A book that describes human history from the late Pleistocene to modern times (especially from 12,000 years ago to modern times) mainly from a geography/environment/ecology perspective. The period mainly covered in Paleoanthropology or Evolutionary psychology generally ends around 100,000 years ago, and in most history books, it starts around 7th century BCE-10th century BCE (Classical or Archaic Greece) or 40th century BCE, so there is a bit of a gap in between, but it was good that this book played a role in narrowing the gap a little. (Read and organized around 2013-03)

What this book seeks to answer

This book answers the following questions:

What is the cause of the existing power imbalance between countries and regions? For example, why is America better off than New Guinea? For example, why do New Guineans live worse than Americans?

The author’s short answer to this is as follows:

Long-term differences between continents are primarily due to differences in environment rather than inherent differences in the people living on each continent.

To elaborate, it is like this.

According to the author, the most important causes of the development of civilization were the increase in food production due to farming about 12,000 years ago, the increase in population and population density due to the increase in production, and the resulting specialization, technological development, and political system. Civilization was able to start earlier in places with favorable environmental conditions for agriculture, and this difference is the fundamental cause of inequality in modern society.

In the end, then, the most important thing is to examine the environmental conditions that allowed agriculture to begin and spread.

Environmental differences

Meanwhile, when referring to “environmental differences” here, the four differences that the author most emphasizes are as follows:

Differences in the types of wild animals and plants that can be domesticated/cultivated
Factors influencing intracontinental spread and migration
Factors influencing intercontinental spread
Differences in continental size or total population

Let’s look at each in a little more detail.

Differences in the types of wild animals and plants that can be domesticated/cultivated

12,000 years ago, most wild species were unsuitable for domestication/cultivation, and even then, by Late Pleistocene (about 120,000 to 12,000 years ago), many wild species in Australia and the Americas had become extinct, making domestication and farming difficult in these areas. On the other hand, Eurasia region, including Fertile Crescent, was rich in plants and animals suitable for domestication and farming, so civilization was able to develop first in this area.

Factors influencing intracontinental spread and migration

Meanwhile, the land of Eurasian continent is long connected along the east-west axis, making it easy for the spread and migration of human civilization, including plants and animals. This is because the east-west axis has a relatively more uniform ecological environment than the north-south axis.

On the other hand, the African continent has a long land along the north-south axis, and New Guinea had problems such as geographical isolation due to the severe difference in altitude.

Factors influencing intercontinental spread

Additionally, because some continents are more isolated from others, there are differences in the ease with which civilization can spread between continents. Looking at the past 6,000 years, the spread from Eurasia to sub-Saharan Africa was easier than in other regions (for example, Australia is an island separated from other continents).

Differences in continental size or total population

Larger continents or higher populations mean more potential inventors, more competitive societies, more innovations to adopt, and greater pressure to adopt and sustain innovations.

On the other hand, in the case of the American continent, the land itself was large, but due to geographical and ecological isolation, it resembled small continents that were not well connected to each other.

Criticism of geographical determinism

It seems that existing historians and anthropologists are criticizing the book’s claims as geographical determinism, but there seems to be no problem as long as the claim to “influence” is not misinterpreted as a claim to “determine” (“Only geographical requirements are important”) or the explanation is misread as justification (“This is why Europe must live well”).

Despite the fact that the author warns against the conceit of Europeans several times in the book, misreadings seem to occur often.

Rather, the following prejudice contained in On the origin of species (the claim that the reason there are no plants worth cultivating in Australia or the Cape of Good Hope is because the people living in these areas were uncivilized and had not sufficiently improved the varieties through breeding) can be refuted from the perspective of “guns, germs, and steel”:

It is not that these counties, so rich in species, do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants; but that the native plants have not been improved by continued selection up to a standard of perfection comparable with that acquired by the plants in countries anciently civilized. —Chapter 1, On the origin of species

References

A critique of criticisms of Guns, Germs, and Steel