Guns, Germs, and Steel

Historian and anthropologist Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) is a multidisciplinary study that uses anthropological, biological, evolutionary, and socio-economic analysis to chart the fates of different peoples throughout human history. Subtitled first as A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, and later as The Fates of Human Societies, the book seeks to understand why some groups of people have prospered while others have failed to advance to the same extent. Diamond explains that history’s “haves” and “have nots” have arisen due to geography and ecological conditions—he aims to disprove ideological arguments that inequality is biologically determined.

Guns, Germs, and Steel won the Pulitzer Prize, among numerous other honors, and was adapted into a documentary by the National Geographic Society.

Summary

Diamond covers a vast time period and geographical terrain throughout this book, starting with the beginning of humanity and covering human development and expansion into the earth’s five habitable continents: Africa, Europe, Eurasia, and North and South America. However, rather than dwelling on the earliest stages of humanity, Diamond’s focus is on what happened when human beings evolved to the level of modern humans and showed evidence of more advanced thought processing and skills (as indicated by the artifacts they left behind).

Above all, Diamond is concerned with the move from hunting and gathering to food production: a move that occurred more rapidly in some settings than others, or failed to occur at all. This is not just a dietary matter, as food production was the key to other developments such as more sophisticated technology, as well as writing, religion, as well as “guns, germs, and steel.”

Germs, which originated from the livestock, might not seem like a positive development, especially where they caused epidemics that swept through food producing communities. However, epidemics allowed survivors to develop resistance. This had two benefits: if another group of people attempted to displace or conquer a community, diseases to which the invaders had not developed resistance could thwart such attempts. Also, those who had developed resistance could transport diseases abroad for use as weapons during wars of conquest.

Wars of conquest constitute a major theme throughout this book, although, in some cases, these were not so much wars as instances of a single food producing community vanquishing a group of hunter-gatherers. Still, Diamond draws attention to major historical episodes involving conquest and colonization, with one well-known example being the European conquest of the Americas in 1492. Diamond details such events across the five continents, endeavoring to find out why some peoples triumphed over others.

The overriding argument is twofold: Food production was a vital first step on the road to establishing more advanced societies that benefited from “guns, germs, and steel.” However, not everyone was in an equally favorable position when it came to adopting food production, as various geographical and ecological setbacks limited the crops and livestock available in some regions. These setbacks could affect local resources and the import of resources from other areas. Hostile climate conditions and terrain, for example, could hinder the diffusion of food production to peoples who might have been able to reap its benefits.

Ultimately, the failure to adopt food production is not a sign of inferiority or ineptitude. People made the best out of what was available to them, and, in some cases, hunting-gathering remained the most viable—or only viable—option. Communities that have succeeded in food production and developed into more advanced societies are not composed of people who are more “advanced” or inherently superior. Often, they have simply been more fortunate in terms of their geographical position and surroundings.