
Three early attempts
1848, the restored German Confederation of
German Confederation of 1866) failed before the
external threat of France's declaration of war in 1870 finally led to the
princelets' surrendering much of their power to a central imperial German
(the Frankfurt Parliament of
1850, and the North
government
in
1871.
The other mode of formation of complex
under threat of external force,
example
is
is
societies, besides
merger by conquest.
A
the origin of the Zulu state, in southeastern Africa.
observed by white
settlers, the
merger
well-documented
When
Zulus were divided into dozens of
first
little
chiefdoms. During the late 1700s, as population pressure rose, fighting
between the chiefdoms became increasingly intense.
Among all those chief-
doms, the ubiquitous problem of devising centralized power structures
was solved most
successfully
by a chief called Dingiswayo,
ascendancy of the Mtetwa chiefdom by
killing a rival
who
gained
around 1807. Din-
giswayo developed a superior centralized military organization by drafting
young men from
all villages
rather than by their village.
cal organization
and grouping them into regiments by age
He
also developed superior centralized politi-
by abstaining from slaughter as he conquered other
doms, leaving the conquered
chief's family intact,
and
chief-
limiting himself to
replacing the conquered chief himself with a relative willing to cooperate
with Dingiswayo.
He
developed superior centralized conflict resolution by
expanding the adjudication of quarrels. In that way Dingiswayo was able
to
conquer and begin the integration of 30 other Zulu chiefdoms. His sue-
FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY
Zulu
cessors strengthened the resulting embryonic
state
2 9
I
by expanding
its
and ceremonies.
judicial system, policing,
This Zulu example of a state formed by conquest can be multiplied
almost
Native states whose formation from chiefdoms hap-
indefinitely.
pened to be witnessed by Europeans
the Polynesian
state of
Hawaiian
state, the
in the
18th and 19th centuries include
Polynesian Tahitian state, the Merina
Madagascar, Lesotho and Swazi and other southern African
besides that of the Zulus, the Ashanti state of
and Buganda
states of
West
Africa,
states
and the Ankole
Uganda. The Aztec and Inca Empires were formed
know much
by 15th-century conquests, before Europeans arrived, but we
about their formation from Indian oral histories transcribed by early Span-
The formation
ish settlers.
Roman
of the
and the expansion of the
state
Macedonian Empire under Alexander were described
in detail
by contem-
porary classical authors.
examples
All these
key role in most,
illustrate that
not
if
all,
wars, or threats of war, have played a
amalgamations of
between mere bands, have been a constant
it,
then, that they evidently began causing
within the past 13,000 years?
tion of
complex
should
now
war.
Why
societies
is
We
societies.
fact of
human
But wars, even
history.
amalgamations of
Why
is
societies only
had already concluded that the forma-
somehow
linked to population pressure, so
we
seek a link between population pressure and the outcome of
should wars tend to cause amalgamations of societies
populations are dense but not
fate of defeated peoples
when
they are sparse?
The answer
is
when
that the
depends on population density, with three possible
outcomes:
Where population
densities are very low, as
is
usual in regions occupied
by hunter-gatherer bands, survivors of a defeated group need only move
farther
away from
their enemies.
between nomadic bands
Where population
food-producing
a defeated
New
That tends to be the
result of
wars
Guinea and the Amazon.
densities are moderate, as in regions occupied
tribes,
band can
in
no
flee.
large vacant areas
But
tribal societies
by
remain to which survivors of
without intensive food pro-
duction have no employment for slaves and do not produce large enough
food surpluses to be able to yield
much
tribute.
Hence the
use for survivors of a defeated tribe, unless to take the
The defeated men
victors.
are killed,
and
their territory
may
victors
women
have no
in marriage.
be occupied by the
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 9 2
Where population
densities are high, as in regions occupied
chiefdoms, the defeated
have nowhere to
still
flee,
have two options for exploiting them while leaving them
chiefdoms and
state societies
because
many such
states or
alive.
now
Because
have economic specialization, the defeated
can be used as slaves, as commonly happened in
tively,
by
but the victors
biblical times. Alterna-
have intensive food production systems
societies
capable of yielding large surpluses, the victors can leave the defeated in
place but deprive
them of political autonomy, make them pay regular
ute in food or goods,
and amalgamate
trib-
their society into the victorious state
or chiefdom. This has been the usual outcome of battles associated with
the founding of states or empires throughout recorded history. For
ple, the
exam-
Spanish conquistadores wished to exact tribute from Mexico's
defeated native populations, so they were very interested in the Aztec
Empire's tribute
lists. It
turned out that the tribute received by the Aztecs
each year from subject peoples had included 7,000 tons of corn, 4,000
tons of beans, 4,000 tons of grain amaranth, 2,000,000 cotton cloaks, and
huge quantities of cacao beans, war costumes,
shields, feather headdresses,
and amber.
Thus, food production, and competition and diffusion between societies,
led as ultimate causes, via chains of causation that differed in detail
but that
all
involved large dense populations and sedentary living, to the
proximate agents of conquest: germs, writing, technology, and centralized
political organization.
on
Because those ultimate causes developed differently
different continents, so did those agents of conquest.
Hence those
agents tended to arise in association with each other, but the association
was not
Incas,
strict:
for example, an empire arose without writing
wayo's Zulus
illustrate that
the
each of those agents contributed somewhat
independently to history's pattern.
the
among
and writing with few epidemic diseases among the Aztecs. Dingis-
Among
the dozens of
Zulu chiefdoms,
Mtetwa chiefdom enjoyed no advantage whatsoever
writing, or germs over the other chiefdoms,
ceeded in defeating.
and ideology. The
Its
which
it
of technology,
nevertheless suc-
advantage lay solely in the spheres of government
resulting
Zulu
state
was thereby enabled
fraction of a continent for nearly a century.
to conquer a
PART FOUR
1
AROUND THE
WORLD IN FIVE
CHAPTERS
CHAPTER
15
Yalis People
WHEN MY
AND
WIFE, MARIE,
Australia one
WERE VACATIONING
I
summer, we decided to
visit a site
town of Men-
preserved Aboriginal rock paintings in the desert near the
indee.
While
summer
I
heat,
knew
I
of the Australian desert's reputation for dryness and
had already spent long periods working under hot, dry
conditions in the Californian desert and
New Guinea savanna,
so
I
consid-
ered myself experienced enough to deal with the minor challenges
would
we
face as tourists in Australia. Carrying plenty of drinking water,
Marie and
The
I
trail
set off at
noon on
from the ranger
a hike of a
few miles to the paintings.
station led uphill, under a cloudless sky,
through open terrain offering no shade whatsoever. The hot, dry
we were
breathing reminded
in a Finnish sauna.
we had
me
of
We
had
uphill, breathing slowly
was unmistakably
pared with any
how
had
known
we had
felt
to breathe while sitting
cliff site
it
first
time in
head straight back.
9
5
I
we
noticed a bird
seemed enormous com-
babbler species. At that point,
2-
with the paintings,
regularly. Presently
a species of babbler, but
better
air that
also lost our interest in art, so
and
experiencing heat hallucinations for the
decided that
it
By the time we reached the
finished our water.
pushed on
that
IN
with well-
I
realized that
my
life.
I
was
Marie and
I
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
Z 9 6
Both of us stopped
talking.
As we walked, we concentrated on
listening
to our breathing, calculating the distance to the next landmark,
mating the remaining time.
When we
Marie's face was red.
station,
we
My
mouth and tongue were now
at last
and asked the ranger
who had made
down
the
reflected that
I
somehow
those paintings had
without air-conditioned
entire lives in that desert
and
for another bottle.
both physically and emotionally,
Sitting there exhausted,
the Aborigines
esti-
dry,
reached the air-conditioned ranger
sagged into chairs next to the water cooler, drank
cooler's last half-gallon of water,
and
retreats,
spent their
managing
to
food as well as water.
find
To white
who had
whites
earlier: the Irish
liam Wills,
tralia
Menindee
Australians,
suffered worse
from the
as the base
desert's
camp
for
two
dry heat over a century
policeman Robert Burke and the English astronomer Wil-
ill-fated leaders
of the
from south to north.
enough
famous
is
for three
European expedition to cross Aus-
first
Setting out with six camels packing food
months, Burke and Wills ran out of provisions while
in
the desert north of Menindee. Three successive times, they encountered
and were rescued by well-fed Aborigines whose home was that
who plied the explorers with fish,
Burke foolishly shot
whole group
his pistol at
fern cakes,
and roasted
desert,
fat rats.
and
But then
one of the Aborigines, whereupon the
fled.
Despite their big advantage over the Aborigines in pos-
sessing guns with
which to hunt, Burke and Wills starved, collapsed, and
died within a
My
Wills,
wife's
made
month
and
after the Aborigines' departure.
my
experience at Menindee, and the fate of Burke and
vivid for
me
human
the difficulties of building a
Australia. Australia stands out
from
all
society in
the other continents: the differ-
ences between Eurasia, Africa, North America, and South America fade
into insignificance
compared with the
differences between Australia
any of those other landmasses. Australia
test,
most
infertile, climatically
impoverished continent.
peans. Until then,
and the
least
it
It
was
is
by
and
far the driest, smallest, flat-
most unpredictable, and
biologically
most
the last continent to be occupied by Euro-
had supported the most
distinctive
human
societies,
numerous human population, of any continent.
Australia thus provides a crucial test of theories about intercontinental
differences in societies.
the
most
Australia
It
had the most
distinctive societies.
is
distinctive environment,
Did the former cause the
the logical continent with
and also
latter? If so,
how?
which to begin our around-the-
297
YALI'S PEOPLE
world tour, applying the lessons of Parts 2 and 3 to understanding the
differing histories of all the continents.
would
1V\ost laypeople
describe as the most salient feature of
Native Australian societies their seeming "backwardness." Australia
sole continent where, in
modern
times,
any of the hallmarks of so-called
metal,
bows and arrows,
chiefdoms, or
states.
all
native peoples
civilization
and
the
—without farming, herding,
were nomadic or
Instead, Australian Aborigines
still
is
without
substantial buildings, settled villages, writing,
seminomadic hunter-gatherers, organized into bands,
shelters or huts,
lived
still
dependent on stone
tools.
living in
During the
temporary
last
13,000
years less cultural change has accumulated in Australia than in any other
continent.
typified
the
The prevalent European view of Native Australians was already
by the words of an early French explorer,
who
wrote, "They are
most miserable people of the world, and the human beings who
approach closest to brute beasts."
40,000 years ago, Native Australian
Yet, as of
head
start
tralians
earliest
known
edges, the earliest hafted stone tools (that
est
and by
known
enjoyed a big
over societies of Europe and the other continents. Native Aus-
developed some of the
handles),
societies
is,
stone tools with ground
stone ax heads
far the earliest watercraft, in the world.
mounted on
Some
of the old-
painting on rock surfaces comes from Australia. Anatomically
modern humans may have
settled Australia before they settled
Europe. Why, despite that head
start,
western
did Europeans end up conquering
Australia, rather than vice versa?
Within that question
much ocean water was
dropped
far
below
ing Australia
sheets
from
its
lies
another. During the Pleistocene Ice Ages,
sequestered in continental ice sheets and sea level
present stand, the shallow Arafura Sea
New
when
now
separat-
Guinea was low, dry land. With the melting of
between around 12,000 and 8,000 years ago, sea
ice
level rose, that
low land became flooded, and the former continent of Greater Australia
became sundered
into the
two hemi-continents of Australia and
New
Guinea (Figure 15.1 on page 299).
The human
societies of those
modern times very
I
just said
different
two formerly joined landmasses were
from each
in
other. In contrast to everything that
about Native Australians, most
New
Guineans, such as
Yali's
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 9 8
people, were farmers and swineherds.
were organized
politically into tribes rather
had bows and arrows, and many used
have
They
much more
substantial dwellings,
numerous and more varied
utensils
lived in settled villages
than bands. All
pottery.
New
much
New Guineans
Guineans tended to
more seaworthy
and more
boats,
than did Australians. As a consequence
of being food producers instead of hunter-gatherers,
at
and
New
Guineans lived
New
higher average population densities than Australians:
Guinea has only one-tenth of Australia's area but supported a native population several times that of Australia's.
Why did the human
societies of the larger
landmass derived from
Pleis-
tocene Greater Australia remain so "backward" in their development,
much more
while the societies of the smaller landmass "advanced"
idly?
Why
didn't
which
is
Strait?
From
rap-
New Guinea innovations spread to Australia,
New Guinea by only 90 miles of sea at Torres
those
all
separated from
the perspective of cultural anthropology, the geographic dis-
tance between Australia and
because Torres Strait
New
Guinea
is
even
than 90 miles,
less
sprinkled with islands inhabited by farmers using
is
New
bows and arrows and
culturally resembling
Torres Strait island
only 10 miles from Australia. Islanders carried on
lies
Guineans. The largest
a lively trade with Native Australians as well as with
New Guineans. How
could two such different cultural universes maintain themselves across a
calm
strait
only 10 miles wide and routinely traversed by canoes?
Compared with Native
Australians,
New
Guineans rate as culturally
"advanced." But most other modern people consider even
"backward." Until Europeans began to colonize
19th century,
tools,
and
all
New
politically
Africans,
New
Guinea
Guineans
in the late
Guineans were nonliterate, dependent on stone
not yet organized into states or (with few exceptions)
chiefdoms. Granted that
Australians,
New
why had
New
Guineans had "progressed" beyond Native
they not yet "progressed" as far as
and Native Americans? Thus,
Yali's
many
Eurasians,
people and their Australian
cousins pose a puzzle inside a puzzle.
When
asked to account for the cultural "backwardness" of Aboriginal
Australian society,
many
white Australians have a simple answer: sup-
posed deficiencies of the Aborigines themselves. In
color, Aborigines certainly look different
late- 19th
facial structure
and skin
from Europeans, leading some
century authors to consider them a missing link between apes
and humans.
How
else
can one account for the fact that white English
colonists created a literate, food-producing, industrial democracy, within
New
Ireland
J?
\^^\
^
^JkV- New
New
.
Guinea
aA,
Aru
Torres Strair~-~^' Britain
Tasmania
Asian and Australian continental shelves:
during the Pleistocene
limits of land
Figure 15.1.
New
Map
of the region from Southeast Asia to Australia and
Guinea. Solid
lines
denote the present coastline; the dashed
the coastline during Pleistocene times
its
present stand
shelves.
At that
—that
time,
is,
when
sea level
the edge of the Asian
New
dropped
to
lines are
below
and Greater Australian
Guinea and Australia were joined
in
an
expanded Greater Australia, while Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and Taiwan
were part of the Asian mainland.
a
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O O
3
few decades of colonizing a continent whose inhabitants
40,000 years were
nonliterate hunter-gatherers?
still
some of
ing that Australia has
still
more than
especially strik-
the world's richest iron
and aluminum
deposits, as well as rich reserves of copper, tin, lead,
were Native Australians
after
It is
and
zinc.
Why,
then,
ignorant of metal tools and living in the Stone
Age?
seems
It
human
like
societies.
ent. Ergo, the
a perfectly controlled experiment in the evolution of
The continent was
explanation for the differences between Native Australian
and European- Australian
ing them.
shall see,
The
logic
societies
behind
however, that
J\s the first
it
this racist
lie
in the different
people compos-
conclusion appears compelling.
step in examining this logic, let us
40,000 years ago,
Greater Australia.
nists
must
We
contains a simple error.
the peoples themselves. Australia
at least
the same; only the people were differ-
and
A glance
at a
New Guinea were
when
at a time
map
examine the origins of
both occupied by
they were both
still
joined as
(Figure 15.1) suggests that the colo-
must have originated ultimately from the nearest continent, Southeast
Asia, by island hopping through the Indonesian Archipelago. This conclu-
sion
is
supported by genetic relationships between modern Australians,
New Guineans, and Asians, and by the survival today of a few populations
of
somewhat
sula,
similar physical appearance in the Philippines,
and Andaman Islands
Once
the colonists
off
Malay Penin-
Myanmar.
had reached the shores of Greater Australia, they
spread quickly over the whole continent to occupy even
and most inhospitable
habitats.
its
By 40,000 years ago,
farthest reaches
fossils
and stone
tools attest to their presence in Australia's southwestern corner; by 35,000
years ago, in Australia's southeastern corner and Tasmania, the corner of
Australia most remote from the colonists' likely beachhead in western Australia
or
New
Guinea
30,000 years ago,
(the parts nearest Indonesia
in the cold
New
and
Guinea highlands.
Asia);
and by
All of those areas
could have been reached overland from a western beachhead. However,
the colonization of both the Bismarck
northeast of
New Guinea,
and the Solomon Archipelagoes
by 35,000 years ago, required further overwater
crossings of dozens of miles.
The occupation could have been even more
rapid than that apparent spread of dates from 40,000 to 30,000 years ago,
YALI'S PEOPLE
O
3
I
since the various dates hardly differ within the experimental error of the
radiocarbon method.
At the Pleistocene times when Australia and
New
Guinea were
initially
occupied, the Asian continent extended eastward to incorporate the
mod-
ern islands of Borneo, Java, and Bali, nearly 1,000 miles nearer to Austra-
New
and
lia
Guinea than Southeast Asia's present margin. However,
channels up to 50 miles wide
least eight
from Borneo or
getting
may have been
low-tech but seaworthy watercraft
The
crossings
at
in
Bali to Pleistocene Greater Australia. Forty thou-
sand years ago, those crossings
today.
remained to be crossed
still
achieved by
in use in coastal
still
must nevertheless have been
difficult,
bamboo
rafts,
South China
because after
that initial landfall by 40,000 years ago the archaeological record provides
no compelling evidence of further human
from Asia
arrivals in Greater Australia
Not
for tens of thousands of years.
until within the last
thousand years do we encounter the next firm evidence,
appearance of Asian-derived pigs
in
New
in the
few
form of the
Guinea and Asian-derived dogs
in Australia.
Thus, the
human
substantial isolation
lation
is
societies of Australia
from the Asian
reflected in languages
and
New
societies that
Guinea developed
founded them. That
spoken today. After
all
those millennia of
isolation, neither
modern Aboriginal Australian languages nor
group of modern
New
Guinea languages
exhibit any clear relationships with any
The
isolation
is
(the so-called
also reflected in genes
somewhat more
similar to
other continents, but the relationship
and physical anthropology.
distinct
New Guinea highto peoples of
not a close one. In skeletons and
physical appearance, Aboriginal Australians
and
from most Southeast Asian populations,
compares photos of Australians or
Papuan languages)
modern Asians than
is
New
New
as
Guineans are also
becomes obvious
if
one
Guineans with those of Indone-
sians or Chinese. Part of the reason for all these differences
initial
the major
modern Asian languages.
Genetic studies suggest that Aboriginal Australians and
landers are
in
iso-
is
that the
Asian colonists of Greater Australia have had a long time in which
to diverge
from
their stay-at-home
Asian cousins, with only limited genetic
exchanges during most of that time. But probably a more important reason
is
that the original Southeast Asian stock
Greater Australia were derived has by
Asians expanding out of China.
now
from which the colonists of
been largely replaced by other
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O 2
3
New
Aboriginal Australians and
and
cally, physically,
from each
linguistically
ABO
system and S of the
well as in
most of the
Australia.
The
rest of the
MNS
wavy
hair of
among
groups, groups B of the
system occur in
New
Guinea as
world, but both are virtually absent in
New
most
tightly coiled hair of
the straight or
other. For instance,
human blood
the major (genetically determined)
so-called
Guineans have also diverged geneti-
Guineans contrasts with
most Australians. Australian languages and
New Guinea's Papuan languages are unrelated not only to Asian languages
but also to each other, except for some spread of vocabulary in both directions across Torres Strait.
and
All that divergence of Australians
reflects
New
Guineans from each other
lengthy isolation in very different environments. Since the rise of
New
and
the Arafura Sea finally separated Australia
Guinea from each
other around 10,000 years ago, gene exchange has been limited to tenuous
contact via the chain of Torres Strait islands. That has allowed the populations of the
two hemi-continents
own
to adapt to their
While the savannas and mangroves of coastal southern
fairly similar to those of
tor,
New
Guinea are
northern Australia, other habitats of the hemi-
continents differ in almost
Here are some of the
environments.
major
all
differences.
respects.
New
Guinea
nearly
lies
on the equa-
while Australia extends far into the temperate zones, reaching almost
40 degrees south of the equator.
New
Guinea
is
mountainous and
extremely rugged, rising to 16,500 feet and with glaciers capping the highest peaks,
lies
while Australia
below 2,000
is
mostly low and
feet of elevation.
on Earth, Australia one of the
New
driest.
flat
Guinea
Most
of
is
—94 percent of
its
area
one of the wettest areas
New
Guinea receives over
100 inches of rain annually, and much of the highlands receives over 200
inches, while
most of Australia
receives less than
20
inches.
New Guinea's
equatorial climate varies only modestly from season to season and year to
year, but Australia's climate
far
more than
with permanent large
are confined in
river
is
highly seasonal and varies from year to year
that of any other continent.
rivers,
most years
As
a result,
New Guinea is laced
while Australia's permanently flowing rivers
to eastern Australia,
and even
Australia's largest
system (the Murray-Darling) has ceased flowing for months during
droughts.
Most
of
New
Guinea's land area
is
clothed in dense rain forest,
while most of Australia's supports only desert and open dry woodland.
New
Guinea
is
covered with young
fertile soil, as
a consequence of vol-
canic activity, glaciers repeatedly advancing and retreating and scouring
YALI'S PEOPLE
the highlands,
O
3
3
and mountain streams carrying huge quantities of
the lowlands. In contrast, Australia has by far the oldest,
most nutrient-leached
volcanic activity
and
lack of high mountains
ing only one-tenth of Australia's area,
mately as
many mammal and
much
Guinea's equatorial location,
elevations,
and greater
shall
fertility.
Guinea
is
is
now
home
Australia
higher rainfall,
little
glaciers. Despite hav-
—a
much
to approxi-
New
result of
greater range of
All of those environmental differences
two hemi-continents' very disparate
influenced the
which we
New
bird species as
and
cultural histories,
consider.
Ihe earliest and
most intensive food production, and the densest
New
populations, of Greater Australia arose in the highland valleys of
Guinea
at altitudes
between 4,000 and 9,000
ing back to 9,000 years ago
feet
above sea
level.
dat-
and becoming extensive by 6,000 years ago,
as well as terraces serving to retain soil moisture in drier areas.
systems were similar to those
still
areas for use as gardens.
ses testify to
Archae-
complex systems of drainage ditches
ological excavations uncovered
swampy
to
infertile,
any continent, because of Australia's
soils of
its
most
silt
The
ditch
used today in the highlands to drain
By around 5,000 years ago, pollen analy-
widespread deforestation of highland
valleys, suggesting for-
est clearance for agriculture.
Today, the staple crops of highland agriculture are the recently intro-
duced sweet potato, along with taro, bananas, yams, sugarcane, edible
grass stems,
and
several leafy vegetables. Because taro, bananas,
are native to Southeast Asia, an
used to be assumed that
New
undoubted
site
and yams
of plant domestication,
it
Guinea highland crops other than sweet
potatoes arrived from Asia. However,
it
was eventually
realized that the
wild ancestors of sugarcane, the leafy vegetables, and the edible grass
stems are
in
New
that taro
New
New Guinea species, that the particular types of bananas grown
New Guinea rather than Asian wild ancestors, and
and some yams are native to New Guinea as well as to Asia. If
Guinea have
Guinea agriculture had
really
had Asian
origins,
one might have
expected to find highland crops derived unequivocally from Asia, but there
are none. For those reasons
it is
ture arose indigenously in the
now
New
generally acknowledged that agricul-
Guinea highlands by domestication of
New Guinea wild plant species.
New Guinea thus joins the Fertile
Crescent, China, and a few other
304
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
regions as one of the world's centers of independent origins of plant
domestication.
No
remains of the crops actually being grown in the high-
lands 6,000 years ago have been preserved in archaeological
ever, that
sites.
How-
not surprising, because modern highland staple crops are plant
is
species that
do not leave archaeologically
exceptional conditions. Hence
it
seems
visible residues except
under
some of them were
likely that
also
the founding crops of highland agriculture, especially as the ancient drain-
age systems preserved are so similar to the modern drainage systems used
for
growing
The
taro.
three unequivocally foreign elements in
production as seen by the
first
New Guinea highland food
European explorers were chickens,
and sweet potatoes. Chickens and pigs were domesticated
New
Asia and introduced around 3,600 years ago to
pigs,
in Southeast
Guinea and most
other Pacific islands by Austronesians, a people of ultimately South Chinese origin
whom we
Chapter 17.
shall discuss in
(Pigs
may have
arrived
earlier.)
As
reached
New Guinea only within the last few centuries, following its introNew Guinea,
for the sweet potato, native to South America,
it
apparently
duction to the Philippines by Spaniards. Once established in
the sweet potato overtook taro as the highland's leading crop, because of
its
shorter time required to reach maturity, higher yields per acre,
and
greater tolerance of poor soil conditions.
The development of
New
Guinea highland agriculture must have
trig-
gered a big population explosion thousands of years ago, because the highlands could have supported only very low population densities of huntergatherers after
New
Guinea's original megafauna of giant marsupials had
been exterminated. The arrival of the sweet potato triggered a further
explosion in recent centuries.
When
Europeans
first
flew over the high-
lands in the 1930s, they were astonished to see below
similar to Holland's.
with
villages,
Broad
valleys
a landscape
were completely deforested and dotted
and drained and fenced
fields for intensive
covered entire valley floors. That landscape
sities
them
testifies to
food production
the population den-
achieved in the highlands by farmers with stone tools.
Steep terrain, persistent cloud cover, malaria, and risk of drought at
lower elevations confine
above about 4,000
New
Guinea highland agriculture to elevations
feet. In effect,
the
New
Guinea highlands are an island
of dense farming populations thrust up into the sky and surrounded below
by a sea of clouds. Lowland
villagers
New
depending heavily on
Guineans on the seacoast and
fish,
while those on dry ground
rivers are
away from
YALI'S PEOPLE
and
the coast
rivers subsist at
low
O
}
densities
5
by slash-and-burn agriculture
based on bananas and yams, supplemented by hunting and gathering. In
New
contrast, lowland
gatherers dependent
Guinea swamp dwellers
nomadic hunter-
live as
on the starchy pith of wild sago palms, which are very
productive and yield three times more calories per hour of
gardening.
New
work than does
Guinea swamps thus provide a clear instance of an envi-
ronment where people remained hunter-gatherers because farming could
not compete with the hunting-gathering
The
sago eaters persisting in
lifestyle.
lowland swamps exemplify the nomadic
hunter-gatherer band organization that must formerly have characterized
all
New
Guineans. For
all
the reasons that
and 14, the farmers and the
complex technology,
manent
villages
and
fishing peoples
societies,
and
we
discussed in Chapters 13
were the ones to develop more-
political organization.
tribal societies, often led
They
live in per-
by a big-man. Some of them
construct large, elaborately decorated, ceremonial houses. Their great art,
in the
form of wooden
statues
and masks,
is
prized in
museums around
the world.
INew guinea thus
became the part of Greater Australia with the
most-advanced technology,
social
and
political
organization, and
art.
New Guinea
Why did New Guineans
However, from an urban American or European perspective,
still
rates as "primitive" rather than
"advanced."
continue to use stone tools instead of developing metal tools, remain non-
and
literate,
fail
turns out that
against
New
and
states? It
Guinea had several biological and geographic
strikes
it.
First,
New Guinea
although indigenous food production did arise in the
highlands,
staples
to organize themselves into chiefdoms
we saw
in
Chapter 8 that
it
yielded
little
protein.
were low-protein root crops, and production of the
cated animal species (pigs and chickens)
was too low
The
dietary
sole domesti-
to contribute
much
to people's protein budgets. Since neither pigs nor chickens can be har-
nessed to pull carts, highlanders remained without sources of power other
than
human muscle power, and
repel the eventual
also failed to evolve epidemic diseases to
European invaders.
A second restriction on the size of highland populations was the limited
available area: the New Guinea highlands have only a few broad valleys,
notably the Wahgi and Baliem Valleys, capable of supporting dense popu-
3
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O 6
was
lations. Still a third limitation
between 4,000 and 9,000
feet
was
the reality that the
the sole altitudinal zone in
suitable for intensive food production.
New
all in
feet,
on the
at
hillslopes
agri-
economic exchanges of food,
at different altitudes specializing in different types
New
of food production, never developed in
the Andes, Alps,
feet, little
and only low-density slash-and-burn
culture in the lowlands. Thus, large-scale
between communities
New Guinea
There was no food production
Guinea alpine habitats above 9,000
between 4,000 and 1,000
mid-montane zone
Guinea. Such exchanges in
and Himalayas not only increased population
those areas, by providing people at
all
densities in
more balanced
altitudes with a
diet,
but also promoted regional economic and political integration.
For
all
these reasons, the population of traditional
New
Guinea never
exceeded 1,000,000 until European colonial governments brought Western medicine and the end of intertribal warfare.
Of the approximately
world centers of agricultural origins that we discussed
Guinea remained the one with by
1,000,000 people,
and
in
Chapter
far the smallest population.
nine
5,
New
a
mere
With
New Guinea could not develop the technology, writing,
among
political systems that arose
populations of tens of millions in
China, the Fertile Crescent, the Andes, and Mesoamerica.
New
mented
in
Guinea's population
is
not only small in aggregate, but also frag-
into thousands of micropopulations by the rugged terrain:
much
ing with each other in the highlands,
lowlands and the highlands.
in
swamps
of the lowlands, steep-sided ridges and narrow canyons alternat-
and dense jungle swathing both the
When I am
engaged
in biological exploration
New Guinea, with teams of New Guineans as field assistants, I consider
excellent progress to be three miles per
existing trails.
Most highlanders
more than 10 miles from home
Those
difficulties
day even
in traditional
lages,
are traveling over
Guinea never went
of terrain, combined with the state of intermittent
account for traditional
New
New Guinea's
Guinea has by
languages in the world:
crammed
we
in the course of their lives.
warfare that characterized relations between
cal fragmentation.
if
New
New
Guinea bands or
linguistic, cultural,
into an area only slightly larger than that of Texas,
is
politi-
far the highest concentration of
1,000 out of the world's 6,000 languages,
into dozens of language families
each other as English
and
vil-
and
and divided
isolated languages as different
from Chinese. Nearly half of
all
New
from
Guinea
lan-
guages have fewer than 500 speakers, and even the largest language groups
(still
with a mere 100,000 speakers) were politically fragmented into hun-
YALI'S PEOPLE
07
3
dreds of villages, fighting as fiercely with each other as with speakers of
was
other languages. Each of those microsocieties alone
far too small to
support chiefs and craft specialists, or to develop metallurgy and writing.
on
Besides a small and fragmented population, the other limitation
development
in
New
Guinea was geographic
inflow of technology and ideas from elsewhere.
bors were
all
separated from
New
thousand years ago they were
(especially the
all
isolation, restricting the
New Guinea's three neigh-
Guinea by water gaps, and
even
New Guinea highlands)
less
in
advanced than
until a
New
few
Guinea
technology and food production.
Of
those three neighbors, Aboriginal Australians remained hunter-gather-
ers
with almost nothing to offer
not already possess.
New
islands of the Bismarck
left,
as
New
New
Guineans that
New
Guineans did
Guinea's second neighbor was the
much
and the Solomon Archipelagoes to the
smaller
east.
That
Guinea's third neighbor, the islands of eastern Indonesia. But
that area, too, remained a cultural backwater occupied by hunter-gatherers for
most of
reached
New
its
history.
There
With
no item that can be
Guinea via Indonesia,
Guinea over 40,000 years ago,
sion around
is
1600
identified as
having
after the initial colonization of
until the time of the
New
Austronesian expan-
B.C.
that expansion, Indonesia
became occupied by food producers of
Asian origins, with domestic animals, with agriculture and technology at
complex
least as
as
New Guinea's,
and with navigational
skills
that served
New Guinea. Austronesians
settled on islands west and north and east of New Guinea, and in the far
west and on the north and southeast coasts of New Guinea itself. Ausas a
much more
efficient
conduit from Asia to
tronesians introduced pottery, chickens, and probably dogs and pigs to
New
Guinea. (Early archaeological surveys claimed pig bones in the
Guinea highlands by 4000
For at
least the last
technologically
B.C.,
thousand years, trade connected
much more advanced
for exporting bird of paradise
New
but those claims have not been confirmed.)
societies of Java
plumes and
spices,
New
Guinea to the
and China. In return
New
Guineans received
Southeast Asian goods, including even such luxury items as
Dong Son
bronze drums and Chinese porcelain.
With
time, the Austronesian expansion
impact on
would
surely have
had more
New Guinea. Western New Guinea would eventually have
been
incorporated politically into the sultanates of eastern Indonesia, and metal
tools
might have spread through eastern Indonesia to
that hadn't
New
Guinea. But
happened by a.d. 1511, the year the Portuguese arrived
in the
O
3
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
Moluccas and truncated Indonesia's separate
Europeans reached
living in
bands or
New
Guinea soon
in fiercely
independent
When
train of developments.
thereafter,
its
inhabitants were
little villages,
and
still
still
using stone
tools.
While
the new Guinea
hemi-continent of Greater Australia thus
developed both animal husbandry and agriculture, the Australian hemicontinent developed neither. During the Ice Ages Australia had supported
New
even more big marsupials than
Guinea, including diprotodonts (the
marsupial equivalent of cows and rhinoceroses), giant kangaroos, and
giant
wombats. But
all
those marsupial candidates for animal husbandry
disappeared in the wave of extinctions (or exterminations) that accompanied
human
colonization of Australia. That
left
Australia, like
New
Guinea, with no domesticable native mammals. The sole foreign domesticated
mammal
adopted
was
in Australia
the dog,
which arrived from Asia
(presumably in Austronesian canoes) around 1500 B.C. and established
itself in
the wild in Australia to
become
the dingo. Native Australians kept
captive dingos as companions, watchdogs, and even as living blankets,
giving rise to the expression "five-dog night" to
mean
a very cold night.
But they did not use dingos / dogs for food, as did Polynesians, or for cooperative hunting of wild animals, as did
was another nonstarter
Agriculture
driest continent but also the
Australia
is
unique
for El
Nino Southern
is
Guineans.
in Australia,
one with the most
in that the
most of the continent
New
which
is
not only the
infertile soils. In addition,
overwhelming influence on climate over
an irregular nonannual cycle, the
ENSO
(acronym
Oscillation), rather than the regular annual cycle of
the seasons so familiar in
most other parts of the world. Unpredictable
severe droughts last for years, punctuated by equally unpredictable torrential
rains
and
floods.
Even today, with Eurasian crops and with trucks and
railroads to transport produce, food production in Australia remains a
risky business.
drought.
Any
Herds build up
good
years, only to be killed off by
incipient farmers in Aboriginal Australia
similar cycles in their
in villages,
in
own
populations.
If in
grown crops, and produced babies, those
would have starved and died
off in
would have faced
good years they had
settled
large populations
drought years, when the land could
support far fewer people.
The other major
obstacle to the development of food production in
YALI'S PEOPLE
Australia
3
was the paucity of domesticable wild
pean plant
have
geneticists
Even modern Euro-
plants.
develop any crop except macadamia
failed to
nuts from Australia's native wild flora.
prize cereals
O 9
The
list
of the world's potential
—the 56 wild grass species with the heaviest grains—includes
only two Australian species, both of which rank near the bottom of the
(grain weight only 13 milligrams,
list
grams
compared with
whopping 40
a
milli-
for the heaviest grains elsewhere in the world). That's not to say
had no potential crops
that Australia
at
all,
or that Aboriginal Australians
would never have developed indigenous food production.
Some
plants,
such as certain species of yams, taro, and arrowroot, are cultivated in
southern
New
Guinea but also grow wild
we
gathered by Aborigines there. As
cally
in
northern Australia and were
shall see, Aborigines in the climati-
most favorable areas of Australia were evolving
might have eventuated
in a direction that
food production. But any food production that
in
did arise indigenously in Australia
would have been
limited by the lack of
domesticable animals, the poverty of domesticable plants, and the difficult
soils
and climate.
Nomadism,
shelter
the hunter-gatherer lifestyle,
and possessions were
sensible adaptations to Australia's
driven resource unpredictability.
rigines simply
moved
risk
all
When
just a
few crops that could
fail,
in
ENSO-
local conditions deteriorated,
where conditions were temporarily
to an area
Rather than depending on
and minimal investment
Abo-
better.
they minimized
by developing an economy based on a great variety of wild foods, not
of which were likely to
fail
simultaneously. Instead of having fluctuating
populations that periodically outran their resources and starved, they
maintained smaller populations that enjoyed an abundance of food in
good years and
a sufficiency in
The Aboriginal Australian
termed
"firestick farming."
rounding landscape
in
bad
substitute for food production has been
The Aborigines modified and managed
ways
that increased
and animals, without resorting to
ally
the
fires
immediately;
fires
its
the sur-
production of edible plants
cultivation. In particular, they intention-
burned much of the landscape
poses:
years.
periodically.
That served several pur-
drove out animals that could be killed and eaten
converted dense thickets into open parkland in which
people could travel more easily; the parkland was also an ideal habitat for
kangaroos, Australia's prime game animal; and the
fires
stimulated the
growth both of new grass on which kangaroos fed and of fern roots on
which Aborigines themselves
fed.
I
3
We
think of Australian Aborigines as desert people, but most of them
were not. Instead,
it
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
O
with rainfall (because
their population densities varied
controls the production of terrestrial wild plant and animal foods) and
with abundance of aquatic foods in the sea,
rivers,
and
lakes.
The
highest
population densities of Aborigines were in Australia's wettest and most
productive regions: the Murray-Darling river system of the Southeast, the
eastern
also
and northern
came
coasts,
and the southwestern corner. Those areas
to support the densest populations of
ern Australia.
European
The reason we think of Aborigines
that Europeans killed or drove
settlers in
as desert people
them out of the most
mod-
simply
is
desirable areas, leav-
ing the last intact Aboriginal populations only in areas that Europeans
didn't want.
Within the
last
5,000 years, some of those productive regions witnessed
an intensification of Aboriginal food-gathering methods, and a buildup
of Aboriginal population density. Techniques were developed in eastern
Australia for rendering abundant and starchy, but extremely poisonous,
cycad seeds edible, by leaching out or fermenting the poison. The previously unexploited highlands of southeastern Australia began to be visited regularly
nuts and
moth
called the
grilled.
was
during the summer, by Aborigines feasting not only on cycad
yams but
also
on huge hibernating aggregations of a migratory
bogong moth, which
Another type of
tastes like a roasted chestnut
intensified food-gathering activity that
when
developed
the freshwater eel fisheries of the Murray-Darling river system, where
water
levels in
marshes fluctuate with seasonal
rains.
Native Australians
constructed elaborate systems of canals up to a mile and a half long, in
order to enable eels to extend their range from one marsh to another. Eels
were caught by equally elaborate weirs, traps
and stone walls across canals with
Traps at different
level rose
and
fell.
have involved a
levels in the
While the
lot of
a net placed in
marsh came
initial
set in
dead-end side canals,
an opening of the wall.
into operation as the water
construction of those "fish farms" must
work, they then fed many people. Nineteenth-cen-
tury European observers found villages of a dozen Aboriginal houses at
the eel farms,
and there are archaeological remains of
villages of
up
to
146
stone houses, implying at least seasonally resident populations of hundreds
of people.
Still
another development in eastern and northern Australia was the
harvesting of seeds of a wild millet, belonging to the same genus as the
broomcorn
millet that
was
a staple of early Chinese agriculture.
The
millet
YALI'S PEOPLE
was reaped with stone
the seeds,
which were
3
I
I
and threshed to obtain
knives, piled into haystacks,
then stored in skin
bags or
wooden
ground with millstones. Several of the tools used
the stone reaping knives
dishes and finally
in this process,
such as
and grindstones, were similar to the tools inde-
pendently invented in the Fertile Crescent for processing seeds of other
wild grasses.
Of
millet harvesting
is
methods of Aboriginal Australians,
the food-acquiring
all
perhaps the one most likely to have evolved eventually
into crop production.
Along with
intensified
food gathering
in the last
5,000 years came new
types of tools. Small stone blades and points provided
more
length of
sharp edge per pound of tool than the large stone tools they replaced.
Hatchets with ground stone edges, once present only locally in Australia,
became widespread.
appeared within the
Shell fishhooks
last
thousand
years.
Why did Australia not develop metal tools, writing, and politically
complex
A
societies?
major reason
we saw
gatherers, whereas, as
is
that Aborigines remained hunter-
Chapters 12-14, those developments
in
arose elsewhere only in populous and economically specialized societies
of food producers. In addition, Australia's aridity, infertility, and climatic
unpredictability limited
its
hunter-gatherer population to only a few hun-
dred thousand people. Compared with the tens of millions of people
ancient China or Mesoamerica, that
potential inventors,
innovations.
and
Nor were
far
its
meant that Australia had
in
far fewer
fewer societies to experiment with adopting
several
hundred thousand people organized into
closely interacting societies. Aboriginal Australia instead consisted of a sea
of very sparsely populated desert separating several
logical "islands,"
more productive
eco-
each of them holding only a fraction of the continent's
population and with interactions attenuated by the intervening distance.
Even within the
relatively
moist and productive eastern side of the conti-
nent, exchanges
between
societies
were limited by the 1,900 miles from
Queensland's tropical rain forests in the northeast to Victoria's temperate
rain forests in the southeast, a geographic
as that
as great
from Los Angeles to Alaska.
Some apparent
Australia
its
and ecological distance
regional or continentwide regressions of technology in
may stem from
the isolation
and
relatively
few inhabitants of
population centers. The boomerang, that quintessential Australian
12
3
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
weapon, was abandoned
tralia.
When
in the
Cape York Peninsula of northeastern Aus-
encountered by Europeans, the Aborigines of southwestern
The function of
Australia did not eat shellfish.
appear in Australian archaeological
sites
uncertain: while an easy explanation
is
the small stone points that
around 5,000 years ago remains
that they
may have been
used as
spearpoints and barbs, they are suspiciously similar to the stone points
and barbs used on arrows elsewhere
Guinea but absent
in the world. If they really
bows and arrows being present
used, the mystery of
in Australia
in
were so
modern
New
might be compounded: perhaps bows and
arrows actually were adopted for a while, then abandoned, across the Australian continent. All these
guns
in Japan, of
examples remind us of the abandonment of
bows and arrows and
pottery in most of Polynesia, and
of other technologies in other isolated societies (Chapter 13).
The most extreme
losses of technology in the Australian region
took
place on the island of Tasmania, 130 miles off the coast of southeastern
At Pleistocene times of low sea
Australia.
now
separating Tasmania from Australia
occupying Tasmania were part of the
level, the
was dry
human
land,
and the people
population distributed con-
tinuously over an expanded Australian continent.
last
shallow Bass Strait
When
the strait
was
at
flooded around 10,000 years ago, Tasmanians and mainland Austra-
became cut
lians
off
from each other because neither group possessed
watercraft capable of negotiating Bass Strait. Thereafter, Tasmania's population of
4,000 hunter-gatherers remained out of contact with
humans on
Earth, living in an isolation otherwise
all
known only from
other
science
fiction novels.
When
finally
encountered by Europeans in A.D. 1642, the Tasmanians
had the simplest material culture of any people
in the
modern world. Like
mainland Aborigines, they were hunter-gatherers without metal
they also lacked
many
tools.
But
technologies and artifacts widespread on the main-
bone tools of any type, boomerangs, ground
land, including barbed spears,
or polished stone tools, hafted stone tools, hooks, nets, pronged spears,
traps,
fire.
and the practices of catching and eating
Some
of these technologies
mainland Australia only
after
may have
fish,
sewing, and starting a
arrived or been invented in
Tasmania became
isolated, in
which case we
can conclude that the tiny Tasmanian population did not independently
invent these technologies for
brought to Tasmania when
and were subsequently
it
lost in
itself.
was
Others of these technologies were
still
part of the Australian mainland,
Tasmania's cultural isolation. For example,
YALI'S PEOPLE
I
3
Tasmanian archaeological record documents the disappearance of
the
at least three smaller islands (Flinders,
lated
ago,
B.C.
On
Kangaroo, and King) that were
iso-
and of awls, needles, and other bone
fishing,
to
3
from Australia or Tasmania by
human
populations that would
around 1500
tools,
rising sea levels
around 10,000 years
have numbered around 200
initially
400 died out completely.
Tasmania and those three smaller islands thus
illustrate in
a conclusion of broad potential significance for
world
extreme form
Human
history.
populations of only a few hundred people were unable to survive
complete isolation.
nitely in
A population
of 4,000
was
indefi-
able to survive for
10,000 years, but with significant cultural losses and significant failures to
invent, leaving
Australia's
lated than the
lated
with a uniquely simplified material culture. Mainland
it
300,000 hunter-gatherers were more numerous and
human
Tasmanians but
still
less iso-
constituted the smallest and most iso-
population of any of the continents. The documented
instances of technological regression
on the Australian mainland, and the
example of Tasmania, suggest that the limited repertoire of Native Australians
compared with that of peoples of other continents may stem
from the
effects of isolation
maintenance of technology
and population
—
like
size
in part
on the development and
those effects on Tasmania, but less
extreme. By implication, the same effects
may have
contributed to differ-
ences in technology between the largest continent (Eurasia) and the next
smaller ones (Africa,
Why
North America, and South America).
mo re -advanced
didn't
neighbors, Indonesia and
rated
New
technology reach Australia from
Guinea? As regards Indonesia,
from northwestern Australia by water and was very
ecologically. In addition, Indonesia itself
backwater
until a
new technology
a cultural
few thousand years ago. There
is
different
its
sepa-
from
it
and technological
no evidence of any
40,000 years ago,
until the
dingo appeared
B.C.
The dingo reached
Australia at the peak of the Austronesian expansion
from South China through Indonesia. Austronesians succeeded
all
was
or introduction reaching Australia from Indonesia, after
Australia's initial colonization
around 1500
was
it
the islands of Indonesia, including the
two
in settling
closest to Australia
—Timor
and Tanimbar (only 275 and 205 miles from modern Australia, respectively).
Since Austronesians covered far greater sea distances in the course
—
314
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
of their expansion across the Pacific,
repeatedly reached Australia, even
dingo to prove
it.
if
we would have to assume that they
we did not have the evidence of the
In historical times northwestern Australia
each year by sailing canoes from the Macassar
district
island of Sulawesi (Celebes), until the Australian
1907. Archaeological evidence traces the
visits in
a.d. 1000,
pose of the
mer or
visits
was
cucumbers
to obtain sea
was
visited
the Indonesian
government stopped the
visits
and they may well have been going on
trepang), starfish relatives exported
on
back
earlier.
(also
until
around
The main pur-
known
as beche-de-
from Macassar to China as a
reputed aphrodisiac and prized ingredient of soups.
Naturally, the trade that developed during the Macassans' annual visits
left
many
The Macassans planted tam-
legacies in northwestern Australia.
arind trees at their coastal campsites and sired children by Aboriginal
women.
Cloth, metal tools, pottery, and glass were brought as trade goods,
though Aborigines never learned to manufacture those items themselves.
Aborigines did acquire from the Macassans some loan words, some cere-
monies, and the practices of using dugout sailing canoes and smoking
tobacco in pipes.
But none of these influences altered the basic character of Australian
society.
More important than what happened
visits is
what did not happen. The Macassans did not
as a result of the
Macassan
settle in Australia
undoubtedly because the area of northwestern Australia facing Indonesia
is
much
too dry for Macassan agriculture.
cal rain forests
could have
settled,
but there
Since the Macassans thus
visits
Had
Indonesia faced the tropi-
and savannas of northeastern Australia, the Macassans
is
no evidence that they ever traveled
came only
and never penetrated inland,
in small
just a
numbers and
for
that far.
temporary
few groups of Australians on a
small stretch of coast were exposed to them. Even those few Australians
got to see only a fraction of Macassan culture and technology, rather
than a
full
Macassan
society with rice fields, pigs, villages,
shops. Because the Australians remained
and work-
nomadic hunter-gatherers, they
acquired only those few Macassan products and practices compatible with
their lifestyle.
Apparently
Dugout
sailing
much more
nesian influence
is
canoes and pipes, yes; forges and pigs, no.
astonishing than Australians' resistance to Indo-
their resistance to
narrow ribbon of water known
spoke
New
New
Guinea
as Torres Strait,
Guinea languages and had
faced Australian hunter-gatherers
pigs, pottery,
who
influence. Across the
New Guinea
farmers
who
and bows and arrows
spoke Australian languages and
YALI'S PEOPLE
I
5
bows and arrows. Furthermore,
lacked pigs, pottery, and
an open-water barrier but
(Muralug Island)
largest
3
is
the strait
not
is
dotted with a chain of islands, of which the
lies
only 10 miles from the Australian coast.
There were regular trading visits between Australia and the islands, and
New
between the islands and
Guinea.
Many
Aboriginal
women came
as
wives to Muralug Island, where they saw gardens and bows and arrows.
How was
it
that those
New
Guinea
traits
did not get transmitted to Aus-
tralia?
This cultural barrier at Torres Strait
is
astonishing only because
mislead ourselves into picturing a full-fledged
intensive agriculture
and pigs 10 miles
Cape York Aborigines never saw
was trade between
New
a
New
off the Australian coast. In reality,
mainland
New
Guinean. Instead, there
Guinea and the islands nearest
between those islands and Mabuiag Island halfway
then between
Mabuiag
Island
we may
Guinea society with
New Guinea,
down
then
the strait,
and Badu Island farther down the
strait,
then between Badu Island and Muralug Island, and finally between
Muralug and Cape York.
New
Guinea society became attenuated along that island chain. Pigs
were rare or absent on the
islands.
Lowland South
New
Guineans along
New
Torres Strait practiced not the intensive agriculture of the
Guinea
highlands but a slash-and-burn agriculture with heavy reliance on seafoods, hunting, and gathering.
The importance of even those
burn practices decreased from southern
along the island chain. Muralug Island
was
dry,
ulation,
New
itself,
slash-and-
Guinea toward Australia
the island nearest Australia,
marginal for agriculture, and supported only a small
human pop-
which subsisted mainly on seafood, wild yams, and mangrove
fruits.
The
interface
between
New
was thus reminiscent of the
sit
in a circle,
who
the
game
Strait
of telephone, in which children
one child whispers a word into the ear of the second
child,
whispers what she thinks she has just heard to the third child, and
word
finally
whispered by the
resemblance to the
Strait islands
rigines with
tion,
Guinea and Australia across Torres
children's
initial
last child
back to the
first
child bears
no
word. In the same way, trade along the Torres
was a telephone game
that finally presented
Cape York Abo-
New
society. In addi-
something very different from
we should not imagine
Guinea
that relations between
Cape York Aborigines were an uninterrupted love
Muralug
feast at
Islanders
and
which Aborigi-
nes eagerly sopped up culture from island teachers. Trade instead alter-
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
I
3
nated with war for the purposes of head-hunting and capturing
women
to
become wives.
Despite the dilution of New Guinea culture by distance and war, some
New Guinea influence did manage to reach Australia. Intermarriage carried New Guinea physical features, such as coiled rather than straight hair,
down
the
Cape York Peninsula. Four Cape York languages had phonemes
unusual for Australia, possibly because of the influence of
languages.
New
Guinea
New Guinea shell
New Guinea outrigger
Cape York Peninsula. New Guinea drums,
The most important transmissions were of
fishhooks, which spread far into Australia, and of
canoes, which spread
down
the
ceremonial masks, funeral posts, and pipes were also adopted on Cape
York. But Cape York Aborigines did not adopt agriculture, in part because
what they saw of
on Muralug Island was so watered-down. They did
it
not adopt pigs, of which there were few or none on the islands, and which
Nor
they would in any case have been unable to feed without agriculture.
bows and arrows, remaining
did they adopt
instead with their spears
and
spear-throwers.
Australia
is
big,
big landmasses
and so
was
is
New
Guinea. But contact between those two
few small groups of Torres
restricted to those
New
islanders with a highly attenuated
Guinea
Strait
culture, interacting with
those few small groups of Cape York Aborigines.
The
latter
groups' deci-
whatever reason, to use spears rather than bows and arrows,
sions, for
New Guinea culture
New Guinea cultural traits to all
New Guinea trait except shell fish-
and not to adopt certain other features of the diluted
they saw, blocked transmission of those
the rest of Australia.
hooks spread
in the cool
As
a result,
no
far into Australia. If the
New Guinea
hundreds of thousands of farmers
highlands had been in close contact with the Abo-
rigines in the cool highlands of southeastern Australia, a massive transfer
of intensive food production and
have followed. But the
tralian highlands
The
New
moon,
New
Guinea culture to Australia might
New Guinea highlands are separated from the Aus-
by 2,000 miles of ecologically very different landscape.
Guinea highlands might as well have been the mountains of the
as far as Australians' chances of observing
and adopting
New
Guinea highland practices were concerned.
In short, the persistence of Stone
tralia,
trading with Stone
sian farmers, at
first
Native Australians.
Age
New
Age nomadic hunter-gatherers
in
Aus-
Guinea farmers and Iron Age Indone-
seems to suggest singular obstinacy on the part of
On
closer examination,
it
merely proves to
reflect the
YALI'S PEOPLE
7
I
3
human
ubiquitous role of geography in the transmission of
culture
and
technology.
It remains for
Australia's Stone
Age
societies
navigator "discovered"
New
with Iron Age Europeans.
Guinea
ern half in 1828, and Britain and
1884. The
first
Europeans
settled
The reasons
maps,
produce
to
paperwork
New
most
New
New
New
Guineans.
Guinea, rather than vice
accounts,
descriptive
New
is still
ships
and
settlers
and administration; and the
was always very
New
populated largely by
administrative
Guinea; the political
New Guineans who resisted with bow and
number of European
Guinea
took them a long
it
who had the oceangoing
institutions to organize the ships, soldiers,
Yet the
and
Guinea; the writing systems and printing
useful in establishing control over
guns to shoot
Portuguese
but by 1960 European governments
Europeans were the ones
travel to
A
divided the eastern half in
coast,
that Europeans colonized
and compasses to
Guinea's and
1526, Holland claimed the west-
Germany
political control over
versa, are obvious.
presses
in
on the
time to penetrate into the interior,
had established
New
us to consider the encounters of
arrow and
small,
clubs.
and today
Guineans. That contrasts
sharply with the situation in Australia, the Americas, and South Africa,
where European settlement was numerous and
original native population over large areas.
lasting
Why
was
and replaced the
New
Guinea
dif-
ferent?
A major factor was the one that defeated all European attempts to settle
New Guinea lowlands until the 1880s: malaria and other tropical dis-
the
eases,
none of them an acute epidemic crowd infection
Chapter 11. The most ambitious of those
failed
as discussed in
lowland settlement plans,
organized by the French marquis de Rays around 1880 on the nearby
island of
New
Ireland,
ended with 930 out of the 1,000 colonists dead
within three years. Even with
many
of
modern medical treatments
my American and European
friends in
New
available today,
Guinea have been
forced to leave because of malaria, hepatitis, or other diseases, while
own
health legacy of
New
my
Guinea has been a year of malaria and a year
of dysentery.
As Europeans were being
felled
by
New
were Eurasian germs not simultaneously
New
Guinea lowland germs, why
felling
New
Guineans? Some
Guineans did become infected, but not on the massive
scale that
killed off
GUNS, GERMS, AND STE'EL
8
I
3
most of the native peoples of Australia and the Americas. One
lucky break for
New Guineans was that there were no permanent Euroin New Guinea until the 1880s, by which time public
pean settlements
health discoveries had
made progress
smallpox and other
in bringing
infec-
European populations under control. In addition, the
tious diseases of
Austronesian expansion had already been bringing a stream of Indonesian
settlers
and traders
to
infectious diseases
New
Guinea for 3,500
were well established
years. Since
in Indonesia,
much more
thereby gained long exposure and built up
Asian mainland
New
Guineans
resistance to Eur-
asian germs than did Aboriginal Australians.
The
sole part of
New
severe health problems
is
Guinea where Europeans do not
suffer
from
the highlands, above the altitudinal ceiling for
malaria. But the highlands, already occupied by dense populations of
New
Guineans, were not reached by Europeans until the 1930s. By then, the
Australian and Dutch colonial governments were no longer willing to open
up lands
for white settlement
them
driving
by
off their lands, as
killing native
people in large numbers or
had happened during
earlier centuries of
European colonialism.
The remaining
pean crops,
the
New
obstacle to
livestock,
European would-be
settlers
was
that Euro-
and subsistence methods do poorly everywhere
in
Guinea environment and climate. While introduced tropical
American crops such
as squash, corn,
and tomatoes are now grown
in
small quantities, and tea and coffee plantations have been established in
the highlands of
Papua
New
Guinea, staple European crops,
barley, and peas, have never taken hold. Introduced
in small
numbers, suffer from tropical diseases,
themselves.
Food production
in
New
crops and agricultural methods that
Guinea
New
cattle
just as
is
like
wheat,
and goats, kept
do European people
dominated by the
still
Guineans perfected over the
course of thousands of years.
All those
problems of disease, rugged
uted to Europeans' leaving eastern
nation of Papua
who
New
terrain,
New
and subsistence contrib-
Guinea (now the independent
Guinea) occupied and governed by
New
Guineans,
nevertheless use English as their official language, write with the
alphabet, live under democratic governmental institutions modeled on
those of England, and use guns manufactured overseas.
different in western
New
The outcome was
Guinea, which Indonesia took over from Hol-
land in 1963 and renamed Irian Jaya province. The province
erned
by Indonesians, for Indonesians.
Its
rural
is
now
population
is
govstill
YALI'S PEOPLE
overwhelmingly
a result of
New
Guinean, but
tion. Indonesians,
9
urban population
is
Indonesian, as
encouraging Indonesian immigra-
at
with their long history of exposure to malaria and other
tropical diseases shared with
germ
its
government policy aimed
I
3
New
barrier as have Europeans.
peans for subsisting in
New
Guineans, have not faced as potent a
They
are also better prepared than Euro-
Guinea, because Indonesian agriculture
already included bananas, sweet potatoes, and
some other
New
in Irian
Guinea agriculture. The ongoing changes
continuation, backed by a centralized government's
Austronesian expansion that began to reach
staple crops of
Jaya represent the
full
New Guinea
resources, of the
3,500 years ago.
Indonesians are modern Austronesians.
Europeans colonized Australia,
rather than Native Australians
colonizing Europe, for the same reasons that
of
New
New
Guinea. However, the fates of
we have
just seen in the case
Guineans and of Aboriginal
Australians were very different. Today, Australia
is
populated and gov-
erned by 20 million non-Aborigines, most of them of European descent,
plus increasing
numbers of Asians
arriving since Australia
previous White Australia immigration policy in 1973.
ulation declined by 80 percent,
an underclass of Australian
or government
stations.
The
Why
society.
reserves, or else
Many
work
did Aborigines fare so
basic reason
is
its
The Aboriginal pop-
from around 300,000
pean settlement to a minimum of 60,000
abandoned
at the time of
Euro-
in
1921. Aborigines today form
of
them
live
for whites as
on mission
stations
herdsmen on
cattle
much worse than New Guineans?
Australia's suitability (in
some
areas) for
European
food production and settlement, combined with the role of European guns,
germs, and
steel in clearing
stressed the difficulties
Aborigines out of the way. While
posed by Australia's climate and
soils, its
I
already
most pro-
ductive or fertile areas can nevertheless support European farming. Agriculture in the Australian temperate zone
is
now dominated
by the Eurasian
temperate-zone staple crops of wheat (Australia's leading crop), barley,
oats, apples,
origins
and grapes, along with sorghum and cotton of African Sahel
and potatoes of Andean
Australia (Queensland)
crops,
origins. In tropical areas of northeastern
beyond the optimal range of
European farmers introduced sugarcane of
bananas and
citrus fruit of tropical Southeast
of tropical South American origins.
As
New
Fertile
Guinea
Crescent
origins,
Asian origins, and peanuts
for livestock, Eurasian sheep
made
it
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 O
3
possible to extend food production to arid areas of Australia unsuitable
for agriculture,
and Eurasian
cattle joined
crops in moister areas.
Thus, the development of food production
lar parts of the
until
tralia
cal
in Australia
and animals domesticated
arrival of non-native crops
world too remote for
had
to await the
in climatically simi-
their domesticates to reach Australia
New
brought by transoceanic shipping. Unlike
Guinea, most of Aus-
lacked diseases serious enough to keep out Europeans. Only in tropi-
northern Australia did malaria and other tropical diseases force
Europeans to abandon
their 19th-century attempts at settlement,
which
succeeded only with the development of 20th-century medicine.
Australian Aborigines, of course, stood in the
way
of European food
production, especially because what was potentially the most productive
farmland and dairy country
initially
supported Australia's densest popula-
European settlement reduced the
tions of Aboriginal hunter-gatherers.
number of Aborigines by two means. One involved shooting them, an
option that Europeans considered more acceptable in the 19th and late
18th centuries than
1930s. The
when
they entered the
last large-scale
Springs in 1928.
New
Guinea highlands
in the
massacre, of 31 Aborigines, occurred at Alice
The other means involved European-introduced germs
to
which Aborigines had had no opportunity to acquire immunity or to
evolve genetic resistance. Within a year of the
arrival at Sydney, in 1788, corpses of Aborigines
ics
became a common
sight.
The
and
In these
all
settlers'
died in epidem-
whooping cough,
tuber-
syphilis.
two ways, independent Aboriginal
societies
areas suitable for European food production.
survived
European
principal recorded killers were smallpox,
influenza, measles, typhoid, typhus, chicken pox,
culosis,
first
who had
more or
less intact
were those
were eliminated
in
The only societies that
in areas of northern
and western
Australia useless to Europeans. Within one century of European colonization,
We
40,000 years of Aboriginal traditions had been mostly swept away.
can now
of this chapter.
return to the problem that
How, except by
I
posed near the beginning
postulating deficiencies in the Aborigines
themselves, can one account for the fact that white English colonists
apparently created a
literate,
food-producing, industrial democracy, within
a few decades of colonizing a continent
40,000 years were
still
nonliterate
whose inhabitants
after
more than
nomadic hunter-gatherers? Doesn't
that
YALI'S PEOPLE
3
2
I
constitute a perfectly controlled experiment in the evolution of
societies, forcing us to a simple racist
The
resolution of this problem
not create a
literate,
is
human
conclusion?
simple.
White English colonists did
food-producing, industrial democracy in Australia.
Instead, they imported
all
of the elements from outside Australia: the live-
stock, all of the crops (except
macadamia
nuts), the metallurgical
knowl-
edge, the steam engines, the guns, the alphabet, the political institutions,
even the germs. All these were the end products of 10,000 years of devel-
opment
nists
in
who
Eurasian environments. By an accident of geography, the colo-
landed at Sydney in 1788 inherited those elements. Europeans
have never learned to survive
in Australia or
inherited Eurasian technology. Robert Burke
enough to
write, but not smart
enough
New
Guinea without
their
and William Wills were smart
to survive in Australian desert
regions where Aborigines were living.
The people who did
tralians.
Of
create a society in Australia
course, the society that they created
were Aboriginal Aus-
was not
a literate, food-
producing, industrial democracy. The reasons follow straightforwardly
from features of the Australian environment.
CHAPTER
16
How China
Became
Chinese
IMMIGRATION, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, MULTILINGUALISM,
ethnic diversity
—my
state of California
these controversial policies
A
is
now pioneering a
the pioneers of
backlash against them.
glance into the classrooms of the Los Angeles public school system,
where
my
sons are being educated, fleshes out the abstract debates with
the faces of children.
in
and
was among
Those children represent over 80 languages spoken
the home, with English-speaking whites
one of my sons' playmates has
born outside the United
at least
is
Every single
one parent or grandparent
States; that's true of three of
grandparents. But immigration
America held
in the minority.
my own
who was
sons' four
merely restoring the diversity that
for thousands of years. Before
European settlement, the
mainland United States was home to hundreds of Native American
and languages and came under control of
a single
tribes
government only within
the last hundred years.
In these respects the United States
All but
one of the world's
six
is
a thoroughly
"normal" country.
most populous nations are melting pots that
achieved political unification recently, and that
still
support hundreds of
languages and ethnic groups. For example, Russia, once a small Slavic
state centered
on Moscow, did not even begin
Ural Mountains until a.d. 1582.
From then
322
its
expansion beyond the
until the
19th century, Russia
HOW CHINA BECAME CHINESE
3
proceeded to swallow up dozens of non-Slavic peoples,
retain their original language
tory
is
the story of
history
sia's
and
is
how
and
3
2.
many
of which
American
cultural identity. Just as
his-
our continent's expanse became American, Rus-
the story of
how
Russia became Russian. India, Indonesia,
Brazil are also recent political creations (or re-creations, in the case of
India),
The
home
to about 850, 670,
and 210 languages,
great exception to this rule of the recent melting pot
most populous nation, China. Today, China appears
and
respectively.
linguistically monolithic, at least to laypeople. It
politically in
From
then.
221
B.C.
and has remained so
Of
modern Europe
the world's
was already
unified
most of the centuries
the beginnings of literacy in China,
writing system, whereas
bets.
for
is
politically, culturally,
it
since
has had only a single
uses dozens of modified alpha-
China's 1.2 billion people, over 800 million speak Mandarin, the
language with by far the largest number of native speakers in the world.
Some 300
rin,
million others speak seven other languages as similar to
and to each other,
a melting pot, but
it
as Spanish
is
to Italian. Thus, not only
seems absurd to ask
is
China not
how China became
China has been Chinese, almost from the beginnings of
its
MandaChinese.
recorded
his-
tory.
We take this
how
astonishing
unity
is
genetic.
much for granted that we forget
why we should not have expected such
seeming unity of China so
it is.
One
reason
While a coarse
racial classification of
world peoples lumps
Chinese people as so-called Mongoloids, that category conceals
all
more
variation than the differences between Swedes, Italians,
much
and
Irish
within Europe. In particular, North and South Chinese are genetically and
physically rather different:
North Chinese are most
similar to Tibetans
and
Nepalese, while South Chinese are similar to Vietnamese and Filipinos.
My North and South Chinese friends can often distinguish each other at a
glance by physical appearance: the North Chinese tend to be
ier,
paler, with
more pointed
noses,
more "slanted" (because of what
North and South China
north
is
drier
is
differ in
taller,
and with smaller eyes that appear
termed their epicanthic
fold).
environment and climate as
and colder; the south, wetter and
between peoples of North and South China.
ples nevertheless
well: the
hotter. Genetic differences
arising in those differing environments imply a long history of
isolation
heav-
moderate
How did those peo-
end up with the same or very similar languages and
cul-
tures?
China's apparent linguistic near-unity
is
also puzzling in view of the
324
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
For instance,
linguistic disunity of other long-settled parts of the world.
we saw
in the last chapter that
New
Guinea, with
less
China's area and with only about 40,000 years of
than one-tenth of
human
history, has a
thousand languages, including dozens of language groups whose
ences are far greater than those
among
the eight
differ-
main Chinese languages.
Western Europe has evolved or acquired about 40 languages
just in the
6,000-8,000 years since the arrival of Indo-European languages, including
languages as different as English, Finnish, and Russian. Yet
to
human
presence in China for over half a million years.
fossils attest
What happened
must have arisen
to the tens of thousands of distinct languages that
in
China over that long time span?
These paradoxes hint that China too was once diverse, as
ulous nations
still
China
are.
earlier. Its "Salification"
differs
all
other pop-
only by having been unified
much
involved the drastic homogenization of a huge
region in an ancient melting pot, the repopulation of tropical Southeast
Asia,
and the exertion of a massive influence on Japan, Korea, and possibly
even India. Hence the history of China offers the key to the history of
of East Asia. This chapter will
the story of
tell
how China
did
all
become
Chinese.
A convenient starting
(see Figure 16.1).
point
a detailed linguistic
A glance at it is an eye-opener to
thinking of China as monolithic.
eight "big"
is
languages
It
all
map
of China
of us accustomed to
turns out that, in addition to China's
—Mandarin
and
its
seven close relatives (often
referred to collectively simply as "Chinese"), with between 11 million
800 million speakers each
many
— China also has over
130
"little"
and
languages,
of them with just a few thousand speakers. All these languages,
"big" and
"little," fall into
four language families, which differ greatly in
the compactness of their distributions.
At the one extreme, Mandarin and
its
relatives,
which constitute the
Chinese subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan language family, are distributed
continuously from North to South China.
from Manchuria
in the
One
could walk through China,
north to the Gulf of Tonkin in the south, while
remaining entirely within land occupied by native speakers of Mandarin
and
its
relatives.
The other
three families have fragmented distributions,
being spoken by "islands" of people surrounded by a "sea" of speakers of
Chinese and other language families.
325
HOW CHINA BECAME CHINESE
fragmented
Especially
Hmong-Mien)
about
five
is
the
distribution
languages, bearing the colorful
Miao-Yao speakers
live in
(alias
among
names of Red Miao, White Miao
Miao), Black Miao, Green Miao
(alias Striped
Miao-Yao
of the
family, which consists of 6 million speakers divided
(alias
Blue Miao), and Yao.
dozens of small enclaves,
all
surrounded by
speakers of other language families and scattered over an area of half a
million square miles, extending
from South China to Thailand. More than
100,000 Miao-speaking refugees from Vietnam have carried
family to the United States,
tive
name
this
language
where they are better known under the
alterna-
Hmong.
of
Another fragmented language group
is
the Austroasiatic family,
whose
most widely spoken languages are Vietnamese and Cambodian. The 60
million Austroasiatic speakers are scattered
the
Malay Peninsula
in the
from Vietnam
south and to northern India in the west. The
fourth and last of China's language families
and Lao), whose
(including Thai
in the east to
is
the Tai-Kadai family
50 million speakers are distributed
South China southward into Peninsular Thailand and west to
from
Myanmar
(Figure 16.1).
Miao-Yao speakers did not acquire
Naturally,
their current
distribution as a result of ancient helicopter flights that
fragmented
dropped them here
and there over the Asian landscape. Instead, one might guess that they
once had a more nearly continuous distribution, which became frag-
mented
as speakers of other language families
Yao speakers
linguistic
to
abandon
expanded or induced Miao-
their tongues. In fact,
much
of that process of
fragmentation occurred within the past 2,500 years and
documented
is
well
The ancestors of modern speakers of Thai, Lao,
moved south from South China and adjacent areas to
historically.
and Burmese
all
their present locations within historical times, successively inundating the
settled
descendants of previous migrations. Speakers of Chinese languages
were especially vigorous
whom
ethnic groups,
in replacing
The recorded
and
inferior.
221
B.C., describes the
and
linguistically converting other
down upon as primitive
Zhou Dynasty, from 1100 to
Chinese speakers looked
history of China's
conquest and absorption of most of China's non-
Chinese-speaking population by Chinese-speaking
We can use
map
states.
several types of reasoning to try to reconstruct the linguistic
of East Asia as of several thousand years ago. First,
the historically
known
we can reason
that
linguistic
modern
we can
reverse
expansions of recent millennia. Second,
areas with just a single language or related
Sino-Tibetan languages
Korean
W
India
/^
Taiwan
(0
$W
*<
/
'
o
^7
"Ml
^-^
(\Sri Lanka
fa
^^
—
v
\
V
i
^Vietnam
y<
°
Borneo
J
\
Austroasiatic
Tai-Kadai
Miao-Yao
Figure 16.1. The four language families of China
and Southeast
Asia.
HOW CHINA BECAME CHINESE
Figure 16.2.
Modern
political borders in
in interpreting the distributions
16.1.
327
East and Southeast Asia, for use
of language families shown
in Figure
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
2 8
3
language group occupying a large, continuous area
testify to a recent
geo-
graphic expansion of that group, such that not enough historical time has
elapsed for
it
to differentiate into
conversely that
modern
given language family
many
languages. Finally,
we can
reason
areas with a high diversity of languages within a
lie
closer to the early center of distribution of that
language family.
Using those three types of reasoning to turn back the
we conclude
that
North China was
originally occupied
linguistic clock,
by speakers of Chi-
nese and other Sino-Tibetan languages; that different parts of South China
were variously occupied by speakers of Miao-Yao, Austroasiatic, and Tai-
Kadai languages; and that Sino-Tibetan speakers have replaced most
An
speakers of those other families over South China.
linguistic
even more drastic
upheaval must have swept over tropical Southeast Asia to the
south of China
—
in Thailand,
Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and
Peninsular Malaysia. Whatever languages were originally spoken there
must now be
entirely extinct, because all of the
modern languages of those
countries appear to be recent invaders, mainly from South China or, in a
few
cases,
from Indonesia. Since Miao-Yao languages barely survived
the present,
we might
also guess that South
China once harbored
still
into
other
language families besides Miao-Yao, Austroasiatic, and Tai-Kadai, but
that those other families left
see, the
no modern surviving languages. As we
Austronesian language family
sian languages belong)
(to
which
may have been one
all
shall
Philippine and Polyne-
of those other families that
vanished from the Chinese mainland, and that
we know
only because
it
spread to Pacific islands and survived there.
These language replacements
European languages,
in East Asia
home to a thousand
know from our recent history
formerly
or
remind us of the spread of
more Native American
New World,
languages. We
come
to replace U.S.
especially English
and Spanish,
that English did not
into the
Indian languages merely because English sounded musical to Indians' ears.
Instead, the replacement entailed English-speaking immigrants' killing
most Indians by war, murder, and introduced
diseases,
Indians' being pressured into adopting English, the
The immediate causes of
in
and the surviving
new majority
language.
that language replacement were the advantages
technology and political organization, stemming ultimately from the
advantage of an early
rise of
food production, that invading Europeans
held over Native Americans. Essentially the same processes accounted for
the replacement of Aboriginal Australian languages by English,
and of
HOW CHINA BECAME CHINESE
subequatorial Africa's original
2 9
3
Pygmy and Khoisan languages by Bantu
languages.
Hence East
Asia's linguistic upheavals raise a corresponding question:
what enabled Sino-Tibetan speakers
to spread
from North China
to South
China, and speakers of Austroasiatic and the other original South China
language families to spread south into tropical Southeast Asia? Here,
must turn to archaeology
for evidence of the technological, political,
some Asians
agricultural advantages that
we
and
evidently gained over other
Asians.
J\s
everywhere else
Asia for most of
human
in the
world, the archaeological record in East
history reveals only the debris of hunter-gatherers
using unpolished stone tools and lacking pottery.
The
first
East Asian evi-
dence for something different comes from China, where crop remains,
bones of domestic animals, pottery, and polished (Neolithic) stone tools
appear by around 7500 B.C. That date
is
within a thousand years of the
beginning of the Neolithic Age and food production in the Fertile Crescent.
But because the previous millennium in China
is
poorly
known
archaeologically, one cannot decide at present whether the origins of Chi-
nese food production were contemporaneous with those in the Fertile
Crescent, slightly earlier, or slightly later. At the least,
China was one of the world's
first
centers of plant
we can
say that
and animal domestica-
tion.
China may actually have encompassed two or more independent centers
of origins of food production.
I
already mentioned the ecological differ-
ences between China's cool, dry north and
latitude, there are also ecological distinctions
and the
warm, wet
south.
At a given
between the coastal lowlands
interior uplands. Different wild plants are native to these disparate
environments and would thus have been variously available to incipient
farmers in various parts of China. In
two drought-resistant
fact, the earliest identified
species of millet in
North China, but
crops were
rice in
South
China, suggesting the possibility of separate northern and southern centers
of plant domestication.
Chinese
sites
with the
earliest evidence of
crops also contained bones of
domestic pigs, dogs, and chickens. These domestic animals and crops were
gradually joined by China's
many
other domesticates.
water buffalo were most important
Among
the animals,
(for pulling plows), while
silkworms,
3°
3
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
ducks, and geese were others. Familiar later Chinese crops include soybeans, hemp, citrus
fruit, tea, apricots,
just as Eurasia's east-west axis
and crops to spread westward
peaches, and pears. In addition,
many
of these Chinese animals
in ancient times,
West Asian domesticates
permitted
China and became important
also spread eastward to
economy have been
nificant western contributions to ancient China's
wheat and
barley,
cows and
and
horses,
there. Especially sig-
(to a lesser extent)
sheep and
goats.
As elsewhere
in the
world, in China food production gradually led to
the other hallmarks of "civilization" discussed in Chapters 11-14.
A
superb Chinese tradition of bronze metallurgy had
its
millennium B.C. and eventually resulted
developing by far the
earliest cast-iron
production
in the
in China's
origins in the third
world, around 500 B.C. The following
1,500 years saw the outpouring of Chinese technological inventions, mentioned in Chapter 13, that included paper, the compass, the wheelbarrow,
and gunpowder.
Fortified
towns emerged
in the third
millennium
B.C.,
with cemeteries whose great variation between unadorned and luxuriously
furnished graves bespeaks emerging class differences. Stratified societies
whose
rulers could mobilize large labor forces of
attested
Grand Canal
(the world's longest canal, over
North and South China. Writing
B.C. but
probably arose
emerging
cities
of China's
and
first
around 2000
As
commoners
are also
by huge urban defensive walls, big palaces, and eventually the
earlier.
states then
is
1,000 miles long), linking
preserved from the second millennium
Our
archaeological knowledge of China's
becomes supplemented by written accounts
dynasties, going back to the Xia Dynasty,
which arose
B.C.
for food production's
we cannot
specify
Old World
origin arose.
more
sinister
by-product of infectious diseases,
where within the Old World most major diseases of
However, European writings from Roman and
medieval times clearly describe the arrival of bubonic plague and possibly
smallpox from the
east, so these
origin. Influenza (derived
from
germs could be of Chinese or East Asian
pigs)
is
even more
likely to
have arisen
in
China, since pigs were domesticated so early and became so important
there.
China's size and ecological diversity spawned
tures, distinguishable archaeologically
and
artifacts. In the
many
separate local cul-
by their differing
styles of pottery
fourth millennium B.C. those local cultures expanded
geographically and began to interact, compete with each other, and
HOW CHINA BECAME CHINESE
coalesce. Just as exchanges of domesticates
3
I
3
between ecologically diverse
regions enriched Chinese food production, exchanges between culturally
diverse regions enriched Chinese culture
more
and technology, and
fierce
compe-
between warring chiefdoms drove the formation of ever larger and
tition
centralized states (Chapter 14).
While China's north-south gradient retarded crop diffusion, the gradient
was
of a barrier there than in the Americas or Africa, because
less
China's north-south distances were smaller; and because China's
sected neither by desert, as
isthmus, as
is
Yellow River
is
is
tran-
Africa and northern Mexico, nor by a narrow
Central America. Instead, China's long east-west rivers (the
in the north, the
Yangtze River
in the south) facilitated diffu-
sion of crops and technology between the coast and inland, while
its
broad
east-west expanse and relatively gentle terrain, which eventually permitted
two
those
river systems to be joined
by canals,
north-south
facilitated
exchanges. All these geographic factors contributed to the early cultural
and
political unification of
area but a
cultural
more rugged
and
China, whereas western Europe, with a similar
terrain
and no such unifying
rivers,
has resisted
political unification to this day.
Some developments spread from south
to north in China, especially
iron smelting and rice cultivation. But the predominant direction of spread
was from north
to south.
That trend
is
clearest for writing: in contrast to
western Eurasia, which produced a plethora of early writing systems, such
as
Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics,
Hittite,
Minoan, and the
Semitic alphabet, China developed just a single well-attested writing sys-
tem.
It
was perfected
North China, spread and preempted or replaced
in
any other nascent system, and evolved into the writing
North Chinese
today. Other major features of
still
used in China
societies that spread south-
ward were bronze technology, Sino-Tibetan languages, and
tion. All three of China's first three dynasties, the
Dynasties, arose in
North China
Preserved writings of the
already tended then (as
first
many
in the
state
forma-
Xia and Shang and Zhou
second millennium
B.C.
millennium B.C. show that ethnic Chinese
still
do today)
to feel culturally superior to
non-Chinese "barbarians," while North Chinese tended to regard even
South Chinese as barbarians. For example, a
the
first
millennium
people of those
five
made
Zhou Dynasty
writer of
to alter.
"The
—the Middle
and other
and the Rong,
—had
several natures, which they could
regions
wild tribes around them
not be
late
B.C. described China's other peoples as follows:
The
Yi,
states
all their
tribes
on the
east
were called
Yi.
They had
their
3
3
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
2
unbound, and tattooed
hair
out
its
being cooked by
and north
such as turning their
Some
of them ate their food with-
The Zhou author went on
fire."
tribes to the south, west,
tices,
their bodies.
to describe wild
as indulging in equally barbaric prac-
inward, tattooing their foreheads, wearing
feet
food
skins, living in caves, not eating cereals, and, of course, eating their
raw.
States organized
by or modeled on that Zhou Dynasty of North China
spread to South China during the
first
millennium
B.C.,
culminating in
China's political unification under the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C.
same period,
unification accelerated during that
nese states absorbed, or were copied by, the
of that cultural unification
emperor condemned
all
was
cultural
as literate "civilized" Chi-
illiterate
"barbarians."
ferocious: for instance, the
Some
first
Qin
previously written historical books as worthless
and ordered them burned, much
and
early Chinese history
Its
to the detriment of our understanding of
writing.
Those and other draconian measures
must have contributed to the spread of North China's Sino-Tibetan
lan-
guages over most of China, and to reducing the Miao-Yao and other lan-
guage families to
their present
fragmented distributions.
Within East Asia, China's head
writing,
and
state
start in
food production, technology,
formation had the consequence that Chinese innova-
tions also contributed heavily to developments in neighboring regions. For
instance, until the fourth millennium B.C.
was
still
belonging to what
site
of
most of
tropical Southeast Asia
occupied by hunter-gatherers making pebble and flake stone tools
Hoa
is
termed the Hoabinhian tradition, named
after the
Binh, in Vietnam. Thereafter, Chinese-derived crops, Neolithic
technology, village living, and pottery similar to that of South China
spread into tropical Southeast Asia, probably accompanied by South China's language families.
The
historical
southward expansions of Burmese,
Laotians, and Thais from South China completed the Sinification of tropical Southeast Asia. All those
modern peoples
are recent offshoots of their
South Chinese cousins.
So overwhelming was
this
Chinese steamroller that the former peoples
of tropical Southeast Asia have
left
behind few traces in the region's mod-
ern populations. Just three relict groups of hunter-gatherers
Negritos of the Malay Peninsula, the
Negritos of
Sri
Lanka
former inhabitants
modern
Andaman
Islanders,
—the Semang
and the Veddoid
—remain to suggest that tropical Southeast
may have
New Guineans
Asia's
been dark-skinned and curly-haired,
like
and unlike the light-skinned, straight-haired South
HOW CHINA BECAME CHINESE
3
who
Chinese and the modern tropical Southeast Asians
Those
may
Negritos of Southeast Asia
relict
source population from which
New
be the
3
3
are their offshoots.
last survivors of the
Guinea was colonized. The Semang
Negritos persisted as hunter-gatherers trading with neighboring farmers
but adopted an Austroasiatic language from those farmers
shall see, Philippine
Pygmy
Negrito and African
—much
we
as,
hunter-gatherers adopted
languages from their farmer trading partners. Only on the remote Anda-
man
Islands
persist
now
—the
do languages unrelated to the South Chinese language
last linguistic survivors
of
families
what must have been hundreds of
extinct aboriginal Southeast Asian languages.
Even Korea and Japan were heavily influenced by China, although
geographic isolation from
their
ensured that they did not lose their languages
it
or physical and genetic distinctness, as did tropical Southeast Asia. Korea
and Japan adopted
metallurgy by the
rice
first
from China
millennium
a.d. China also transmitted
second millennium
in the
B.C.,
and writing
B.C.,
in the first
bronze
millennium
West Asian wheat and barley to Korea and
Japan.
we
In thus describing China's seminal role in East Asian civilization,
should not exaggerate.
It is
not the case that
cultural advances in East
all
Asia stemmed from China and that Koreans, Japanese, and tropical Southeast Asians
were noninventive barbarians
ancient Japanese developed
some of
who
contributed nothing. The
the oldest pottery in the world
settled as hunter-gatherers in villages subsisting
on Japan's
resources, long before the arrival of food production.
probably domesticated
first
and
rich seafood
Some crops were
or independently in Japan, Korea, and tropical
Southeast Asia.
But China's role was nonetheless disproportionate. For example, the
prestige value of Chinese culture
is still
Japan has no thought of discarding
despite
only
drawbacks
its
now
replacing
its
so great in Japan and Korea that
its
Chinese-derived writing system
for representing Japanese speech, while
clumsy Chinese-derived writing with
its
Korea
is
wonderful
indigenous han'gul alphabet. That persistence of Chinese writing in Japan
and Korea
tion in
is
a vivid 20th-century legacy of plant
China nearly 10,000 years ago. Thanks to the achievements of East
Asia's first farmers,
(as
we
and animal domestica-
China became Chinese, and peoples from Thailand to
shall see in the next chapter) Easter Island
became
their cousins.
CHAPTER
17
Speedboat to Polynesia
PACIFIC
ISLAND HISTORY IS ENCAPSULATED FOR ME IN AN
happened when three Indonesian friends and I walked
incident that
into a store in Jayapura, the capital of Indonesian
friends'
New
names were Achmad, Wiwor, and Sauakari, and
Guinea.
My
the store
was
run by a merchant named Ping Wah. Achmad, an Indonesian government
officer,
ical
was
acting as the boss, because he
assistants.
forest
But
Achmad had
I
were organizing an ecolog-
Wiwor and
never before been in a
and had no idea what supplies to buy. The
At the moment
that
a Chinese newspaper.
it
and
survey for the government and had hired
but then shoved
it
New
results
Sauakari as local
Guinea mountain
were comical.
my friends entered the store, Ping Wah was reading
When he saw Wiwor and Sauakari, he kept reading
out of sight under the counter as soon as he noticed
Achmad. Achmad picked up an ax head, causing Wiwor and Sauakari
laugh, because he
showed him how
was holding
to hold
it
upside down.
it
correctly
then looked at Wiwor's bare
feet,
and to
test
it.
Wiwor and
Achmad and
to
Sauakari
Sauakari
with toes splayed wide from a lifetime
of not wearing shoes. Sauakari picked out the widest available shoes and
held them against Wiwor's
ing
Achmad and
feet,
but the shoes were
Sauakari and Ping
picked up a plastic
comb with which
3
3
Wah
to
4
still
too narrow, send-
into peals of laughter.
comb
out
Achmad
his straight, coarse black
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
hair.
to
3
Wiwor
would be no food
Achmad
to
buy
that he should
in
New
buy
lots of rice,
Guinea mountain
sweet potatoes, which would upset Achmad's stomach
the laughter,
all
the Indonesian government,
New
a
later
survey alone with
by pointing to
Ping
writing
far
New Guinea in the
New Guinean opposi-
Wiwor and
Sauakari.
He
let
me do
Guineans would
kill
the forest
explained his decision to
New
anyone with hair
me
Guineans,
like his if
they
from army backup.
Wah had
is
Achmad
which annexed western
decided to stay in town and to
New
hilarity.
Guinea highlander, and
his straight, coarse hair, so unlike that of
and saying that
found him
—more
the north coast. Javans dominate
1960s and used bombs and machine guns to crush
Achmad
because
villages except
could sense the underlying tensions.
I
was Javan, Ping Wah Chinese, Wiwor
Sauakari a New Guinea lowlander from
sia the
Wiwor. Wiwor
pulled on the comb. Everyone laughed, including
Despite
comb
immediately stuck in Wiwor's hair, then broke as soon as
It
responded by reminding
tion.
5
Glancing at Wiwor's tough, tightly coiled hair, he handed the
Wiwor.
there
3
put away his newspaper because importation of Chinese
nominally
illegal in
Indonesian
New Guinea.
In
much
of Indone-
merchants are Chinese immigrants. Latent mutual fear between the
economically dominant Chinese and politically dominant Javans erupted
in
1966
in a
bloody revolution, when Javans slaughtered hundreds of
thousands of Chinese. As
most
New
New
Guineans,
Wiwor and
Sauakari shared
Guineans' resentment of Javan dictatorship, but they also
scorned each other's groups. Highlanders dismiss lowlanders as effete sago
eaters, while
lowlanders dismiss highlanders as primitive big-heads, refer-
ring both to their massive coiled hair
Within a few days of
my
setting
and Sauakari, they came close to
Tensions
among
and to
up an
their reputation for arrogance.
isolated forest
camp with Wiwor
fighting each other with axes.
the groups that
Achmad, Wiwor, Sauakari, and Ping
Wah represent dominate the politics of Indonesia, the world's fourth-mostpopulous nation. These modern tensions have roots going back thousands
of years.
When we
think of major overseas population movements,
we
tend to focus on those since Columbus's discovery of the Americas, and on
the resulting replacements of non-Europeans by Europeans within historic
times. But there
were also big overseas movements long before Columbus,
and prehistoric replacements of non-European peoples by other non-European peoples. Wiwor, Achmad, and Sauakari represent three prehistorical
waves of people that moved overseas from the Asian mainland into the
3
Pacific.
that
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
3
Wiwor's Highlanders are probably descended from an early wave
New Guinea from Asia
had colonized
by 40,000 years ago. Achmad's
ancestors arrived in Java ultimately from the South China coast, around
4,000 years ago, completing the replacement there of people related to
New
Wiwor's ancestors. Sauakari's ancestors reached
Guinea around
3,600 years ago, as part of that same wave from the South China coast,
while Ping Wah's ancestors
still
The population movement
New
ancestors to Java and
expansion, was
years.
among the
One prong
of
remote islands of the
lithic
it
occupy China.
that
brought Achmad's and Sauakari's
Guinea, respectively, termed the Austronesian
biggest population
movements of the
last
6,000
became the Polynesians, who populated the most
Pacific
and were the greatest seafarers among Neo-
peoples. Austronesian languages are spoken today as native lan-
guages over more than half of the globe's span, from Madagascar to Easter
book on human population movements
Island. In this
Ice Ages, the
the
since the
end of the
Austronesian expansion occupies a central place, as one of
most important phenomena to be explained.
Why
did Austronesian
people, stemming ultimately from mainland China, colonize Java and the
rest of
Indonesia and replace the original inhabitants there, instead of
Indonesians colonizing China and replacing the Chinese? Having occupied
all
of Indonesia,
why were
than a narrow coastal
the Austronesians then unable to occupy
strip of the
New
they completely unable to displace Wiwor's people from the
highlands?
How
more
Guinea lowlands, and why were
New
Guinea
did the descendants of Chinese emigrants become trans-
formed into Polynesians?
Ioday, the population
of Java, most other Indonesian islands
(except the easternmost ones), and the Philippines
In appearance
and genes those
Chinese, and even
those of the
Malay
more
is
rather homogeneous.
islands' inhabitants are similar to
South
similar to tropical Southeast Asians, especially
Peninsula. Their languages are equally homogeneous:
while 374 languages are spoken in the Philippines and western and central
Indonesia,
all
of
them
are closely related
and
fall
within the same sub-
subfamily (Western Malayo-Polynesian) of the Austronesian language
family. Austronesian languages reached the Asian
mainland on the Malay
Peninsula and in small pockets in Vietnam and Cambodia, near the west-
ernmost Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo, but they occur
nowhere
else
on the mainland (Figure
17.1).
Some Austronesian words
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
3
3
7
Distribution of Austronesian languages
limits of
Austronesian family
Figure 17.1. The Austronesian language family consists of four
subfamilies, three of them confined to
The
nesian) widespread.
latter
Taiwan and one (Malayo-Poly-
subfamily in turn consists of two sub-
subfamilies, Western Malayo-Polynesian
(=
W M-P) and Central-
Eastern Malay o-Polynesian (= C-E M-P). The latter sub-subfamily in
turn consists of four sub-sub-subfamilies, the very widespread Oceanic one to the east
and
three others to the west in a
much
smaller
area comprising Halmahera, nearby islands of eastern Indonesia,
the west
and
end of New Guinea.
borrowed into English include "taboo" and "tattoo" (from
a Polynesian
language), "boondocks" (from the Tagalog language of the Philippines),
and "amok," "batik," and "orangutan" (from Malay).
That genetic and
is
linguistic uniformity of Indonesia
initially as surprising as is the
China. The famous Java
Homo
predominant
and the Philippines
linguistic uniformity of
erectus fossils prove that
humans have
occupied at least western Indonesia for a million years. That should have
given ample time for
humans
to evolve genetic
and
linguistic diversity
tropical adaptations, such as dark skins like those of
peoples
It is
—but instead Indonesians and Filipinos have
also surprising that Indonesians
and
many
and
other tropical
light skins.
Filipinos are so similar to trop-
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
3
3
Southeast Asians and South Chinese in other physical features besides
ical
light skins
and
in their genes.
A
glance at a
map makes
Indonesia offered the only possible route by which
it
obvious that
humans could have
New Guinea and Australia 40,000 years ago, so one might naively
have expected modern Indonesians to be like modern New Guineans and
Australians. In reality, there are only a few New Guinean-like populations
reached
in the Philippine
/
western Indonesia area, notably the Negritos living in
mountainous areas of the Philippines. As
Guinean-like
populations that
relict
I
is
also true of the three
mentioned
New
in speaking of tropical
Southeast Asia (Chapter 16), the Philippine Negritos could be
populations ancestral to Wiwor's people before they reached
relicts
of
New Guinea.
Even those Negritos speak Austronesian languages similar to those of their
neighbors,
Filipino
implying that they too
(like
Malaysia's
Semang
Negritos and Africa's Pygmies) have lost their original language.
All these facts suggest strongly that either tropical Southeast Asians or
South Chinese speaking Austronesian languages recently spread through
the Philippines
and Indonesia, replacing
islands except the Philippine Negritos,
all
the former inhabitants of those
and replacing
all
the original island
languages. That event evidently took place too recently for the colonists to
evolve dark skins, distinct language families, or genetic distinctiveness or
diversity.
eight
Their languages are of course
much more numerous than
dominant Chinese languages of mainland China, but are no more
diverse.
The
proliferation of
many
similar languages in the Philippines
Indonesia merely reflects the fact that the islands never underwent a
and cultural
cal
the
and
politi-
unification, as did China.
Details of language distributions provide valuable clues to the route of
this
hypothesized Austronesian expansion. The whole Austronesian lan-
guage family consists of 959 languages, divided among four subfamilies.
But one of those subfamilies, termed Malayo-Polynesian, comprises 945
of those 959 languages and covers almost the entire geographic range of
the Austronesian family. Before the recent overseas expansion of Europe-
ans speaking Indo-European languages, Austronesian was the most wide-
spread language family in the world. That suggests that the MalayoPolynesian subfamily differentiated recently out of the Austronesian family
and spread
far
from the Austronesian homeland, giving
local languages, all of
too
little
which are
still
rise to
many
closely related because there has been
time to develop large linguistic differences. For the location of
that Austronesian homeland,
we should
therefore look not to Malayo-
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
3
9
3
Polynesian but to the other three Austronesian subfamilies, which differ
considerably more from each other and from Malayo-Polynesian than the
sub-subfamilies of Malayo-Polynesian differ
among each
other.
turns out that those three other subfamilies have coincident distribu-
It
tions, all of
sian.
They
them
tiny
compared with the
distribution of Malayo-Polyne-
are confined to aborigines of the island of Taiwan, lying only
90 miles from the South China mainland. Taiwan's aborigines had the
island largely to themselves until
numbers within the
after
last
mainland Chinese began
thousand years.
Still
settling in large
more mainlanders
arrived
1945, especially after the Chinese Communists defeated the Chinese
Nationalists in 1949, so that aborigines
now
constitute only 2 percent of
Taiwan's population. The concentration of three out of the four Austrone-
on Taiwan suggests
sian subfamilies
realm, Taiwan
the
is
that, within the present
Austronesian
homeland where Austronesian languages have been
spoken for the most millennia and have consequently had the longest time
in
which to diverge.
All other Austronesian languages,
from those on Mad-
agascar to those on Easter Island, would then stem from a population
expansion out of Taiwan.
We
can now
turn to archaeological evidence. While the debris of
ancient village sites does not include fossilized
and
pottery,
it
words along with bones
does reveal movements of people and cultural artifacts that
could be associated with languages. Like the rest of the world, most of
the present Austronesian realm
many
Pacific islands
—was
—Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and
originally occupied
by hunter-gatherers lacking
pottery, polished stone tools, domestic animals,
and crops. (The
sole
exceptions to this generalization are the remote islands of Madagascar,
eastern Melanesia, Polynesia,
and Micronesia, which were never reached
by hunter-gatherers and remained empty of humans until the Austronesian
expansion.)
The
first
archaeological signs of something different within
the Austronesian realm
millennium
B.C.,
style (so-called
come from
—Taiwan. Beginning around the fourth
polished stone tools and a distinctive decorated pottery
Ta-p'en-k'eng pottery) derived from earlier South China
mainland pottery appeared on Taiwan and on the opposite coast of the
South China mainland. Remains of
rice
and
millet at later
Taiwanese
sites
provide evidence of agriculture.
Ta-p'en-k'eng
sites
of Taiwan and the South China coast are
full
of fish
4°
3
bones and mollusk
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
of stone net sinkers and adzes suitable
shells, as well as
for hollowing out a
wooden
canoe. Evidently, those
first
Neolithic occu-
pants of Taiwan had watercraft adequate for deep-sea fishing and for regular sea traffic across
coast. Thus,
Taiwan
Taiwan
separating that island from the China
Strait,
may have
Strait
served as the training ground where
mainland Chinese developed the open-water maritime
permit them to expand over the
One
a bark beater, a stone implement used for
is
pounding the fibrous bark of certain
ing.
tic
Once
would
Taiwan's Ta-p'en-k'eng culture to
specific type of artifact linking
later Pacific island cultures
skills that
Pacific.
Pacific peoples spread
tree species into rope, nets,
and
cloth-
beyond the range of wool-yielding domes-
animals and fiber plant crops and hence of woven clothing, they became
dependent on pounded bark "cloth" for their clothing. Inhabitants of
Rennell Island, a traditional Polynesian island that did not become Westernized until the 1930s, told
side benefit that the island
me
that Westernization yielded the wonderful
became
quiet.
No more
everywhere, pounding out bark cloth from
sounds of bark beaters
dawn
until after
dusk every
day!
Within a millennium or so
after the Ta-p'en-k'eng culture
reached Tai-
wan, archaeological evidence shows that cultures obviously derived from
it
spread farther and farther from Taiwan to
sian realm (Figure 17.2).
tery,
bones of domestic
The evidence
pigs,
which has
up the modern Austrone-
and crop remains. For example, the decorated
Ta-p'en-k'eng pottery on Taiwan gave
pottery,
fill
includes ground stone tools, pot-
also been
found
way
to undecorated plain or red
at sites in the Philippines
and on the
Indonesian islands of Celebes and Timor. This cultural "package" of pottery,
stone tools, and domesticates appeared around 3000 B.C. in the Phil-
ippines,
around 2500
B.C.
on the Indonesian
Borneo and Timor, around 2000
1600
B.C. in the
assumed a speedboat pace,
ward
B.C.
New Guinea region.
last
we
shall see, the
as bearers of the cultural
expansion
package raced
Ocean beyond
the
east-
Solomon
phases of the expansion, during the millennium after
a.d. 1, resulted in the colonization of every Polynesian
island capable of supporting
ward across
and North
on Java and Sumatra, and around
There, as
into the previously uninhabited Pacific
Archipelago. The
islands of Celebes
the Indian
humans. Astonishingly,
Ocean
it
and Micronesian
also swept west-
to the east coast of Africa, resulting in the
colonization of the island of Madagascar.
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
3
4
i
Figure 17.2. The paths of the Austronesian expansion, with approxi-
mate dates when each region was reached. 4a = Borneo, 4b — Celebes,
= Timor
= Halmahera (around 1600 B.C.).
B.C.). 6a = Bismarck Archipelago (around 1600 B.C.). 6b = Malay Peninsula, 6c = Vietnam (around
1000 B.C.). 7 = Solomon Archipelago (around 1600 B.C.). 8 = Santa
Cruz, 9c = Tonga, 9d = New Caledonia (around 1200 B.C.). 10b =
4c
(around 2500
B.C.).
5a
5b = Java, 5c = Sumatra (around 2000
Society Islands, 10c
(around a.d.
At
least
= Cook
Islands,
11a
= Tuamotu
1).
until
the expansion reached coastal
between islands was probably by double-outrigger
are
still
Archipelago
New
Guinea, travel
sailing canoes,
sented a major advance over the simple dugout canoes prevalent
traditional peoples living
dugout canoe
(that
as
is,
which
widespread throughout Indonesia today. That boat design repre-
is
just
what
among
on inland waterways throughout the world.
its
hollowed out), and
its
name
implies: a solid tree trunk
"dug out"
ends shaped, by an adze. Since the canoe
round-bottomed as the trunk from which
it
was
A
is
carved, the least imbal-
ance in weight distribution tips the canoe toward the overweighted
side.
3
Whenever
I've
Guineans,
I
and
been paddled in dugouts up
have spent
movement
slight
my
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
4 2
much
New
Guinea
of the trip in terror:
rivers
by
New
seemed that every
it
of mine risked capsizing the canoe and spilling out
commune
binoculars to
with crocodiles.
on calm
to look secure while paddling dugouts
even
New
some
stabilizing device
Guineans can use a dugout
must have been
in seas
New
Guineans manage
and
lakes
me
rivers,
but not
with modest waves. Hence
essential not only for the Austrone-
sian expansion through Indonesia but even for the initial colonization of
Taiwan.
The solution was
hull
and
to lash
several feet
from
two smaller
it,
logs ("outriggers") parallel to the
one on each
side,
connected to the hull by
Whenever
poles lashed perpendicular to the hull and outriggers.
starts to tip
toward one
side, the
the hull
buoyancy of the outrigger on that
side
prevents the outrigger from being pushed under the water and hence
makes
it
virtually impossible to capsize the vessel.
double-outrigger sailing canoe
may have been
The invention of
the
the technological break-
through that triggered the Austronesian expansion from the Chinese mainland.
Iwo
striking coincidences between
archaeological and linguistic
evidence support the inference that the people bringing a Neolithic culture
to Taiwan, the Philippines,
and Indonesia thousands of years ago spoke
Austronesian languages and were ancestral to the Austronesian speakers
still
inhabiting those islands today. First, both types of evidence point
unequivocally to the colonization of Taiwan as the
sion
from the South China
coast,
and
first
stage of the expan-
to the colonization of the Philippines
and Indonesia from Taiwan as the next
stage. If the
expansion had pro-
ceeded from tropical Southeast Asia's Malay Peninsula to the nearest Indonesian island of Sumatra, then to other Indonesian islands, and finally to
the Philippines
and Taiwan, we would
find the deepest divisions (reflecting
the greatest time depth) of the Austronesian language family
modern languages of the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, and
of Taiwan and the Philippines
would have
among
the
the languages
differentiated only recently
within a single subfamily. Instead, the deepest divisions are in Taiwan, and
the languages of the
Malay Peninsula and Sumatra
fall
together in the
same sub-sub-subfamily: a recent branch of the Western Malayo-Polyne-
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
sian sub-subfamily,
which
in
is
3
4 3
turn a fairly recent branch of the Malayo-
Polynesian subfamily. Those details of linguistic relationships agree perfectly
with the archaeological evidence that the colonization of the Malay
Peninsula was recent, and followed rather than preceded the colonization
of Taiwan, the Philippines,
and Indonesia.
The other coincidence between archaeological and
linguistic evidence
concerns the cultural baggage that ancient Austronesians used. Archaeol-
ogy provides us with direct evidence of culture
and
fish
One might
bones, and so on.
studying only
in the
initially
modern languages whose unwritten
unknown, could ever
figure out
form of
is
a linguist,
ancestral forms remain
whether Austronesians
6,000 years ago had pigs. The solution
pottery, pig
wonder how
living
on Taiwan
to reconstruct the vocabularies
of vanished ancient languages (so-called protolanguages) by comparing
vocabularies of
modern languages derived from them.
For instance, the words meaning "sheep"
in
many
languages of the
Indo-European language family, distributed from Ireland to India, are
quite similar: "avis," "avis," "ovis," "oveja," "ovtsa," "owis,"
in Lithuanian, Sanskrit, Latin, Spanish, Russian,
tively.
(The English "sheep"
is
various
and "oi"
Irish, respec-
obviously from a different root, but English
retains the original root in the
shifts that the
Greek, and
word "ewe.") Comparison
of the sound
modern Indo-European languages have undergone
during their histories suggests that the original form was "owis" in the
ancestral
Indo-European language spoken around 6,000 years ago. That
unwritten ancestral language
Evidently,
is
termed Proto-Indo-European.
Proto-Indo-Europeans
6,000
years
ago
had sheep,
in
agreement with archaeological evidence. Nearly 2,000 other words of
their
vocabulary can similarly be reconstructed, including words for
"goat," "horse," "wheel," "brother," and "eye." But no Proto-Indo-Euro-
pean word can be reconstructed for "gun," which uses different roots
different
modern Indo-European languages: "gun"
in
in English, "fusil" in
French, "ruzhyo" in Russian, and so on. That shouldn't surprise us: people
6,000 years ago couldn't possibly have had a word for guns, which were
invented only within the past 1,000 years. Since there
ited
was thus no
inher-
shared root meaning "gun," each Indo-European language had to
invent or
borrow
its
Proceeding in the
pine, Indonesian,
own word when guns were finally invented.
same way, we can compare modern Taiwanese,
and Polynesian languages
Philip-
to reconstruct a Proto-Aus-
3
4 4
B
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
tronesian language spoken in the distant past.
To no
one's surprise, that
reconstructed Proto-Austronesian language had words with meanings
such as "two," "bird," "ear," and "head louse": of course, Proto-Austronesians could count to 2,
knew
interestingly, the reconstructed
lice.
More
which must therefore have been part of Proto-Austronesian
"rice,"
The reconstructed language
ture.
of birds, and had ears and
language had words for "pig," "dog," and
is full
economy, such as "outrigger canoe,"
"fish trap,"
and "sea
turtle."
cul-
of words indicating a maritime
"sail,"
"giant clam," "octopus,"
This linguistic evidence regarding the culture
of Proto-Austronesians, wherever and whenever they lived, agrees well
with the archaeological evidence regarding the pottery-making, sea-oriented, food-producing people living
on Taiwan around 6,000 years ago.
The same procedure can be applied
to reconstruct Proto-Malayo-Poly-
nesian, the ancestral language spoken by Austronesians after emigrating
from Taiwan. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian contains words
for
many
tropical
crops like taro, breadfruit, bananas, yams, and coconuts, for which no
word can be
reconstructed in Proto-Austronesian. Thus, the linguistic evi-
dence suggests that
many
tropical crops
repertoire after the emigration
were added to the Austronesian
from Taiwan. This conclusion agrees with
archaeological evidence: as colonizing farmers spread southward from Tai-
wan
(lying
about 23 degrees north of the equator) toward the equatorial
tropics, they
came
to
depend increasingly on tropical root and
which they proceeded to carry with them out into the tropical
How could those Austronesian-speaking farmers
Taiwan replace the
tree crops,
Pacific.
from South China
via
original hunter-gatherer population of the Philippines
and western Indonesia so completely that
little
genetic
and no
linguistic
evidence of that original population survived? The reasons resemble the
reasons
why Europeans
within the
last
two
replaced or exterminated Native Australians
centuries,
and why South Chinese replaced the
tropical Southeast Asians earlier: the farmers'
superior tools and weapons,
skills,
erers
much
original
denser populations,
more developed watercraft and maritime
and epidemic diseases to which the farmers but not the hunter-gath-
had some
resistance.
On
the Asian mainland Austronesian-speaking
farmers were able similarly to replace some of the former hunter-gatherers
of the
Malay
Peninsula, because Austronesians colonized the peninsula
from the south and east (from the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and
Borneo) around the same time that Austroasiatic-speaking farmers were
colonizing the peninsula from the north (from Thailand). Other Austrone-
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
sians
managed
Cambodia
to
3
4
5
to establish themselves in parts of southern
become
Vietnam and
modern Chamic minority of
the ancestors of the
those countries.
However, Austronesian farmers could spread no
farther into the South-
east Asian mainland, because Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai farmers had
already replaced the former hunter-gatherers there, and because Austronesian farmers
had no advantage over Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai farmers.
Although we
infer that
Austronesian speakers originated from coastal
South China, Austronesian languages today are not spoken anywhere
mainland China, possibly because they were among the hundreds of
in
for-
mer Chinese languages eliminated by the southward expansion of SinoTibetan speakers. But the language families closest to Austronesian are
thought to be Tai-Kadai, Austroasiatic, and Miao-Yao. Thus, while Austronesian languages in China
nese dynasties,
We
some of
have now
may
their sister
followed the
not have survived the onslaught of Chi-
and cousin languages
initial stages
from the South China
sion for 2,500 miles
the Philippines, to western
of the Austronesian expancoast, through
Taiwan and
and central Indonesia. In the course of that
expansion, Austronesians came to occupy
islands,
did.
from the seacoast to the
all
habitable areas of those
and from the lowlands to the
interior,
mountains. By 1500 B.C. their familiar archaeological hallmarks, including
pig bones
and plain red-slipped
pottery,
show
that they
eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera, less than
ern end of the big mountainous island of
to overrun that island, just as they
New
had reached the
200 miles from the west-
Guinea. Did they proceed
had already overrun the big mountain-
ous islands of Celebes, Borneo, Java, and Sumatra?
They did
not, as a glance at the faces of
makes obvious, and
My
friend
as detailed studies of
Wiwor and
from Indonesians,
coiled hair,
and
all
other
Filipinos,
face shapes.
New
most modern
New
Guinea highlanders
and South Chinese
New
Guineans
Guinean genes confirm.
in their
Most lowlanders from
differ
obviously
dark skins, tightly
New Guinea's
interior
and south coast resemble the highlanders except that they tend to be
taller.
Geneticists have failed to find characteristic Austronesian gene markers in
blood samples from
New
Guinea highlanders.
But peoples of New Guinea's north and east coasts, and of the Bismarck
and Solomon Archipelagoes north and east of New Guinea, present a more
3
complex
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
4 6
picture. In appearance, they are variably intermediate
Highlanders like
Wiwor and
age considerably closer to Wiwor. For instance,
wavy
the north coast has
and Wiwor's coiled
hair,
between
Indonesians like Achmad, though on the aver-
my
hair intermediate between
friend Sauakari
Achmad's
from
straight hair
and skin somewhat paler than Wiwor's, though
considerably darker than Achmad's. Genetically, the Bismarck and Solo-
New Guineans are about 15 percent
New Guinea highlanders. Hence Austronesians evidently reached the New Guinea region but failed completely
to penetrate the island's interior and were genetically diluted by New
mon
and north coastal
islanders
Austronesian and 85 percent
like
Guinea's previous residents on the north coast and islands.
Modern
languages
Chapter 15
tell
essentially the
explained that most
1
New
same story but add
detail. In
Guinea languages, termed Papuan
languages, are unrelated to any language families elsewhere in the world.
New Guinea mountains,
the whole of southwestern and south-central lowland New Guinea, including the coast, and the interior of northern New Guinea is a Papuan lan-
Without exception, every language spoken
guage.
But Austronesian
languages
are
in the
spoken
in
a
narrow
immediately on the north and southeast coasts. Most languages of the
marck and Solomon
ken only
in isolated
islands are Austronesian:
New
Bis-
are spo-
pockets on a few islands.
Austronesian languages spoken
north coastal
Papuan languages
strip
Guinea are
in the
Bismarcks and Solomons and
related, as a separate sub-sub-subfamily
termed Oceanic, to the sub-sub-subfamily of languages spoken on Hal-
mahera and the west end of New Guinea. That
firms, as
linguistic relationship con-
one would expect from a map, that Austronesian speakers of the
New Guinea region arrived by way of Halmahera.
and Papuan languages and
to long contact
their distributions in
show massive
mars, making
it
North
New Guinea testify
between the Austronesian invaders and the Papuan-speak-
ing residents. Both the Austronesian
region
Details of Austronesian
and the Papuan languages of the
influences of each other's vocabularies
difficult to
and gram-
decide whether certain languages are basically
Austronesian languages influenced by Papuan ones or the reverse. As one
travels
from
village to village along the north coast or
one passes from a
a
village
its
fringing islands,
with an Austronesian language to a village with
Papuan language and then
to another Austronesian-speaking village,
without any genetic discontinuity at the
linguistic boundaries.
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
3
4 7
All this suggests that descendants of Austronesian invaders
nal
New
and of
origi-
Guineans have been trading, intermarrying, and acquiring each
other's genes
and languages
Guinea coast and
its
for several
islands.
thousand years on the North
New
That long contact transferred Austronesian
languages more effectively than Austronesian genes, with the result that
most Bismarck and Solomon islanders
now speak
Austronesian languages,
even though their appearance and most of their genes are
still
Papuan. But
neither the genes nor the languages of the Austronesians penetrated
Guinea's interior. The outcome of their invasion of
New
New
Guinea was thus
very different from the outcome of their invasion of Borneo, Celebes, and
other big Indonesian islands, where their steamroller eliminated almost
traces of the previous inhabitants' genes
what happened
in
New
Guinea,
let
us
all
and languages. To understand
now
turn to the evidence from
archaeology.
Around
1600 b.c,
almost simultaneously with their appearance on
Halmahera, the familiar archaeological hallmarks of the Austronesian
expansion
—
pigs, chickens, dogs, red-slipped pottery,
stone and of giant clamshells
—appear
New
in the
and adzes of ground
Guinea region. But two
features distinguish the Austronesians' arrival there
arrival in the Philippines
The
of
first
which do
significance but
recognize an early Austronesian
site.
Guinea region was
finely
let
which are
aesthetic features
archaeologists immediately
Whereas most
pottery in the Philippines and Indonesia
New
their earlier
and Indonesia.
feature consists of pottery designs,
no economic
from
early Austronesian
was undecorated, pottery
in the
decorated with geometric designs arranged
in horizontal bands. In other respects the pottery preserved the red slip
and
the vessel forms characteristic of earlier Austronesian pottery in Indonesia.
Evidently, Austronesian settlers in the
New
Guinea region got the idea of
"tattooing" their pots, perhaps inspired by geometric designs that they
had already been using on
their
bark cloth and body tattoos. This
termed Lapita pottery, after an archaeological
site
named
style is
Lapita, where
it
was described.
The much more
sites in
the
significant distinguishing feature of early Austronesian
New Guinea
the Philippines
region
is
their distribution. In contrast to those in
and Indonesia, where even the
earliest
known
Austronesian
3
sites are
ita
on big
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
4^
Luzon and Borneo and Celebes,
islands like
pottery in the
New
To
fringing remote larger islands.
only one
(Aitape)
site
couple of
region are in the Bismarcks, on
islands, occasionally
(as
we
shall see) the
with Lap-
date, Lapita pottery has been
on the north coast of
the Solomons.
sites in
sites
Guinea region are virtually confined to small
New
Most Lapita
islets off
Guinea
itself,
and
New
of the
sites
islets
found
at
at a
Guinea
the coast of the larger Bismarck
on the coasts of the
larger islands themselves. Since
makers of Lapita pottery were capable of
sailing thou-
sands of miles, their failure to transfer their villages a few miles to the large
New
Bismarck islands, or a few dozen miles to
due to
The
basis of Lapita subsistence can be reconstructed
excavated by archaeologists at Lapita
ily
Guinea, was certainly not
inability to get there.
on seafood, including
They had
fish,
porpoises, sea turtles, sharks, and shellfish.
and dogs and
pigs, chickens,
from the garbage
Lapita people depended heav-
sites.
ate the nuts of
many
trees (includ-
ing coconuts). While they probably also ate the usual Austronesian root
crops, such as taro
and yams, evidence of those crops
much more
because hard nut shells are
thousands of years
Naturally,
it is
in
likely
is
hard to obtain,
than soft roots to persist for
garbage heaps.
impossible to prove directly that the people
who made
Lapita pots spoke an Austronesian language. However, two facts
this inference virtually certain. First,
and
pots, the pots themselves
ancestral to
itants,
except for the decorations on the
their associated cultural paraphernalia are
similar to the cultural remains
found
on remote
and Philippine
at Indonesian
modern Austronesian-speaking
tery also appears
societies.
human
inhab-
with no evidence of a major second wave of settlement subsequent
and where the modern inhabitants speak an
Austronesian language (more of this below). Hence Lapita pottery
assumed to mark Austronesians'
What were
bigger islands?
makers
visited
arrival in the
New
those Austronesian pot makers doing on
They were probably
lived until recently
on
living in the
islets in
such a village on Malai
the
Islet, in
New
may
When
I
be
Guinea region.
islets
same way
as
adjacent to
modern pot
Guinea region. In 1972
I
the Siassi island group, off the
medium-sized island of Umboi, off the larger Bismarck island of New
ain.
sites
Second, Lapita pot-
with no previous
Pacific islands
to that bringing Lapita pots,
safely
make
Brit-
stepped ashore on Malai in search of birds, knowing nothing
about the people there,
I
was astonished by
the sight that greeted me.
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
3
4 9
Instead of the usual small village of low huts, surrounded by large gardens
sufficient to feed the village,
and with
a
few canoes drawn up on the beach,
most of the area of Malai was occupied by two-story wooden houses
by
side, leaving
lent of
no ground
available for gardens
downtown Manhattan. On
side
—the New Guinea equiva-
the beach were
rows of big canoes.
It
turned out that Malai islanders, besides being fishermen, were also special-
and
ized potters, carvers,
ated pots and
islands
traders,
wooden bowls,
and exchanging
their
Even the timber
necessities.
lived
wares for
by making beautifully decor-
them
in their
canoes to larger
and other
pigs, dogs, vegetables,
Malai canoes was obtained by trade from
for
on nearby Umboi
villagers
who
transporting
Malai does not have
Island, since
trees big
enough to be fashioned into canoes.
European shipping, trade between
In the days before
islands in the
New
Guinea region was monopolized by such specialized groups of canoebuilding potters, skilled in sailing without navigational instruments, and
on offshore
living
time
islets
or occasionally in mainland coastal villages. By the
reached Malai in 1972, those indigenous trade networks had col-
I
lapsed or contracted, partly because of competition from European
vessels
and aluminum
ment forbade long-distance canoe voyaging
traders were
drowned.
island traders of the
I
would guess
New
and over even the
largest
after
on Bismarck
from the Lapita
peninsula.
century,
style
When
all
islets.
accidents in which
to the north coast of
Bismarck and Solomon
Not
until
1600
in the centuries after
occurred mostly after Lapita times, since Lapita
centrated
some
that the Lapita potters were the inter-
Guinea region
The spread of Austronesian languages
itself,
motor
pots, partly because the Australian colonial govern-
sites
around a.d.
B.C.
New Guinea
islands,
must have
themselves were con1
did pottery derived
New Guinea's southeast
exploring New Guinea in the late 19th
appear on the south side of
Europeans began
the remainder of
New Guinea's south coast still supported pop-
ulations only of Papuan-language speakers, even
though Austronesian-
speaking populations were established not only on the southeastern peninsula but also
New
on the Aru and Kei Islands
(lying
70-80 miles
off western
Guinea's south coast). Austronesians thus had thousands of years in
which to colonize
New
Guinea's interior and
nearby bases, but they never did
Guinea's coastal fringe
so.
was more
Even
southern coast from
their colonization of
linguistic
coastal peoples remained predominantly
its
New
than genetic:
Guineans
North
all
New
northern
in their genes.
At
5°
3
B
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
most, some of them merely adopted Austronesian languages, possibly in
order to communicate with the long-distance traders
Ihus, the outcome
who
linked societies.
in Indonesia
and the
Philippines. In
the latter region the indigenous population disappeared
driven
off, killed, infected,
—presumably
or assimilated by the invaders. In the former
region the indigenous population mostly kept the invaders out.
ers (the Austronesians)
may
populations
were the same
in
New
The invad-
both cases, and the indigenous
also have been genetically similar to each other,
original Indonesian population supplanted
related to
New
of the Austronesian expansion in the
Guinea region was opposite to that
Guineans, as
I
by Austronesians
suggested earlier.
Why
the
if
was
really
the opposite out-
comes?
The answer becomes obvious when one considers
New
circumstances of Indonesia's and
the differing cultural
Guinea's indigenous populations.
Before Austronesians arrived, most of Indonesia
was
thinly occupied
by
hunter-gatherers lacking even polished stone tools. In contrast, food pro-
New
New Guinea lowlands and in the
New Guinea highlands supported
duction had already been established for thousands of years in the
Guinea highlands, and probably
in the
Bismarcks and Solomons as well. The
some of the densest populations of Stone Age people anywhere
in the
mod-
ern world.
Austronesians enjoyed few advantages in competing with those established
New
Guinean populations. Some of the crops on which Austrone-
sians subsisted, such as taro, yams,
been independently domesticated
arrived.
The
New
and bananas, had probably already
in
New
Guinea before Austronesians
Guineans readily integrated Austronesian chickens,
dogs, and especially pigs into their food-producing economies.
New Guin-
eans already had polished stone tools. They were at least as resistant to
tropical diseases as
were Austronesians, because they carried the same
five
types of genetic protections against malaria as did Austronesians, and
some or
all
of those genes evolved independently in
Guineans were already accomplished
New
Guinea.
seafarers, although not as
New
accom-
plished as the makers of Lapita pottery. Tens of thousands of years before
the arrival of Austronesians,
New
Guineans had colonized the Bismarck
and Solomon Archipelagoes, and a trade
able for
making sharp
tools)
was
in obsidian (a volcanic stone suit-
thriving in the Bismarcks at least 18,000
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
years before the Austronesians arrived.
New
3
Guineans even seem to have
expanded recently westward against the Austronesian
Indonesia, where languages spoken on the islands of
and of Timor are
western
New
typical
Papuan languages
1
5
related to
tide, into eastern
North Halmahera
some languages of
Guinea.
In short, the variable
illustrate the role of
outcomes of the Austronesian expansion
food production
human
in
Austronesian food-producers migrated into two regions
Indonesia) occupied by resident peoples
who were
each other. The residents of Indonesia were
the residents of
New
still
strikingly
population movements.
(New Guinea and
probably related to
hunter-gatherers, while
Guinea were already food producers and had devel-
oped many of the concomitants of food production (dense populations,
more advanced technology, and
disease resistance,
while the Austronesian expansion swept
failed to
failed to
away
As
so on).
a result,
the original Indonesians,
it
make much headway in the New Guinea region, just as it also
make headway against Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai food produc-
ers in tropical
Southeast Asia.
We have now traced the Austronesian expansion through Indonesia and
up to the shores of New Guinea and tropical Southeast Asia. In Chapter
19
we
ter
15
shall trace
we saw
it
across the Indian
lishing themselves in northern
remaining thrust began
when
to
Madagascar, while
humans had reached
into an island realm that
Around 1200
Fiji,
mons. Early
no other
B.C. Lapita potsherds, the
and chickens and dogs, and the usual other
archaeological hallmarks of Austronesians appeared
pelagoes of
Chap-
and western Australia. The expansion's
previously.
familiar triumvirate of pigs
in
from estab-
the Lapita potters sailed far eastward into
beyond the Solomons,
the Pacific
Ocean
that ecological difficulties kept Austronesians
Samoa, and Tonga, over
in the Christian era,
on the
Pacific archi-
a thousand miles east of the Solo-
most of those same hallmarks (with the
notable exception of pottery) appeared on the islands of eastern Polynesia,
including the Societies and Marquesas. Further long overwater canoe voyages brought settlers north to Hawaii, east to Pitcairn
and southwest to
New
those of the
Islands,
Zealand. The native inhabitants of most of those
islands today are the Polynesians,
the Lapita potters.
and Easter
who
thus are the direct descendants of
They speak Austronesian languages
closely related to
New Guinea region, and their main crops are the Austronesian
package that included taro, yams, bananas, coconuts, and breadfruit.
With the occupation of the Chatham Islands
off
New
Zealand around
2
5
3
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
'
European "explorers" entered the
a.d. 1400, barely a century before
Pacific, the task of
exploring the Pacific was finally completed by Asians.
Their tradition of exploration, lasting tens of thousands of years, had
begun when Wiwor's ancestors spread through Indonesia to
and Australia.
ended only when
It
it
had run out of
New
targets
Guinea
and almost
every habitable Pacific island had been occupied.
lo anyone interested
in
world
history,
human
societies of East
Asia and the Pacific are instructive, because they provide so
ples of
how
environment molds
homeland, East Asian and
ticable wild plant
peoples. Again
history.
Depending on
many exam-
their geographic
Pacific peoples differed in their access to
and animal
and
species
in their
domes-
connectedness to other
and again, people with access to the prerequisites
for food
production, and with a location favoring diffusion of technology from
elsewhere, replaced peoples lacking these advantages. Again and again,
when
a single
wave of
their descendants
colonists spread out over diverse environments,
developed in separate ways, depending on those environ-
mental differences.
For instance,
we have
seen that South Chinese developed indigenous
food production and technology, received writing and
ogy and
political structures
mountain rain
technol-
largely replacing the former inhabit-
ants of those areas. Within Southeast Asia,
tives of those
more
from North China, and went on to colonize
and Taiwan,
tropical Southeast Asia
still
among
the descendants or rela-
food-producing South Chinese colonists, the Yumbri in the
forests of northeastern
Thailand and Laos reverted to living
as hunter-gatherers, while the Yumbri's close relatives the Vietnamese
(speaking a language in the same sub-subfamily of Austroasiatic as the
Yumbri language) remained food producers
in the rich
established a vast metal-based empire. Similarly,
Red Delta and
among Austronesian emi-
grant farmers from Taiwan and Indonesia, the Punan in the rain forests of
Borneo were forced to turn back to the hunter-gatherer
their relatives living
on
lifestyle,
while
Java's rich volcanic soils remained food producers,
founded a kingdom under the influence of India, adopted writing, and
built the great
went on
Buddhist
monument
to colonize Polynesia
at
became
Borobudur. The Austronesians
isolated
who
from East Asian metallurgy
and writing and hence remained without writing or metal. As we saw
Chapter
2,
in
though, Polynesian political and social organization and econo-
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
53
3
mies underwent great diversification in different environments. Within a
millennium, East Polynesian colonists had reverted to hunting-gathering
on the Chathams while building
tion
a protostate with intensive food produc-
on Hawaii.
When
Europeans
tages enabled
them
at last arrived, their technological
to establish
and other advan-
temporary colonial domination over most
of tropical Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands.
However, indigenous
germs and food producers prevented Europeans from
settling
region in significant numbers. Within this area, only
New
Caledonia, and Hawaii
—the
largest
thest
from the equator and hence
like)
climates
—now
and most remote
in the
most of
Zealand,
this
New
islands, lying far-
most nearly temperate (Europe-
support large European populations. Thus, unlike
Australia and the Americas, East Asia and
occupied by East Asian and Pacific peoples.
most
Pacific islands
remain
CHAPTER
18
Hemispheres Colliding
THE
LARGEST POPULATION REPLACEMENT OF THE LAST
13,000 years has been the one resulting from the recent collision
between Old World and
sive
moment,
as
we saw
New World
in
Chapter
societies. Its
3,
occurred
most dramatic and
when
Pizarro's tiny
deci-
army
of Spaniards captured the Inca emperor Atahuallpa, absolute ruler of the
largest, richest,
most populous, and administratively and technologically
most advanced Native American
the
state.
Atahuallpa's capture symbolizes
European conquest of the Americas, because the same mix of proxi-
was
mate factors that caused
it
other Native American
societies.
also responsible for
Let us
now
European conquests of
return to that collision of
we have learned since Chapter 3. The basic
why did Europeans reach and conquer the
Native Americans, instead of vice versa? Our starting point will
hemispheres, applying what
question to be answered
lands of
is:
be a comparison of Eurasian and Native American societies as of a.d.
1492, the year of Columbus's "discovery" of the Americas.
Uur
comparison begins
nant of local population
size
factor behind the conquest.
with food production, a major determi-
and
societal
The most
3
5
complexity
—hence an ultimate
glaring difference between
4
American
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
3
and Eurasian food production involved big domestic
5
5
mammal
species. In
Chapter 9 we encountered Eurasia's 13 species, which became
source of animal protein (meat and milk), wool, and hides,
of land transport of people and goods,
fare,
its
its
its
chief
main mode
indispensable vehicles of war-
and (by drawing plows and providing manure)
a big enhancer of crop
production. Until waterwheels and windmills began to replace Eurasia's
mammals
trial"
in
medieval times, they were also the major source of
power beyond human muscle power
grindstones and operating water
lifts.
—
In contrast, the Americas
one species of big domestic mammal, the llama
small area of the
Andes and
human consumption,
/
"indus-
had only
alpaca, confined to a
the adjacent Peruvian coast.
and goods transport,
for meat, wool, hides,
its
for example, for turning
While
it
was used
never yielded milk for
it
never bore a rider, never pulled a cart or a plow, and
never served as a power source or vehicle of warfare.
That's an
American
enormous
societies
set of differences
—due
between Eurasian and Native
largely to the Late Pleistocene extinction (exter-
mination?) of most of North and South America's former big wild
mal
species. If
it
had not been
have taken a different course.
ers
for those extinctions,
When
modern
mam-
history might
Cortes and his bedraggled adventur-
landed on the Mexican coast in 1519, they might have been driven into
the sea by thousands of Aztec cavalry
mounted on domesticated
native
American horses. Instead of the Aztecs' dying of smallpox, the Spaniards
might have been wiped out by American germs transmitted by diseaseresistant Aztecs.
American
have been sending their
civilizations resting
own
on animal power might
conquistadores to ravage Europe. But those
hypothetical outcomes were foreclosed by
mammal
extinctions thousands
of years earlier.
Those extinctions
left
Eurasia with
many more wild candidates for
Most candidates disqualify
domestication than the Americas offered.
themselves as potential domesticates for any of half a dozen reasons.
Hence Eurasia ended up with
the Americas with just
its
its
13 species of big domestic
one very local
species.
Both hemispheres also
had domesticated species of birds and small mammals
pig,
and Muscovy duck very
locally
in Eurasia.
domestic animals was
compared with
in the
Ameri-
honeybees, silkworms, and
But the significance of
trivial
—the turkey, guinea
and the dog more widely
cas; chickens, geese, ducks, cats, dogs, rabbits,
some others
mammals and
all
those species of small
that of the big ones.
Eurasia and the Americas also differed with respect to plant food pro-
3
5
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
duction, though the disparity here
was
marked than
less
for animal food
production. In 1492 agriculture was widespread in Eurasia.
Among
the
few Eurasian hunter-gatherers lacking both crops and domestic animals
were the Ainu of northern Japan, Siberian
societies
without reindeer, and
small hunter-gatherer groups scattered through the forests of India and
tropical Southeast Asia
and trading with neighboring farmers. Some other
Eurasian societies, notably the Central Asian pastoralists and the reindeerherding Lapps and Samoyeds of the Arctic, had domestic animals but
or no agriculture. Virtually
all
little
other Eurasian societies engaged in agricul-
ture as well as in herding animals.
Agriculture
was
also widespread in the Americas, but hunter-gatherers
occupied a larger fraction of the Americas' area than of Eurasia's. Those
regions of the Americas without food production included
all
of northern
North America and southern South America, the Canadian Great
and
all
Plains,
of western North America except for small areas of the U.S. South-
west that supported irrigation agriculture.
It is
striking that the areas of
Native America without food production included what today, after Europeans' arrival, are
some of
the most productive farmlands and pastures of
both North and South America: the Pacific states of the United
Canada's wheat
belt, the
pampas of Argentina, and
the Mediterranean
zone of Chile. The former absence of food production
due entirely to
in these lands
their local paucity of domesticable wild animals
and to geographic and ecological
and
barriers that prevented the crops
few domestic animal species of other parts of the Americas from
Those lands became productive not only
some
cases, for Native Americans, as
for
States,
European
settlers
and the
arriving.
but also, in
soon as Europeans introduced
able domestic animals and crops. For instance, Native
became renowned
for their mastery of horses,
and sheepherding,
in parts of the
and
in
American
some
was
plants,
suit-
societies
cases of cattle
Great Plains, the western United States,
and the Argentine pampas. Those mounted plains warriors and Navajo
sheepherders and weavers
now
figure prominently in white Americans'
image of American Indians, but the basis for that image was created only
after
1492. These examples demonstrate that the sole missing ingredients
required to sustain food production in large areas of the Americas were
domestic animals and crops themselves.
In those parts of the Americas that did support Native
culture,
it
was constrained by
agriculture:
five
major disadvantages
American
vis-a-vis
agri-
Eurasian
widespread dependence on protein-poor corn, instead of
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
and protein-rich
Eurasia's diverse
by hand instead of plowing by
animals, which enables one person to cultivate a
which also permits cultivation of some
7
5
hand planting of individual
cereals;
seeds, instead of broadcast sowing; tilling
3
fertile
much
but tough
larger area,
soils
and
and sods that
by hand (such as those of the North American Great
are difficult to
till
Plains); lack of
animal manuring to increase
soil fertility;
and
just
human
muscle power, instead of animal power, for agricultural tasks such as
threshing, grinding,
agriculture as of
and
irrigation.
These differences suggest that Eurasian
1492 may have yielded on the average more
protein per person-hour of labor than Native
juch differences
calories
American agriculture
and
did.
in food production constituted a major ultimate
cause of the disparities between Eurasian and Native American societies.
Among
the resulting proximate factors behind the conquest, the
most
important included differences in germs, technology, political organization,
in
and writing. Of
these, the
one linked most directly to the differences
food production was germs. The infectious diseases that regularly
ited
crowded Eurasian
quently developed
most
societies,
immune
lethal killers:
and to which many Eurasians conse-
or genetic resistance, included
all
list,
infectious diseases that can be attributed with certainty to
the sole
the Americas,
it
remains uncertain whether syphilis arose
I
explained
in Eurasia or in
and the claim that human tuberculosis was present
Americas before Columbus
is
in
my
crowd
pre-Columbian
Native American societies were nonsyphilitic treponemas. (As
Chapter 11,
of history's
smallpox, measles, influenza, plague, tuberculosis,
typhus, cholera, malaria, and others. Against that grim
in
vis-
in the
opinion unproven.)
This continental difference in harmful germs resulted paradoxically
from the difference
in useful livestock.
for the infectious diseases of
Most
crowded human
of the microbes responsible
societies evolved
from very
similar ancestral microbes causing infectious diseases of the domestic ani-
mals with which food producers began coming into daily close contact
around 10,000 years ago. Eurasia harbored many domestic animal species
and hence developed many such microbes, while the Americas had very
few of each. Other reasons
lethal
microbes were that
for epidemic diseases, arose
in Eurasia;
why
Native American societies evolved so few
villages,
which provide
thousands of years
and that the three regions of the
ideal breeding
later in
grounds
the Americas than
New World
supporting urban
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
5
3
societies (the
Andes, Mesoamerica, and the U.S. Southeast) were never
connected by
fast,
influenza,
high-volume trade on the scale that brought plague,
and possibly smallpox
to
Europe from Asia. As
a result, even
malaria and yellow fever, the infectious diseases that eventually became
major obstacles to European colonization of the American
that posed the biggest barrier to the construction of the
are not
American diseases
at all but are
tropics,
and
Panama Canal,
caused by microbes of Old World
Americas by Europeans.
tropical origin, introduced to the
Rivaling germs as proximate factors behind Europe's conquest of the
Americas were the differences
ences
stemmed
in all aspects of technology.
ultimately from
much
Eurasia's
These
differ-
longer history of densely
populated, economically specialized, politically centralized, interacting
and competing
nology
may
be singled out:
metals
First,
for tools in all
copper,
—
initially
copper, then bronze, and finally iron
complex Eurasian
silver, gold,
some other
dependent on food production. Five areas of tech-
societies
and
alloys
societies as of
principal materials for tools in
1492. In contrast, although
were used for ornaments
parts of the Americas, stone
in the
Andes and
and wood and bone were
Native American
all
—were used
societies,
still
the
which made
only limited local use of copper tools.
Second, military technology was far more potent in Eurasia than in the
Americas. European weapons were
plemented by small firearms and
were also made of solid
steel
steel
swords, lances, and daggers, supwhile body armor and helmets
artillery,
or else of chain mail. In place of
Americans used clubs and axes of stone or
the Andes), slings,
less
bows and arrows, and
effective protection
wood
Native
steel,
(occasionally copper in
quilted armor, constituting
much
and weaponry. In addition, Native American
armies had no animals to oppose to horses, whose value for assaults and
fast transport
gave Europeans an overwhelming advantage until some
Native American societies themselves adopted them.
Third, Eurasian societies enjoyed a huge advantage in their sources of
power
to operate machines.
power was the use of animals
and to turn wheels
draining
fields.
The
—
earliest
advance over human muscle
cattle, horses,
and donkeys
for grinding grain, raising water,
Waterwheels appeared
ated, along with tidal mills
in
Roman
and windmills,
in the
—to
and
pull
plows
irrigating or
times and then prolifer-
Middle Ages. Coupled to
systems of geared wheels, those engines harnessing water and wind power
were used not only to grind grain and move water but also to serve myriad
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
3
9
5
manufacturing purposes, including crushing sugar, driving blast furnace
bellows, grinding ores,
ducing
producing
salt,
making paper, polishing
stone, pressing
and sawing wood.
textiles,
pro-
oil,
conventional to
It is
define the Industrial Revolution arbitrarily as beginning with the har-
nessing of steam
power
in 18th-century
revolution based on water and
England, but in fact an industrial
wind power had begun already
many parts of Europe. As of 1492,
times in
all
which animal, water, and wind power were being applied
being carried out by
still
Long before
it
human muscle power
the wheel began to be used in
had become the
basis of
in
medieval
of those operations to
in the
were
in Eurasia
Americas.
power conversion
most Eurasian land transport
in Eurasia,
—not only
for
animal-drawn vehicles but also for human-powered wheelbarrows, which
enabled one or more people,
port
much
still
also adopted in Eurasian pottery
of the wheel
in
was adopted
Mexican ceramic
in the
making and
in clocks.
None
of those uses
is
sea transport.
Eurasian societies developed large sailing ships, some of them capa-
wind and crossing the ocean, equipped with
sex-
magnetic compasses, sternpost rudders, and cannons. In capacity,
speed, maneuverability,
and seaworthiness, those Eurasian ships were
superior to the rafts that carried out trade between the
advanced
societies, those of the
sailed with the
wind along the
and captured such a
raft
In addition to
American
on
their
New World's
his first
nized states.
Mogul
Among
rafts
down
voyage toward Peru.
germs and technology, Eurasian and Native
By
most of Eurasia had come under the
these, the
state of India,
far
most
Andes and Mesoamerica. Those
Pacific coast. Pizarro's ship easily ran
societies differed in their political organization.
or Renaissance times,
the
to trans-
Americas, where wheels are attested only
of technology to be mentioned
ble of sailing against the
tants,
human muscle power,
toys.
The remaining area
Many
using just
greater weights than they could have otherwise. Wheels were
late
medieval
rule of orga-
Habsburg, Ottoman, and Chinese
and the Mongol
state at
its
peak
states,
in the
13th
century started out as large polyglot amalgamations formed by the conquest of other states. For that reason they are generally referred to as
empires.
Many
Eurasian states and empires had
official religions that
con-
tributed to state cohesion, being invoked to legitimize the political leadership
and
to sanction
wars against other peoples. Tribal and band
societies
360
in Eurasia
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
were largely confined to the Arctic reindeer herders, the Siberian
hunter-gatherers, and the hunter-gatherer enclaves in the Indian subconti-
nent and tropical Southeast Asia.
The Americas had two empires, those of
resembled their Eurasian counterparts in
the Aztecs
size,
and
which
Incas,
population, polyglot make-
up, official religions, and origins in the conquest of smaller states. In the
Americas those were the sole two
resources for public works or
whereas seven European
land, Sweden,
the scale of
states (Spain, Portugal,
and Denmark) had the resources
many
Eurasian
states,
England, France, Hol-
to acquire
American colo-
between 1492 and 1666. The Americas also held many chiefdoms
nies
(some of them virtually small
america beyond Aztec
cas
political units capable of mobilizing
war on
rule,
was organized only
The
states
last
had
states) in tropical
at the tribal or
band
literate bureaucracies,
and
in
societies
by
rest of the
Ameri-
level.
proximate factor to be discussed
some
populace other than bureaucrats was also
European
South America, Meso-
and the U.S. Southeast. The
is
Most Eurasian
writing.
a significant fraction of the
Writing empowered
literate.
facilitating political administration
and economic
exchanges, motivating and guiding exploration and conquest, and making
and human experience extending
available a range of information
remote places and times. In contrast, use of writing
confined to the
elite in
in the
a small area of Mesoamerica.
into
Americas was
The Inca Empire
employed an accounting system and mnemonic device based on knots
(termed quipu), but
it
could not have approached writing as a vehicle for
transmitting detailed information.
Ihus, Eurasian societies
in the time of
Columbus enjoyed
big
advantages over Native American societies in food production, germs,
technology (including weapons), political organization, and writing. These
were the main factors tipping the outcome of the post-Columbian
sions.
But those differences as of a.d. 1492 represent
historical trajectories that
Americas, and over a
particular, the
had extended over
much
colli-
one snapshot of
13,000 years
in the
longer time in Eurasia. For the Americas, in
1492 snapshot captures the end of the independent
tory of Native Americans. Let us
trajectories.
at least
just
now
trajec-
trace out the earlier stages of those
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
6
3
I
Table 18.1 summarizes approximate dates of the appearance of key
developments
main "homelands" of each hemisphere
in the
(the Fertile
Crescent and China in Eurasia, the Andes and Amazonia and Mesoamerica in the Americas).
World homeland of
is
It
also includes the trajectory for the
and that
the eastern United States,
not a homeland at
all
but
is
listed to illustrate
for England,
how rapidly
New
minor
which
developments
spread from the Fertile Crescent.
This table
is
sure to horrify any knowledgeable scholar, because
it
reduces exceedingly complex histories to a few seemingly precise dates. In
reality, all
of those dates are merely attempts to label arbitrary points along
a continuum. For example, more significant than the date of the
found by some archaeologist
tool
was made of
metal, but
is
when
the time
first
metal
a significant fraction of
how common must
metal tools be to rate
all
tools
as
"widespread"? Dates for the appearance of the same development
differ
the
among
different parts of the
same homeland. For
Andean region pottery appears about 1,300
Ecuador (3100
B.C.)
than in Peru (1800
for the rise of chiefdoms, are
more
B.C.).
years earlier in coastal
Some
difficult to infer
may
instance, within
dates, such as those
from the archaeological
record than are dates of artifacts like pottery or metal tools.
Some
of the
dates in Table 18.1 are very uncertain, especially those for the onset of
American food production. Nevertheless, as long
the table
The
tion of
is
a simplification,
it is
diets
around 5,000 years
A
than in those of the Americas.
while there
there
is
is
one understands that
earlier in the
its
frac-
Eurasian homelands
caveat must be mentioned immediately:
no doubt about the antiquity of food production
controversy about
histories.
began to provide a large
table suggests that food production
human
as
comparing continental
useful for
in Eurasia,
onset in the Americas. In particular, archae-
ologists often cite considerably older claimed dates for domesticated plants
at
Coxcatlan Cave
other American
now
in
sites
Mexico,
Cave
at Guitarrero
than the dates given
in Peru,
in the table.
and
at
some
Those claims are
being reevaluated for several reasons: recent direct radiocarbon dat-
ing of crop remains themselves has in
some
dates; the older dates previously reported
cases been yielding younger
were based instead on charcoal
thought to be contemporaneous with the plant remains, but possibly not
so;
and the
status of
collected wild plants
some of
is
the older plant remains as crops or just as
uncertain.
Still,
even
begin earlier in the Americas than the dates
if
plant domestication did
shown
in
Table 18.1, agricul-
6 2
3
Table 18.1
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
and the Americas
Historical Trajectories of Eurasia
Approximate Date of Adoption
Eurasia
China
Fertile
England
Crescent
Plant domestication
8500
b.c.
by 7500
B.C.
3500
b.c.
Animal domestication
8000
B.C.
by 7500
b.c.
3500
b.c.
Pottery-
7000
b.c.
by 7500
B.C.
3500
b.c.
Villages
9000
b.c.
by 7500
b.c.
3000
b.c.
Chiefdoms
5500
b.c.
4000
B.C.
2500
b.c.
Widespread metal tools
4000
b.c.
2000
b.c.
2000
b.c.
States
3700
b.c.
2000
b.c.
Writing
3200
b.c.
by 1300
or artifacts (copper
and/or bronze)
Widespread iron tools
900
500
b.c.
500 A.D.
b.c.
b.c.
A.D.
43
650
b.c.
This table gives approximate dates of widespread adoption of significant developments
in three
Eurasian and four Native American areas. Dates for animal domestication neglect
dogs, which were domesticated earlier than food-producing animals in both Eurasia and
ture surely did not provide the basis for
most human
sedentary existence in American homelands until
calorie intake
much
later
and
than in Eur-
asian homelands.
As we saw
Chapters 5 and 10, only a few relatively small areas of
in
each hemisphere acted as a "homeland" where food production
and from which
and China
it
is
and the Andes and Amazonia, Mesoamerica, and
The
rate of spread of
key devel-
especially well understood for Europe, thanks to the
archaeologists at
arose
then spread. Those homelands were the Fertile Crescent
in Eurasia,
the eastern United States in the Americas.
opments
first
work
there.
As Table 18.1 summarizes
food production and village living had arrived from the
after a long lag (5,000 years), the
first
Fertile
Crescent
subsequent lag for England's adoption
of chiefdoms, states, writing, and especially metal tools
2,000 years for the
many
for England, once
was much
shorter:
widespread metal tools of copper and bronze, and
only 250 years for widespread iron tools. Evidently,
it
was much
easier for
one society of already sedentary farmers to "borrow" metallurgy from
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
3
6
3
Native America
Andes
by 3000
Amazonia
Mesoamerica
3000
by 3000
B.C.
b.c.
Eastern U.S.
2500
b.c.
b.c.
—
500
b.c.
3100-1800
b.c.
6000
b.c.
1500
b.c.
2500
b.c.
3100-1800
b.c.
6000
b.c.
1500
b.c.
500
b.c.
b.c.
200
b.c.
3500
B.C.
by 1500
A.D.
p
A.D.
b.c.
1500
1
—
—
1000
A.D. 1
the Americas.
architecture,
300
b.c.
600
b.c.
—
Chiefdoms are inferred from archaeological evidence, such as ranked
and settlement
facts: see the text for
patterns.
some of
the
The
table greatly simplifies a
many important
burials,
complex mass of historical
caveats.
another such society than for nomadic hunter-gatherers to "borrow" food
production from sedentary farmers (or to be replaced by the farmers).
Why
were the
trajectories of all
key developments shifted to
later
dates in the Americas than in Eurasia? Four groups of reasons suggest
themselves: the later start,
more
limited suite of wild animals
available for domestication, greater barriers to diffusion,
smaller or
more
isolated areas of dense
human populations
and plants
and possibly
in the
Americas
than in Eurasia.
As
for Eurasia's
head
start,
humans have occupied Eurasia
for
about a
million years, far longer than they have lived in the Americas. According
to the archaeological evidence discussed in
Chapter
1,
humans
entered the
Americas at Alaska only around 12,000 b.c, spread south of the Canadian ice sheets as Clovis hunters a few centuries before 11,000 B.C., and
reached the southern tip of South America by 10,000 B.C. Even
if
the dis-
364
puted claims of older
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
human occupation
sites in
the Americas prove valid,
unknown
those postulated pre-Clovis inhabitants remained for
reasons
very sparsely distributed and did not launch a Pleistocene proliferation of
hunter-gatherer societies with expanding populations, technology, and art
as in the
Old World. Food production was already
Crescent only 1,500 years after the time
erers
were
just reaching
when
arising in the Fertile
Clovis-derived hunter-gath-
southern South America.
Several possible consequences of that Eurasian head start deserve consideration. First, could
Americas to
it
have taken a long time after 11,000
up with people?
fill
When
involved, one finds that this effect
one works out the
would make only
likely
tell
us that even
if
a
numbers
a trivial contribution
to the Americas' 5,000-year lag in food-producing villages.
tions given in Chapter 1
B.C. for the
The
calcula-
mere 100 pioneering Native
Americans had crossed the Canadian border into the lower United States
and increased
at a rate of only 1 percent per year, they
would have
satu-
rated the Americas with hunter-gatherers within 1,000 years. Spreading
south at a mere one mile per month, those pioneers would have reached
the southern tip of South America only
700 years
after crossing the
Cana-
dian border. Those postulated rates of spread and of population increase
low compared with actual known
are very
rates for peoples occupying
previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited lands.
were probably
fully
of the arrival of the
Hence
the Americas
occupied by hunter-gatherers within a few centuries
first
colonists.
Second, could a large part of the 5,000-year lag have represented the
time that the
first
Americans required to become familiar with the new
local plant species,
tered? If
sian
we can
animal species, and rock sources that they encoun-
again reason by analogy with
and farmers
hunter-gatherers
environments
nists of
New
and learned
wild plants and animals in
priate
Guinean and Polyne-
previously
unfamiliar
—such as Maori colonists of New Zealand or Tudawhe coloGuinea's Karimui Basin —the colonists probably discovered
the best rock sources
Third,
New
occupying
much
to distinguish useful
less
than a century.
what about Eurasians' head
technology? The
from poisonous
start in
developing locally appro-
early farmers of the Fertile Crescent
were heirs to the technology that behaviorially modern
and China
Homo sapiens had
been developing to exploit local resources in those areas for tens of thousands of years. For instance, the stone sickles, underground storage
and other technology that hunter-gatherers of the
Fertile
pits,
Crescent had
365
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
been evolving to
utilize
wild cereals were available to the
first
cereal farm-
Americas
ers of the Fertile Crescent. In contrast, the first settlers of the
arrived in Alaska with equipment appropriate to the Siberian Arctic tun-
equipment suitable to each
dra.
They had
new
habitat they encountered. That technology lag
to invent for themselves the
significantly to the delay in
An
may have
contributed
Native American developments.
even more obvious factor behind the delay was the wild animals and
As
plants available for domestication.
I
hunter-gatherers adopt food production,
discussed in Chapter 6,
it is
when
not because they foresee the
potential benefits awaiting their remote descendants but because incipient
food production begins to offer advantages over the hunter-gatherer
Early food production
style.
in the
Americas than
was
less
Crescent or China, partly owing to
in the Fertile
the Americas' virtual lack of domesticable wild
mammals. Hence
American farmers remained dependent on wild animals
early
for animal protein
and necessarily remained part-time hunter-gatherers, whereas
Fertile
life-
competitive with hunting-gathering
in
both the
Crescent and China animal domestication followed plant domesti-
cation very closely in time to create a food producing package that quickly
won
out over hunting-gathering. In addition, Eurasian domestic animals
made Eurasian
more competitive by providing
agriculture itself
fertilizer,
and eventually by drawing plows.
Features of American wild plants also contributed to the lesser competitiveness of Native
American food production. That conclusion
for the eastern United States,
where
less
ca's staple grain of corn,
where
in the
nut
no large-seeded
grains, pulses,
trees. It is also clear for
which spread to become
Americas as well. Whereas the
a
Fertile
Mesoameri-
dominant crop
may have
wild teosinte
into corn, having to
undergo drastic changes
and an enormous increase
As a
result,
even
the onset of Native
years
if
a
few cen-
required several thousand years to evolve
and energy allocation to seed production,
ings,
else-
Crescent's wild wheat
and barley evolved into crops with minimal changes and within
turies,
clearest
than a dozen crops were domesti-
cated, including small-seeded grains but
fiber crops, or cultivated fruit or
is
in
cob
in its reproductive biology
loss of the seed's
rock-hard cas-
size.
one accepts the recently postulated
later dates for
American plant domestication, about 1,500 or 2,000
would have elapsed between
that onset (about
widespread year-round villages (1800-500
B.C.)
3000-2500
in
B.C.)
and
Mesoamerica, the
inland Andes, and the eastern United States. Native American farming
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 6
3
served for a long time just as a small supplement to food acquisition by
hunting-gathering, and supported only a sparse population.
the traditional, earlier dates for the onset of
tion, then
one accepts
American plant domestica-
5,000 years instead of 1,500 or 2,000 years elapsed before food
production supported
in time
If
with the
rise
gatherer lifestyle
villages. In contrast, villages
of food production in
itself
was
much
were closely associated
of Eurasia. (The hunter-
sufficiently productive to
support villages even
before the adoption of agriculture in parts of both hemispheres, such as
Japan and the
Fertile
Crescent in the Old World, and coastal Ecuador and
New World.) The limitations imposed by locally available
domesticates in the New World are well illustrated by the transformations
Amazonia
in the
when
of Native American societies themselves
arrived,
whether from elsewhere
in the
other crops or animals
Americas or from Eurasia. Exam-
ples include the effects of corn's arrival in the eastern United States
Amazonia, the llama's adoption
and the
tion to the south,
in the
northern Andes after
horse's appearance in
many
and
its
domestica-
parts of
North and
South America.
In addition to Eurasia's head start
developments
and wild animal and plant
were also accelerated by the
in Eurasia
species,
easier diffusion of
animals, plants, ideas, technology, and people in Eurasia than in the
icas, as a result
Amer-
of several sets of geographic and ecological factors. Euras-
east-west major axis, unlike the Americas' north-south major axis,
ia's
permitted diffusion without change in latitude and associated environmental variables. In
contrast to Eurasia's consistent east-west breadth, the
New World was constricted over the whole
especially at
Panama. Not
least, the
length of Central America and
Americas were more fragmented by
areas unsuitable for food production or for dense
human
populations.
These ecological barriers included the rain forests of the Panamanian
mus
separating Mesoamerican societies from
societies; the deserts of
U.S. southwestern
isth-
Andean and Amazonian
northern Mexico separating Mesoamerica from
and southeastern
societies;
dry areas of Texas separat-
ing the U.S. Southwest from the Southeast; and the deserts and high mountains fencing off U.S. Pacific coast areas that
suitable for food production.
tic
As a
result, there
would otherwise have been
was no
diffusion of
domes-
animals, writing, or political entities, and limited or slow diffusion of
crops and technology, between the
the eastern United
Some
specific
States,
New
World
centers of Mesoamerica,
and the Andes and Amazonia.
consequences of these barriers within the Americas
367
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
deserve mention.
Food production never
and Mississippi Valley to the
diffused
from the U.S. Southwest
modern American breadbaskets
and Oregon, where Native American
societies
of California
remained hunter-gatherers
merely because they lacked appropriate domesticates. The llama, guinea
pig,
and potato of the Andean highlands never reached the Mexican high-
lands, so
Mesoamerica and North America remained without domestic
mammals
except for dogs. Conversely, the domestic sunflower of the east-
ern United States never reached Mesoamerica, and the domestic turkey of
Mesoamerica never made
it
to
South America or the eastern United
Mesoamerican corn and beans took 3,000 and 4,000
to cover the
700 miles from Mexico's farmlands
States.
years, respectively,
to the eastern U.S. farm-
lands. After corn's arrival in the eastern United States, seven centuries
more passed before
the development of a corn variety productive in
North
American climates triggered the Mississippian emergence. Corn, beans,
and squash may have taken several thousand years to spread from Mesoamerica to the U.S. Southwest. While Fertile Crescent crops spread west
and
east sufficiently fast to
same
preempt independent domestication of the
species or else domestication of closely related species elsewhere, the
barriers within the
Americas gave
rise to
many such
parallel domestica-
on crop and
livestock diffusion
tions of crops.
As
striking as these effects of barriers
are the effects
on other
features of
human
societies.
Alphabets of
mately eastern Mediterranean origin spread throughout
ties
all
complex
ulti-
socie-
of Eurasia, from England to Indonesia, except for areas of East Asia
where derivatives of the Chinese writing system took hold. In contrast, the
New World's
the
sole writing systems, those of
complex Andean and eastern U.S.
Mesoamerica, never spread to
societies that
might have adopted
them. The wheels invented in Mesoamerica as parts of toys never met the
llamas domesticated in the Andes, to generate wheeled transport for the
New World. From east to
and the
Roman Empire
west in the Old World, the Macedonian Empire
both spanned 3,000 miles, the Mongol Empire
6,000 miles. But the empires and states of Mesoamerica had no political
relations with,
and apparently never even heard
eastern United States
the
700 miles
Andes 1,200 miles
The
Eurasia
of, the
chiefdoms of the
to the north or the empires
grouping
states of
to the south.
greater geographic fragmentation of the Americas
is
and
compared with
also reflected in distributions of languages. Linguists agree in
all
but a few Eurasian languages into about a dozen language
3
families,
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6 8
each consisting of up to several hundred related languages. For
example, the Indo-European language family, which includes English as
well as French, Russian, Greek, and Hindi, comprises about 144 lan-
guages. Quite a few of those families occupy large contiguous areas
the case of Indo-European, the area encompassing
through much of western Asia to India. Linguistic,
logical evidence
combines to make
most of Europe
historical,
—
in
east
and archaeo-
clear that each of these large, contigu-
ous distributions stems from a historical expansion of an ancestral
language, followed by subsequent local linguistic differentiation to form a
Most such expansions appear
family of related languages (Table 18.2).
to
be attributable to the advantages that speakers of the ancestral language,
belonging to food-producing societies, held over hunter-gatherers.
We
already discussed such historical expansions in Chapters 16 and 17 for
and other East Asian language
the Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian,
Among major
expansions of the
last
families.
millennium are those that carried
Indo-European languages from Europe to the Americas and Australia, the
Russian language from eastern Europe across Siberia, and Turkish
(a lan-
guage of the Altaic family) from Central Asia westward to Turkey.
With the exception of the Eskimo-Aleut language family of the American Arctic and the Na-Dene language family of Alaska, northwestern Canada, and the U.S. Southwest, the Americas lack examples of large-scale
language expansions widely accepted by
ing in Native
Most
linguists.
American languages do not discern
linguists specializ-
large, clear-cut
groupings
other than Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene. At most, they consider the evi-
dence sufficient only to group other Native American languages (variously
estimated to
number from 600
groups or isolated languages.
linguist
Joseph Greenberg,
to 2,000) into a
A
who
other than Eskimo-Aleut and
hundred or more language
controversial minority view
groups
all
is
that of the
Native American languages
Na-Dene languages
into a single large family,
termed Amerind, with about a dozen subfamilies.
Some
of Greenberg's subfamilies, and
more-traditional linguists,
may
some groupings recognized by
turn out to be legacies of
New World pop-
ulation expansions driven in part by food production. These legacies
may
include the Uto-Aztecan languages of Mesoamerica and the western
United
States,
the
Oto-Manguean languages
of
Mesoamerica,
Natchez-Muskogean languages of the U.S. Southeast, and the Arawak
guages of the West Indies. But the
difficulties that linguists
have
the
lan-
in agreeing
369
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
Table 18.2 Language Expansions
Language
Family
or Language
Inferred
Date
6000 or 4000
B.C.
Indo-European
in the
Old World
Ultimate
Expansion
Ukraine or Anatolia -»
Europe,
C. Asia, India
6000 B.c-2000
B.C.
Elamo-Dravid-
Driving Force
food production
or horse-based
pastoralism
Iran -* India
food production
Tibetan Plateau,
food production
ian
4000 B.c.-present
Sino-Tibetan
N. China -»
S.
China,
tropical S.E.
Asia
3000 B.c-1000
B.C.
Austronesian
S.
China -"Indo-
food production
nesia, Pacific
islands
3000 b.c.-a.d. 1000
Nigeria and
Bantu
food production
Cameroon
-*S. Africa
3000 B.C.-A.D.
1
Austroasiatic
S.
China -"tropi-
food production
cal S.E. Asia,
India
1000 B.C.-A.D. 1500
Tai-Kadai,
Miao-Yao
a.d.
Hungarian
892
S.
China -> tropical S.E. Asia
Ural Mts.-»
Hungary
A.D. 1000-A.D.
1300
Altaic
(Mon-
gol, Turkish)
food production
Asian steppes -+
Europe, Tur-
horse-based
pastoralism
horse-based
pastoralism
key, China,
India
a.d. 1480-a.d.
1638
Russian
European Russia
-"Asiatic
Siberia
food production
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
7 O
3
on groupings of Native American languages
complex Native American
the
New
Had any
World.
reflect the difficulties that
societies themselves faced in
expanding within
food-producing Native American peoples suc-
ceeded in spreading far with their crops and livestock and rapidly replacing hunter-gatherers over a large area, they
would have
left
legacies of
language families, as in Eurasia, and the relationships of
easily recognized
Native American languages would not be so controversial.
Thus,
we have
identified three sets of ultimate factors that tipped the
advantage to European invaders of the Americas: Eurasia's long head
on human
settlement;
its
more
effective
food production, resulting from
greater availability of domesticable wild plants
and
its less
A
fourth,
more
some puzzling non-inventions
and wheels
societies
that did
and
especially of animals;
formidable geographic and ecological barriers to intracontinen-
tal diffusion.
ing
start
in
speculative ultimate factor
in the
complex Andean
is
suggested by
Americas: the non-inventions of writ-
societies, despite a
time depth of those
approximately equal to that of complex Mesoamerican societies
make
those inventions; and wheels' confinement to toys and their
eventual disappearance in Mesoamerica, where they could presumably
have been useful
in
human-powered wheelbarrows,
as in China.
These
puzzles remind one of equally puzzling non-inventions, or else disappear-
ances of inventions, in small isolated societies, including Aboriginal Tas-
mania, Aboriginal Australia, Japan, Polynesian islands, and the American
Arctic.
Of
course, the Americas in aggregate are anything but small: their
combined area
tion as of a.d.
is
fully
76 percent that of Eurasia, and
1492 was probably
the Americas, as
we have
seen, are
their
human popula-
also a large fraction of Eurasia's. But
broken up into "islands" of
societies
with tenuous connections to each other. Perhaps the histories of Native
American wheels and writing exemplify the
extreme form
After
more
at least 13,000 years of separate developments, advanced
American and Eurasian
societies finally collided within the last
years. Until then, the sole contacts
and the
principles illustrated in a
by true island societies.
New
between human
thousand
societies of the
Worlds had involved the hunter-gatherers on opposite
Old
sides
of the Bering Strait.
There were no Native American attempts to colonize Eurasia, except
the Bering Strait,
where
a small population of Inuit (Eskimos) derived
at
from
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
Alaska established
The
the
first
at Arctic
i
and sub-Arctic
to colonize the
Americas was by
latitudes (Figure 18.1).
Norse from
colonized Iceland in a.d. 874, then Norse from Iceland colonized
Greenland
in a.d.
986, and finally Norse from Greenland repeatedly
ited the northeastern coast of
and 1350. The
is
7
across the strait on the opposite Siberian coast.
documented Eurasian attempt
Norse
Norway
itself
3
sole
Norse archaeological
site
discovered in the Americas
on Newfoundland, possibly the region described
sagas, but these also
vis-
North America between about a.d. 1000
as Vinland in
Norse
mention landings evidently farther north, on the
coasts of Labrador and Baffin Island.
Iceland's climate permitted herding
and
its
area
was
sufficient to
persisted to this day. But
and extremely limited
agriculture,
support a Norse-derived population that has
most of Greenland
is
covered by an
ice cap,
and
even the two most favorable coastal fjords were marginal for Norse food
production. The Greenland Norse population never exceeded a few thousand.
It
remained dependent on imports of food and iron from Norway,
and of timber from the Labrador
coast. Unlike Easter Island
Norway across the North
when each area was reached.
Figure 18.1. The Norse expansion from
tic,
with dates or approximate dates
and other
Atlan-
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
7 2
3
remote Polynesian islands, Greenland could not support a
food-producing
though
society,
it
self-sufficient
did support self-sufficient Inuit hunter-
gatherer populations before, during, and after the Norse occupation
period.
The populations of Iceland and Norway themselves were too small
and too poor for them to continue
their support of the
Greenland Norse
population.
Age
In the Little Ice
that began in the 13th century, the cooling of the
North Atlantic made food production
to Greenland
Greenland, and Norse voyaging
in
from Norway or Iceland, even more marginal than before.
The Greenlanders'
last
known
an Icelandic ship that arrived
ans finally began again to
contact with Europeans
after being
visit
blown
Greenland
in
came
off course.
1577,
its
1410 with
in
When
Europe-
Norse colony no
longer existed, having evidently disappeared without any record during
the 15th century.
But the coast of North America lay effectively beyond the reach of ships
sailing directly
from Norway
itself,
period a.d. 986-1410. The Norse
given Norse ship technology of the
visits
were instead launched from the
Greenland colony, separated from North America only by the 200-mile
width of Davis
Strait.
However, the prospect of that
tiny marginal colony's
sustaining an exploration, conquest, and settlement of the Americas
nil.
Even the
sents
sole
Norse
no more than
site
a winter
located
on Newfoundland apparently
camp occupied by
was
repre-
a few dozen people for a
few years. The Norse sagas describe attacks on
their
Vinland camp by
people termed Skraelings, evidently either Newfoundland Indians or Dorset
Eskimos.
The
fate of the
post, remains
Greenland colony, medieval Europe's most remote out-
one of archaeology's romantic mysteries. Did the
land Norse starve to death, attempt to
or
succumb
to disease or
sail off,
last
Green-
intermarry with Eskimos,
Eskimo arrows? While those questions of proxi-
mate cause remain unanswered, the ultimate reasons why Norse colonization of Greenland
and America
failed are
abundantly
clear.
It
failed
because the source (Norway), the targets (Greenland and Newfoundland),
and the time
(a.d.
984-1410) guaranteed that Europe's potential advan-
tages of food production, technology,
and
political organization
be applied effectively. At latitudes too high for
much food
could not
production, the
iron tools of a few Norse, weakly supported by one of Europe's poorer
states,
were no match for the stone, bone, and wooden tools of Eskimo
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
3
7
3
and Indian hunter-gatherers, the world's greatest masters of Arctic survival
skills.
Ihe second Eurasian
because
it
attempt to colonize the Americas succeeded
involved a source, target, latitude, and time that allowed
Europe's potential advantages to be exerted effectively. Spain, unlike Nor-
way, was rich and populous enough to support exploration and subsidize
colonies. Spanish landfalls in the
Americas were
highly suitable for food production, based at
first
at subtropical latitudes
mostly on Native Ameri-
can crops but also on Eurasian domestic animals, especially
began
horses. Spain's transatlantic colonial enterprise
in
and
cattle
1492, at the end
of a century of rapid development of European oceangoing ship technology,
which by then incorporated advances
design developed by
Old World
the Indian Ocean.
sia) in
were able to
sail
to the
As
societies (Islam, India,
a result, ships built
West
Indies; there
and ship
in navigation, sails,
China, and Indone-
and manned
in Spain itself
was nothing equivalent
to the
Greenland bottleneck that had throttled Norse colonization. Spain's
World colonies were soon joined by those of
half a
New
dozen other European
states.
The
first
European settlements
founded by Columbus
ans,
in
Americas, beginning with the one
1492, were in the West Indies. The island Indi-
whose estimated population
a million,
in the
at the time of their "discovery"
were rapidly exterminated on most islands by
sion, enslavement, warfare,
exceeded
disease, disposses-
and casual murder. Around 1508 the
ony was founded on the American mainland,
first col-
Isthmus of Panama.
at the
Conquest of the two large mainland empires, those of the Aztecs and Incas,
followed in 1519-1520 and 1532-1533, respectively. In both conquests
European-transmitted epidemics (probably smallpox)
made major
contri-
butions, by killing the emperors themselves, as well as a large fraction of
the population.
bers of
The overwhelming
military superiority of even tiny
mounted Spaniards, together with
their political skills at exploiting
divisions within the native population, did the rest.
the remaining native states of Central
num-
European conquest of
America and northern South
America followed during the 16th and 17th centuries.
As
for the
most advanced native
the U.S. Southeast
societies of
North America, those of
and the Mississippi River system,
their destruction
was
3
B
7 4
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
accomplished largely by germs alone, introduced by early European
As Europeans spread throughout
explorers and advancing ahead of them.
the Americas,
many
Mandans
other native societies, such as the
of the
Great Plains and the Sadlermiut Eskimos of the Arctic, were also wiped
out by disease, without need for military action. Populous native societies
not thereby eliminated were destroyed in the same
Incas had been
European
—by
soldiers
full-scale
and
wars, increasingly
Those
their native allies.
way
the Aztecs
waged by
soldiers
and
professional
were backed by
European mother countries, then
the political organizations initially of the
New
of the European colonial governments in the
World, and
finally of
the independent neo-European states that succeeded the colonial govern-
ments.
Smaller native societies were destroyed more casually, by small-scale
and murders carried out by private
raids
native hunter-gatherers initially
citizens.
For instance, California's
numbered about 200,000
in aggregate,
among a hundred tribelets, none of which
defeated. Most of those tribelets were killed off or
but they were splintered
war
required a
to be
dispossessed during or soon after the California gold rush of 1848-52,
when
Yahi
large
numbers of immigrants flooded the
tribelet of
firearms,
As one example, the
northern California, numbering about 2,000 and lacking
was destroyed
on a Yahi
state.
in four raids
village carried out
by 17
by armed white
settlers
on August
settlers: a
6,
dawn
raid
1865; a massacre
of Yahis surprised in a ravine in 1866; a massacre of 33 Yahis tracked to
a cave
around 1867; and
a final massacre of
another cave by 4 cowboys around 1868.
were similarly eliminated by private
late
19th and early 20th centuries. The
zonian
ease,
in
Many Amazonian Indian groups
during the rubber boom of the
settlers
final stages
being played out in the present decade, as the
Indian societies that
about 30 Yahis trapped
of the conquest are
Yanomamo and
other
Ama-
remain independent are succumbing to
dis-
being murdered by miners, or being brought under control by
missionaries or government agencies.
The end
societies
result has
been the elimination of populous Native American
from most temperate areas suitable for European food production
and physiology. In North America those that survived
communities
now
live
as sizable intact
mostly on reservations or other lands considered
undesirable for European food production and mining, such as the Arctic
and arid areas of the U.S. West. Native Americans
in
many
tropical areas
have been replaced by immigrants from the Old World tropics (especially
HEMISPHERES COLLIDING
3
7 5
black Africans, along with Asian Indians and Javanese in Suriname).
In parts of Central
originally so
America and the Andes, the Native Americans were
numerous
that,
even after epidemics and wars,
population today remains Native American or mixed. That
true at high altitudes in the Andes,
have physiological
Andean crops
ever, even
still
is
of the
especially
where genetically European
women
even in reproducing, and where native
difficulties
offer the
much
most
suitable basis for food production.
where Native Americans do
How-
survive, there has been extensive
replacement of their culture and languages with those of the Old World.
Of the hundreds
America,
all
of Native American languages originally spoken in
except 187 are no longer spoken at
187 are moribund
official
nations,
all
now
Of
North
and 149 of these
in the sense that they are being
people and no longer learned by children.
World
all,
last
spoken only by old
the approximately
40
New
have an Indo-European language or Creole as the
language. Even in the countries with the largest surviving Native
American populations, such
as Peru, Bolivia,
Mexico, and Guatemala, a
glance at photographs of political and business leaders shows that they are
disproportionately Europeans, while several Caribbean nations have black
African leaders and
The
Guyana has had Asian Indian
original Native
leaders.
American population has been reduced by
a
debated large percentage: estimates for North America range up to 95 per-
But the total
cent.
human
mately ten times what
it
population of the Americas
was
in
is
now
approxi-
1492, because of arrivals of Old World
peoples (Europeans, Africans, and Asians).
The Americas' population now
consists of a mixture of peoples originating
from
tralia.
shift
That demographic
shift
of the last
on any continent except Australia
ments between about 11,000
B.C.
continents except Aus-
500 years
—has
and a.d.
all
1.
its
—the most massive
ultimate roots in develop-
CHAPTER
How
NO
Africa Became
Black
MATTER HOW MUCH ONE HAS READ ABOUT AFRICA
beforehand, one's
overwhelming.
Namibia,
I
On
first
the streets of
impressions from actually being there are
Windhoek,
last
newly independent
whites,
and Namas,
from both blacks and whites. They were no longer mere
pictures in a textbook, but living
humans
in front of
of the formerly widespread Kalahari
gling for survival. But
sign:
capital of
saw black Herero people, black Ovambos,
different again
hoek, the
19
what most surprised me
in
me. Outside Wind-
Bushmen were
Namibia was
one of downtown Windhoek's main roads was called Goering
Surely,
I
strug-
a street
Street!
thought, no country could be so dominated by unrepentant
Nazis as to name a
street after the
founder of the Luftwaffe,
street instead
notorious Nazi Reich skommissar and
Hermann
Goering! No,
commemorated Hermann's
ing Reich skommissar of the former
German colony
which became Namibia. But Heinrich was
his legacy included
it
turned out that the
father, Heinrich Goering, found-
of South-West Africa,
also a problematic figure, for
one of the most vicious attacks by European colonists
on Africans, Germany's 1904 war of extermination against the Hereros.
Today, while events in neighboring South Africa
world's attention,
Namibia
as well
3
is
command more
struggling to deal with
7 6
its
of the
colonial
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
past and establish a multiracial society.
inseparable Africa's past
is
from
its
3
Namibia
7 7
Most Americans and many Europeans equate
blacks, white Africans with recent intruders,
native Africans with
and African
racial history
with the story of European colonialism and slave trading. There
why we
ous reason
numbers
may have
is
an obvi-
focus on those particular facts: blacks are the sole
native Africans familiar to
large
me how
illustrated for
present.
most Americans, because they were brought
in
as slaves to the United States. But very different peoples
occupied
much
of
modern black
Africa until as recently as a few
thousand years ago, and so-called African blacks themselves are heterogeneous. Even before the arrival of white colonialists, Africa already har-
bored not
but (as
just blacks
divisions of humanity,
we
shall see) five of the world's six
and three of them are confined
One-quarter of the world's languages are spoken only in Africa.
continent approaches this
human
is
No
other
diversity.
Africa's diverse peoples resulted
prehistory. Africa
major
as natives to Africa.
from
its
diverse geography
and
its
long
the only continent to extend from the northern to the
southern temperate zone, while also encompassing some of the world's
driest deserts, largest tropical rain forests,
tains.
Humans have
and highest equatorial mounanywhere
lived in Africa far longer than
else:
our
remote ancestors originated there around 7 million years ago, and anatomically
modern
interactions
Homo
sapiens
may have
arisen there since then.
between Africa's many peoples generated
history, including
past 5,000 years
two
of the
its
The long
fascinating pre-
most dramatic population movements of the
—the Bantu expansion and the Indonesian colonization
of Madagascar. All of those past interactions continue to have heavy consequences, because the details of
who
arrived
where before
whom
are
shaping Africa today.
How did those five divisions of humanity get to be where they are now
Why were blacks the ones who came to be so widespread, rather
in Africa?
than the four other groups whose existence Americans tend to forget?
How can we
ever hope to wrest the answers to those questions from Afri-
ca's preliterate past,
spread of the
scale,
still
lacking the written evidence that teaches us about the
Roman
Empire? African prehistory
only partly solved. As
it
is
a puzzle
turns out, the story has
on
a
some
grand
little-
appreciated but striking parallels with the American prehistory that
encountered in the preceding chapter.
we
1
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
7^
3
he five major human groups
a.d.
to
which Africa was already home by
1000 are those loosely referred to by laypeople
as blacks, whites,
African Pygmies, Khoisan, and Asians. Figure 19.1 depicts their distributions, while the portraits following
page 288
ing differences in skin color, hair
will
form and
remind you of their
color,
and
Blacks were formerly confined to Africa, Pygmies and Khoisan
only there, while
it.
These
five
for Aboriginal Australians
may
readers
classifying
whites and Asians
groups constitute or represent
humanity except
Many
many more
them
and
into arbitrary "races"! Yes,
is
Africa's Egyptians
Swedes under the
live
the major divisions of
their relatives.
single
I
acknowledge that each of
very diverse. To lump people as different
and Ibos under the
We
the differences between them.
lump
all
still
outside Africa than in
already be protesting: don't stereotype people by
these so-called major groups
as Zulus, Somalis,
live
strik-
facial features.
single
heading of "blacks" ignores
ignore equally big differences
when we
and Berbers with each other and with Europe's
heading of "whites." In addition, the divisions
between blacks, whites, and the other major groups are
arbitrary, because
human groups on
Earth have mated
each such group
shades into others: all
with humans of every other group that they encountered. Nevertheless, as
we'll see, recognizing these
ing history that
I'll
major groups
use the group
names
is still
so useful for understand-
as shorthand, without repeating
the above caveats in every sentence.
Of
the five African groups, representatives of
many
populations of
blacks and whites are familiar to Americans and Europeans and need no
physical description. Blacks occupied the largest area of Africa even as of
a.d. 1400: the southern Sahara
19.1).
and most of sub-Saharan Africa
(see Figure
While American blacks of African descent originated mainly from
Africa's west coastal zone, similar peoples traditionally occupied East
Africa as well, north to the Sudan and south to the southeast coast of
South Africa
itself.
Whites, ranging from Egyptians and Libyans to Moroc-
cans, occupied Africa's north coastal zone
and the northern Sahara. Those
North Africans would hardly be confused with blue-eyed blond-haired
Swedes, but most laypeople would
still
call
them "whites" because they
have lighter skin and straighter hair than peoples to the south termed
"blacks."
Most
of Africa's blacks and whites depended on farming or
herding, or both, for their living.
In contrast, the next
two groups,
the Pygmies
and Khoisan, include
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
3
7 9
Peoples of Africa (as of ad 1400)
Indonesians
+
Blacks
Figure 19.1. See the text for caveats about describing distributions of Afri-
can peoples in terms of these familiar but problematical groupings.
380
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
hunter-gatherers without crops or livestock. Like blacks, Pygmies have
dark skins and tightly curled
their
facial
much
smaller
and body
size,
hair,
hair.
However, Pygmies
more reddish and
less
from blacks
differ
in
black skins, more extensive
and more prominent foreheads,
eyes,
and
teeth. Pyg-
mies are mostly hunter-gatherers living in groups widely scattered through
and trading with
the Central African rain forest
(or
working
for) neigh-
boring black farmers.
The Khoisan make up
who are
over much
the group least familiar to Americans,
unlikely even to have heard of their name. Formerly distributed
of southern Africa, they consisted not only of small-sized hunter-gatherers,
known as San, but also of larger herders, known as Khoi. (These names
are now preferred to the better-known terms Hottentot and Bushmen.)
Both the Khoi and the San look
(or looked) quite unlike African blacks:
their skins are yellowish, their hair
is
very tightly coiled, and the
tend to accumulate
much
a distinct group, the
Khoi have been greatly reduced
fat in their
colonists shot, displaced, or infected
women
buttocks (termed "steatopygia"). As
many
numbers: European
in
of them, and most of the survi-
vors interbred with Europeans to produce the populations variously
known
in
South Africa as Coloreds or Basters. The San were similarly
and
shot, displaced,
infected, but a dwindling small
served their distinctness in
ture, as depicted
Namibian
some years ago
in the
number have
pre-
desert areas unsuitable for agricul-
widely seen film The Gods Must Be
Crazy.
The northern
distribution of Africa's whites
is
unsurprising, because
physically similar peoples live in adjacent areas of the
Near East and
Europe. Throughout recorded history, people have been moving back and
forth between Europe, the
little
more about
Near
East,
and North
Africa.
therefore say
I'll
Africa's whites in this chapter, since their origins aren't
mysterious. Instead, the mystery involves blacks, Pygmies, and Khoisan,
whose
distributions hint at past population upheavals. For instance, the
present fragmented distribution of the 200,000 Pygmies, scattered amid
120 million blacks, suggests that Pygmy hunters were formerly widespread
through the equatorial forests
of black farmers.
until displaced
The Khoisan area of southern
for a people so distinct in
isolated
by the
arrival
is
surprisingly small
anatomy and language. Could
the Khoisan, too,
have been originally more widespread
tions
and
Africa
until their
more northerly popula-
were somehow eliminated?
I've
saved the biggest anomaly for
last.
The
large island of
Madagascar
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
much
only 250 miles off the East African coast,
lies
8
3
I
closer to Africa than
any other continent, and separated by the whole expanse of the Indian
to
Ocean from Asia and
Australia. Madagascar's people prove to be a mix-
two elements. Not
ture of
surprisingly,
one element
the other consists of people instantly recognizable,
is
African blacks, but
from
their appearance,
spoken by
as tropical Southeast Asians. Specifically, the language
people of Madagascar
—Asians, blacks, and mixed—
Ma'anyan language spoken on
very similar to the
is
all
the
Austronesian and
the Indonesian island of
Borneo, over 4,000 miles across the open Indian Ocean from Madagascar.
No
other people remotely resembling Borneans live within thousands of
miles of Madagascar.
These Austronesians, with
their
Austronesian language and modified
Austronesian culture, were already established on Madagascar by the time
it
was
visited
first
by Europeans,
most astonishing fact of
in
1500. This strikes
human geography
Columbus, on reaching Cuba, had found
it
me
as the single
for the entire world.
It's
as
if
occupied by blue-eyed, blond-
haired Scandinavians speaking a language close to Swedish, even though
the nearby
North American continent was inhabited by Native Americans
speaking Amerindian languages.
How on earth could prehistoric people of
Borneo, presumably voyaging in boats without maps or compasses, end
up
in
Madagascar?
Ihe case of
their physical
Madagascar
tells
us that peoples' languages, as well as
appearance, can yield important clues to their origins. Just
by looking at the people of Madagascar, we'd have
them came from
tropical Southeast Asia, but
known
that
some of
we wouldn't have known
from which area of tropical Southeast Asia, and we'd never have guessed
Borneo.
already
What else
know from
can
we
learn
from African languages that we
The mind-boggling complexities of
fied
by Stanford University's great
nized that
all
those languages
for their distribution).
dull
fall
Africa's 1,500 languages
linguist
Joseph Greenberg,
were
who
clari-
recog-
into just five families (see Figure 19.2
Readers accustomed to thinking of
linguistics as
and technical may be surprised to learn what fascinating contributions
Figure 19.2
If
didn't
African faces?
we
rough
makes
to our understanding of African history.
begin by comparing Figure 19.2 with Figure 19.1, we'll see a
correspondence
between
language
families
and
anatomically
382
j|
lilHIllll
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
Niger-Congo
(Bantu)
S
Nilo-Saharan
K
Khoisan
A
Austronesian
Figure 19.2. Language families of Africa.
defined
human
spoken by
groups: languages of a given language family tend to be
distinct people. In particular, Afroasiatic speakers
to be people
who would
mostly prove
be classified as whites or blacks, Nilo-Saharan
and Niger-Congo speakers prove to be blacks, Khoisan speakers Khoisan,
and Austronesian speakers Indonesian. This suggests that languages have
tended to evolve along with the people
who
speak them.
383
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
Concealed
at the
top of Figure 19.2
is
our
first
surprise, a big
Eurocentric believers in the superiority of so-called
We're taught that Western civilization originated
brought to
Those
among
religions arose
Near
in the
shock for
civilization.
East,
was
Europe by the Greeks and Romans, and
brilliant heights in
produced three of the world's great
Islam.
Western
religions: Christianity,
Judaism, and
peoples speaking three closely related
languages, termed Semitic languages: Aramaic (the language of Christ and
the Apostles),
Hebrew, and Arabic,
Semitic peoples with the
Near
respectively.
We
instinctively associate
East.
However, Greenberg determined that Semitic languages
only one of six or more branches of a
asiatic, all
its
really
form
larger language family, Afro-
of whose other branches (and other 222 surviving languages)
are confined to Africa.
12 of
much
Even the Semitic subfamily
itself is
mainly African,
19 surviving languages being confined to Ethiopia. This suggests
that Afroasiatic languages arose in Africa,
them spread
to the
Near
birth to the languages
Hence
East.
and that only one branch of
may have been
Africa that gave
spoken by the authors of the Old and
ments and the Koran, the moral
pillars of
The next surprise in Figure 19.2
comment when I just told you that
languages.
it
is
Western
a seeming detail
on which
distinct peoples tend to
of people —
—only the Pygmies lack any
Among Africa's five groups
Khoisan, and Indonesians
New
Testa-
civilization.
I
didn't
have distinct
blacks, whites, Pygmies,
distinct languages:
each band of Pygmies speaks the same language as the neighboring group
of black farmers.
However,
if
one compares a given language as spoken
by Pygmies with the same language as spoken by blacks, the Pygmy version seems to contain
some unique words with
distinctive sounds.
Originally, of course, people as distinctive as the Pygmies, living in a
place as distinctive as the equatorial African rain forest, were surely isolated
enough to develop
languages are gone, and
mies'
modern
linguistic clues
their
we
distribution
own
language family. However, today those
already
is
saw from Figure
19.1 that the Pyg-
highly fragmented. Thus, distributional and
combine to suggest that the Pygmy homeland was engulfed
by invading black farmers, whose languages the remaining Pygmies
adopted, leaving only traces of their original languages in some words and
sounds.
We
saw previously
that
much
the
same
Negritos (Semang) and Philippine Negritos,
and Austronesian languages,
surround them.
respectively,
is
who
true of the Malaysian
adopted Austroasiatic
from the farmers who came
to
384
The fragmented
implies
similarly
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
distribution of Nilo-Saharan languages in Figure 19.2
many
that
speakers of those languages have been
engulfed by speakers of Afroasiatic or Niger-Congo languages. But the
Khoisan languages
distribution of
astonishment;
it's
how
just
is
whole world
in
not an expression of premature
denote a
linguists
in the
been puzzled by the name
their use of clicks as consonants. (If you've
!Kung Bushman, the exclamation mark
more dramatic
to an even
testifies
Those languages are famously unique
engulfing.
click.) All existing
Khoisan
languages are confined to southern Africa, with two exceptions. Those
exceptions are two very distinctive, click-laden Khoisan languages
Hadza and Sandawe, stranded
in
named
Tanzania more than 1,000 miles from
the nearest Khoisan languages of southern Africa.
Xhosa and
In addition,
Africa are
full
also appear in
stranded
still
a few other
of clicks. Even
two
Niger-Congo languages of southern
more unexpectedly,
clicks or
Khoisan words
Afroasiatic languages spoken by blacks in Kenya,
farther
from present Khoisan peoples than are the Hadza
and Sandawe peoples of Tanzania.
and peoples formerly extended
All this suggests that
Khoisan languages
far north of their present southern African
distribution, until they too, like the Pygmies,
were engulfed by the blacks,
leaving only linguistic legacies of their former presence. That's a unique
contribution of the linguistic evidence, something
we
could hardly have
guessed just from physical studies of living people.
I
have saved the most remarkable contribution of
you look again
family
is
at Figure 19.2, you'll see that the
distributed
all
linguistics for last. If
Niger-Congo language
over West Africa and most of subequatorial Africa,
apparently giving no clue as to where within that enormous range the family
originated.
However, Greenberg recognized that
all
Niger-Congo
lan-
guages of subequatorial Africa belong to a single language subgroup
termed Bantu. That subgroup accounts for nearly half of the 1,032 Niger-
Congo languages and
Congo
speakers. But
for
all
more than
half (nearly
200
million) of the Niger-
those 500 Bantu languages are so similar to each
other that they have been facetiously described as 500 dialects of a single
language.
Collectively, the
Bantu languages constitute only a
subfamily of the Niger-Congo language family.
families are
Congo
crammed
into
West
range. In particular, the
Most
single,
low-order
of the 176 other sub-
Africa, a small fraction of the entire Niger-
most
distinctive
Bantu languages, and the
non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages most closely related to Bantu
Ian-
385
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
Cameroon and
guages, are packed into a tiny area of
adjacent eastern
Nigeria.
Evidently, the
Bantu branch of
Niger-Congo language family arose
it
in
West
arose at the east end of that range, in
Africa; the
Cameroon and
homeland over most of
Nigeria; and the Bantu then spread out of that
subequatorial Africa. That spread must have begun long ago enough that
the ancestral Bantu language
had time
to split into
guages, but nevertheless recently enough that
are
still
very similar to each other. Since
as well as the Bantu, are blacks,
in
which
direction just
To make
we
all
all
500 daughter
lan-
those daughter languages
other Niger-Congo speakers,
couldn't have inferred
who
migrated
from the evidence of physical anthropology.
this type of linguistic
reasoning clear,
let
me give you a
familiar
example: the geographic origins of the English language. Today, by far
the largest
number
of people
whose
first
language
is
English live in North
America, with others scattered over the globe in Britain, Australia, and
other countries. Each of those countries has
we knew nothing
else
its
own
have guessed that the English language arose in
carried overseas to Britain
But
and Australia by
history,
we might
North America and was
colonists.
those English dialects form only one low-order subgroup of the
all
Germanic language
family. All the other
German, and Dutch languages
vian,
dialects of English. If
about language distributions and
subgroups
— are
—the various Scandina-
crammed
into northwestern
Europe. In particular, Frisian, the other Germanic language most closely
related to English,
is
Germany. Hence a
confined to a tiny coastal area of Holland and western
linguist
would immediately deduce
correctly that the
English language arose in coastal northwestern Europe and spread around
the
world from
really
fifth
was
and
there. In fact,
carried
we know from recorded
history that English
from there to England by invading Anglo-Saxons
in the
sixth centuries a.d.
Essentially the
Bantu people,
same
line of
now flung
over
reasoning
much
tells
of the
us that the nearly
map
200 million
of Africa, arose from
Cam-
eroon and Nigeria. Along with the North African origins of Semites and
the origins of Madagascar's Asians, that's another conclusion that
we
couldn't have reached without linguistic evidence.
We
had already deduced, from Khoisan language distributions and the
lack of distinct
Pygmy
languages, that Pygmies and Khoisan peoples had
formerly ranged more widely, until they were engulfed by blacks. (I'm
using "engulfing" as a neutral all-embracing word, regardless of whether
3
8
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
6
the process involved conquest, expulsion, interbreeding, killing, or epi-
demics.) We've
the blacks
tic
who
now
seen,
from Niger-Congo language
but
it still
that
I'll
The
did the engulfing were the Bantu.
evidence considered so far has
let
Only the further evidence
help us answer
two more
tages enabled the Bantu to displace the Pygmies
the Bantu reach the former
1o
approach the
questions:
What advan-
question about the Bantu's advantages,
from the
living present
derived from domesticated plants and animals. As
is
When
and Khoisan?
did
Pygmy and Khoisan homelands?
ine the remaining type of evidence
chapters, that evidence
physical and linguis-
us infer these prehistoric engulfings,
hasn't solved their mysteries for us.
now present can
distributions, that
let's
exam-
—the evidence
we saw
in previous
important because food production led to high
population densities, germs, technology, political organization, and other
ingredients of power. Peoples
tion, inherited or
engulf geographically less
When
who, by accident of
endowed
people.
Europeans reached sub-Saharan Africa
were growing
their geographic loca-
developed food production thereby became able to
five sets
in the 1400s, Africans
of crops (Figure 19.3), each of them laden with
significance for African history.
The
first set
Africa, extending to the highlands of Ethiopia.
was grown only
North
in
North Africa enjoys
a
Med-
iterranean climate, characterized by rainfall concentrated in the winter
months. (Southern California also experiences a Mediterranean climate,
explaining
why my basement and
that of millions of other southern Cali-
fornians often gets flooded in the winter but infallibly dries out in the
summer.) The
where agriculture arose, enjoys that same
Fertile Crescent,
Mediterranean pattern of winter
Hence North
rains.
Africa's original crops all prove to be ones adapted to
germinating and growing with winter rains, and
cal evidence to
have been
first
known from
archaeologi-
domesticated in the Fertile Crescent begin-
ning around 10,000 years ago. Those Fertile Crescent crops spread into
climatically similar adjacent areas of
North Africa and
tions for the rise of ancient Egyptian civilization.
iar
laid the
founda-
They include such
famil-
crops as wheat, barley, peas, beans, and grapes. These are familiar to
us precisely because they also spread into climatically similar adjacent
areas of Europe, thence to America
and Australia, and became some of the
staple crops of temperate-zone agriculture
around the world.
387
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
Origins of African crops, with examples
N4'
/
\
,'
*•»
tropical
*
Asia
/
(bananas,
Asian yams)
Figure 19.3.
(that
is,
The areas of origin of crops grown
traditionally in Africa
before the arrival of crops carried by colonizing Europeans),
with examples of two crops from each area.
As one
travels south in Africa across the
ters rain in the Sahel
rains fall in the
zone
summer
just
rather than in the winter.
crops adapted to winter rain could
would have been
we
find
two
the Sahara,
difficult to
sets of
Saharan desert and reencoun-
south of the desert, one notices that Sahel
grow
somehow have
in the
Even
if
Fertile Crescent
crossed the Sahara, they
summer-rain Sahel zone. Instead,
African crops whose wild ancestors occur just south of
and which are adapted to summer rains and
less
seasonal vari-
—
3
One
ation in day length.
distributed
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
8
8
whose ancestors
set consists of plants
from west to
east across the Sahel zone
are widely
and were probably
domesticated there. They include, notably, sorghum and pearl millet,
which became the
staple cereals of
proved so valuable that
all
it is
much
now grown
of sub-Saharan Africa.
in areas
Sorghum
with hot, dry climates on
the continents, including in the United States.
The other
set consists of plants
whose wild ancestors occur
and were probably domesticated there
grown mainly
and remain unknown
just in Ethiopia
including Ethiopia's narcotic chat,
brew
finger millet used to
teff,
used to
make
its
its
its
banana-like ensete,
national beer, and
its
in Ethiopia
Most
in the highlands.
are
still
to
Americans
its
oily
noog,
tiny-seeded cereal called
national bread. But every reader addicted to coffee
can thank ancient Ethiopian farmers for domesticating the coffee plant.
remained confined to Ethiopia
until
it
The
and Papua
New
It
caught on in Arabia and then
around the world, to sustain today the economies of countries as
as Brazil
its
far-flung
Guinea.
from wild ancestors
next-to-last set of African crops arose
wet climate of West Africa. Some, including African
virtually confined there; others, such as African
rice,
in the
have remained
yams, spread throughout
other areas of sub-Saharan Africa; and two, the
oil
palm and kola
nut,
reached other continents. West Africans were chewing the caffeine-containing nuts of the latter as a narcotic, long before the Coca-Cola
pany enticed
first
originally laced with
The
last
its
extracts.
batch of African crops
is
also adapted to
wet climates but pro-
vides the biggest surprise of Figure 19.3. Bananas, Asian yams,
were already widespread
rice
was
Com-
Americans and then the world to drink a beverage
established
in
sub-Saharan Africa
on the coast of East
in the 1400s,
Africa. But those crops originated
in tropical Southeast Asia. Their presence in Africa
the presence of Indonesian people
and taro
and Asian
would astonish
on Madagascar had not already
us to Africa's prehistoric Asian connection.
Did Austronesians
Borneo land on the East African coast, bestow
their crops
can farmers, pick up African fishermen, and
on
sail off into
us,
if
alerted
sailing
from
grateful Afri-
the sunrise to
colonize Madagascar, leaving no other Austronesian traces in Africa?
The remaining
surprise
is
that
all
of Africa's indigenous crops
of the Sahel, Ethiopia, and West Africa
Not
—those
—originated north of the equator.
a single African crop originated south of
it.
This already gives us a
389
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
hint
why
speakers of Niger-Congo languages, stemming from north of the
equator, were able to displace Africa's equatorial Pygmies and subequatorial
Khoisan people. The
agriculture
was due'not
Khoisan and Pygmies to develop
failure of the
any inadequacy of
to
theirs as farmers but
to the accident that southern Africa's wild plants
for domestication. Neither
merely
were mostly unsuitable
Bantu nor white farmers,
heirs to
thousands of
years of farming experience, were subsequently able to develop southern
African native plants into food crops.
can be summarized much more
Africa's domesticated animal species
quickly than
that
tor
its
we know
is
plants, because there are so
for sure
confined there,
was domesticated
is
few of them. The
in Africa,
because
its
sole
animal
wild ances-
a turkeylike bird called the guinea fowl.
Wild
ancestors of domestic cattle, donkeys, pigs, dogs, and house cats were
native to
tain
North Africa but
where they were
rently
known
first
also to Southwest Asia, so
can't yet be cer-
domesticated, although the earliest dates cur-
for domestic
evidence suggests that cattle
North
we
donkeys and house cats favor Egypt. Recent
may have been
Africa, Southwest Asia,
and
India,
have contributed to modern African
remainder of Africa's domestic
domesticated independently in
and that
all
three of those stocks
cattle breeds.
Otherwise,
mammals must have been
all
the
domesticated
elsewhere and introduced as domesticates to Africa, because their wild
ancestors occur only in Eurasia. Africa's sheep and goats were domesti-
cated in Southwest Asia,
ern Russia, and
its
its
The most unexpected
feature of this
again a negative one. The
mammal
species for
abundance
—
its
list
its
which Africa
and buffalo. As we'll
list
is
famous and which
see, that reality
was
of African domestic animals
was
its
it
is
possesses in such
rhinos and hippos,
its
giraffes
as fraught with consequences for
the absence of native domestic plants in subequato-
Africa.
This quick tour through Africa's food staples suffices to
of
horses in south-
includes not a single one of the big wild
zebras and wildebeests,
African history as
rial
chickens in Southeast Asia,
camels probably in Arabia.
them traveled
a long
way from
their points of origin,
outside Africa. In Africa as elsewhere in the world,
much
show
that
some
both inside and
some peoples were
"luckier" than others, in the suites of domesticable wild plant and
animal species that they inherited from their environment. By analogy with
the engulfing of Aboriginal Australian hunter-gatherers by British colo-
3
nists fed
9°
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
'
on wheat and
we have
cattle,
some of the "lucky"
to suspect that
Africans parlayed their advantage into engulfing their African neighbors.
Now,
at last, let's turn to the archaeological record to find out
engulfed
whom when.
What
can archaeology
history of Western civilization
food production began
and pyramids. After
Africa's
can
and herding
for the rise of farming
us about actual dates and places
tell
in Africa?
Any
would be forgiven
for
reader steeped in the
assuming that African
pharaohs
in ancient Egypt's Nile Valley, land of the
all,
most complex
Egypt by 3000
society,
who
B.C.
was undoubtedly
and one of the world's
the site of
earliest centers of
writing. In fact, though, possibly the earliest archaeological evidence for
food production
comes instead from the Sahara.
in Africa
Today, of course,
much
of the Sahara
is
so dry that
it
cannot support
even grass. But between about 9000 and 4000 B.C. the Sahara was more
humid, held numerous
lakes,
ans began to tend cattle and
and they may
and teemed with game. In that period, Sahar-
make
also have been starting to domesticate
Saharan pastoralism precedes the
arrival of
pottery, then to keep sheep
food production
known
earliest
in Egypt, in the
and goats,
sorghum and
millet.
date (5200 B.C.) for the
form of a
full
package of South-
west Asian winter crops and livestock. Food production also arose in West
Africa and Ethiopia, and by around
crossed the
2500
modern border from Ethiopia
While those conclusions
rest
B.C. cattle herders
on archaeological evidence,
an independent method for dating the
mals: by comparing the words for
had already
into northern Kenya.
there
arrival of domestic plants
them
in
is
also
and
ani-
modern languages. Compari-
sons of terms for plants in southern Nigerian languages of the Niger-
Congo
family
show
which the word
that the
words
fall
for a particular crop
into three groups. First are cases in
is
very similar in
Nigerian languages. Those crops prove to be ones
oil
palm, and kola nut
and other evidence
—
West Africa and
Since those are the oldest West African crops,
rian languages inherited the
same
Next come crops whose names
Those crops turn out
those southern
West African yams,
plants that were already believed
to be native to
falling within a small
like
all
all
original set of
first
on botanical
domesticated there.
modern southern Nige-
words
are consistent only
for them.
among the
languages
subgroup of those southern Nigerian languages.
to be ones believed to be of Indonesian origin, such
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
1
9
3
as
bananas and Asian yams. Evidently, those crops reached southern Nige-
ria
only after languages began to break up into subgroups, so each sub-
group coined or received different names for the new plants, which the
that particular subgroup inherited. Last
modern languages of only
crop names that aren't consistent within language groups at
follow trade routes. These prove to be
peanuts, which
New
we know were introduced
of transatlantic ship traffic (a.d. 1492)
but instead
all,
World crops
come
corn and
like
into Africa after the beginnings
and diffused
since then along trade
routes, often bearing their Portuguese or other foreign names.
if we possessed no
we would still be able
Thus, even
whatsoever,
botanical or archaeological evidence
to deduce
from the
linguistic evidence
alone that native West African crops were domesticated
sian crops arrived next,
UCLA
The
in.
and that
finally the
first,
that Indone-
European introductions came
historian Christopher Ehret has applied this linguistic
approach to determining the sequence
in
which domestic plants and
ani-
mals became utilized by the people of each African language family. By a
method termed glottochronology, based on
words tend to change over
historical time,
calculations of
comparative
how
linguistics
rapidly
can even
yield estimated dates for domestications or crop arrivals.
Putting together direct archaeological evidence of crops with the
indirect linguistic evidence,
cating
sorghum and
who
first
that the people
millet in the Sahara
languages ancestral to
ple
we deduce
who were
more
domesti-
thousands of years ago spoke
modern Nilo-Saharan languages.
Similarly, the peo-
domesticated wet-country crops of West Africa spoke lan-
guages ancestral to the modern Niger-Congo languages. Finally, speakers
of ancestral Afroasiatic languages
ing the crops native to Ethiopia,
cent crops to
North
may have
been involved
in domesticat-
and they certainly introduced
Fertile Cres-
Africa.
Thus, the evidence derived from plant names in modern African languages permits us to glimpse the existence of three languages being spoken
in Africa
thousands of years ago: ancestral Nilo-Saharan, ancestral Niger-
Congo, and ancestral Afroasiatic. In addition, we can glimpse the
tence of ancestral Khoisan
of crop
Now
names (because
linguistic evidence,
though not that
ancestral Khoisan people domesticated
surely, since Africa
to have
from other
harbors 1,500 languages today,
exis-
it is
no
big
crops).
enough
harbored more than four ancestral languages thousands of years
ago. But
all
those other languages must have disappeared
the people speaking
them survived but
—
either because
lost their original language, like the
3
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
9 2
Pygmies, or because the people themselves disappeared.
The
modern
survival of
Africa's four native language families (that
the four other than the recently arrived Austronesian language of
is,
Mada-
gascar) isn't due to the intrinsic superiority of those languages as vehicles
for
communication. Instead,
it
must be attributed to a
and Afroasiatic hap-
ancestral speakers of Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo,
pened to be
and animals, which
impose
and time
living at the right place
them multiply and
let
historical accident:
to acquire domestic plants
either replace other peoples or
The few modern Khoisan speakers survived mainly
their language.
because of their isolation in areas of southern Africa unsuitable for Bantu
farming.
Before we trace
what archaeology
movement
tells
Khoisan survival beyond the Bantu
—the Austronesian colonization of Madagascar. Archaeologists
exploring Madagascar have
least
tide, let's see
us about Africa's other great prehistoric population
now proved that Austronesians had
arrived at
by a.d. 800, possibly as early as a.d. 300. There the Austronesians
encountered (and proceeded to exterminate) a strange world of living ani-
mals as distinctive as
if
they had
come from another
animals had evolved on Madagascar during
its
planet, because those
long isolation. They
included giant elephant birds, primitive primates called lemurs as big as
gorillas,
human
and pygmy hippos. Archaeological excavations of the
settlements
on Madagascar
and crops, so the colonists were not
blown
off course; they
formed
One
hint
is
in
just a small
canoeload of fishermen
a full-fledged expedition.
prehistoric 4,000-mile expedition
earliest
yield remains of iron tools, livestock,
How
did that
come about?
an ancient book of
sailors' directions, the Periplus
of the
Erythrean Sea, written by an anonymous merchant living in Egypt around
a.d. 100.
The merchant
describes an already thriving sea trade connecting
India and Egypt with the coast of East Africa.
after a.d. 800, Indian
cally
With the spread of Islam
Ocean trade becomes well documented archaeologi-
by copious quantities of Mideastern (and occasionally even Chinese!)
products such as pottery, glass, and porcelain in East African coastal
ments. The traders waited for favorable winds to
Ocean
directly
gator Vasco da
between East Africa and India.
Gama became
the
first
let
them
When
European to
settle-
cross the Indian
the Portuguese navi-
sail
around the south-
ern cape of Africa and reached the Kenya coast in 1498, he encountered
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
3
Swahili trading settlements and picked up a pilot
who
9 3
guided him on that
direct route to India.
But there was an equally vigorous sea trade from India eastward,
between India and Indonesia. Perhaps the Austronesian colonists of Madagascar reached India from Indonesia by that eastern trade route and then
fell
with the westward trade route to East Africa, where they joined
in
with Africans and discovered Madagascar. That union of Austronesians
and East Africans
lives
on today
in
Madagascar's basically Austronesian
language, which contains loan words from coastal Kenyan Bantu languages. But there are no corresponding Austronesian loan words in
Kenyan languages, and other
ground
in East Africa:
traces of Austronesians are very thin
mainly
just Africa's possible legacy of
on the
Indonesian
musical instruments (xylophones and zithers) and, of course, the Austronesian crops that became so important in African agriculture.
Hence
one wonders whether Austronesians, instead of taking the easier route to
Madagascar
via
India
and East Africa, somehow
straight across the Indian
about Africa's most surprising
What
fact of
can archaeology
in recent
sailed
Ocean, discovered Madagascar, and only
got plugged into East African trade routes. Thus,
movement
(incredibly)
tell
human
later
some mystery remains
geography.
us about the other great population
African prehistory
—the
Bantu expansion?
from the twin evidence of modern peoples and
their languages that sub-
Saharan Africa was not always a black continent, as we think of
Instead, this evidence suggested that Pygmies
We saw
it
today.
had once been widespread
the rain forest of Central Africa, while Khoisan peoples
spread in drier parts of subequatorial Africa.
in
had been wide-
Can archaeology
test
those
assumptions?
In the case of the Pygmies, the
answer
archaeologists have yet to discover ancient
tral
is
"not yet," merely because
human
African forests. For the Khoisan, the answer
the north of the
modern Khoisan
of people possibly resembling the
As
"yes." In
Zambia, to
range, archaeologists have found skulls
modern Khoisan,
resembling those that Khoisan peoples were
at the
skeletons from the Cenis
still
as well as stone tools
making
in
southern Africa
time Europeans arrived.
for
logical
how the Bantu came
and
to replace those northern Khoisan, archaeo-
linguistic evidence suggest that the
expansion of ancestral
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
B
9 4
3
Bantu farmers from West Africa's inland savanna south into
coastal forest
may have begun
still
widespread
had
cattle
and were
in all
and wet-climate crops such
still
engaged
in
lost their cattle to disease
into the
as early as
Congo
3000
Bantu languages show
Basin's
much
as
its
wetter
B.C. (Figure 19.4).
Words
that, already then, the
fishing, hunting,
borne by
and gathering. They even
tsetse flies in the forest.
and compress them into the
By soon
after
1000
As they spread
equatorial forest zone, cleared gardens, and
increased in numbers, they began to engulf the
the forest into the
Bantu
yams, but that they lacked metal
Pygmy
hunter-gatherers
forest itself.
B.C. the
Bantu had emerged from the eastern
more open country of East
Africa's Rift Valley
side of
and Great
Lakes. Here they encountered a melting pot of Afroasiatic and Nilo-
Saharan farmers and herders growing millet and sorghum and raising
live-
stock in drier areas, along with Khoisan hunter-gatherers. Thanks to their
wet-climate crops inherited from their West African homeland, the Bantu
were able to farm
in
wet areas of East Africa unsuitable for
ous occupants. By the
last centuries B.C. the
all
those previ-
advancing Bantu had reached
the East African coast.
In East Africa the Bantu began to acquire millet
and sorghum (along
with the Nilo-Saharan names for those crops), and to reacquire
from
iron,
their
cattle,
Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic neighbors. They also acquired
which had
just
begun to be smelted
in Africa's Sahel zone.
The
origins
of ironworking in sub-Saharan Africa soon after 1000 B.C. are
unclear.
That early date
is
suspiciously close to dates for the arrival of
Near Eastern ironworking techniques
coast.
Hence
historians
still
in Carthage,
on the North African
often assume that knowledge
reached sub-Saharan Africa from the north.
On
of metallurgy
the other hand, copper
smelting had been going on in the West African Sahara and Sahel since at
least
2000
B.C.
That could have been the precursor to an independent
Afri-
can discovery of iron metallurgy. Strengthening that hypothesis, the ironsmelting techniques of smiths in sub-Saharan Africa were so different from
those of the Mediterranean as to suggest independent development: Afri-
can smiths discovered
how
to produce high temperatures in their village
furnaces and manufacture steel over 2,000 years before the Bessemer fur-
naces of 19th-century Europe and America.
With the addition of iron
had
finally
tools to their wet-climate crops, the
Bantu
put together a military-industrial package that was unstoppable
in the subequatorial Africa of the time. In East Africa they
still
had
to
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
The Bantu expansion: 3000 bc
to
3
9
5
ad 500
Figure 19.4. Approximate paths of the expansion that carried people
speaking Bantu languages, originating from a homeland (designated H)
in the
northwest corner of the current Bantu area, over eastern and south-
ern Africa between
3000
B.C.
and
a.d. 500.
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
9 6
3
compete against numerous Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic Iron Age farmers.
But to the south lay 2,000 miles of country thinly occupied by Khoisan
hunter-gatherers, lacking iron and crops. Within a few centuries, in one of
the swiftest colonizing advances of recent prehistory, Bantu farmers
swept
It's
the
all
way
on the
to Natal,
east coast of
what
is
now
had
South Africa.
easy to oversimplify what was undoubtedly a rapid and dramatic
expansion, and to picture
onrushing Bantu hordes. In
all
Khoisan
reality, things
in the
way
being trampled by
were more complicated. Khoisan
peoples of southern Africa had already acquired sheep and cattle a few
The
centuries ahead of the Bantu advance.
were few
in
agriculture,
first
Bantu pioneers probably
number, selected wet-forest areas suitable
and leapfrogged over
drier areas,
which they
for their
left
yam
to Khoisan
herders and hunter-gatherers. Trading and marriage relationships were
undoubtedly established between those Khoisan and the Bantu farmers,
each occupying different adjacent habitats, just as Pygmy hunter-gatherers
and Bantu farmers
still
the Bantu multiplied
economy, did they
their
was
still
do today
in equatorial Africa.
and incorporated
fill
cattle
in the leapfrogged areas.
the same: Bantu farmers occupying
Only
gradually, as
and dry-climate
cereals into
But the eventual result
most of the former Khoisan
realm; the legacy of those former Khoisan inhabitants reduced to clicks in
scattered non-Khoisan languages, as well as buried skulls
and stone
tools
waiting for archaeologists to discover; and the Khoisan-like appearance of
some southern African Bantu
What
actually
don't know. All
ples
We
had
happened to
we can
peoples.
all
those vanished Khoisan populations?
say for sure
is
that, in places
We
where Khoisan peo-
lived for perhaps tens of thousands of years, there are
now
Bantu.
can only venture a guess, by analogy with witnessed events in modern
times
when
steel-toting white farmers collided
with stone tool-using
hunter-gatherers of Aboriginal Australia and Indian California. There,
know
we
that hunter-gatherers were rapidly eliminated in a combination of
ways: they were driven out,
men were
killed or enslaved,
women
were
appropriated as wives, and both sexes became infected with epidemics of
the farmers' diseases.
which
is
An example
of such a disease in Africa
borne by mosquitoes that breed around farmers'
is
malaria,
villages,
and
to
which the invading Bantu had already developed genetic resistance but
Khoisan hunter-gatherers probably had not.
However, Figure 19.1, of recent African human
us that the Bantu did not overrun
all
distributions, reminds
the Khoisan,
who
did survive in
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
3
9 7
southern African areas unsuitable for Bantu agriculture. The southernmost
Bantu people, the Xhosa, stopped
500 miles
coast,
itself is
east of
at the Fish River
Cape Town.
too dry for agriculture:
It's
after
it is,
on South
Africa's south
not that the Cape of
all,
Good Hope
the breadbasket of
modern
South Africa. Instead, the Cape has a Mediterranean climate of winter
which the Bantu summer-rain crops do not grow. By 1652, the
rains, in
year the Dutch arrived at Cape
Eastern origin, the
That seeming
politics today.
Xhosa had
Town
still
detail of plant
with their winter-rain crops of Near
not spread beyond the Fish River.
geography had enormous implications for
One consequence was
that,
once South African whites had
quickly killed or infected or driven off the Cape's
Khoisan population,
whites could claim correctly that they had occupied the Cape before the
Bantu and thus had prior rights to
since the prior rights of the
possessing them.
tlers in
it.
That claim needn't be taken
Cape Khoisan
from
dis-
Dutch
set-
didn't inhibit whites
The much heavier consequence was
that the
seriously,
1652 had to contend only with a sparse population of Khoisan
herders, not with a dense population of steel-equipped Bantu farmers.
When
in
whites finally spread east to encounter the Xhosa at the Fish River
1702, a period of desperate fighting began. Even though Europeans by
then could supply troops from their secure base at the Cape,
wars and 175 years for
their armies,
ing
in establishing
Dutch
ships
How could whites have
themselves at the Cape at
had faced such
took nine
advancing at an average rate of
than one mile per year, to subdue the Xhosa.
ceeded
it
all, if
those
first
few
less
suc-
arriv-
fierce resistance?
Thus, the problems of modern South Africa stem at
least in part
from
a
geographic accident. The homeland of the Cape Khoisan happened to contain
few wild plants suitable for domestication; the Bantu happened to
summer-rain crops from
inherit
their ancestors of
5,000 years ago; and
Europeans happened to inherit winter-rain crops from
their ancestors of
nearly 10,000 years ago. Just as the sign "Goering Street" in the capital of
newly independent Namibia reminded me, Africa's past has stamped
itself
deeply on Africa's present.
how the Bantu were able to engulf the Khoisan, instead of vice
Now let's turn to the remaining question in our puzzle of African
1 hat's
versa.
prehistory:
That
it
why Europeans were the ones to colonize sub-Saharan Africa.
the other way around is especially surprising, because
was not
3
Africa
was
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
9^
the sole cradle of
human
evolution for millions of years, as well
homeland of anatomically modern
as perhaps the
Homo sapiens.
To
these
advantages of Africa's enormous head start were added those of highly
diverse climates
An
and habitats and of the world's highest human
10,000 years ago might have been
extraterrestrial visiting Earth
given for predicting that Europe
diversity.
would end up
for-
as a set of vassal states of
a sub-Saharan African empire.
The proximate reasons behind
Europe are
clear. Just as in their
outcome of
the
Africa's collision with
encounter with Native Americans, Euro-
peans entering Africa enjoyed the
triple
advantage of guns and other tech-
nology, widespread literacy, and the political organization necessary to
sustain expensive
programs of exploration and conquest. Those advan-
tages manifested themselves almost as soon as the collisions started: barely
Gama
four years after Vasco da
1498, he returned with a
first
reached the East African coast, in
fleet bristling
with cannons to compel the surren-
der of East Africa's most important port, Kilwa, which controlled the Zim-
babwe gold
trade.
But
why
did Europeans develop those three advantages
before sub-Saharan Africans could?
As we have
discussed,
all
three arose historically
of food production. But food production
from the development
was delayed
in
sub-Saharan
Africa (compared with Eurasia) by Africa's paucity of domesticable native
animal and plant species,
food production, and
its
much
smaller area suitable for indigenous
north-south axis, which retarded the spread of
its
food production and inventions.
Let's
examine
how
those factors oper-
ated.
First, as
regards domestic animals, we've already seen that those of sub-
Saharan Africa came from Eurasia, with the possible exception of a few
from North
Africa.
Saharan Africa
until
emerging Eurasian
As
a result, domestic animals did not reach sub-
thousands of years after they began to be
civilizations. That's initially surprising,
think of Africa as the continent of big wild
ter
utilized
because
mammals. But we saw
in
by
we
Chap-
9 that a wild animal, to be domesticated, must be sufficiently docile,
submissive to humans, cheap to feed, and
grow
immune
to diseases
and must
rapidly and breed well in captivity. Eurasia's native cows, sheep,
goats, horses,
and pigs were among the world's few
cies to pass all those tests.
buffalo, zebra, bush pig, rhino,
domesticated, not even in
large wild animal spe-
—such as the African
hippopotamus — have never been
Their African equivalents
modern
and
times.
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
some
true, of course, that
It's
3
9 9
large African animals have occasionally
been tamed. Hannibal enlisted tamed African elephants in
war
other species.
cated
to
—that
his unsuccessful
Rome, and ancient Egyptians may have tamed
against
is,
giraffes
and
But none of those tamed animals was actually domestiselectively bred in captivity
become more
useful to
humans.
Had
and genetically modified so
Africa's rhinos
as
and hippos been
domesticated and ridden, they would not only have fed armies but also
have provided an unstoppable cavalry to cut through the ranks of Euro-
pean horsemen. Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops could have over-
thrown the Roman Empire.
A
second factor
is
never happened.
It
a corresponding, though
between sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia
Sahel, Ethiopia,
and West Africa did
less
extreme, disparity
in domesticable plants.
yield indigenous crops, but
The
many
fewer varieties than grew in Eurasia. Because of the limited variety of wild
starting material suitable for plant domestication, even Africa's earliest
agriculture
may have begun
several
thousand years
later
than that of the
Fertile Crescent.
Thus, as far as plant and animal domestication was concerned, the head
start
and high
diversity lay with Eurasia, not with Africa.
that Africa's area
about one-third of
is
A third factor
is
only about half that of Eurasia. Furthermore, only
its
area
falls
within the sub-Saharan zone north of the
equator that was occupied by farmers and herders before 1000 B.C. Today,
the total population of Africa
less
is
than 700 million, compared with 4
billion for Eurasia. But, all other things being equal,
people
mean more competing
societies
more land and more
and inventions, hence
a faster pace
of development.
The remaining
factor behind Africa's slower rate of post-Pleistocene
development compared with Eurasia's
is
the different orientation of the
main axes of these continents. Like that of the Americas,
axis
is
north-south, whereas Eurasia's
moves along
a north-south axis,
climate, habitat, rainfall,
is
difficulty in
east-west (Figure 10.1). As one
day length, and diseases of crops and
moving
major
one traverses zones differing greatly
Hence crops and animals domesticated or acquired
had great
Africa's
in
in
livestock.
one part of Africa
to other parts. In contrast, crops
and
ani-
mals moved easily between Eurasian societies thousands of miles apart but
at the
same
latitude
and sharing similar climates and day
The slow passage or complete
halt of crops
and
lengths.
livestock along Africa's
north-south axis had important consequences. For example, the Mediter-
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
4 O O
ranean crops that became Egypt's staples require winter rains and seasonal
variation in day length for their germination.
Those crops were unable to
spread south of the Sudan, beyond which they encountered
and
European colonists brought them
little
rains
Good Hope
never reached the Mediterranean climate at the Cape of
oped
summer
or no seasonal variation in daylight. Egypt's wheat and barley
little
in
until
1652, and the Khoisan never devel-
agriculture. Similarly, the Sahel crops adapted to
summer
rain
and
to
or no seasonal variation in day length were brought by the Bantu into
southern Africa but could not grow at the Cape
itself,
thereby halting the
advance of Bantu agriculture. Bananas and other tropical Asian crops for
which
the
Africa's climate
most productive
eminently suitable, and which today are
is
staples of tropical African agriculture,
among
were unable to
reach Africa by land routes. They apparently did not arrive until the
millennium a.d., long after their domestication
first
because they had
in Asia,
to wait for large-scale boat traffic across the Indian Ocean.
impeded the spread of livestock.
Africa's north-south axis also seriously
Equatorial Africa's tsetse
mammals
can wild
asian and
flies,
carrying trypanosomes to which native Afri-
are resistant, proved devastating to introduced Eur-
North African
species of livestock.
The cows
that the Bantu
acquired from the tsetse-free Sahel zone failed to survive the Bantu expansion through the equatorial forest. Although horses had already reached
Egypt around 1800
B.C.
and transformed North African warfare soon
thereafter, they did not cross the
mounted West African kingdoms
Sahara to drive the
until the first
never spread south through the tsetse
rise of cavalry-
millennium a.d., and they
zone. While cattle, sheep, and
fly
goats had already reached the northern edge of the Serengeti in the third
millennium
B.C.,
it
took more than 2,000 years beyond that for livestock
to cross the Serengeti
and reach southern
Similarly slow in spreading
down
Africa.
Africa's north-south axis
was human
technology. Pottery, recorded in the Sudan and Sahara around 8000 B.C.,
did not reach the Cape until around a.d.
in
Egypt by 3000
B.C.
and spread
in
1.
Although writing developed
an alphabetized form to the Nubian
kingdom of Meroe, and although alphabetic writing reached Ethiopia
(possibly
Africa,
from Arabia), writing did not
where
it
was
arise independently in the rest of
instead brought in from the outside by Arabs
and
Europeans.
In short, Europe's colonization of Africa
had nothing
to
do with
differ-
HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK
4 O
I
ences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists
assume. Rather,
it
was due
to accidents of
geography and biogeography
in particular, to the continents' different areas, axes,
plant and animal species. That
is,
and
suites of
wild
the different historical trajectories of
Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.
EPILOGUE
J
THE FUTURE OF
HUMAN HISTORY
AS A SCIENCE
YALl'S
human
QUESTION WENT TO THE HEART OF THE CURRENT
condition, and of post-Pleistocene
we have completed
this
human
history.
brief tour over the continents,
how
Now that
shall
we
answer Yali?
I
would say
to Yali: the striking differences between the long-term his-
tories of peoples of the different continents
have been due not to innate
differences in the peoples themselves but to differences in their environ-
ments.
I
expect that
if
the populations of Aboriginal Australia
and Eurasia
could have been interchanged during the Late Pleistocene, the original
Aboriginal Australians would
now
be the ones occupying most of the
Americas and Australia, as well as Eurasia, while the original Aboriginal
Eurasians would be the ones
fragments in Australia.
now
One might
reduced to downtrodden population
at first be inclined to dismiss this asser-
tion as meaningless, because the experiment
about
its
outcome cannot be
verified.
to evaluate related hypotheses
is
imaginary and
my
claim
But historians are nevertheless able
by retrospective
tests.
For instance, one can
examine what did happen when European farmers were transplanted to
Greenland or the U.S. Great Plains, and when farmers stemming ultimately
from China emigrated to the Chatham Islands, the rain
forests of Borneo,
or the volcanic soils of Java or Hawaii. These tests confirm that the
4 o
5
same
EPILOGUE
4 O 6
up
ancestral peoples either ended
gatherers, or
went on
to build
extinct, or returned to living as hunter-
complex
states,
depending on their environ-
ments. Similarly, Aboriginal Australian hunter-gatherers, variously transplanted to Flinders Island, Tasmania, or southeastern Australia, ended up
extinct, or as hunter-gatherers
ogy,
with the modern world's simplest technol-
or as canal builders intensively managing a productive fishery,
depending on their environments.
Of course,
the continents differ in innumerable environmental features
affecting trajectories of
human
societies.
But a mere laundry
list
of every
possible difference does not constitute an answer to Yali's question. Just
four sets of differences appear to
The
first set
me
to be the
most important ones.
consists of continental differences in the wild plant
and
animal species available as starting materials for domestication. That's
because food production was
critical for the
accumulation of food sur-
pluses that could feed non-food-producing specialists, and for the buildup
of large populations enjoying a military advantage through mere numbers
even before they had developed any technological or political advantage.
For both of those reasons,
all
developments of economically complex,
socially stratified, politically centralized societies
beyond the
level of small
nascent chiefdoms were based on food production.
But most wild animal and plant species have proved unsuitable for
domestication: food production has been based on relatively few species
of livestock and crops.
It
turns out that the
species for domestication varied greatly
differences in continental areas
and
number of wild candidate
among
the continents, because of
mammals)
in
were much more severe
in
also (in the case of big
Late Pleistocene extinctions. These extinctions
Australia and the Americas than in Eurasia or Africa.
ended up biologically somewhat
Eurasia, the Americas
New Guinea
nal big
On
in a
still
less
less so,
well
As
endowed than
and Australia even
a result, Africa
the
less so, as
(with one-seventieth of Eurasia's area and with
mammals
much
all
larger
did Yali's
of
origi-
its
extinct in the Late Pleistocene).
each continent, animal and plant domestication was concentrated
few especially favorable homelands accounting for only a small
frac-
tion of the continent's total area. In the case of technological innovations
and
political institutions as well,
most
societies acquire
much more from
other societies than they invent themselves. Thus, diffusion and migration
within a continent contribute importantly to the development of
ties,
which tend
in the
its
socie-
long run to share each other's developments (insofar
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS
as
SCIENCE
A
environments permit) because of the processes illustrated
New
form by Maori
Zealand's Musket Wars. That
lacking an advantage either acquire
they
fail
to
Hence
do
so) are replaced
most rapid
modest
from
such simple
in
societies initially
societies possessing
by those other
it
or
(if
societies.
a second set of factors consists of those affecting rates of diffu-
which
sion and migration,
ward
it
is,
4 O 7
in Eurasia,
among
barriers.
movements of crops and
They were
continents.
east-west major axis and
its
and geographical
ecological
for
differed greatly
because of
The reasoning
its
is
relatively
straightfor-
which depend strongly on
livestock,
climate and hence on latitude. But similar reasoning also applies to the
diffusion of technological innovations, insofar as they are best suited with-
out modification to specific environments. Diffusion was slower in Africa
and especially
in the
Americas, because of those continents' north-south
major axes and geographic and ecological
traditional
New
Guinea, where
barriers.
rugged terrain
It
was
also difficult in
and the long backbone of
high mountains prevented any significant progress toward political and
linguistic unification.
Related to these factors affecting diffusion within continents
help build
up
Within the
last
a third
and technology. Ease of
a local pool of domesticates
continental diffusion has varied, because
lated than others.
is
between continents, which may also
set of factors influencing diffusion
some continents
6,000 years
it
are
inter-
more
has been easiest from
Eurasia to sub-Saharan Africa, supplying most of Africa's species of
stock. But interhemispheric diffusion
made no
iso-
live-
contribution to Native
America's complex societies, isolated from Eurasia at low latitudes by
broad oceans, and
at
high latitudes by geography and by a climate suitable
just for hunting-gathering.
To Aboriginal
Australia, isolated
from Eurasia
by the water barriers of the Indonesian Archipelago, Eurasia's sole proven
contribution
was
the dingo.
The fourth and
last set of factors consists
area or total population size.
potential inventors,
to adopt
—and
fate befell
tions displaced
vative
larger area or population
more competing
more pressure
societies failing to
That
A
do so
of continental differences in
societies,
to adopt
and
more innovations
many
by farmers. Conversely,
it
available
retain innovations, because
will tend to be eliminated
African pygmies and
means more
by competing
societies.
other hunter-gatherer popula-
also befell the stubborn, conser-
Greenland Norse farmers, replaced by Eskimo hunter-gatherers
whose subsistence methods and technology were
far superior to those of
EPILOGUE
4 O 8
the
Among
Norse under Greenland conditions.
area and the
number of competing
New
smaller for Australia and
the world's landmasses,
were
societies
much
largest for Eurasia,
Guinea and especially for Tasmania. The
Americas, despite their large aggregate area, were fragmented by geogra-
phy and ecology and functioned
effectively as several poorly
connected
smaller continents.
Those four
sets of factors constitute big
environmental differences that
can be quantified objectively and that are not subject to dispute. While one
can contest
my
subjective impression that
New
Guineans are on the aver-
age smarter than Eurasians, one cannot deny that
New Guinea has a much
smaller area and far fewer big animal species than Eurasia. But mention
among historians
of these environmental differences invites
the label "geo-
graphic determinism," which raises hackles. The label seems to have
unpleasant connotations, such as that
ing, or that
we humans
mate, fauna, and
human
stone tools and eating
human
Of
flora.
inventiveness,
creativity counts for noth-
programmed by
would
still
be cutting our meat with
raw, like our ancestors of a million years ago. All
societies contain inventive people.
It's
just that
some environments
provide more starting materials, and more favorable conditions for
ing inventions, than
utiliz-
do other environments.
Ihese answers to
Yali's
question are longer and more complicated
than Yali himself would have wanted. Historians, however,
may
find
them
too brief and oversimplified. Compressing 13,000 years of history on
continents into a 400-page
book works out
to
all
an average of about one
page per continent per 150 years, making brevity and simplification
table.
cli-
course these fears are misplaced. Without
of us today
all
it
human
are passive robots helplessly
inevi-
Yet the compression brings a compensating benefit: long-term com-
parisons of regions yield insights that cannot be
won from
short-term
studies of single societies.
Naturally, a host of issues raised by Yali's question remain unresolved.
At present, we can put forward some
agenda for the future, rather than a
now
is
to develop
human
it
fully
answers plus a research
developed theory. The challenge
history as a science,
historical sciences such as
Hence
partial
on
a par with
acknowledged
astronomy, geology, and evolutionary biology.
seems appropriate to conclude
this
book by looking
to the future
of the discipline of history, and by outlining some of the unresolved issues.
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS
The most straightforward extension of
and thus
further,
A
this
more convincingly
to establish
SCIENCE
book
will be to quantify
the role of, intercontinen-
tal
differences in the four sets of factors that appear to be
To
illustrate differences in starting materials for
numbers
4 O 9
most important.
domestication,
for each continent's total of large wild terrestrial
I
provided
mammalian
her-
bivores and omnivores (Table 9.2) and of large-seeded cereals (Table 8.1).
One
extension would be to assemble corresponding numbers for large-
seeded legumes (pulses), such as beans, peas, and vetches. In addition,
I
mentioned factors disqualifying big mammalian candidates for domestication, but
I
Africa,
how many
did not tabulate
on each continent.
factor
would be
It
candidates are disqualified by each
interesting to
where a higher percentage of candidates
Eurasia:
which disqualifying
factors are
is
data should also be assembled to test
so, especially for
disqualified than in
most important
what has selected for their high frequency in African
tive
do
my
in Africa,
and
mammals? Quantita-
preliminary calculations sug-
gesting differing rates of diffusion along the major axes of Eurasia, the
Americas, and Africa.
A second extension
will be to smaller
geographic scales and shorter
time scales than those of this book. For instance, the following obvious
question has probably occurred to readers already: why, within Eurasia,
were European
societies, rather
than those of the Fertile Crescent or China
or India, the ones that colonized America
in technology,
and became
modern world?
A
would
likely
in the
who had lived at any time between 8500 B.C.
who had tried then to predict future historical trajecto-
surely have labeled Europe's eventual
dominance
as the least
outcome, because Europe was the most backward of those three Old
World regions
rise
and Australia, took the lead
and economically dominant
historian
and a.d. 1450, and
ries,
politically
for
most of those 10,000
of Greece and then Italy after
500
years.
B.C.,
From 8500
almost
all
B.C. until the
major innovations
—animal domestication, plant domestication, writing,
metallurgy, wheels,
Crescent.
and so on — arose
or near the
in
western Eurasia
states,
in
Fertile
Until the proliferation of water mills after about a.d. 900,
Europe west or
north of the Alps contributed nothing of significance to Old World tech-
nology or civilization;
it
was
instead a recipient of developments from the
eastern Mediterranean, Fertile Crescent,
to
and China. Even from a.d. 1000
1450 the flow of science and technology was predominantly
into
4
Europe from the Islamic
EPILOGUE
O
I
societies stretching
rather than vice versa. During those
technology, having launched
itself
from India to North
same centuries China
led the
on food production nearly
Africa,
world
in
as early as
the Fertile Crescent did.
Why,
mous
and China eventually
then, did the Fertile Crescent
lose their enor-
One
leads of thousands of years to late-starting Europe?
course, point to proximate factors behind Europe's
can, of
development
rise: its
of a merchant class, capitalism, and patent protection for inventions,
develop absolute despots and crushing taxation, and
failure to
Judeo-Christian tradition of
proximate causes one must
empirical inquiry.
critical
its
for
Still,
raise the question of ultimate cause:
its
Greco-
all
such
why
did
these proximate factors themselves arise in Europe, rather than in China
or the Fertile Crescent?
For the
start that
Fertile Crescent, the
it
answer
had enjoyed thanks
to
is
its
clear.
Once
it
had
lost the
head
locally available concentration of
domesticable wild plants and animals, the Fertile Crescent possessed no
further compelling geographic advantages.
start
can be traced
in detail, as the
The disappearance of that head
westward
shift in
powerful empires.
After the rise of Fertile Crescent states in the fourth millennium B.C., the
center of
power
initially
remained
in the Fertile Crescent, rotating
between
empires such as those of Babylon, the Hittites, Assyria, and Persia. With
the
Greek conquest of
all
under Alexander the Great
made
its
first
Roman Empire
it
societies
from Greece
in the late fourth century B.C.,
shift irrevocably
Rome's conquest of Greece
the
advanced
in the
eventually
westward.
It
power
finally
shifted farther west with
second century
moved
east to India
B.C.,
and
after the fall of
again, to western
and northern
Europe.
The major
factor behind these shifts
compares the modern
Fertile
becomes obvious
as
soon as one
Crescent with ancient descriptions of
it.
Today, the expressions "Fertile Crescent" and "world leader in food production" are absurd. Large areas of the former Fertile Crescent are
desert, semidesert, steppe, or heavily
for agriculture. Today's
ephemeral wealth of some of the region's nations,
based on the single nonrenewable resource of
oil,
conceals the region's
long-standing fundamental poverty and difficulty in feeding
In ancient times, however,
much
itself.
of the Fertile Crescent and eastern
Mediterranean region, including Greece, was covered with
region's transformation
now
eroded or salinized terrain unsuited
from
fertile
woodland
forest.
The
to eroded scrub or desert
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS
SCIENCE
A
4
has been elucidated by paleobotanists and archaeologists.
Its
I
I
woodlands
were cleared for agriculture, or cut to obtain construction timber, or
burned as firewood or for manufacturing
plaster.
Because of low
and hence low primary productivity (proportional to
of vegetation could not keep pace with
rainfall),
rainfall
regrowth
destruction, especially in the
its
presence of overgrazing by abundant goats. With the tree and grass cover
removed, erosion proceeded and valleys
ture in the low-rainfall
cesses,
which began
silted up,
environment led to
Nabataean
instance, the last forests near the ancient
felled
Fertile
capital of Petra, in
by the Ottoman Turks during construction of
the Hejaz railroad just before
Thus,
accumulation. These pro-
salt
continued into modern times. For
in the Neolithic era,
modern Jordan, were
while irrigation agricul-
World War
I.
Crescent and eastern Mediterranean societies had the mis-
They committed
fortune to arise in an ecologically fragile environment.
ecological suicide by destroying their
westward
as each eastern
own
resource base. Power shifted
Mediterranean society
in turn
undermined
itself,
beginning with the oldest societies, those in the east (the Fertile Crescent).
Northern and western Europe has been spared
this fate,
not because
good luck
inhabitants have been wiser but because they have had the
live in a
more robust environment with higher
regrows quickly.
Much
its
to
which vegetation
rainfall, in
of northern and western Europe
is
still
able to
support productive intensive agriculture today, 7,000 years after the
arrival of
food production. In
effect,
Europe received
its
crops, livestock,
technology, and writing systems from the Fertile Crescent, which then
gradually eliminated
That
Why
is
how
itself
major center of power and innovation.
as a
the Fertile Crescent lost
did China also lose
its
lead?
huge early lead over Europe.
its
Its falling
behind
because China enjoyed undoubted advantages: a
is
initially surprising,
rise of
food production
nearly as early as in the Fertile Crescent; ecological diversity
to
from North
South China and from the coast to the high mountains of the Tibetan
plateau, giving rise to a diverse set of crops, animals,
large
and productive expanse, nourishing the
ulation in the world;
and an environment
intensive agriculture after nearly
largest regional
less
than the Fertile Crescent's, allowing China
and technology; a
human pop-
dry or ecologically fragile
still
to support productive
10,000 years, though
its
environmental
problems are increasing today and are more serious than western Europe's.
These advantages and head
world
in technology.
The long
start
list
of
enabled medieval China to lead the
its
major technological
firsts
includes
4
also led the
It
EPILOGUE
gunpowder, paper,
cast iron, the compass,
tioned earlier.
12
world
printing,
consisting of hundreds of ships
of
up
up
to 28,000, across the Indian
power, navigation, and
in political
control of the seas. In the early 15th century
400
to
Ocean
feet
it
and many others men-
sent treasure fleets, each
long and with total crews
as far as the east coast of Africa,
decades before Columbus's three puny ships crossed the narrow Atlantic
Ocean
to the Americas' east coast.
around
Africa's southern cape
own
Vasco da Gama's
three
Why
didn't Chinese ships proceed
westward and colonize Europe, before
puny
ships
rounded the Cape of Good Hope
eastward and launched Europe's colonization of East Asia?
Why
didn't
Chinese ships cross the Pacific to colonize the Americas' west coast? Why,
in brief, did
China
lose
its
technological lead to the formerly so backward
Europe?
The end of China's
sailed
treasure fleets gives us a clue. Seven of those fleets
from China between a.d. 1405 and 1433. They were then
pended
sus-
as a result of a typical aberration of local politics that could hap-
pen anywhere
in the world: a
power
struggle between
two
factions at the
Chinese court (the eunuchs and their opponents). The former faction had
been identified with sending and captaining the
latter faction
fleets,
ping.
Hence when
fleets.
gained the upper hand in a power struggle,
it
the
stopped sending
eventually dismantled the shipyards, and forbade oceangoing ship-
The episode
ment of public
is
reminiscent of the legislation that strangled develop-
electric lighting in
London
in the 1880s, the isolationism
of the United States between the First and Second
number
of
backward
steps in
was
all
motivated by
But in China there was a difference, because the
local political issues.
entire region
World Wars, and any
any number of countries,
politically unified.
One
decision stopped fleets over the
whole of China. That one temporary decision became
irreversible,
no shipyards remained to turn out ships that would prove the
because
folly of that
temporary decision, and to serve as a focus for rebuilding other shipyards.
Now contrast those events in China with what happened when fleets of
exploration began to
sail
Columbus, an
by
Italian
from
birth,
politically
in France, chen to the king of Portugal.
for ships in
fragmented Europe. Christopher
switched his allegiance to the duke of Anjou
When
the latter refused his request
which to explore westward, Columbus turned to the duke of
Medina-Sedonia,
who
also refused, then to the count of Medina-Celi,
did likewise, and finally to the king and queen of Spain,
Columbus's
first
who
who
denied
request but eventually granted his renewed appeal.
Had
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS
Europe been united under any one of the
first
A
SCIENCE
three rulers,
4
its
I
3
colonization
of the Americas might have been stillborn.
In fact, precisely because
on
Europe was fragmented, Columbus succeeded
persuading one of Europe's hundreds of princes to spon-
his fifth try in
Once Spain had thus launched
sor him.
the
European colonization of
America, other European states saw the wealth flowing into Spain, and six
more joined
cannon,
in colonizing
America. The story was the same with Europe's
electric lighting, printing, small firearms,
was
innovations: each
at first neglected or
and innumerable other
opposed
Europe for idiosyncratic reasons, but once adopted
ally
in
some
in
one area,
parts of
it
eventu-
spread to the rest of Europe.
These consequences of Europe's disunity stand
those of China's unity.
From time
sharp contrast to
in
to time the Chinese court decided to halt
other activities besides overseas navigation:
it
abandoned development of
an elaborate water-driven spinning machine, stepped back from the verge
of an industrial revolution in the 14th century, demolished or virtually
abolished mechanical clocks after leading the world in clock construction,
and retreated from mechanical devices and technology
late
in general after the
15th century. Those potentially harmful effects of unity have flared
up again
in
modern China, notably during
Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s,
ers closed the
when
the
madness of the Cultural
a decision by
whole country's school systems
one or a few lead-
for five years.
China's frequent unity and Europe's perpetual disunity both have a long
history.
The most productive
joined for the
areas of
modern China were
politically
time in 221 B.C. and have remained so for most of
first
the time since then.
China has had only a
single writing system
from the
beginnings of literacy, a single dominant language for a long time, and
substantial cultural unity for
never
come remotely
two thousand
years. In contrast,
close to political unification:
it
was
into 1,000 independent statelets in the 14th century, into
a.d. 1500, got
up again to nearly
has 45 languages,
modest attempts
still
500
splintered
statelets in
minimum of 25 states in the 1980s, and is now
40 at the moment that I write this sentence. Europe still
each with its own modified alphabet, and even greater
down
to a
The disagreements
cultural diversity.
Europe has
at
Community (EEC)
that continue today to frustrate even
European unification through the European Economic
are symptomatic of Europe's ingrained
commitment
to
disunity.
Hence the
real
problem
in
understanding China's loss of
political
and
414
EPILOGUE
technological preeminence to Europe
The answer
unity and Europe's chronic disunity.
maps
(see
to understand China's chronic
is
is
again suggested by
page 415). Europe has a highly indented coastline, with
large peninsulas that
approach islands
in their isolation,
and
five
of which
all
evolved independent languages, ethnic groups, and governments: Greece,
Italy, Iberia,
Denmark, and Norway / Sweden. China's
coastline
is
much
smoother, and only the nearby Korean Peninsula attained separate importance.
Europe has two islands
their political
nicities,
(Britain
and
Ireland) sufficiently big to assert
independence and to maintain their
and one of them
(Britain) big
and
close
own
languages and eth-
enough to become a major
independent European power. But even China's two largest islands, Tai-
wan and Hainan, have
a
each
less
major independent power
and Japan's geographic
politically
Taiwan's emergence in recent decades;
isolation kept
it
until recently
much more
isolated
from the Asian mainland than Britain has been from mainland
Europe. Europe
cal units
than half the area of Ireland; neither was
until
is
carved up into independent
by high mountains
linguistic, ethnic,
(the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians,
and
politi-
and Norwe-
gian border mountains), while China's mountains east of the Tibetan
plateau are
much
less
formidable barriers. China's heartland
together from east to west by
alluvial valleys (the
two long navigable
Yangtze and Yellow Rivers), and
it is
to south by relatively easy connections between these
(eventually linked by canals).
As a
is
bound
river systems in rich
joined from north
two
river systems
China very early became domi-
result,
nated by two huge geographic core areas of high productivity, themselves
only weakly separated from each other and eventually fused into a single
core. Europe's
two
biggest rivers, the Rhine
much
less
of Europe. Unlike China, Europe has
connect
and Danube, are smaller and
many
scattered
small core areas, none big enough to dominate the others for long, and
each the center of chronically independent
Once China was
finally unified, in
221
states.
B.C.,
no other independent
state
ever had a chance of arising and persisting for long in China. Although
periods of disunity returned several times after 221 B.C., they always ended
in reunification.
But the unification of Europe has resisted the efforts of
such determined conquerors as Charlemagne, Napoleon, and Hitler; even
the
Roman Empire
at
its
peak never controlled more than half of Europe's
area.
Thus, geographic connectedness and only modest internal barriers gave
China an
initial
advantage. North China, South China, the coast, and the
500 miles
O<orea
J^
j
9
\
*j5
sr
China
t?
(
f
(^"/Hainan
/Taiwan
m
Comparison of the coastlines of China and of Europe, drawn to the same
Note that Europe's is much more indented and includes more large
scale.
peninsulas
and two
large islands.
4
EPILOGUE
6
I
and
interior contributed different crops, livestock, technologies,
cultural
features to the eventually unified China. For example, millet cultivation,
bronze technology, and writing arose
in
and cast-iron technology emerged
tion
book
I
North China, while
in
South China. For
rice cultiva-
much
of this
have emphasized the diffusion of technology that takes place
in
the absence of formidable barriers. But China's connectedness eventually
became a disadvantage, because
a decision
by one despot could and repeat-
edly did halt innovation. In contrast, Europe's geographic balkanization
resulted in dozens or hundreds of independent, competing statelets
centers of innovation.
tion,
If
one
state did
and
not pursue some particular innova-
another did, forcing neighboring states to do likewise or else be con-
quered or
economically behind. Europe's barriers were sufficient to
left
prevent political unification, but insufficient to halt the spread of technol-
ogy and
ideas.
There has never been one despot
who
could turn off the tap
for all of Europe, as of China.
These comparisons suggest that geographic connectedness has exerted
both positive and negative
result, in the very
in regions with
effects
on the evolution of technology. As
long run, technology
may have
a
developed most rapidly
moderate connectedness, neither too high nor too low.
Technology's course over the
last
1,000 years in China, Europe, and possi-
bly the Indian subcontinent exemplifies those net effects of high, moderate,
and low connectedness,
respectively.
Naturally, additional factors contributed to history's diverse courses in
different parts of Eurasia. For instance, the Fertile Crescent, China,
Europe differed
in their
exposure to the perennial threat of barbarian inva-
sions by horse-mounted pastoral
nomad groups
(the
and
nomads
of Central Asia.
One
Mongols) eventually destroyed the ancient
systems of Iran and Iraq, but none of the Asian
nomads
establishing themselves in the forests of western
of those
irrigation
ever succeeded in
Europe beyond the Hun-
garian plains. Environmental factors also include the Fertile Crescent's
geographically intermediate location, controlling the trade routes linking
China and India to Europe, and China's more remote location from Eurasia's
other advanced civilizations, making China a gigantic virtual island
within a continent. China's relative isolation
is
especially relevant to
adoption and then rejection of technologies, so reminiscent of the
tions
on Tasmania and other
discussion
may
islands (Chapters 13
at least indicate the relevance of
and
15).
But
its
rejec-
this brief
environmental factors to
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS
and shorter-term patterns of
smaller-scale
A
SCIENCE
4
I
7
history, as well as to history's
broadest pattern.
The
histories of the Fertile Crescent
lesson for the
and China also hold
modern world: circumstances change, and
a salutary
past primacy
is
no guarantee of future primacy. One might even wonder whether the geographical reasoning employed throughout this
wholly irrelevant
in the
modern world, now
on the Internet and cargo
instantly
between continents.
It
is
book has
emerging
On
—such
as
routinely airfreighted overnight
result
new powers
are
Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, and especially Japan.
we
though,
reflection,
variations
become
might seem that entirely new rules apply to competi-
between the world's peoples, and that as a
tion
at last
that ideas diffuse everywhere
on the old ones.
new
see that the supposedly
rules are just
Yes, the transistor, invented at Bell Labs in the
eastern United States in 1947, leapt 8,000 miles to launch an electronics
industry in Japan
— but
did not
it
industries in Zaire or Paraguay.
make
the shorter leap to found
The nations
rising to
new power
are
new
still
ones that were incorporated thousands of years ago into the old centers of
dominance based on food production, or that have been repopulated by
peoples from those centers. Unlike Zaire or Paraguay, Japan and the other
new powers were
lations already
able to exploit the transistor quickly because their popu-
had
ized government.
a long history of literacy, metal machinery,
The world's two
Crescent and China,
Fertile
still
earliest centers of
central-
dominate the modern world,
through their immediate successor
states situated in
and
food production, the
states
either
(modern China), or through
neighboring regions influenced early by those two centers
(Japan, Korea, Malaysia,
and Europe), or through
states
repopulated or
ruled by their overseas emigrants (the United States, Australia, Brazil).
Prospects for world dominance of sub-Saharan Africans, Aboriginal Australians,
at
8000
and Native Americans remain dim. The hand of
B.C. lies heavily
Among
first,
and
I
relevant to answering Yali's question, cul-
and influences of individual people loom
human
cultural traits vary greatly
that cultural variation
have discussed
is
history's course
us.
other factors
tural factors
former
on
no doubt
large.
To take
the
around the world. Some of
a product of environmental variation,
many examples
in this
book. But an important ques-
—
4
I
EPILOGUE
8
tion concerns the possible significance of local cultural factors unrelated
to the environment.
A minor cultural
rary local reasons,
become
more important
theory to other
ry's
fixed,
cultural choices, as
fields of science.
for typewriters.
It
mentioned
I
was adopted
may
arise for trivial,
is
tempo-
toward
a society
suggested by applications of chaos
Such cultural processes are among
wild cards that would tend to
As one example,
feature
and then predispose
make
in
history unpredictable.
Chapter 13 the
initially,
histo-
out of
QWERTY
keyboard
many competing keyboard
designs, for trivial specific reasons involving early typewriter construction
in
America
certain
in the 1860s, typewriter salesmanship, a decision in
Ms. Longley who founded the Shorthand and Typewriter
in Cincinnati,
and the success of Ms. Longley's
McGurrin, who thrashed Ms. Longley's
Taub
1882 by
in a
Institute
Frank
star typing pupil
non-QWERTY
a
competitor Louis
widely publicized typing contest in 1888. The decision could
have gone to another keyboard at any of numerous stages between the
1860s and the 1880s; nothing about the American environment favored
QWERTY keyboard over its rivals. Once the decision had been made,
though, the QWERTY keyboard became so entrenched that
was also
the
it
adopted for computer keyboard design a century
cific
now lost in the
reasons,
remote past,
ian adoption of a counting system based
later.
may have
lain
Equally
trivial spe-
behind the Sumer-
on 12 instead of 10
(leading to
our modern 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, 12-month year, and 360-degree
circle), in
contrast to the widespread
on 20 (leading to
its
days and a 365-day
Those
Mesoamerican counting system based
calendar using two concurrent cycles of 260
details of typewriter, clock,
and calendar design have not affected
the competitive success of the societies adopting them. But
imagine
how
they could have. For example,
the United States
if
the
had not been adopted elsewhere
it is
easy to
QWERTY keyboard of
in the
say, if
Japan or Europe had adopted the much more
board
—that
trivial
named
year).
world as well
efficient
Dvorak key-
decision in the 19th century might have had big conse-
quences for the competitive position of 20th-century American technology.
Similarly, a study of Chinese children suggested that they learn to write
more quickly when taught an alphabetic
transcription of Chinese sounds
(termed pinyin) than
when taught
thousands of
has been suggested that the latter arose because of
signs. It
traditional Chinese writing, with
their convenience for distinguishing the large
its
numbers of Chinese words
possessing differing meanings but the same sounds (homophones).
If so,
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS
abundance of homophones
the
large impact
in the
was anything
guage rich
in
in the
rigid
there
9
I
may have had
it
a
seems unlikely
a linguistic or cultural factor account for
the otherwise puzzling failure of
toward
Chinese language
4
Chinese environment selecting for a lan-
homophones. Did
Was
SCIENCE
role of literacy in Chinese society, yet
on the
that there
writing?
A
complex Andean
civilizations to develop
anything about India's environment predisposing
socioeconomic castes, with grave consequences for the devel-
opment of technology
Was
in India?
there anything about the Chinese
environment predisposing toward Confucian philosophy and cultural conservatism,
which may also have profoundly affected history?
Why
was
proselytizing religion (Christianity and Islam) a driving force for colonization
and conquest among Europeans and West Asians but not among Chi-
nese?
These examples
illustrate the
tural idiosyncrasies, unrelated to
broad range of questions concerning
environment and
of
initially
cul-
little signifi-
cance, that might evolve into influential and long-lasting cultural features.
Their significance constitutes an important unanswered question.
best be
approached by concentrating attention on
remain puzzling
can
It
historical patterns that
major environmental factors have been
after the effects of
taken into account.
What
about the
modern example
iar
is
effects of idiosyncratic individual people?
the
narrow
failure,
A
on July 20, 1944, of the
famil-
assassi-
nation attempt against Hitler and of a simultaneous uprising in Berlin.
Both had been planned by Germans
could not be
won and who wanted
eastern front between the
who were
convinced that the war
to seek peace then, at a time
when
the
German and Russian armies still lay mostly
wounded by a time bomb in a briefcase
within Russia's borders. Hitler was
placed under a conference table; he might have been killed
been placed slightly closer to the chair where he was
the
modern map of Eastern Europe and
been significantly different
War
II
if
Hitler
the
if
the case
had
sitting. It is likely that
Cold War's course would have
had indeed been
killed
and
if
World
had ended then.
Less well
summer
known
but even more fateful was a
of 1930, over
many, when a car
in
two years before
traffic
accident in the
Hitler's seizure of
which he was riding
in the
power
in
Ger-
"death seat" (right front
passenger seat) collided with a heavy trailer truck. The truck braked just
EPILOGUE
4 2 O
running over Hitler's car and crushing him. Because of
in time to avoid
the degree to
success, the
which
psychopathology determined Nazi policy and
Hitler's
form of an eventual World War
quite different
One can
if
the truck driver
II
would probably have been
had braked one second
later.
think of other individuals whose idiosyncrasies apparently
influenced history as did Hitler's: Alexander the Great, Augustus, Buddha,
Christ, Lenin,
Mohammed,
Martin Luther, the Inca emperor Pachacuti,
William the Conqueror, and the Zulu king Shaka, to name a few. To what
extent did each really change events, as opposed to "just" happening to be
the right person in the right place at the right time? At the one extreme
the view of the historian
of
what man
of the Great
[sic]
Thomas
has accomplished in this world,
Men who
is
Carlyle: "Universal history, the history
is
at
bottom the History
have worked here." At the opposite extreme
view of the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck,
who
is
the
unlike Carlyle
had long firsthand experience of politics' inner workings: "The statesman's
task
is
to hear God's footsteps marching through history,
catch on to His coattails as
He marches
and to
try to
past."
Like cultural idiosyncrasies, individual idiosyncrasies throw wild cards
into the course of history.
They may make
history inexplicable in terms of
environmental forces, or indeed of any generalizable causes. For the purposes of this book, however, they are scarcely relevant, because even the
most ardent proponent of the Great
Man
theory would find
interpret history's broadest pattern in terms of a
it
difficult to
few Great Men. Perhaps
Alexander the Great did nudge the course of western Eurasia's already
literate,
food-producing, iron-equipped
states,
but he had nothing to do
with the fact that western Eurasia already supported
ing,
iron-equipped states at a time
literate
still
food-produc-
supported only non-
hunter-gatherer tribes lacking metal tools. Nevertheless,
an open question
uals
when Australia
literate,
on history
how wide and
lasting the effects of idiosyncratic individ-
history
is
generally not considered to be a science,
but something closer to the humanities. At best, history
the social sciences, of
economics
remains
really are.
Ihe discipline of
of government
it
is
which
it
is
classified
rates as the least scientific.
often termed "political science" and the
refers to
among
While the
Nobel
field
Prize in
"economic science," history departments rarely
if
ever
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS
not think of themselves as scientists and receive
edged sciences and
is
"There
is
their methodologies.
mass of
a
damn
one
just
details
is
The
"History
that
it is
seem to me not
whose place among
training in acknowl-
more
is
fatal.
more or
a kaleidoscope,"
is
nothing
less
bunk,"
and so on.
difficult to extract general principles
from studying history than from studying planetary
jects
I
captured in numerous aphorisms: "History
fact after another,"
One cannot deny
little
sense that history
no law of history any more than of
difficulties
4 2
"Department of Historical Science." Most historians do
label themselves
more than
SCIENCE
A
orbits.
However, the
Similar ones apply to other historical sub-
the natural sciences
is
nevertheless secure, includ-
and
ing astronomy, climatology, ecology, evolutionary biology, geology,
paleontology. People's image of science
unfortunately often based on
is
physics and a few other fields with similar methodologies. Scientists in
those fields tend to be ignorantly disdainful of fields to which those meth-
odologies are inappropriate and which must therefore seek other methodologies
—such
my own
as
biology. But recall that the
research areas of ecology and evolutionary
word
"science"
means "knowledge" (from
the
Latin scire, "to know," and scientia, "knowledge"), to be obtained by
whatever methods are most appropriate to the particular
have
much empathy with
students of
human
field.
Hence
I
history for the difficulties
they face.
Historical sciences in the broad sense (including
share
many
features that set
as physics, chemistry,
astronomy and the
them apart from nonhistorical
and molecular biology.
I
would
like)
sciences such
single out four:
methodology, causation, prediction, and complexity.
In physics the chief
method
for gaining
knowledge
is
the laboratory
experiment, by which one manipulates the parameter whose effect
is
in
question, executes parallel control experiments with that parameter held
constant, holds other parameters constant throughout, replicates both the
experimental manipulation and the control experiment, and obtains quantitative data.
This strategy, which also works well in chemistry and molec-
ular biology,
is
so identified with science in the minds of
experimentation
is
laboratory experimentation can obviously play
the historical sciences.
stop hurricanes
many
people that
often held to be the essence of the scientific method. But
and
One cannot
ice ages,
little
or no role in
many
interrupt galaxy formation, start
of
and
experimentally exterminate grizzly bears in a
few national parks, or rerun the course of dinosaur evolution. Instead, one
EPILOGUE
4 2 2
must gain knowledge
by other means, such as
in these historical sciences
observation, comparison, and so-called natural experiments (to which
Historical sciences are concerned with chains of proximate
causes. In
I
moment).
shall return in a
and ultimate
most of physics and chemistry the concepts of "ultimate cause,"
"purpose," and "function" are meaningless, yet they are essential to
understanding living systems in general and
human
activities in particular.
For instance, an evolutionary biologist studying Arctic hares whose fur
color turns from
identifying the
brown
in
summer
mundane proximate
to white in winter
is
not satisfied with
causes of fur color in terms of the fur
pigments' molecular structures and biosynthetic pathways. The more
important questions involve function (camouflage against predators?) and
ultimate cause (natural selection starting with an ancestral hare population
with seasonally unchanging fur color?). Similarly, a European historian
is
not satisfied with describing the condition of Europe in both 1815 and
1918
pan-European war.
as having just achieved peace after a costly
Understanding the contrasting chains of events leading up to the two peace
treaties
is
essential to understanding
why an
even more costly pan-Euro-
pean war broke out again within a few decades of 1918 but not of 1815.
But chemists do not assign a purpose or function to a collision of two gas
molecules, nor do they seek an ultimate cause for the collision.
another difference between historical and nonhistorical sciences
Still
involves prediction. In chemistry
standing of a system
is
and physics the acid
whether one can successfully predict
behavior. Again, physicists tend to look
and
history, because those fields
down on
appear to
impact on Earth 66 million years ago
many
if
future
(e.g.,
In historical sci-
why an
asteroid
driven dinosaurs but not
other species to extinction), but a priori predictions are
more
diffi-
(we would be uncertain which species would be driven to extinction
we
and
may have
its
under-
evolutionary biology
fail this test.
ences, one can provide a posteriori explanations
cult
test of one's
did not have the actual past event to guide us). However, historians
do make and
historical scientists
discoveries of data will
The
show
test predictions
about what future
us about past events.
properties of historical systems that complicate attempts at predic-
tion can be described in several alternative ways.
human
societies
One can
point out that
and dinosaurs are extremely complex, being characterized
by an enormous number of independent variables that feed back on each
other.
As a
result, small
changes at a lower
level of organization
can lead
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS
to emergent changes at a higher level.
A
A
typical
423
SCIENCE
example
the effect of
is
that one truck driver's braking response, in Hitler's nearly fatal traffic acci-
dent of 1930, on the
wounded
in
who were
of a hundred million people
lives
World War
II.
killed or
Although most biologists agree that biological
systems are in the end wholly determined by their physical properties and
obey the laws of quantum mechanics, the systems' complexity means, for
practical purposes, that that deterministic causation does not translate into
predictability.
stand
why
Knowledge of quantum mechanics does not help one under-
introduced placental predators have exterminated so
tralian marsupial species, or
won World War
Powers
Each
why the
human
glacier, nebula, hurricane,
it is
Powers rather than the Central
I.
and even each individual and
unique, because
Allied
many Aus-
cell
society,
and biological
species,
of a sexually reproducing species,
influenced by so
many
is
and made up of so
variables
many
variable parts. In contrast, for any of the physicist's elementary par-
ticles
and isotopes and of the chemist's molecules,
Hence
entity are identical to each other.
physicists
and chemists can
mulate universal deterministic laws at the macroscopic
and historians can formulate only
ability of
being correct,
I
statistical trends.
can predict
at the University of California
advance that
my own two
note that tribal societies
doms
if
was potential
children
was
emerge
another
way
its
would be boys.
own
New
outside the
work, not fewer
I
if
develop into chief-
and dense and
that
was not
if
there
the case.
unique features, with the result
Mexico, Guatemala, Peru,
Guinea or Guadalcanal.
of describing the complexity and unpredictability of
historical systems, despite their ultimate determinacy,
chains of causation
a very high prob-
1,000 babies born
Similarly, historians
likely to
in the highlands of
in those of
for-
but biologists
had no means of knowing
for surplus food production than
and Madagascar, but not
Still
I
sufficiently large
But each such local population has
that chiefdoms did
With
Medical Center, where
may have been more
the local population
level,
that, of the next
than 480 or more than 520 will be boys. But
in
individuals of the
all
may
domain of
is
to note that long
separate final effects from ultimate causes lying
that field of science. For example, the dinosaurs
may have been exterminated by the impact
of an asteroid
whose
completely determined by the laws of classical mechanics. But
if
orbit
was
there
had
been any paleontologists living 67 million years ago, they could not have
predicted the dinosaurs' imminent demise, because asteroids belong to a
field
of science otherwise remote from dinosaur biology. Similarly, the Lit-
424
tie Ice
Age of
a.d.
EPILOGUE
1300-1500 contributed
to the extinction of the Green-
land Norse, but no historian, and probably not even a modern
cli-
matologist, could have predicted the Little Ice Age.
Ihus, the difficulties
historians face in establishing cause-and-
effect relations in the history of
human
societies are
broadly similar to
the difficulties facing astronomers, climatologists, ecologists, evolutionary
biologists, geologists,
these fields
is
and paleontologists. To varying degrees, each of
plagued by the impossibility of performing replicated, con-
from enormous
trolled experimental interventions, the complexity arising
numbers of
variables, the resulting uniqueness of each system, the conse-
quent impossibility of formulating universal laws, and the
difficulties
of
predicting emergent properties and future behavior. Prediction in history,
as in other historical sciences,
over long times,
events
when
is
most
feasible
become averaged
out. Just as
I
large spatial scales
and
could predict the sex ratio of the
next 1,000 newborns but not the sexes of
rian can recognize factors that
collision
on
the unique features of millions of small-scale brief
made
my own two children,
between American and Eurasian
societies after
the histo-
outcome of the
inevitable the broad
13,000 years of
separate developments, but not the outcome of the 1960 U.S. presidential
election.
The
details of
which candidate said what during a
single televised
debate in October 1960 could have given the electoral victory to Nixon
instead of to Kennedy, but
the
no
details of
who
said
what could have blocked
European conquest of Native Americans.
How can students of human history profit from the experience of scientists in other historical sciences? A methodology that has proved useful
involves the comparative
method and
so-called natural experiments.
neither astronomers studying galaxy formation nor
manipulate their systems
human
While
historians can
both
in controlled laboratory experiments, they
can take advantage of natural experiments, by comparing systems
fering in the presence or absence (or in the strong or
weak
effect)
of
dif-
some
putative causative factor. For example, epidemiologists, forbidden to feed
large
amounts of salt
tify effects
to people experimentally, have
differ greatly in their salt intake;
been able to iden-
humans who
already
and cultural anthropologists, unable
to
human groups experimentally with varying resource abundances
many centuries, still study long-term effects of resource abundance on
provide
for
still
of high salt intake by comparing groups of
THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS
human
A
by comparing recent Polynesian populations living on
societies
islands differing naturally in resource abundance.
among
sons
The student
draw on many more natural experiments than
history can
425
SCIENCE
just
compari-
Comparisons can also
the five inhabited continents.
complex
large islands that have developed
human
of
utilize
societies in a considerable
degree of isolation (such as Japan, Madagascar, Native American Hispaniola,
New
of smaller
dreds
many
Guinea, Hawaii, and
others), as well as societies
and regional
islands
societies
on hun-
within each
of the
human
history,
continents.
Natural experiments
are inherently
confounding
one of
in
any
whether
field,
ecology or
in
open to potential methodological
criticisms.
Those include
effects of natural variation in additional variables besides the
interest, as well as
problems
in inferring chains of causation
from
observed correlations between variables. Such methodological problems
have been discussed
in great detail for
some of
diseases by
comparing groups of people (often by retrospective
studies), has for a long time successfully
for dealing with
eties.
ral
the historical sciences. In
drawing inferences about human
particular, epidemiology, the science of
problems similar to those facing historians of human
Ecologists have also devoted
much
direct experimental interventions to
variables
would be immoral,
soci-
attention to the problems of natu-
experiments, a methodology to which they must resort in
where
historical
employed formalized procedures
many
cases
manipulate relevant ecological
or impossible. Evolutionary biologists
illegal,
have recently been developing ever more sophisticated methods for draw-
from comparisons of
ing conclusions
known
tory
is
and animals of
evolutionary histories.
In short,
human
different plants
I
acknowledge that
it
is
much more
difficult to
understand
history than to understand problems in fields of science
where
his-
unimportant and where fewer individual variables operate. Never-
theless, successful
methodologies for analyzing historical problems have
been worked out in several
fields.
As
a result, the histories of dinosaurs,
nebulas, and glaciers are generally acknowledged to belong to fields of
science rather than to the humanities. But introspection gives us far
insight into the
ways of other humans than
thus optimistic that historical studies of
scientifically as studies of
today, by teaching us
shape our future.
dinosaurs
what shaped
into those of dinosaurs.
human
—and with
the
societies
more
I
am
can be pursued as
profit to
our
own
society
modern world, and what might
2003 Afterword:
Guns, Germs, and Steel Today
Guns, Germs, and Steel (GGS)
complex human
nents over the last 13,000 years.
1996, and
was published
it
in
is
about why the
I
finished revising the manuscript in
1997. Since then,
mostly in work on other projects, especially on
lapses of societies.
arates
Hence seven
me from GGS's
what has happened
To
tion?
my
writing.
rise of
unfolded differently on different conti-
societies
my
I
have been involved
next book about col-
years' distance in time
and focus now
sep-
How does the book look in retrospect, and
to change or extend
its
conclusions since
its
publica-
admittedly biased eye, the book's central message has sur-
vived well, and the most interesting developments since
its
publication
have involved four extensions of the story to the modern world and to
recent history.
My main conclusion was
that societies developed differently
on
differ-
ent continents because of differences in continental environments, not in
human
biology.
Advanced technology,
and other features of complex
societies
centralized political organization,
could emerge only in dense seden-
tary populations capable of accumulating food surpluses
that
depended
8,500
B.C.
for their
food on the
rise
—populations
of agriculture that began around
But the domesticable wild plant and animal species essential for
that rise of agriculture were distributed very unevenly over the continents.
426
AFTERWORD
4 2.7
The most valuable domesticable wild
species
were concentrated
in
only
nine small areas of the globe, which thus became the earliest homelands
of agriculture.
a head start
The
original inhabitants of those
homelands thereby gained
toward developing guns, germs, and
steel.
The languages and
genes of those homeland inhabitants, as well as their livestock, crops,
technologies,
and writing systems, became dominant
in the ancient
and
modern world.
Discoveries in the last half-dozen years, by archaeologists, geneticists,
linguists,
One
and other
its
main
suggests that the
I
outlines. Let
me mention
this
three examples.
GGS's geographic coverage involved Japan,
of the biggest gaps in
about whose prehistory
now
have enriched our understanding of
specialists,
without changing
story,
had
little
to say in 1996. Recent genetic evidence
modern Japanese people
are the product of an agri-
GGS: an expansion
cultural expansion similar to others discussed in
Korean farmers, beginning around 400
B.C., into
of
southwestern Japan and
then advancing northeast up the Japanese archipelago. The immigrants
brought intensive
rice agriculture
and metal
tools,
the original Japanese population (related to the
the
modern Japanese, much
as
expanding
and they mixed with
modern Ainu)
Fertile Crescent
to produce
farmers mixed
with Europe's original hunter/gatherer population to produce modern
Europeans.
As another example, archaeologists
corn, beans,
most
direct route via northeastern
becoming
originally
assumed that Mexican
and squashes reached the southeastern United
clear that this route
Mexico and
was too dry
States
eastern Texas. But
by the
it is
now
for farming; those crops instead
took a longer route, spreading from Mexico into the southwestern United
States to trigger the rise of Anasazi societies there,
from
New Mexico
and Colorado through
and then spreading
east
river valleys of the Great Plains
into the southeastern United States.
As
a final example, in Chapter
10
I
contrasted the frequency of
repeated independent domestications and slow spreads of the same or
related plants along the Americas' north/south axis with the predomi-
nantly single domestications and rapid east/west spreads of Eurasian
crops.
Even more examples of those two contrasting patterns have con-
tinued to turn up, but
domestic
mammals
in different parts of
cas' plants.
it
also
now
appears that most or
all
of Eurasia's Big Five
underwent repeated independent domestications
Eurasia
—unlike Eurasia's
plants, but like the Ameri-
—
AFTERWORD
428
These and other discoveries add
how
me, to our understanding of
complex
agriculturally based
biggest advances building
that were not the book's
ple have written,
of
which continue to
agriculture's rise triggered the rise of
societies in the ancient world.
GGS
on
main
fascinate
However, the
have involved extensions into areas
focus. Since publication, thousands of peo-
phoned, e-mailed, or buttonholed
me
to
tell
me
of par-
or contrasts that they noticed between the ancient continental
allels
processes of
tell
details,
GGS
and the modern or recent processes that they
you about four of these
study.
I'll
example
revelations: briefly, the illuminating
New Zealand's Musket Wars; the perennial question "Why Europe, not
China?"; in more
world and
some
in the
societies
between competition
detail, parallels
modern
business world; and
in the ancient
GGS's relevance
to
why
today are rich while others are poor.
In 1996 I devoted one brief paragraph (in Chapter 13) to a phenomenon in 19th-century New Zealand history termed the Musket Wars,
as an illustration of how powerful new technologies spread. The Musket
Wars were a complicated, poorly understood series of tribal wars among
New
Zealand's indigenous Maori people, between 1818 and the 1830s
wars by which European guns spread among
fought one another with stone and
tribes that
had previously
wooden weapons. Two books pub-
lished since then have increased our understanding of that chaotic period
of
New
made
Zealand
its
history, placed
relevance to
In the early 1800s,
to visit
New
GGS even
European
it
broader historical context, and
traders, missionaries,
and whalers began
Zealand, which had been occupied 600 years previously by
Polynesian farmers and fishermen
visitors
in a
clearer.
were concentrated
at
known
New
as Maoris.
The
first
European
Zealand's northern end. Those north-
ern Maori tribes with the earliest access to Europeans thereby became the
first tribes
over
tle
all
to acquire muskets,
which gave them
the other tribes lacking muskets.
a big military advantage
They used
that advantage to set-
scores with neighboring tribes that were their traditional enemies. But
they also used muskets for a
against
Maori
tribes
least as
raids feasible
type of warfare: long-distance raids
hundreds of miles away, carried out
rivals in acquiring slaves
At
new
and
in order to
outdo
prestige.
important as European muskets in making long-distance
were European-introduced potatoes (originating
in
South
AFTERWORD
America), which yielded
many more
42.9
tons of food per acre or per farmer
than did traditional Maori agriculture based on sweet potatoes. The main
limitation that
had previously prevented Maoris from undertaking long
had been the twin problems of feeding warriors away from home
raids
a long time,
and feeding the at-home population of
women and
for
children
dependent on the would-be warriors to stay home and grow sweet pota-
Hence
toes. Potatoes solved that bottleneck.
Musket Wars would be
Whatever they are
tive, killing
est
called, the
Musket/Potato Wars proved very destruc-
about one-quarter of the original Maori population. The high-
body counts arose when
Of
the tribes not
acquire muskets and potatoes, some were
they could acquire them, while others
them and thereby
in these
among
the
first
to
virtually exterminated before
made determined
efforts to acquire
restore the previous military equilibrium.
wars was the conquest and mass
tribes, as
and potatoes
a tribe with lots of muskets
attacked a tribe with few or none.
Maori
a less heroic term for the
the Potato Wars.
killing of
One
episode
Moriori tribes by
described in Chapter 2.
The Musket/Potato Wars
illustrate the
the history of the last 10,000 years:
main process running through
human groups with
guns, germs, and
or with earlier technological and military advantages, spreading at
steel,
became replaced
the expense of other groups, until either the latter groups
or everyone
came
to share the
new
advantages. Recent history furnishes
innumerable examples as Europeans expanded to other continents. In
many
places the
non-European
and ended up losing
locals never got a
their lives or their freedom.
chance to acquire guns
However, Japan did suc-
ceed in acquiring (actually, reacquiring) guns, preserved
and within 50 years used
its
new guns
to defeat a
its
independence,
European power
in the
Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. North American Plains Indians, South
American Araucanian Indians,
New
Zealand's Maoris, and Ethiopians
acquired guns and used them to hold off European conquest for a long
time,
though they were ultimately defeated. Today, Third World countries
are doing their best to catch
ter's
up with the
First
World by acquiring
the lat-
technological and agricultural advantages. Such spreads of technol-
ogy and agriculture, arising ultimately from competition between human
groups, must have happened at innumerable other times and places over
the past 10,000 years.
In that sense, there
was nothing unusual about
New
ket/Potato Wars. While those wars were a purely local
Zealand's
Mus-
phenomenon con-
AFTERWORD
43°
fined to
New Zealand, they are of worldwide
interest because they furnish
such a clear example, so narrowly confined in space and time, of so
introduction to the northern end of
had spread 900 miles
much
to the southern
end of
New
Zealand. In the past,
to
greater distances, but the underlying social processes of pop-
ulation replacement and competition were essentially the same.
are
their
Zealand, muskets and potatoes
and improved pre-gun weapons took much longer
agriculture, writing,
spread
New
many
two decades following
other similar local phenomena. Within about
wondering whether nuclear weapons
will proliferate
Now we
around the world
by the same often-violent process, from the eight countries that presently
possess them.
JK second area
of active discussion since 1997
that could be termed
"Why
falls
Europe, not China?" Most of
differences between continents:
i.e.,
the question of
under a heading
GGS concerned
why some
Eurasians
Amer-
rather than Aboriginal Australians, sub-Saharan Africans, or Native
expand over the world within the past millennium.
icans were the ones to
However,
realized that
I
Eurasians,
was
expanded?"
cluding
I
GGS
Hence
I
it
many
readers
would
also
wonder "Why, among
Europeans rather than Chinese or some other group that
knew
that
my
readers
would not
without saying anything about
briefly considered
it
let
me
get
away with con-
obvious question.
this
in the book's epilogue.
I
suggested that the
underlying reason behind Europe's overtaking China was something
deeper than the proximate factors suggested by most historians
China's Confucianism
vs.
Europe's Judeo-Christian tradition, the
of European
western science, the
rise
Britain's deforestation
coupled with
and other proximate
factors,
its
ple": ultimate geographic factors that led to
and mostly remaining unified
petition
etc.).
Behind these
Princi-
China becoming unified early
thereafter, while
stantly fragmented. Europe's fragmentation did,
foster the
of
mercantilism and capitalism,
coal deposits,
saw an "Optimal Fragmentation
I
(e.g.,
rise
Europe remained con-
and China's unity
didn't,
advance of technology, science, and capitalism by fostering com-
between
states
and providing innovators with alternative sources
of support and havens from persecution.
Historians have subsequently pointed out to
me
that Europe's frag-
mentation, China's unity, and Europe's and China's relative strengths were
all
more complex than depicted
in
my
account.
The geographic bound-
AFTERWORD
3 1
4
could usefully be grouped as
aries of the political/social spheres that
"Europe" or "China" fluctuated over the centuries. China led Europe in
technology at least until the 15th century and might do so again in the
refer to
"Why
which case the question
future, in
Europe, not China?" might only
an ephemeral phenomenon without deep explanation.
Political
fragmentation has more complex effects than only providing a constructive
forum
for competition: for instance, competition can be destructive as
well as constructive (think of
World Wars
and
I
II).
a multifaceted rather than a monolithic concept:
Fragmentation
itself is
on innovation
effect
its
depends on factors such as the freedom with which ideas and people can
move
across the boundaries between fragments, and whether the frag-
ments are
distinct or just clones of
"optimal"
may
political
also vary with the
fragmentation that
is
each other. Whether fragmentation
is
measure of optimality used; a degree of
may
human
optimal for technological innovation
not be optimal for economic productivity, political
stability,
or
happiness.
My
sense
is
that a large majority of social scientists
mate explanations for the
tory.
For example,
different courses of
in a thoughtful recent essay
importance of Europe's (especially
favors proxi-
still
European and Chinese
"engine science," meaning
Britain's)
and engines.
the applications of science to the development of machines
Goldstone wrote,
regard to energy:
"Two problems
faced
all
his-
Jack Goldstone stressed the
pre-industrial economies in
amount and concentration. The amount
of mechanical
energy available to any pre-industrial economy was limited to water
flows, animals or people
tured. In
...
It is difficult
military/political
energy in
who
could be fed, and wind that could be cap-
any geographically fixed area,
amount was
power
to devise a
...
[It
means
to extract useful
economy or
work from
the
was] the application of steam power to spin-
and surface transport, to brick-making, grain-threshing,
iron-making, shoveling, construction, and
all
sorts
processes that transformed Britain's economy. ...
from a necessary development of European
ment of engine
strictly limited.
to overstate the advantage given to the first
fossil fuels.
ning, to water
this
science
was
the chance
It
of manufacturing
thus
may
be that, far
civilization, the rich develop-
outcome of
specific,
even
if
highly
contingent, circumstances that happened to arise in 17th- and 18th-
century Britain."
If this
reasoning
is
correct, then a search for deep geo-
graphic or ecological explanations will not be profitable.
The opposite minority
view, similar to
my
view expressed
in the epi-
4
3
AFTERWORD
2
GGS, has been argued
logue of
between Europe and China
in
in detail
the very different fates of science in the
culture in
local
in
Europe provided no
by Graeme Lang: "Differences
ecology and geography helped to explain
two
regions. First, [rainfall] agri-
role for the state,
which remained
far
from
communities most of the time, and when the agricultural revolution
Europe produced a growing agricultural surplus,
this
growth of relatively autonomous towns along with urban
allowed the
institutions such
as universities prior to the rise of the centralized states in the late
Middle
Ages. [Irrigation and water-control] agriculture in China, by contrast,
favored the early development of intrusive and coercive states in the major
river valleys, while
of local
towns and
autonomy found
their institutions never achieved the degree
Europe. Second, the geography of China,
in
unlike that of Europe, did not favor the prolonged survival of independent states. Instead, China's geography facilitated eventual conquest
and
unification over a vast area, followed by long periods of relative stability
under imperial
rule.
The
resulting state system suppressed
most of the con-
modern
The explanation
ditions required for the emergence of
outlined above
is
certainly oversimplified.
of this kind of account
into explanations
is
that
it
science.
.
.
.
However, one of the advantages
escapes the circularity which often creeps
which do not go deeper than
social or cultural differ-
ences between Europe and China. Such explanations can always be chal-
lenged with a further question:
why were Europe and China
different with
regard to those social or cultural factors? Explanations rooted ultimately
in
geography and ecology, however, have reached bedrock."
It
remains a challenge for historians to reconcile these different
approaches to answering the question
"Why
answer may have important consequences for
Europe, not China." The
how
and Europe today. For example, from Lang's and
aster of China's Cultural Revolution of the
best to govern
my
China
perspective, the dis-
1960s and 1970s, when a few
misguided leaders were able to close the school systems of the world's
largest country for five years,
tion, but
may
may
not be a unique one-time-only aberra-
presage more such disasters in the future unless China can
introduce far more decentralization into
Europe, in
to devote
its
rush toward
much thought
son behind
its
to
political
how
its
political system. Conversely,
and economic unity today,
will
have
to avoid dismantling the underlying rea-
successes of the last five centuries.
AFTERWORD
Ihe third recent
was
to
me
the
433
extension of GGS's message to the
most unexpected one. Soon
was reviewed favorably by
Bill
Gates, and then
from other business people and economists
allels
between the
histories of entire
modern world
after the book's publication,
human
who
began receiving
I
it
letters
pointed out possible par-
societies discussed in
GGS and
the histories of groups in the business world. This correspondence con-
cerned the following broad question: what
human
is
the best
way
to organize
groups, organizations, and businesses so as to maximize produc-
tivity, creativity,
innovation, and wealth? Should your group have a cen-
tralized direction (in the extreme, a dictator), or should there be diffuse
leadership or even anarchy? Should your collection of people be organized
into a single group, or
broken down into a small or large number of
groups? Should you maintain open communication between your groups,
or erect walls of secrecy between them? Should you erect protectionist tarwalls against the outside, or should
iff
you expose your business
to free
competition?
These questions
arise at
many
different levels
and
for
many
types of
groups. They apply to the organization of entire countries: remember the
perennial arguments about whether the best form of government
is
benign dictatorship, a federal system, or an anarchical
The
same questions
the
same
arise
industry.
free-for-all.
about the organization of different companies within
How
can
we account
for the fact that Microsoft has
been so successful recently, while IBM, which was formerly successful,
behind but then drastically changed
cess?
belts?
belt
How
its
organization and improved
its
fell
suc-
can we explain the different successes of different industrial
When I was
a
around Boston,
boy growing up
led the
world
in
The
Boston, Route 128, the industrial
in scientific creativity
But Route 128 has fallen behind, and
innovation.
a
now
relations of businesses to
and on Route 128 are very
and imagination.
Silicon Valley
one another
is
the center of
in Silicon Valley
different, possibly resulting in those different
outcomes.
Of
course, there are also the
tivities
famous differences between the produc-
of the economies of whole countries, such as Japan, the United
States, France,
and Germany. Actually, though, there are big differences
between the productivity and wealth of different business sectors even
within the same country. For example, the Korean
in efficiency to ours,
but
all
steel
industry
is
equal
other Korean industries lag behind their
AFTERWORD
434
American counterparts. What
these various
Korean
is
it
about the different organization of
industries that accounts for their differences in pro-
same country?
ductivity within the
Obviously, answers to these questions about differences in organizational success
depend partly on the idiosyncrasies of individuals. For
example, the success of Microsoft has surely had something to do with the
personal talents of
tion,
theless,
one can
run, or else
is
Gates. Even with a superior corporate organiza-
Bill
Microsoft would not be successful with an ineffectual leader. Neverstill
ask: all other things being equal, or else in the long
on the average, what form of organization of human groups
best?
My comparison of the histories
Europe
in the epilogue of
GGS
of China, the Indian subcontinent, and
suggested an answer to this question as
applied to technological innovation in whole countries. As explained in
the preceding section,
ical entities
I
inferred that competition between different polit-
spurred innovation in geographically fragmented Europe, and
that the lack of such competition held innovation back in unified China.
Would
that
mean
that a higher degree of political fragmentation than
Europe's would be even better? Probably not: India was geographically
even more fragmented than Europe, but
This suggested to
me
less
innovative technologically.
the Optimal Fragmentation Principle: innovation
proceeds most rapidly in a society with some optimal intermediate degree
of fragmentation: a too-unified society
too-fragmented
This inference rang a
Kinsey Global
is
at a disadvantage,
and so
is
a
society.
bell
with
Bill
Lewis and other executives of Mc-
Institute, a leading consulting firm
based in Washington,
D.C., which carries out comparative studies of the economies of countries
and
industries all over the world.
parallels
between
that they presented a copy of
partners,
The
executives were so struck by the
their business experience
GGS
and
States, France,
hundred
their reports
Germany, Korea, Japan,
and other countries. They, too, detected a key
size in spurring innovation.
historical inferences
to each of the firm's several
and they presented me with copies of
economies of the United
group
my
on the
Brazil,
role of competition
and
Here are some of the conclusions that
I
gleaned from conversations with McKinsey executives and from their
reports:
We
Americans often fantasize that German and Japanese industries are
super-efficient, exceeding
American
industries in productivity. In reality,
AFTERWORD
that's
4
not true: on the average across
productivity
is
among
related to differences in organization
instructive. Let
the
German
industries, America's industrial
higher than that in either Japan or Germany. But those
average figures conceal big differences
try,
all
3 5
me
give
the industries of each coun-
—and those differences are very
you two examples from McKinsey case
studies
on
beer industry and the Japanese food-processing industry.
Germans make wonderful
beer.
Every time that
my
wife and
I
fly to
we carry with us an empty suitcase, so we can fill it
German beer to bring back to the United States and enjoy
over the following year. Yet the productivity of the German beer industry
is only 43 percent that of the U.S. beer industry. Meanwhile, the German
Germany
for a visit,
with bottles of
metalworking and
steel industries are
ican counterparts. Since the
equal in productivity to their Amer-
Germans
are evidently perfectly capable of
why can't they do so when it comes to beer?
German beer industry suffers from small-scale pro-
organizing industries well,
It
turns out that the
duction. There are a thousand tiny beer companies in Germany, shielded
from competition with one another because each German brewery has
tually a local
imports.
vir-
monopoly, and they are also shielded from competition with
The United
States has
67 major beer breweries, producing 23
lion liters of beer per year. All of
bil-
Germany's 1,000 breweries combined
produce only half as much. Thus the average U.S. brewery produces 31
times
more beer than
the average
German
This fact results from local tastes and
German
Coors. Instead, most
tory where
is
it
in
Germany analogous
German
beer
is
policies.
beer,
German
miles of the fac-
beer industry cannot
scale. In the beer business, as in other businesses,
production costs decrease greatly with
making
to our Budweiser, Miller, or
consumed within 30
brewed. Therefore, the
from economies of
unit for
German government
beer drinkers are fiercely loyal to their local brand, so there are
no national brands
profit
brewery.
scale.
The bigger
and the longer the assembly
with beer, the lower the cost of manufacturing
the refrigerating
line for filling bottles
beer.
Those tiny German
beer companies are relatively inefficient. There's no competition; there are
just a
thousand local monopolies.
The
German drinkers are reinforced by
make it hard for foreign beers to compete in the German market. The German government has so-called beer purity laws that
local beer loyalties of individual
German laws
that
specify exactly
Not surprisingly, those government
based on what German breweries put into beer,
what can go
purity specifications are
into beer.
—
4
3
AFTERWORD
6
and not on what American, French, and Swedish breweries
beer.
Because of those laws, not
much
German
(Before
beer than
put into
foreign beer gets exported to Ger-
many, and because of inefficiency and high prices much
derful
like to
you would otherwise expect
you object that German Lowenbrau beer
won-
of that
less
gets sold abroad.
widely available in the
is
United States, please read the label on the next bottle of Lowenbrau that
you drink
here:
it's
not produced in Germany but in North America, under
license, in big factories
with North American productivity and efficiencies
of scale.)
The German soap industry and consumer
ilarly inefficient; their
electronics industry are sim-
companies are not exposed to competition with one
another, nor are they exposed to foreign competition,
acquire the best practices of international industry.
that
you bought an imported
German companies have
tionally,
My
the last time
is
TV
set made in Germany?) But those disadGerman metal and steel industries, in which
vantages are not shared by the
big
and so they do not
(When
to
compete with one another and interna-
and thus are forced to acquire the best international
other favorite example from the
Japanese food-processing industry.
about Japanese
efficiency,
and
it is
We
McKinsey
practices.
reports concerns the
Americans tend to be paranoid
indeed formidable in some industries
but not in food-processing. The efficiency of the Japanese food-processing
industry
is
a miserable 32 percent that of ours. There are 67,000 food-
processing companies in Japan, compared to only 21,000 in the United
which has twice Japan's population
States,
processing
company
is
six times bigger
than
does the Japanese food-processing industry,
try,
—so
its
the average U.S. food-
Japanese counterpart.
like the
German
is
the
same two reasons:
The Japanese
local taste
are fanatics for fresh food.
and government
A
visited a
Tokyo supermarket with one of
were surprised to discover that
the date the milk
in
date.
When my
my wife's Japanese
wife and
cousins,
Japan a milk container bears three
was manufactured,
and the expiration
policies.
container of milk in a U.S.
supermarket bears only one date: the expiration date.
ket,
beer indus-
consist of small companies with local monopolies? Basically, the
answer
I
Why
the date
it
Milk production
we
dates:
arrived at the supermar-
in
Japan always
starts at
one minute past midnight, so that the milk that goes to market in the
morning can be labeled
11:59
P.M., the
was made
as today's milk. If the milk
date on the container
yesterday,
would have
were produced
at
to indicate that the milk
and no Japanese consumer would buy
it.
AFTERWORD
As
lies.
4
a result, Japanese food-processing
A
3
7
companies enjoy
monopo-
local
milk producer in northern Japan cannot hope to compete in south-
would take an
ern Japan, because transporting milk there
extra day or
two, a fatal disadvantage in the eyes of consumers. These local monopolies
are reinforced by the Japanese government,
which obstructs the
import of foreign processed food by imposing a 10-day quarantine,
among
how
other restrictions. (Imagine
food labeled as only one day old
Japanese consumers
about food 10 days
feel
Japanese food-producing companies are not exposed to
foreign competition,
for
Some
Hence
either domestic or
and they don't learn the best international methods
producing food. Partly as a
$200
the best beef costs
who shun
old.)
a
result,
food prices
in
Japan are very high:
pound, while chicken costs $25 a pound.
other Japanese industries are organized very differently from the
food processors. For instance, Japanese
steel,
and consumer electronic companies compete
ductivities
computer
metal, car, car parts, camera,
fiercely
and have higher pro-
than their U.S. counterparts. But the Japanese soap,
beer,
and
industries, like the Japanese food-processing industry, are not
exposed to competition, do not apply the best practices, and thus have
lower productivities than the corresponding industries in the United
States. (If
set
you look around your house, you are
and camera, and possibly also your
computer and soap are
likely to find that
car, are
Japanese, but that your
apply these lessons to comparing different industrial belts
Finally, let's
much
TV
not.)
or businesses within the United States. Since the publication of
spent
your
GGS,
I've
time talking with people from Silicon Valley and from Route
128, and they
me
tell
that these
two
industrial belts are quite different in
terms of corporate ethos. Silicon Valley consists of
lots of
companies that
is much colamong compaRoute 128 are much more
are fiercely competitive with one another. Nevertheless, there
laboration
—a
free
I'm told, the businesses of
nies. In contrast,
secretive
flow of ideas, people, and information
and insulated from one another,
like
Japanese milk-producing
companies.
What about
the contrast between Microsoft
published, I've acquired friends at
and IBM? Since
GGS was
Microsoft and have learned about that
corporation's distinctive organization. Microsoft has lots of units, each
comprised of 5 to 10 people, with
the units are not
in
free
communication among
units,
and
micromanaged; they are allowed a great deal of freedom
pursuing their
own
ideas.
That unusual organization
at
Microsoft
—
4
which
in essence
AFTERWORD
3 8
broken into many competing semi-independent units
is
contrasts with the organization at
sisted
of
much more
competitive
ability.
changed things
Then IBM acquired
IBM now
drastically:
until
some years ago con-
and resulted
new
a
in
we may
All of this suggests that
about group organization.
you don't want
Instead,
loss
chief executive officer
of
who
as a result.
be able to extract a general principle
your goal
If
IBM's
has a more Microsoft-like organiza-
and I'm told that IBM's innovativeness has improved
tion,
ity,
IBM, which
insulated groups
innovation and competitive abil-
is
either excessive unity or excessive fragmentation.
you want your country,
industry, industrial belt, or
company
to
be broken up into groups that compete with one another while maintaining relatively free
tem, with
1
its
communication
built-in
—
competition between our 50
he remaining extension
tral
like the U.S. federal
of
questions of world economics:
United States and Switzerland)
rich,
government
sys-
states.
GGS
has been into one of the cen-
why
are
some countries
while other countries
(like
(like the
Paraguay
and Mali) are poor? Per-capita gross national products (GNP) of the
world's richest countries are
countries.
This
employment
implications.
is
more than 100 times those of
the poorest
not just a challenging theoretical question giving
to economics professors, but also one with important policy
If
we could
identify the answers, then
poor countries could
concentrate on changing the things that keep them poor and on adopting
the things that
make
other countries rich.
Obviously, part of the answer depends on differences in
tions.
The
clearest evidence for this
that divide essentially the
human
institu-
view comes from pairs of countries
same environment but have very
different insti-
tutions and, associated with those institutions, different per-capita
GNPs.
Four flagrant examples are the comparison of South Korea with North
Germany with
Korea, the former West
Dominican Republic with
Among
the
many "good
Haiti,
and
the former East Germany, the
Israel
with
its
Arab neighbors.
institutions" often invoked to explain the greater
wealth of the first-named country of each of these pairs are effective rule
of law, enforcement of contracts, protection of private property rights,
lack of corruption,
low frequency of
assassinations, openness to trade
to flow of capital, incentives for investment,
Undoubtedly, good institutions are indeed part of the answer to the
ferent wealths of nations.
and
and so on.
Many, perhaps most, economists go
further
dif-
and
AFTERWORD
believe that
good
explanation.
Many
But there
incomplete
is
governments, agencies, and foundations base their
and loans on
institutions in
—not wrong,
need addressing
has
its
own
to
by making the devel-
this explanation,
poor countries
their top priority.
increasing recognition that this good-institutions view
tors
just
incomplete
—and that other important
poor countries are to become
if
policy implications.
poor countries
tions to
overwhelmingly the most important
institutions are
policies, foreign aid,
opment of good
439
One cannot
types.
variables besides
imposed
limits
GNPs
of the United
criticisms of the good-institutions
view are of
One
type recognizes the importance of other proximate
institutions,
on
such as public health,
agricultural productivity,
According to the
good
the origin of
latter criticism,
tutions as a proximate influence
Good
institu-
good
The other type concerns
interest.
good
just introduce
Paraguay and Mali and expect those countries
like
and Switzerland. The
two main
This recognition
rich.
adopt the institutions and achieve the per-capita
States
is
fac-
whose
origins are of
random
popped up anywhere around the globe,
equal probability. Instead,
it
and environmental
seems to
fragility.
institutions.
not enough to consider good
it is
institutions are not a
and climate-
soil-
in
me
no further
insti-
practical
variable that could have
Denmark
or in Somalia, with
that, in the past,
good
institu-
tions always arose because of a long chain of historical connections
from
ultimate causes rooted in geography to the proximate dependent variables
of the institutions.
We must understand that chain if we hope, now, to pro-
duce good institutions quickly in countries lacking them.
At the time that
power
I
wrote GGS,
I
commented, "The nations
rising to
new
still
ones that were incorporated thousands of years ago
into the old centers of
dominance based on food production, or that have
[today] are
been repopulated by peoples from those centers.
course at 8,000 B.C.
lies
heavily
on
us."
.
.
Two new
.
The hand of
history's
papers by economists
(Olsson and Hibbs, and Bockstette, Chanda, and Putterman) have subjected this postulated
heavy hand of history to detailed
tests. It
turns out
that countries in regions with long histories of state societies or agriculture
have higher per-capita
GNP than countries with
other variables have been controlled.
of the variance in
recently
eties
GNP. Even
low GNPs, countries
just
The
effect explains a large fraction
among
in regions
short histories, even after
countries with still-low or
with long histories of state
soci-
or agriculture, like South Korea, Japan, and China, have higher
growth
rates than countries with short histories, such as
New
Guinea and
44°
the Philippines, even though
much
"
AFTERWORD
some of
the countries with short histories are
richer in natural resources.
There are many obvious reasons for these
effects of history,
such as that
long experience of state societies and agriculture implies experienced
administrators, experience with market economies, and so on. Statistically,
part of that ultimate effect of history proves to be mediated by the
familiar proximate causes of
effect of history
good
good
institutions.
But there
is
still
a large
remaining after one controls for the usual measures of
institutions.
Hence
must be other mediating proximate mech-
there
anisms as well. Thus a key problem will be to understand the detailed
chain of causation from a long history of state societies and agriculture to
modern economic growth,
up that chain more
In short, the themes of
in the ancient
in order to help developing countries
advance
quickly.
GGS
seem to me to be not only a driving force
world but also a ripe area for study
in the
modern world.
Acknowledgments
IS
IT
A PLEASURE FOR
tions of
many
ME TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE CONTRIBU-
My
people to this book.
School introduced
me
many New Guinea
friends will be obvious
I
to the fascination of history.
cite their experiences.
my
responsibility for
who
colleagues,
read
my
Heiser,
my
equally great debt (and absolution from
my many
and professional
scientist friends
and
Kent Flannery, Patrick
Marie Cohen, read the whole manuscript, and Charles
David Keightley, Bruce Smith, Richard Yarnell, and Daniel
Zohary each read
ters
owe an
great debt to
from the frequency with which
In particular, Peter Bellwood,
my wife,
Jr.,
I
errors) to
My
Roxbury Latin
patiently explained the subtleties of their subjects
drafts.
Kirch, and
teachers at
appeared as
several chapters. Earlier versions of several of the chaparticles in
Discover magazine and
in
Natural History
magazine. The National Geographic Society, World Wildlife Fund, and
University of California at Los Angeles supported
islands.
as
my
I
secretaries, Ellen
Willi
at
W.
Modecki
and Lori Rosen
as
my
my
as
illustrator,
and
research assistants and
as
W Norton, Neil Belton and Will Sulkin
Kohler at Fischer, Marc Zabludoff and
Shulman
fieldwork on Pacific
have been fortunate to have John Brockman and Katinka Matson
agents, Lori Iversen
Lamm
my
at Discover,
my
at
editors
Mark Wheeler and
and Ellen Goldensohn and Alan Ternes
History.
44
i
Donald
Jonathan Cape,
at
Polly
Natural
Further Readings
TT HESE SUGGESTIONS ARE FOR THOSE INTERESTED
JL
favored references that provide comprehensive
ture.
IN
ing further. Hence, in addition to key books and papers,
A journal title (in italics)
after a
colon by the
first
and
READI
have
listings of the earlier litera-
is
followed by the volume number, followed
last
page numbers, and then the year of publi-
cation in parentheses.
Prologue
Among references
relevant to
compendium of human gene
phy of
Human
most chapters of this book
frequencies entitled
is
an enormous
The History and Geogra-
Genes, by L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and
Alberto Piazza (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). This remarkable
book approximates
a history of everything about everybody, because
the authors begin their accounts of each continent with a convenient sum-
mary of the
continent's geography, ecology,
and environment, followed by
the prehistory, history, languages, physical anthropology, and culture of
peoples. L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Francisco Cavalli-Sforza,
Human Diasporas
its
The Great
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995), covers similar
442
FURTHER READINGS
443
material but
is
written for the general reader rather than for specialists.
Another convenient source
trated History of
perCollins, 1993-94).
tled, respectively,
Civilizations,
is
Humankind,
five
volumes
entitled
Goran Burenhult (San
The
Illus-
Francisco: Har-
individual volumes in this series are enti-
Humans, People of the Stone Age, Old World
World and Pacific Civilizations, and Traditional Peo-
The
New
The
a series of five
ed.
First
ples Today.
Cambridge University
Several series of volumes published by
(Cambridge, England, various dates)
regions or eras.
One
tory of [X], where
series consists of
X
is
is
histories
entitled
of particular
The Cambridge His-
variously Africa, Early Inner Asia, China, India,
America, Poland, and Southeast Asia. Another
Iran, Islam, Japan, Latin
series
provide
books
Press
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of [X], where
X
is
variously Africa,
China, Japan, Latin America and the Caribbean, Russia and the former
Soviet Union, Australia, the
Middle East and North Africa, and
Pakistan, and adjacent countries.
Still
India,
other series include The Cambridge
ModThe Cambridge Economic History of Europe, and The Cam-
Ancient History, The Cambridge Medieval History, The Cambridge
ern History,
bridge
Economic History of India.
Three encyclopedic accounts of the world's languages are Barbara
Grimes, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 13th ed. (Dallas:
Institute of Linguistics, 1996), Merritt
Ruhlen,
A Guide
to the World's
Languages, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), and C.
and
F.
M.
Voegelin, Classification
(New York:
Among
F.
Voegelin
the World's Languages
Elsevier, 1977).
Arnold Toynbee,
large-scale comparative histories,
History, 12 vols. (London:
An
and Index of
Summer
Oxford University
Press,
A
Study of
1934-54), stands out.
excellent history of Eurasian civilization, especially western Eurasian
civilization,
is
William McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1991).
Oxford University
The same
author's
Press, 1979), despite
A
World History (New York:
its title,
also maintains a focus
western Eurasian civilization, as does V. Gordon Childe,
in History, rev. ed. (Baltimore:
tive history
on
What Happened
Penguin Books, 1954). Another compara-
with a focus on western Eurasia, C. D. Darlington, The Evolu-
Man and Society (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), is by a
biologist who recognizes some of the same links between continental history and domestication that
discuss. Two books by Alfred Crosby are
tion
of
I
FURTHER READINGS
444
distinguished studies of the European overseas expansion with emphasis
on
accompanying
its
and germs:
animals,
plants,
The Columbian
Exchange: Biological Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn.: Green-
wood, 1972) and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of
Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Mar-
and Kings: The Origins of Cultures (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), and Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service, eds.,
Evolution and Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960),
vin Harris, Cannibals
are comparative histories from the perspective of cultural anthropologists.
Ellen Semple, Influences of Geographic
1911),
an example of
is
human societies. Other
geographic influences on
important historical studies are
readings for the Epilogue.
My
listed
under further
book The Third Chimpanzee (New York:
HarperCollins, 1992), especially
ies
Environment (New York: Holt,
earlier efforts to study
its
chapter 14, on the comparative histor-
of Eurasia and the Americas, provided the starting point for
my
think-
ing about the present book.
The best-known or most notorious
group differences
ray,
The
in intelligence
is
Bell Curve: Intelligence
(New York:
recent entrant into the debate about
Richard Herrnstein and Charles Mur-
and Class Structure
Chapter
Excellent books about early
The
Human
in
American Life
Free Press, 1994).
human
1
evolution include Richard Klein,
Career (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), Roger
Lewin, Bones of Contention (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), Paul
Mellars and Chris Stringer, eds., The
Biological Perspectives
Edinburgh University
gins Reconsidered
Human Revolution: Behavioural and
on the Origins of Modern Humans (Edinburgh:
Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, Ori-
Press, 1989),
(New York: Doubleday,
1992), D. Tab Rasmussen, ed.,
The Origin and Evolution of Humans and Humanness (Boston: Jones and
Bartlett, 1993), Matthew Nitecki and Doris Nitecki, eds., Origins of Anatomically
Modern Humans (New York: Plenum,
1994), and Chris Stringer
and Robin McKie, African Exodus (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996). Three
popular books dealing specifically with the Neanderthals are Christopher
Stringer
and Clive Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals (New York:
FURTHER READINGS
Thames and Hudson, 1993),
Erik Trinkaus and Pat Shipman,
(New York: Knopf, 1993), and
thal (New York: Macmillan, 1995).
Genetic evidence of human origins is
1
of
my book The
advances
Two
Third Chimpanzee.
Sforza,
"Inference of
nuclear
DNA
Academy of
the subject of the
two books by
L.
already cited under the Prologue, and of chapter
al.
in the genetic
The Nean-
Ian Tattersall, The Last Neander-
dertals
Luca Cavalli-Sforza et
445
evidence are
human
restriction
technical papers with recent
Mountain and
J. L.
L. L. Cavalli-
evolution through cladistic analysis of
polymorphism," Proceedings of the National
Sciences 91:6515-19 (1994), and D. B. Goldstein et
al.,
"Genetic absolute dating based on microsatellites and the origin of modern humans," ibid. 92:6723-27 (1995).
human
References to the
the Bismarck
colonization of Australia,
New
Guinea, and
and Solomon Archipelagoes, and to extinctions of
under further readings for Chapter 15. In particular,
mals there, are
listed
Tim
The Future Eaters (New York:
Flannery,
large ani-
Braziller, 1995), discusses
those subjects in clear, understandable terms and explains the problems
with claims of very recent survival of extinct big Australian mammals.
The standard
animals
is
text
on Late Pleistocene and Recent
extinctions of large
Paul Martin and Richard Klein, eds., Quaternary Extinctions
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984).
More
recent updates are
Richard Klein, "The impact of early people on the environment: The case
of large
mammal
J.
Firor,
Human
Impact on the Environment (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press,
extinctions," pp.
1992), and Anthony Stuart,
13-34
"Mammalian
in J. E.
Jacobsen and
extinctions in the Late Pleisto-
cene of Northern Eurasia and North America,"
Biological Reviews
66:453-62 (1991). David Steadman summarizes recent evidence that
extinction waves accompanied
human
settlement of Pacific islands in his
paper "Prehistoric extinctions of Pacific island birds: Biodiversity meets
zooarchaeology," Science 267:1123-31 (1995).
Popular accounts of the settlement of the Americas, the accompanying
extinctions of large
mammals, and
the resulting controversies are Brian
Fagan, The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America
(New York:
my book The
Third Chim-
Ronald
Carlisle, ed.,
Thames and Hudson, 1987), and chapter 18
panzee, both of which provide
many other
of
references.
Americans before Columbus: Ice-Age Origins (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh, 1988), includes a chapter by
on pre-Clovis evidence
at the
J.
M. Adovasio and
Meadowcroft
site.
his colleagues
Papers by C. Vance
FURTHER READINGS
44^
Haynes,
Jr.,
an expert on the Clovis horizon and reported pre-Clovis
sites,
include "Contributions of radiocarbon dating to the geochronology of the
peopling of the
R.
New
World," pp. 354-74
in R. E. Taylor, A.
Kra, eds., Radiocarbon after Four Decades
S.
Long, and
(New York:
Springer,
1992), and "Clovis-Folson geochronology and climate change," pp. 219-
36
Olga Soffer and N. D. Praslov,
in
vis
claims for the Pedra Furada
brias,
From Kostenki to Clovis: Upper
(New York: Plenum, 1993). Pre-Clo-
eds.,
Paleolithic Paleo-Indian Adaptations
are argued by
site
"Carbon-14 dates point to man
in the
Americas 32,000 years ago,"
Nature 321:769-71 (1986), and David Meltzer
human occupation
at
N. Guidon and G. Deli-
et al.,
"On
a Pleistocene
Pedra Furada, Brazil," Antiquity 68:695-714
(1994). Other publications relevant to the pre-Clovis debate include T. D.
Dillehay et
al.,
"Earliest hunters
and gatherers of South America," Journal
of World Prehistory 6:145-204 (1992),
D. Dillehay, Monte Verde:
T.
A
Late Pleistocene Site in Chile (Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1989), T.
D. Dillehay and D.
"Glacial-age
uity
man
in
Meltzer, eds., The First Americans:
J.
CRC
Search and Research (Boca Raton:
South America?
—a
55:12-36 (1990), John Hoffecker
and the peopling of the
A. C. Roosevelt
et al.,
New
Press, 1991),
critical review,"
et al.,
Thomas Lynch
American Antiq-
"The colonization of Beringia
World," Science 259:46-53 (1993), and
"Paleoindian cave dwellers in the Amazon: The
peopling of the Americas," Science 272:373-84 (1996).
Chapter 2
Two
outstanding books explicitly concerned with cultural differences
among
Polynesian islands are Patrick Kirch, The Evolution of the Polyne-
sian Chiefdoms (Cambridge:
Cambridge University
Press, 1984),
and the
same author's The Wet and the Dry (Chicago: University of Chicago
1994).
Much
of Peter Bellwood's
Thames and Hudson, 1987),
The Polynesians,
rev.
ed.
Press,
(London:
also deals with this problem. Notable books
dealing with specific Polynesian islands include Michael King, Moriori
(Auckland: Penguin, 1989), on the
ered
Chatham
Gods and Fishhooks (Honolulu:
on Hawaii, Patrick Kirch and Marshall
versity of
Chicago
Press, 1992), also
Islands, Patrick Kirch, Feath-
University of Hawaii Press, 1985),
Sahlins,
Anahulu (Chicago: Uni-
on Hawaii, Jo Anne Van Tilburg,
Easter Island (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994),
FURTHER READINGS
and Paul Bahn and John
447
Flenley, Easter Island,
Earth Island (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1992).
Chapter 3
My account of Pizarro's capture of Atahuallpa combines the eyewitness
accounts by Francisco Pizarro's brothers Hernando Pizarro and Pedro
Pizarro and by Pizarro's companions Miguel de Estete, Cristobal de
Mena,
Ruiz de Arce, and Francisco de Xerez. The accounts by Hernando Pizarro,
Miguel de
ents
Estete,
and Francisco de Xerez have been translated by Clem-
Markham, Reports on
ser., vol.
the Discovery of Peru, Hakluyt Society, 1st
47 (New York, 1872); Pedro
Pizarro's account, by Philip
Relation of the Discovery and Conquest of the
Means,
Kingdoms of Peru (New
York: Cortes Society, 1921); and Cristobal de Mena's account, by Joseph
Sinclair,
The Conquest of Peru, as Recorded by a Member of the Pizarro
(New York, 1929). The account by Ruiz de Arce was reprinted
Expedition
in Boletin
de
la
Real Academia de Historia (Madrid) 102:327-84 (1933).
John Hemming's excellent The Conquest of the Incas (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970) gives a
full
account of the capture and
indeed of the whole conquest, with an extensive bibliography.
A
19th-
century account of the conquest, William H. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru
(New York,
1847),
is still
highly readable and ranks
the classics of historical writing. Corresponding
modern and
among
classic 19th-
century accounts of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs are, respectively,
Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), and William Prescott, History
of the Conquest of Mexico (New York, 1843). Contemporary eyewitness
accounts of the conquest of the Aztecs were written by Cortes himself
Hernando Cortes, Five Letters of Cortes to the Emperor
[New York: Norton, 1969]) and by many of Cortes's companions
(reprinted as
(reprinted in Patricia de Fuentes, ed.,
versity of
Oklahoma
The Conquistadors [Norman: Uni-
Press, 1993]).
Chapters 4-10
References for these seven chapters on food production will be combined, since
many
of the references apply to
more than one of them.
FURTHER READINGS
44^
Five important sources,
question
how
all
of
them
excellent
and
fact-filled,
address the
food production evolved from the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle:
Kent Flannery, "The origins of agriculture," Annu