Kevin’s Reviews > Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies > Status Update

Ep: The Future of Human History as a Science;
Answering Yali - Four sets of factors explain why New Guineans did not advance as quickly as Eurasians.
1. Continental differences in domesticable plants/animals
2. Varying rates of diffusion across continents
3. Diffusion rates within continents
4. Area and population size

Despite unavailable experiments, anthropologists are providing evidence for these factors.

Ch19: How Africa Became Black;
By AD 1000, Africa was home to all major human groups (blacks, whites, African Pygmies, Khoisan, and Asians) except Aboriginal Australians and relatives. The north-south axis and ecology provided a barrier to idea diffusion, preventing Eurasians from colonizing the entire continent. The settling of Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was due to a geographic accident (domesticable plants)

Ch18: Hemisphere's Colliding;
The Old World (Eurasia) clashed with the New World (the Americas) resulting in conquest. The Americas were colonized by pre-Clovis settlers just 13000 years ago, so Europeans were far more advanced technologically and politically by the 15th century. Bands and tribes were easily conquered by force, while the Inca and Aztec empires were weakened by diseases prior to their downfall.

Ch17: Speedboat to Polynesia;
The pacific islands became largely influenced by Asians instead of European explorers because of indigenous germs preventing Europeans from colonizing in significant numbers. Food production spread throughout Polynesia and Micronesia from the north (China) rather than from the south (Australia). The indigenous New Guineans strangely resisted the influences of both.

Ch16: How China Became Chinese;
China has surprising little cultural diversity despite clear differences between northern and southern peoples. No significant geographical barriers divided the area so technology, language, and political structures were able to pervade the entire country very quickly at the start of human history. This allowed China to become an early center for plant and animal domestication.

Ch15: Yali's People;
New Guinea and Australia were populated by 40,000 BC. Yet, New Guineans remained non-literate hunter-gatherers up until a few hundred years ago due to the diversity of the land (food production was unnecessary) and isolation from other islands (who themselves were non-literate H-Gers). When colonists arrived in the late 18th century, they faced barriers that natives had dealt with for centuries.

Ch14: From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy;
Government/religion, germs, writing, and technology were the four main routes to complex societies. Bands and tribes were the smallest and simplest egalitarian societies while chiefdoms and states were the largest kleptocracies (centralized gov't in which leaders pilfered the people's resources). Societies tend to coalesce into the latter with reversions occurring often.

Ch13: Necessity's Mother;
Instead of innovation being born out of necessity, the opposite tends to be the case; needs become salient post-invention. Technologies diffused and evolved at different rates on different continents with Eurasia growing fastest. Eurasia faced fewer obstacles while the Americas and Africa had to overcome the unfriendly deserts and rain-forests that effectively separated the landmasses.

Ch12: Blueprints and Borrowed Letters;
Hunter-gatherer societies were unable to develop the effective writing systems of food-producing peoples. Early writing was used mostly for debt accounting, and by the societal elite to oppress the lower-class members of the group. Writing spread via 'Blueprint' (an existing system) and idea diffusion (the general concept of scribing). Alphabets spread necessarily by blueprint.

Ch11: Lethal Gift of Livestock;
Europeans didn't just bring superior weaponry, technology, and farming methods with them to the New World. They also brought diseases that native peoples had not yet been exposed to. As a result, most of the conquest of the Americas was not due to the swords of conquistadors, but by the rapid spread of epidemics. Domesticated social animals were great breeding grounds for pathogens.