Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

by Jared Diamond

Among those regions where food production did spring up independently, why did the times at which it appeared vary so greatly—for example, thousands of years earlier in eastern Asia than in the eastern United States and never in eastern Australia? Among those regions into which it was imported in the prehistoric era, why did the date of arrival also vary so greatly—for example, thousands of years earlier in southwestern Europe than in the southwestern United States? Again among those regions where it was imported, why in some areas (such as the southwestern United States) did local hunter-gatherers themselves adopt crops and livestock from neighbors and survive as farmers, while in other areas (such as Indonesia 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 its haves.