Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond (PDF)

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“Fascinating…. Lays a foundation for understanding human history.”―Bill Gates In this “artful, informative, and delightful” (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion –as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war –and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California’s Gold Medal.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Library Journal Most of this work deals with non-Europeans, but Diamond’s thesis sheds light on why Western civilization became hegemonic: “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.” Those who domesticated plants and animals early got a head start on developing writing, government, technology, weapons of war, and immunity to deadly germs. (LJ 2/15/97) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review “Artful, informative, and delightful…. There is nothing like a radically new angle of vision for bringing out unsuspected dimensions of a subject, and that is what Jared Diamond has done.” – William H. McNeil, New York Review of Books“An ambitious, highly important book.” – James Shreeve, New York Times Book Review“A book of remarkable scope, a history of the world in less than 500 pages which succeeds admirably, where so many others have failed, in analyzing some of the basic workings of culture process…. One of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years.” – Colin Renfrew, Nature“The scope and the explanatory power of this book are astounding.” – The New Yorker“No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater clarity, than Jared Diamond as illustrated by Guns, Germs, and Steel. In this remarkably readable book he shows how history and biology can enrich one another to produce a deeper understanding of the human condition.” – Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University“Serious, groundbreaking biological studies of human history only seem to come along once every generation or so. . . . Now [Guns, Germs, and Steel] must be added to their select number. . . . Diamond meshes technological mastery with historical sweep, anecdotal delight with broad conceptual vision, and command of sources with creative leaps. No finer work of its kind has been published this year, or for many past.” – Martin Sieff, Washington Times“[Diamond] is broadly erudite, writes in a style that pleasantly expresses scientific concepts in vernacular American English, and deals almost exclusively in questions that should interest everyone concerned about how humanity has developed. . . . [He] has done us all a great favor by supplying a rock-solid alternative to the racist answer. . . . A wonderfully interesting book.” – Alfred W. Crosby, Los Angeles Times“An epochal work. Diamond has written a summary of human history that can be accounted, for the time being, as Darwinian in its authority.” – Thomas M. Disch, The New Leader About the Author Jared Diamond is professor of geography at UCLA and author of the best-selling Collapse and The Third Chimpanzee. He is a MacArthur Fellow and was awarded the National Medal of Science. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Two decades ago when I served in the Missouri National Guard we had an extended drill weekend at Ft. Leonard Wood for a live fire artillery exercise. This was a three day drill and I remember it clearly because it was the same weekend as Princess Diana’s funeral on September 6, 1997. I had been at the local library the day before we rolled out and saw an interesting book that promised to explain why western civilization had been the one to colonize the New World and rise to ascendency over much of the world for a long period of time. That had always been an interesting question for me and one which many people do not know the answer to. I checked out the book and during some downtime I began to read. To say that the book grabbed my attention is an understatement. I started it on Friday and finished it on Saturday. My whole conception of how history had seen the rise of Western Civilization was fundamentally altered and would never be the same. At the time I thought that using Guns, Germs, and Steel as an educational tool would be a great idea. My dream of teaching history had never been realized and in 1997 seemed like it would never happen. However, history is full of strange things and in 2009 I got the chance to return to college and pick up my degrees. I began teaching American History in 2013 and was then asked to teach World Regional Geography for the Spring 2014 semester. They handed me a textbook and said, “Good luck.” As I drove back home I considered how I would teach this course and my mind recalled Jared Diamond and his Pulitzer Prize winning book. To make the story short, I built a course that used the textbook, Diamond’s book, and the National Geographic series based on the book. Obviously I take what Diamond said in Guns, Germs, and Steel seriously. I think Diamond did some outstanding work in doing three decades of research and then writing a book which to me is resonates with readers. For many years the idea that Western Civilization was superior to any other form has been the dominant world view. Diamond rejects that completely by saying Western Civilization had advantages that others did not have due to geography, or literally where it was. When you stop and think about it, why were the Europeans so superior to others for so long? Was it their race, their ideals, or what? Diamond said it was because of where they started that they developed into the world spanning civilization we know. What advantages did the Europeans have over others? They arrived with technology superior to all others, were better organized, and had the lethal gift of germs which in the Americas killed over half the population and was the biggest reason as to why the Europeans took those lands over. When Diamond explored the germ theory he realized that these germs came from contact with domesticated mammals such as horses, cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, and goats. These same mammals were what enabled Europeans to transport materials as well as have a convenient food supply and a power source such as horses pulling plows. This idea works when you look at the Americas and Australia, but not when you look at Africa and Asia. The lethality of germs did not affect the people in those regions like it did the Americas. In fact, some of the diseases in Africa killed the Europeans and prevented them for exploiting Sub-Saharan Africa for centuries. Some of these germs are now known to have come from Asia as well along with domestic animals that came from there. Many of the larger mammals Europe had were also found in Asia. In fact, some of the technology such as gunpowder came from Asia as well. Diamond acknowledged this in his book and sought to explain why Europe was able to expand while Asia did not. This is something I really stress in my class and it is something which the book and National Geographic series does not explore as deeply as it should. Diamond saw a decision made in the 15th century by a Chinese emperor as being the decisive event that altered human history. At that point China was the leading power in the world. It had a great navy, the largest country, gunpowder, advanced technology and far more people thanks to its agricultural practices than any other nation at that time. The decision by emperors in China’s Ming dynasty led to China losing its technological advantage over Europe although no one had any idea that this was happening. These decisions or orders are called Haijin. Diamond did not explore this in any depth other than to point to it and say that China’s inward looking policies which had existed for centuries were the result of its location, its geography. Its singular form of government used Haijin to build up its power at the expense of expanding China’s culture and boundaries. There is a lot here to work with, but Diamond seems to casually bring it up in the book’s epilogue. Instead he focuses heavily on the Americas where his theory of environmental determinism is the strongest. I think he gets the theory right, but in the case of Asia he needed to go deeper. Since Diamond is an ornithologist by education, and his world journey’s focused on New Guinea, I think his point of view was heavily influenced through his contact with hunter-gatherers. His theory is at its weakest in Asia and specifically China. That again reflects his preference for focusing on one type of people versus another. This does not mean his theory is wrong. It just needs expansion and I do not think Diamond will be doing that any time soon. His recent works have dealt with different ideas. Even with this glaring problem, I think this book is outstanding. It does answer the question of why Western Civilization dominated the world for the most part. For my geography class it is a wonderful tool. I focus heavily on how man domesticated two grains from the Middle East, wheat and barley, and built Western Civilization upon them. Coupled with the domestication of large mammals, the forerunners of Western Civilization spread through Europe. Geography played a huge role in why it went west and why there are so many differences between East and West on a cultural level. It also explains why there are such huge differences between North Africa and the lands to the south of the Sahara. The role of geography in shaping mankind is without a doubt the single underlying reason as to why history occurred like it did. This is really hard for students to understand because they seem to have been taught a much different concept prior to taking a geography course. Only by explaining the human-environment interaction do students begin to realize that geography caused man to make decisions which would reverberate for millennia. The people of the Middle East followed the Tigris and Euphrates rivers northwest into Anatolia and out of the desert. Man’s movement west, north, and south with the crops and animals of the Middle East were shaped by geographical barriers. Diamond points out how man overcame these barriers over time. The civilization that was able to do so developed greater technologies than others. He points to both European and Chinese naval developments in this regard. China’s need to continue to build its naval forces was negligible due to a lack of naval enemies while in Europe those enemies were often themselves as nations competed for resources and trade. Since China controlled all of its trade which was mostly internal or land based, its need for a navy was reduced. Europe surged ahead while China languished. In my classes I point to the barriers as we explore the world’s regions. I show how these barriers played such big roles. We play a board game by Avalon Hill that helps to illustrate this as well. Diamond’s book plays a big role in my class and so do his theories. I find it really helps students take the principles and ideas from the first part of the class and begin to apply them to the world regions we study. They are able to make the mental leap to the realization that the people of the world are different for many reasons, the foremost being the place in which they live more than anything else. It helps them to break down and discard the erroneous belief which many of them have regarding their place in the world. Using Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel I am able to use Transformative Learning Theory to overcome the disorientating dilemma they find themselves in at the beginning of class. I could build a new class out of Diamond’s book that encompasses geography, history, and sociology if my school would let me. In fact, I could build two classes out of it. One would focus on why Western Civilization developed like it did and expanded to the Americas while the second one would focus on the development of Eastern Civilization and its failure to expand beyond Asia itself. While courses exist that dive into those ideas, they are built around history more than anything else. Few instructors use environmental determinism in explaining how early mankind developed in the places it did. The ultimate objectives of these courses would be why they developed like they did, not just their history. Diamond has written several other books such as Collapse, The Third Chimpanzee, and The World Until Yesterday. He is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been awarded all kinds of prizes and awards for his research and work in multiple fields. I find it interesting that he began to study environmental history in his fifties which led to this book and many others. This to me is proof that you are not bound by formal rules regarding your education, but rather by using your interests coupled with the research capabilities your education has provided you new careers beckon. This book is a testament to following one’s interests and using one’s intellect. I highly recommend it to all readers. It is one of my favorite books and I have read through it multiple times.

⭐Guns, Germs, and Steel is a history and prehistory of the human species. It purports to explain why Europeans and their descendants in other parts of the world came to dominate the rest of the human species after 1500, rather than other humans originating elsewhere in the world.The author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond, tells us that prior to 1500, or at least 1492, an extraterrestrial explorer and observer would not have expected the European ascendancy. The Ottoman Empire threatened Western Europe. Western Europe had barely escaped conquest by the Mongols in the thirteenth century. China had just launched a sea voyage that had reached the western shore of Africa, and was experimenting with technologies that may have begun the industrial revolution four centuries before it began in England. Four centuries previous to 1500, the Arab world out shined Western Europe, which was mired in the European Dark Ages.Diamond mentions the emergence of modern humans in Africa about 100,000 years ago, and their displacement of Neanderthals in Europe about 35,000 years ago. Nevertheless, his main interest is with the last 13,000 years. Prior to that time humans everywhere in the world were nomadic hunters and gatherers.Agriculture began independently in various parts of the world. It began first and most successfully in the Fertile Crescent. The Fertile Crescent includes what is now Israel, and parts of Jordan, Lebanon, eastern Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Agriculture began there because the area contained the largest number of plants that were edible and could be domesticated, and the largest number of animals that could be domesticated and used for food or transport.A mammal cannot be domesticated unless that mammal in the wild recognizes some kind of status hierarchy. Animals that are used to submitting to animals of their species could learn to submit to humans. This is why wild sheep in the Fertile Crescent were domesticated, and why sheep in North America could not be. It is why horses and donkeys could be domesticated, and why Zebras could not be.The development of agriculture was gradual. As Paleolithic hunters in the Fertile Crescent followed herds of wild sheep and goats they would harvest wild wheat and barley. Eventually they learned that if they saved some of the wild wheat and barley that they harvested and planted it, when they returned to the area a year later there would be more wheat and barley to harvest. Eventually they learned that by protecting the sheep and goats from other predators there would be more sheep and goats for them to eat. From these insights and practices farming and herding developed.Finally nascent agriculturalists learned that by encouraging reproduction among the most useful of the plants and animals they kept they could make those plants and animals even more useful.However, the transition from hunting and gathering to planting and herding was more necessary than enjoyable. Forensic evidence indicates that with farming came lower adult heights, shorter lives, and more diseases. People did not adopt farming because they could but because they had to. Wild animals and plants could not feed growing populations. Once agriculture began populations grew even more. A square mile can usually provide over a hundred times as many calories through planting and herding than by hunting and gathering.Greater population density led to larger tribes which could conquer and displace Paleolithic tribes. Paleolithic peoples had to adopt the ways of their Neolithic neighbors, or they would be annihilated by them. Some learned. Others died.As agriculture became more productive it could support a group of people who did not need to spend their time producing food. Hierarchies developed along with divisions of labor.With the construction of temples for their gods, and palaces for their leaders civilization began. It is no accident that the first civilization was that of the Sumerians, who lived in part of the Fertile Crescent. Soon later the Egyptian civilization was formed by Neolithic peoples who had migrated to the Nile Delta from the Fertile Crescent.The use of copper developed, followed by the use of bronze. The use of bronze resulted from an arms race. Weapons made from bronze could penetrate armor made of copper. Weapons made from copper could not penetrate armor made of bronze. Systems of writing were invented.About three thousand years ago the Hittites, who lived in what is now Turkey, initiated the use of iron. Iron has the same advantage over bronze that bronze has over copper.Once plants were domesticated into crops they could spread to the east and west easier than to the north and south. This is because to the east and west they would find similar growing seasons and climates.This was a problem that affected the American Indians far more than the inhabitants of Europe and Asia. The domestication of corn began in what is now South America about five thousand years ago. As the use of corn moved north it had to be bred to grow in colder climates with shorter growing seasons. It only reached the Great Lakes region about one thousand years ago.Another disadvantage the Indians had in their competition with the Europeans is that their ancestors had hunted to extinction native species of horses and camels. These were not available to be used militarily against European cavalries.Also, serious diseases like small pox and measles originated with domesticated animals in Eurasia. Eventually people living in Eurasia developed partial resistances to these diseases. Thirty percent of whites who were infected with small pox died. Ninety percent of Indians died.Because Eurasia was home to more peoples and civilizations, animals and plants that were domesticated in one area spread to other areas. Inventions made in one area spread to other areas. The Europeans learned the use of copper and bronze from Egypt, the use of iron and steel from the Hittites, the alphabet from the Phoenicians, who in turn probably learned it from an Egyptian scribe. They learned the use of gun powder, the compass, and paper form the Chinese. They learned of how gun powder could be used militarily from the Ottomans.By contrast, when the Europeans arrived to the Americas the Aztecs and Incas did not even know the other civilization existed. The Aztecs had invented the wheel, but had little use for it because they had no pack animals. The Incas had domesticated the llamas as a pack animal, but they had no wheels for wagons the Llamas could have pulled. The Aztecs had a system of writing and mathematics. The Incas had neither. The Incas were beginning to experiment with bronze. The Aztecs could only use copper.An advantage Europe had over China was that Europe was divided into various kingdoms that were independent of each other, but which could learn from each other. If one European country refused to adopt a technical advance its rivals would adopt it, forcing the laggards to catch up.By contrast China was unified and ruled by an authoritarian government. Toward the end of the fifteenth century a Chinese emperor decreed that there would be no more overseas exploration. Similar decisions stopped or impeded other advances. The Chinese had recently liberated themselves from the Mongol conquest. The Chinese became xenophobic. They decided that they were the “Middle Kingdom” surrounded by barbarians who had nothing useful to teach them.While this was happening in China the Italian Renaissance was beginning in Europe.Guns, Germs, and Steel is a fascinating book which I found difficult to put down.Unfortunately, for reasons that are due to ideology rather than evidence, Diamond maintains that the races are comparable in average intelligence. He even claims, “in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners.”Diamond refuses to acknowledge that farming and civilization exert different evolutionary pressures than hunting and gathering. Paleolithic hunters only need to plan for the next hunt. Farmers need to plan for the next planting season, and for the next harvest. What Paleolithic hunters do not eat rots. Farmers need to defer gratification. No matter how hungry they get they cannot eat the grain they need to plant next spring. They cannot butcher all of their farm animals.With the development of civilization there are even more evolutionary advantages to being of above average intelligence. Men with the intelligence to become merchants, government officials, scribes, and so on have usually become prosperous. Therefore they had more children who survived and reproduced.With Paleolithic and even Neolithic societies the best warriors have more than one wife, and more sons who inherit their violent aptitudes and inclination. With civilization, criminal justice systems remove men who are unusually physically aggressive from the gene pool.One can learn much from reading Guns, Germs, and Steel. To learn how agriculture and civilization effected human evolution and gave the Europeans an advantage Diamond does not acknowledge I recommend The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending,http://www.amazon.com/The-000-Year-Explosion-Civilization/dp/0465020429and A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, by Nicholas Wade.http://www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/dp/1594204462

⭐How this book managed to pass me by for the last 20 years is beyond me, but it did, and I was much the poorer for it! I suspect it was down to the somewhat misleading subtitle, Its not a short history of the world, it is instead an attempt to explain why some parts of the world developed much quicker than others, and how we have reached the relative balance of civilization(s) that we have today. The core of the argument is in the title, but its much more complex than that, and the author does an excellent job in laying out his arguments and providing the underpinning evidence for them.Others reviewers have said its a dry read. Believe me, its not! I have read scientific journals much drier than this! Inevitably some of the topics, such how some plants and animals have been domesticated can be a dry topic, but the author does a really good job in making the explanations easier to follow.The astonishing thing about this book is that it has pulled evidence from a wide variety of sources to build up such a coherent and plausible picture. The author is a genuine polymath and his masterly analysis of topics from such a wide variety of scientific and historical fields is breathtaking. It was fully deserving of its Pulitzer prize.Its easy to see why this book is unpopular with some sections of society, it undermines the basis of many other theories about racial, cultural and religeous supremacy. I am convinced however, that this will be seen as one of a select few landmark books that shape the way we perceive our origins in the years to come.The Kindle version is good conversion of the original book. The diagrams can be effectively magnified to fill the page, the tables do not loose format and there are hyperlinks to the tables and diagrams included within the text where necessary. Unfortunately the plate illustrations have not been included, probably to reduce the overall file size; however, I did not find this to be a problem in following the arguments within the text.

⭐I have only read the introduction and the first chapter, but already given up.The book seems to be premised around the notion of the Great Leap Forward. However three recent discoveries would seem to seriously call into question this notion; Pre-Clovis occupation 14,550 years ago at the Page-Ladson site, Florida; U-Th dating of carbonate crusts has revealed Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art; a bone fragment from Denisova Cave (Russia) shows that it came from an individual who had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.I will happily read the rest of the book, when the author reviews his theories in the light of these recent developments.

⭐Having read Sapiens with its great anthropological history of man I wanted more of the same. I got this based on other reviews and am disappointed. It starts with a man who has obviously been to New Guinea and felt a connection with the people there. This connection continues throughout what is an impenetrable book. The tiny writing and boring recounting of human history from A to J then back to D is like a Tarantino film. I couldn’t tell you if it ties together or not in the end as I kept skipping forward to the next chapter. Don’t believe the hype.

⭐In some ways I want to give this book more than 3 stars but in others I want to give less, so 3 feels like a fair compromiseOn the positive side the book introduced me to ideas I hadn’t considered before and has encouraged a desire to find out more how humans developed from primitive hunter gathers to what we are now. In particular, it has a way of looking at human development in a very non-linear way, casts aside a lot of ‘western’ prejudice and opens up better ways of approaching the ideas. The concept of the book is good, it asks the question why does Eurasian (especially European) culture dominate the world? It is not satisfied with the obvious answer because it was in Europe that technology and culture developed to the highest level and empowered the Europeans to send well armed invaders around the world. Nor is it satisfied with citing the Europeans of having this advantage due to its access to agriculture, literature, iron melting etc. It goes deeper and asks why did those things come to be developed to substantially higher levels in Europe and Asia than in Africa, America or Australia. The book puts forward many credible ideas of how this came about. No spoilers you can read them for yourself.However, there are 3 fundamental flaws in book, the first two are common gripes typical of ‘pop’ science.Firstly, there is way too much certainty here, despite his early explanation of uncertainty of radio carbon dating he nevertheless goes on to make some very bold claims on very patchy evidence. This is most startling on his theories of how existing on a land mass with big East-West axis is a driver for development. His thesis is highly plausible but hard evidence is distinctly lacking. There is a very small sample set of just 5 substantial landmasses (Eurasia, Africa, Australian North and South America) on Earth each with many other startling geographical differences which all impacted on human development to greater or less degrees. Separating out this one feature as a determinate force, even with a plausible rationale, is fair enough as long as it is presented with suitable scientific doubt – I found that essential ingredient of sound scientific reasoning absent throughout the text. His science is very imprecise, that isn’t a fault with the science you can only work with the evidence you have but good science must above all else be honest and contain explicit and proportionate doubt.Secondly the chapter on evolution is almost comical. Evolution is described in anthropomorphical terms as if it moves with a consciousness and to pre conceived plan. I doubt this is intentional but is worryingly common in popular writing – it absolutely not how evolution works. Writing about it in such terms I suspect is a sub conscious concession to those that want god to have a role in biology – it’s certainly bad science.These two points are probably more relevant today than 20 years ago, the importance of having a scientifically literate population is utterly exposed with the rise of popularism and the world in the grip of a pandemic. Scientists must write books for popular consumption but when doing so must maintain proper scientific methodology, this is far more important than the subject of the book, a general scientific literacy in the world’s population is not a luxury it is becoming a necessity for our continued survival.But the big downer for me was the endless repetition. There were plenty of good ideas scattered in the book, but each time he mentioned (for example) germs imported by invaders wiping out local populations while the local populations were not able to pass on their germs to the invaders there is a repeat of basic idea why the germs only work one way. I only need to be told once, maybe twice at most, not tens of times. The text is littered with repeated set piece speeches about the East-West axis, germs, literature, animal and plant domestication, irrigation, sedentary living etc. After the first quarter of the book I was able to detect a repeat rant on the first line and skim the next few pages. Generally I was little wiser by the end of the book than I was after the introduction, there are little gems buried in the latter text but it takes a lot wading through stuff I have already been told to get to. This is a shame by the end of the book I was utterly tired of it despite the fact I felt enlightened by its beginning, I wish I’d lost it after I read the introduction.

⭐With apologies to the author, whose book I really want to read. It just isn’t possible to open this (B-format) edition without the knowledge that you’ll have a migraine after 5 pages. The publisher has clearly taken a cost-saving decision to shrink the pages from the hardback rather than reflow the text. Very disappointed.

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