Reflections on Guns, Germs, and Steel
WHAP/Napp
Objective: To summarize Jared
Diamond’s point of view regarding
different rates of development in human
societies
Do Now:
What is latitude and how does latitude
impact the cultural diffusion of
agriculture?
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Cues:
Notes:
I. The Book
A. Author: Jared Diamond
B. Title: “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies”
C. Copyright: 1997
II. Yali’s Question
A. Diamond’s book begins with a question posed by a local politician
from the tropical island of New Guinea
1. Why do peoples of Eurasian origin, especially those still living in
Europe and eastern Asia, plus those transplanted to North
America, dominate the modern world in wealth and power?
2. Or as Diamond also offers: Why weren’t Native Americans,
Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated,
subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?
3. Or why did human development proceed at such different rates
on different continents?
a. After all, until the end of the last Ice Age, around 11,000
B.C.E., all peoples on all continents were still huntersgatherers
III. The Importance of Food Production
A. Different peoples acquired food production at different times in
prehistory and some never acquired it all
B. According to Diamond, food production was indirectly a prerequisite
for the development of guns, germs, and steel
1. Hence geographic variation in whether, or when, the peoples of
different continents became farmers and herders explains to a
large extent their subsequent contrasting fates
a) Stored food is essential for feeding non-food-producing
specialists and for supporting cities
2. Big domestic mammals also became the main means of land
transport until the development of railroads in the 19th century
a) Deadly germs evolved from close contact with domestic
animals but then these people developed some resistance
Summaries:
Cues:
Notes:
IV. Five Areas Where Food Production Arose Independently
A. Southwest Asia (known as the Near East or Fertile Crescent
B. China
C. Mesoamerica
D. The Andes
E. The Eastern United States
V. Four Others – Candidates for Distinction
A. Africa’s Sahel zone, tropical West Africa, Ethiopia, and New Guinea
VI. But Fertile Crescent  Significant Advantages
A. World’s largest zone of Mediterranean climate and therefore it has a
high diversity of wild plants and animal species
1. Goat, sheep, pig, and cow
VII. Characteristics Necessary  Candidates for Domestication
A. Diet  No mammalian carnivore domesticated  too much food
B. Growth Rate  Must grow quickly
C. Must Breed Well in Captivity
D. Must Not Possess a Nasty Disposition
E. Must Not Possess a Tendency to Panic
F. Must live in herds with a defined hierarchy
G. Thus, only a small percentage of animals are candidates for
domestication
H. But Eurasian peoples happened to inherit many more species of
domesticable large wild mammalian herbivores than did peoples of
other continents
VIII. The Axes of Continents
A. East/West Axis of Eurasia  ideal for diffusion of crops/animals 
similar climate
B. But Africa  North/South Axis
C. Americas  North/South Axis
D. And continental differences in axis orientation affected the diffusion
not only of food production but also of other technologies and
inventions
IX. Disease
A. Rise of agriculture launched the evolution of crowd infectious
diseases  could not be sustained in small groups
B. Eurasian crowd diseases evolved out of diseases of Eurasian herd
animals that became domesticated
C. Eurasian germs played a key role in decimating the Native American
Indians as well as native peoples in the Pacific islands, Australia, and
southern Africa
X. Diamond’s Conclusion
A. Not innate differences in people but in their environments
Summaries:
Essential Question:
 Why was a continent’s axis orientation vital in determining the development of
human societies on the continent?

Why were the Europeans the people who were able to conquer so many of the
world’s great civilizations and control so much of the world?
1. Groups who remained huntergatherers into the twentieth century
lived in what types of areas?
A. Areas near the equator
B. Areas where natural resources
were abundant
C. Areas not fit for food production
D. Areas with lots of water
2. What was needed for an area to
become involved in food production?
A. An abundance of wild game
B. Several species of plants that
could be domesticated
C. A comfortable climate
D. A North/South Axis
3. What is not a cause of uneven
distribution of wealth and power,
according to Diamond?
A. Differences in wild plant
distribution
B. The relative isolation of people
C. The orientation of a continent on
a particular axis
D. The intelligence of groups
4. Food production meant what to
hunting and gathering societies?
A. More nomadic lifestyles
B. Fewer physical demands
C. More physical work
D. Fewer hours of labor each day
5. Hunter-gatherers in southeastern
Europe adopted crops and
agriculture from where?
A. Africa
B. Southwestern Asia
C. North America
D. China
6. The arrival of founder crops enabled
local populations to become…?
A. Obese
B. Nomadic
C. Rich
D. Sedentary
7. Who invented things like firearms
and steel equipment?
A. Eurasians
B. Australians
C. Americans
D. Africans
8. Where did technology grow fastest
according to Jared Diamond?
A. In isolated areas with small
populations
B. In nomadic societies
C. In productive regions with large
human populations
D. In areas where food production
was just beginning
A Different Point of View: A Critique of Diamond’s Work: By Gene Callahan
“…Diamond's central conception is that the course of history, broadly speaking, is not
determined by individual actions, cultural factors, or racial differences, but by the
environmental circumstances into which different groups of people accidentally wandered.
More specifically, those groups that happened to wind up in places that offered a variety of
plants and animals suitable for domestication, and that made acquiring domesticated
species and new technologies from other societies relatively easy, wound up having a
decisive advantage over groups located in environments lacking those features. As a result,
when geographically advantaged societies encountered groups not so blessed, the outcome
was inevitably that the former conquered or absorbed the disadvantaged culture. Thus it is
geography, claims Diamond, and not greater inventiveness, a superior culture, or racial
differences that is the "ultimate explanation" of why, for instance, Europeans came to rule
the Americas rather than American Indians ruling Europe…
“…In order to make his thesis plausible, Diamond must show that there were crucially
important geographical differences between the homelands of those societies that wound up
as conquerors and those that turned out to be the vanquished. He has exerted tremendous
ingenuity in attempting to do so. I believe that he has succeeded to some extent, although it
is a much more limited accomplishment than he ambitiously claims to have achieved…
“[But] Diamond often has to put a good deal of spin on historical episodes. In attempting
to explain why the Vikings did not successfully colonize the New World, while the
Spaniards and the Europeans who followed in their wake did, he writes, "Spain, unlike
Norway, was rich and populous enough to support exploration and subsidize colonies"…
But this declaration simply brushes over the fact that Norway did successfully explore the
North Atlantic, and did successfully colonize the Faeroe Islands and Iceland. If Diamond
were true to his project…, he ought to proceed to formulate a quantitative law governing
just how far from the mother country a colony can survive, given any particular amount of
wealth and any number of residents in the colonizer. However, simply to state that
requirement is to expose the attempt to stuff human history into a deductivist framework
as the absurdity that it is…
“…As I mentioned in the introduction, Diamond's mistake is not merely of concern to
scholars. The view that "vast, impersonal forces" largely determine the course of history,
whether those forces are taken to be "the material conditions of production," as in
Marxism, or geographical circumstances, as in Diamond, naturally suggests that
individuals can do little to affect their own future. As a logical consequence, in order to
improve the lives of those who have been dealt a poor hand by those forces, it seems
necessary to counteract them with another vast, impersonal force, namely, the State. Huge
international programs intended to redress the arbitrary outcomes brought about by
historical forces are recommended. The cases of countries with few geographic advantages
but relatively free economies, such as Japan, prospering, and those of nations blessed with
natural resources but ruled by highly interventionist governments, for example, Brazil or
Nigeria, lagging behind, are easily dismissed as anomalies by those who are convinced that
human action plays an insignificant part in history…”