Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (London: Vintage, 1998)^[note]

‘Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies’, authored by physiologist, ornithologist, anthropologist, evolutionary biologist, ecologist, bestselling popular science writer and all-round scientific polymath Jared Diamond, is an enormously ambitious work.

In it, Diamond seeks to answer what is perhaps both the greatest and the most controversial question in the entire field of human history – namely, why civilization, technological advancement and modernity emerged in the parts of the world that they did and not in other regions.

In doing so, he seeks to explain the rise of civilization, the conquest of continents and differential rates of development around the world throughout history right up to the present day – in short, more or less the entire course of human history and indeed much of prehistory as well.

Perhaps inevitably, Diamond fails in the hugely ambitious task he has set himself.

Yet, if Diamond ultimately fails in this project, nevertheless the intellectual journey upon which he takes his readers is a hugely enlightening and entertaining one, in which he introduces many novel ideas that are indeed surely a part of the answer to the historical question he has posed.

Moreover, it is a hugely thought-provoking book and perhaps its chief value is in having once again opened up to public discussion and scholarly debate this most important, yet also challenging and taboo, of historical questions.

Diamond’s Theory

In addition to being a hugely ambitious work, ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ is also a very long book.

This is perhaps inevitable given the scale of his ambition. After all, one is unlikely to be able to explain the rise of civilization throughout the entire world and the entirety of human history in just a few paragraphs.

However, despite its scale, ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ is still, in my view, an unnecessarily overlong book, and includes much repetition of material as well as the inclusion of much material that is tangential or, at best, peripheral to the book’s main theme and thesis.

Distilling its basic theory therefore easier said than done.

Neither is the book’s title of much help in this direction.

Guns, germs and steel are indeed a part of the story of how some groups came to expand and ultimately dominate the globe—but they are only a relatively late element this story, and certainly not the ultimate factors responsible.^[1]

Instead, they represent just some of the means by which certain populations came to conquer, colonize, and displace other populations, although other technologies also played a role.

However, to attribute the conquest of continents to technologies such as guns and steel only raises the further question as to why it was certain peoples inhabiting certain regions who first developed and made use of these technologies and not other peoples in other regions.

Likewise, to attribute the depopulation of Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals to the germs carried by European colonizers may indeed be true, but it only raises the question as to why it was, not only Europeans who invaded America and Australia, and not  Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals who invaded Europe, but also why it was Europeans who carried more virulent infectious diseases than did Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals, such that it was the latter who were decimated by European diseases, not the European settlers wiped out by indigenous germs.^[2]

In short, these are proximate causes that explain how Europeans came to conquer their colonies, but not the ultimate reason why they were able to do so

Yet the greater part of Diamond’s text is indeed devoted to answering this more fundamental question.

Diamond’s theory can be summarized thus:

The more advanced technological development of certain regions is traced ultimately to their domestication of plants and animals, or adoption of domestic species that were domesticated elsewhere.

Whether a population domesticated any plants or animals, or were able to adopt domestic species domesticated elsewhere, and how many such species they were able to domesticate or adopt, and how early, depended on three factors:

1. How many, if any, species were available that were suitable for domestication in the area they inhabited?
2. Whether they were in contact with other regions where species had been domesticated, or which had adopted domestic species that had been domesticated elsewhere?
3. Whether climatic factors permitted the adoption in their own locale of these domesticates?

The adoption of domestic plants permitted higher population densities, which increased both:

1. The potential for technological innovation, and
2. The number and virulence of infectious diseases with which a population was afflicted.

Technological innovation was greater in more densely populated regions simply because, the most people there are, the greater the chances that some of them may come up with useful technological innovations, while greater population density also facilitates the spread and diffusion of these technologies.

Meanwhile, infectious diseases came to be more virulent and deadly in more densely populated regions because they spread more easily, and can hence afford to evolve to become more deadly, in densely populated environments where people are in closer contact with one another, and with one another’s waste materials, enabling the pathogens to spread from one person to another more easily.

On the other hand, in less densely populated regions, infectious diseases pass between different people much less easily. Therefore, there is selection pressure against a pathogen evolving to become deadly to its host, or at least to kill its host too quickly, because, if the pathogen kills its host before it has managed to spread to any new hosts (as is more likely in sparsely populated regions), its genes usually perish along with the host.

In addition, Diamond argues, the domestication of animals itself also leads to more infectious diseases because, according to Diamond, many infectious diseases which afflict us today first spread to humans via contact with domestic animals.

However, if the rise of civilization, and conquest of continents, is indeed ultimately attributable to the availability of potentially domesticable species, and of already domesticated species from other regions that can be readily adopted in one’s own region, then this only raises several further questions, namely:  

1. Why some species are evidently domesticable and others apparently not?
2. Why domesticable species were present in some regions but not others? and
3. What factors prevented the transfer of these domesticates to some other regions?

Here, as we will see, Diamond provides compelling and quite persuasive theoretical reasons why there was:

1. A lack of domesticable plants in Africa; and
2. A lack of domesticable animals in the Americas and Australasia.

However, at the same time, he fails to adequately explain why there was, and indeed that there was (supposedly):

1. A lack of domesticable plants in America; and
2. A lack of domesticable animals in Africa.

Domesticated Plants in Eurasia vs Sub-Saharan Africa

Thus, with respect to the fact that tropical Africans domesticated few plants, Diamond explains that annual plants, namely those which complete their entire lifecycles within a single year, are ideal for exploitation and domestication by humans and many have come to represent important parts of our staple diets. This, Diamond explains, is because:

“Within their mere one year of life, annual plants inevitably remain small herbs. Many of them instead put their energy into producing big seeds, which remain dormant during the dry season and are then ready to sprout when the rains come. Annual plants therefore waste little energy on making inedible wood or fibrous stems, like the body of trees and bushes. But many of the big seeds… are edible by humans. They constitute 6 of the modern world’s 12 major crops” (p136).

However, in the Tropics, which includes most of sub–Saharan Africa, seasonal variation in climate is minimal, and temperatures hence relatively stable all year round.

Therefore, annual plants are rare in sub–Saharan Africa and other tropical regions, since an organism is unlikely to evolve to calibrate its lifecycle in accordance with predictable annual (i.e. seasonal) changes in climate if annual changes in climate are minimal.

Meanwhile, those parts of sub–Saharan Africa where the climate was suitable for the cultivation of these crops, and which today enjoy high farm yields, namely Southern Africa, much of which enjoys a subtropical climate similar to that prevailing in the areas of Eurasia where agriculture first developed, were nevertheless unable to adopt crops domesticated in these latter regions prior to modern times, simply because they were not in sufficient contact with the Middle Eastern and North African civilizations, being separated by the Sahara and the Tropics, to both of which environments annual plants domesticated in the Middle East and Mediterranean region are wholly unsuited and hence could never penetrate prior to modern times.

Plant Domestication in the Americas

Unfortunately, however, while this explanation – namely the relative lack of annual plants in the Tropics – works quite well to explain the relative lack of plants domesticated in sub-Saharan Africa, it works much less well in explaining the rise of civilization in the Americas.

Thus, much of North America enjoys a subtropical or temperate climate similar to that prevailing in those regions of Eurasia where agriculture first developed and subsequently flourished. In these regions, given the seasonal variation in climate, annual plants are presumably common.

Yet, in these parts of North America, few important crops seem to have been domesticated, and advanced civilization was largely, if not wholly, absent.

Instead, the greatest civilizations of pre-Columbian America were centred squarely in the Tropics.

Thus, of what are generally regarded as the three greatest pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas (and arguably the only pre-Columbian American cultures to qualify as true ‘civilizations’), the territories of two, namely the Mayan and Aztec, were entirely restricted to the Tropics, while the third, the Inca, though its vast empire expanded beyond Tropics, also had its origins, capital and heartland within this climatic zone.

Animal Domestication in Eurasia vs the Americas

What then of domesticated animals, the other factor emphasized by Diamond?

Whereas in respect of domesticated plants, Diamond has, as we have seen, an explanation that works well in explaining the relative absence of early agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa but rather fails to adequately explain the rise and spread (and the absence in some regions) of civilization in the Americas, with respect to domesticated animals, his explanation works rather better for the the Americas (and indeed for Australasia) than it does for Africa.

Thus, Diamond persuasively explains that the number of animals of the sort suitable for domestication was reduced in the Americas (and Australasia) by the sudden and late arrival of humans on this landmass.

Thus, whereas animal species of the Old World had long been subject to human predation, and hence evolved counter-adaptations, such as avoidance and fear of humans, animal species in the Americas, were entirely unprepared for the sudden influx of humans with their already developed and formidable hunting skills.

“Most big mammals of Africa and Eurasia survived into modern times, because they had coevolved with protohumans for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. They thereby enjoyed ample time to evolve a fear of humans, as our ancestors’ initially poor hunting skills slowly improved” (p43)

In contrast, on the sudden arrival of humans in the Americas and Australasia, the indigenous fauna were suddenly confronted with anatomically modern, and comparatively technologically advanced, human hunters, with their already formidable hunting skills honed over thousands of years of evolution, cultural and biological, in Africa and Eurasia.

As evidence, he cites the extinctions that also occurred on isolated islands that had formerly been uninhabited by humans upon the arrival of the first human colonists, such as that of the famous “dodo of Mauritius”:

“On every one of the well-studied oceanic islands colonized in the prehistoric era, human colonization led to an extinction spasm whose victims included the moas of New Zealand, the giant lemurs of Madagascar, and the big flightless geese of Hawaii” (p43).^[3]

Thus, he not unreasonably concludes, the same process of mass extinctions surely occurred, albeit on a much wider scale, among the indigenous fauna of the Americas and Australasia when humans first arrived en masse during prehistory.

This then explains the disappearance in America of so many large animals of the sort that might have been potentially domesticable at around the same time the first humans arrived there.^[4]

As a general rule, predation rarely leads to the complete extinction of a species, because, as the prey species decreases in number due to predation, predators either switch to an alternative source of food as a substitute for the prey that has become increasingly scarce, or themselves begin to decline in numbers due to declining numbers of prey on whom to feed, either of which allow the prey species to recover in numbers.

However, among humans, hunting is often motivated as much by status competition as by caloric needs (Hawkes 1991).

This results in particular prestige being associated with claiming the carcass of an especially rare prey.

This means that, even when a prey species is on the verge of extinction, and continuing to hunt this species makes no sense in terms of optimal foraging theory, humans may continue to hunt down the last surviving members of a species.

Thus, humans have the unique and dubious distinction of having driven many species to extinction through predation.

Animal Domestication in Sub-Saharan Africa

Yet, if this sudden and late influx of formidable human hunters explains the relative lack of domesticable animals in the Americas and Australia, this explanation certainly cannot apply to Africa, which, far from experiencing a late influx of humans, is the region where anatomically modern humans first evolved.

Therefore, indigenous prey species in Africa will have gradually evolved counteradaptations to human predation, not least fear and avoidance of humans, at the same time that humans ourselves were gradually evolving to become such formidable hunters.

This is in stark contrast to the situation, not only in Australasia or the Americas, as emphasized by Diamond, but also, as not mentioned by Diamond, even in Eurasia itself.

Thus, just as the indigenous fauna of Australasia and the Americas were wholly unprepared for the sudden influx of anatomically modern humans who quite suddenly arrived in their midst, so, in a much earlier period, the indigenous fauna of Eurasia were perhaps faced with much the same predicament, and mortal danger, being suddenly faced with the first anatomically modern humans to venture beyond the African continent, yet with their already formidable hunting skills honed over many years of evolution in Africa.^[5]

Indeed, the indigenous fauna of Eurasia may even have faced this mortal danger repeatedly, having been confronted with successive waves of hominid (Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis) that had successively migrated out of Africa, each of which were likely formidable hunters, and each successive wave perhaps more formidable than that which preceded it.

It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that Africa is famous for its exotic large wild animals, which is why it is a popular destination for safari expeditions.

Thus, according to Diamond’s own reckoning, Africa is today home to almost as many species of large terrestrial mammal as is Eurasia, with 51 such species being indigenous to Africa, as compared to 72 that are found in Eurasia (p162). This, of course, means that, relative to its much smaller overall land mass, Africa actually has a much greater concentration of different large terrestrial mammalian species than does Eurasia.^[6]

Why then were no indigenous species of animal, apart from Guinea fowl and donkeys, successfully domesticated in sub-Saharan Africa?

Diamond himself acknowledges the paradox, conceding:

“The lack of domestic mammals indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa is especially astonishing, since a main reason why tourists visit Africa today is to see its abundant and diverse wild animals” (p161).

Thus, he acknowledges:

“The percentage of [large terrestrial herbivorous or omnivorous mammals] actually domesticated [of those available in each region] is highest in Eurasia (18 percent) and is especially low in sub–Saharan Africa (no species domesticated out of 51 candidates!” (p163).^[7]

However, explains away this paradox by insisting that, although there were indeed a large number of superficially seemingly domesticable mammals in sub–Saharan Africa, it just so happens that, purely by chance, none of these species were in fact amenable to domestication.

Yet, rather than presenting any general systematic reason why so few African animals were domesticable, Diamond simply argues this was just bad luck. It just so happened that, purely by chance, and for various quite different reasons, no African animals were capable of being domesticated, but rather each were possessed of one or more traits that absolutely precluded their successful domestication.

Given the large number of terrestrial herbivores in Africa, this is unlikely purely on statistical grounds.

Yet Diamond proceeds on a purely ad hoc, piecemeal basis, discussing why several of the more obvious candidates were in fact unsuitable for domestication.

His arguments, moreover, are not always entirely persuasive.

Zebras

A case in point are zebras, a herbivorous odd-toed ungulate, indigenous to much of East and Southern Africa.

Zebras, Diamond concedes, seem superficially eminently suitable for domestication.

Thus, zebras feed on grasses that we cannot consume. This means they do not compete with humans for food, but rather convert a food we cannot consume (namely, grass) into foods we can (namely, zebra meat and milk).

Moreover, zebras are closely related to horses and donkeys, whose wild ancestors have, of course, been successfully domesticated by humans. They also resemble horses and donkeys both morphologically and behaviourally.^[8]

This suggests that, since donkeys and horses were, of course, successfully domesticated, surely zebras could have been domesticated in just the same way.

Indeed, with only a little imagination, one can easily envisage a domesticated zebra, not only being farmed for its milk and meat, but also being used as a draft and pack animal, and being ridden, both for transport and perhaps into battle.

However, despite superficial appearances, Diamond nevertheless insists that zebras are in fact wholly undomesticable, something he attributes primarily to what he terms their “nasty disposition” (p171-2).

Yet this argument strikes me as immediately suspect.

After all, African wild asses, the ancestors of domestic donkeys, are also known to be quite aggressive, at least with one another, while the wild ancestor of the domestic horse is now extinct, conveniently precluding a direct behavioural comparison.

Moreover, the fact that zebras, while never domesticated, have been successfully tamed, as Diamond himself acknowledges, seems to rule out Diamond’s claim that their “nasty disposition” alone prevents exploitation by humans.

Aurochs

Another comparison is even more devastating to Diamond’s argument, namely that of a wild animal that, unlike zebras, early humans did successfully domesticate, and whose wild ancestor is also extinct, but whose highly aggressive behavioural disposition can be readily inferred and whose physical formidability is surely not in doubt – namely the auroch, the wild ancestor of domestic cattle.

Domestic bulls remain a physically formidable and aggressive animal. This is among the reasons they are favoured in blood sports such as bull-baiting, bull riding and bullfighting.^[9]

Yet the wild ancestor of cattle, the auroch, was much larger and more formidable even than the domestic bull.

Moreover, it was surely also undoubtedly far more aggressive as well, since the reduction of aggression, so as to make animals more easily manageable by humans, is an early, universal and important consequence of domestication.

Indeed, the domestication of the formidable auroch perhaps even forces us to reconsider whether hippos and rhinos, the prospect for whose domestication Diamond, seemingly not unreasonably, dismisses in little more than a sentence, might also have been potentially domesticable.^[10]

Moreover, aurochs, and indeed modern cattle, also evince yet another trait that, at least according to Diamond, supposedly precludes a species’ domestication – namely, it is not advisable to keep multiple adult males in close proximity to one another in the same enclosure during the breeding season.

Thus, Diamond argues that “one of the main factors” that precluded the domestication of African antelope is the fact that:

“Males of those herds space themselves into territories and fight fiercely with each other when breeding” (p174).

But the same is also true of bulls. Thus, dairy farmers well know that it is not generally advised to keep more than one bull in a single enclosed field at any time, and, as with antelope, especially not during the breeding season.^[11]

Yet, if this is true of modern domestic bulls, then it was undoubtedly even more true of the first wild aurochs to be tamed, prior to their full domestication, since, as we have already seen, the reduction of aggression is among the principle aims, and effects, of the domestication process.

Yet according to Diamond, if males of a given species “disperse themselves into territories and fight fiercely with each other when breeding”, then this absolutely precludes any possibility of their successful domestication.

We are fortunate that our ancient Eurasian forebears, those who successfully domesticated the formidable wild auroch, never took the trouble to read Jared Diamond’s celebrated nonfiction bestseller, for, if they had, they would no doubt have abandoned the project as futile at the outset.

Modern Domestication

As the final definitive evidence that the failure of the indigenous peoples of Africa, Australasia and the Americas to domesticate indigenous fauna and flora did not betoken any deficiency on their own part as compared to Eurasians, but rather reflected the inherent unsuitability for domestication of the various species available, Diamond points to the inability of white colonists in Africa, America and Australasia, and even of modern scientists, to domesticate any of the indigenous species of Africa, Australasia and the Americas that natives had also failed to domesticate.

His argument seems to be that, if the white colonists in Africa also failed to domesticate zebras, then it cannot be racial factors that prevented indigenous black Africans from doing so; and, if even modern scientists, with all the modern technologies and scientific knowledge available to them, have proven unable to domesticate, say, zebras, then what hope did ancient Africans have. Clearly, zebras must simply be intrinsically undomesticable.

However, the problem with this argument is that the process of domestication is necessarily a gradual one, involving selective breeding over many generations. Therefore, even with the aid of modern scientific knowledge, by its very nature, it can occur only over many generations.^[12]

Yet most of sub–Saharan Africa was colonized by Europeans only from the late nineteenth century. Therefore, white western settlers arrived in Africa only a few generations ago, and in Australia and the Americas, only a few generations before that.^[13]

Moreover, in most of sub–Saharan Africa, they were few in number, and mostly left during the process of decolonization only a few generations later, or soon thereafter.

Therefore, they had little time in which to domesticate any indigenous fauna or flora.

Perhaps more importantly, they also often had little incentive.

After all, why begin the slow, difficult and uncertain process of domesticating indigenous fauna and flora when they already had their own domesticates, already domesticated in Eurasia, which they could often readily transplant to their new homes?

For example, wheat, rice and barley were all first domesticated in Eurasia, but, transplanted to the Americas, they are now among the most important staple crops of North America.^[14]

Shape, Axis and Orientation of Continents

What then are the factors that prevented ancient peoples from simply adopting the domesticates that had already been domesticated in other regions?

One important factor identified by Diamond is isolation. A people isolated from other civilizations or peoples by geographic barrers obviously cannot adopt the domesticates of the latter, and nor can they copy, reverse engineer and adopt their technologies, for the simple reason that they never come into contact with these technologies.

Thus, of all the world’s continents, Australia was undoubtedly the most isolated, being separated from Eurasia and the Americas by vast oceans.^[15]

Yet, besides oceans, deserts, tundra and mountains, another less obvious factor identified by Diamond as precluding the successful transfer of domesticates in ancient times is the shape, axis and orientation of the various continents.

Thus, Eurasia, which Diamond identifies as a single cultural zone, and which, for his purposes, includes North Africa (p161), is, he observes, orientated primarily on an east-west axis, from Japan and Korea in the Far East, to Western Europe and the Maghreb thousands of miles away in the west.

Since climate varies primarily with latitude (i.e. distance from the equator, and from the North and South Poles), and not with longitude, this means that, despite its vast size, many distant regions of Eurasia nevertheless enjoy very similar climates, making the transfer of domesticates adapted to these climates between these different regions quite feasible.

Thus, many domesticates that were first domesticated in one part of the vast Eurasian landmass nevertheless came to be adopted in many other parts of Eurasia far from region of initial domestication even in ancient times.

For example, barley, first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, nevertheless came to be adopted as far away as Europe and East Asia in prehistoric times.

In contrast, Diamond argues that both Africa and the Americas are oriented primarily on a north-south axis.

Thus, North and South America, considered as a single continent, is a tall, thin landmass, being very narrow in places, especially at the Isthmus of Panama, which, at its narrowest point, is less than fifty miles across, but, on a north-south axis, stretches from the Arctic tundra of Northern Canada to Cape Horn in Chile at its southern tip several thousands of miles away.

These different regions obviously enjoy very different climates, making the transfer of domesticates across the continent in a northern and southerly direction very difficult for plants and animals adapted to a specific climate.

The Axis and Orientation of Africa

Again, however, this explanation does not work quite as well for Africa as it does for the Americas.

Thus, once we exclude North Africa, which, as we have seen, Diamond classifies as a part of the Eurasian cultural zone, being culturally, biologically, racially and climatically continuous with the Middle East and Mediterranean region (p161), sub–Saharan Africa is not an especially tall, narrow continent. On the contrary, it is, at its maximum extent, as wide as it is tall.

Thus, the total distance from the Somalian coast in East Africa to the Senegalese coast in West Africa, the widest expanse of the continent, is about 4,500 miles, which is very similar to the distance from the southern edge of the Sahara Desert to the most southerly tip of South Africa.

This is also much wider than the greatest east-west expanse of either North or South America.

Thus, astrophysicist-turned-historian Michael Hart, assessing Diamond’s theory, observes:

“Sub–Saharan Africa, where a vast stretch of savannah (the Sudan, situated between the Sahara and the tropical rainforest) stretches 3500 miles in an east-west direction, from the highlands of Ethiopia to Senegal… [T]ransmission of technology and domesticates could — and repeatedly did — take place along the Sudan, and also across Ethiopia” (Understanding Human History: p176).

In short, Africa obviously does not enjoy the same vast East-West expanse as Eurasia, but, by the same token, it benefits from a vastly greater east-west expanse than does either North or South America.

Yet, in most respects, the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas seem to have been much more advanced than any indigenous sub-Saharan African culture.

The Axis and Orientation of the Americas

Indeed, if this explanation doesn’t work well for Africa, on closer inspection, it doesn’t work that well for America either.

While America is indeed a tall thin landmass, two of the three greatest pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas, namely the Aztec and Mayan, were both concentrated in central America, where the continent is at its narrowest.

Being located in this part of the Americas, they were therefore especially disadvantaged according to Diamond’s theory, as they were therefore likely unable to adopt any domesticates domesticated anywhere else in the American landmass for climatic reasons.

However, despite this disadvantage, they nevertheless built the most impressive civilizations of the pre-Columbian Americas.

Conversely, the Americas are at their widest in North America, much of which also enjoys a temperate and subtropical climate ideal for agriculture and where advanced agriculture today thrives. Yet it was precisely in these regions that advanced civilization was largely if not entirely absent prior to the arrival of Europeans.

Relative Degrees of Cultural Isolation

Indeed, the achievements of the Mesoamerican civilizations, especially the Maya, were not only far more impressive than what was achieved in elsewhere in the Americas, but also much more impressive than anything achieved in sub–Saharan Africa.

However, the civilizations of the Americas were also disadvantaged as compared to those of sub–Saharan Africa in yet another respect – namely whereas the civilizations of Mesoamerica were entirely cut off from cultural exchange with the civilizations of Eurasia for thousands of years, this was never true to anything like the same degree in sub-Saharan Africa.

On the contrary, trade and cultural exchange between sub–Saharan Africa and the peoples and civilizations of North Africa and the Middle East was extensive and longstanding, especially across down the Nile Valley and across the Red Sea into the Horn of Africa, down the Swahili coast in coastal East Africa, and thence indirectly into the remainder of sub–Saharan Africa.^[16]

In contrast, contact, let alone cultural diffusion, between Eurasian civilization and the emerging civilizations of meso-America can be ruled out almost entirely.

The great civilizations of meso-America emerged entirely independently of those in Eurasia.

Astrophysicist-turned-historian Michael Hart reports:

“[S]ub–Saharan Africa was not completely cut off from Eurasia, and some important aspects of Eurasian technology and culture did reach [sub–Saharan Africa]. Techniques of pottery-making, bronze working, and ironworking reached [sub–Saharan Africa] from the Middle East, as did the use of domesticated camels [whereas] domestic sheep and goats were introduced into [sub–Saharan Africa] from the Middle East by 4 kya. In contrast, prior to 1492, no Neolithic flora, fauna, or technology ever spread from the Old World to the Western Hemisphere” (Understanding Human History: p176).

Thus, anthropologist and physiologist John R Baker, who, in his magnus opus Race (reviewed here), even credits the remarkable Mayan civilization, alongside other impressive achievements (e.g. in astronomy), with being the first people to have  independently ‘invented the concept of zero’, laments increulously:

“How, on the environmental hypothesis, can one explain the fact that the Negrids inhabiting the tropical rain-forest of central Africa made not even a start in mathematics, while the Maya of the Guatemalan tropical rain-forest, equally cut off from all contacts with civilized people, made astounding progress in this subject, and at one time were actually ahead of the whole of the rest of the world in one important branch of it?” (Race: p527-8)^[17]

Similarly, Hart, assessing Diamond’s theory incredulously, concludes:

“By 1000 AD, Mesoamerica was far more advanced than [sub–Saharan Africa] was, or ever had been. For example, Mesoamericans had originated writing on their own, had constructed many large stone structures, and had built large cities (rivaling any existing in Europe, and far larger than any in [sub–Saharan Africa). Furthermore, the Mayan achievements in mathematics and astronomy dwarf any intellectual achievements in [sub–Saharan Africa]” (Understanding Human History: p177).

Elephants in the Room?

Why then does Diamond fail in his endeavour?

Partly this reflects the scale of the task he has set himself. As discussed above, Diamond aspires to do nothing less than to explain the rise and spread of human civilizations across the entirety of the globe throughout the entirety of human history and much of prehistory. It is therefore hardly a surprise that he ultimately fails in the gargantuan task that he has set himself

Yet it hardly helps that Diamond restricts the range of factors that he is willing to consider.

Thus, he dismisses outright the idea that innate racial differences might play a role in explaining the different rates of technological and societal development among different races (see Understanding Human History and IQ And Global Inequality).

Admittedly, he does briefly alludes to this possibility in his Prologue, but only so as to dismiss it summarily:

“Sound evidence for the existence of human differences in intelligence that parallel human differences in technology is lacking” (p19).

Yet, in his very next paragraph, he acknowledges the existence of an “enormous” literature in psychometrics, intelligence research and behaviour genetics that shows just that (p19).

However, he dismisses this literature, not only on scientific grounds, but also on moral grounds. Thus, he writes:

“The objection to such racist explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong” (p19)

Yet, in saying that his objection is “not just” that these sorts of explanations are “loathsome”, he implicitly concedes that the supposedly loathsomeness of such explanations is indeed part of his objection. In other words, Diamond has allowed his moral convictions to influence his scientific judgement, what Bernard Davies, in just this context, referred to as the ‘moralistic fallacy’.

Yet quite why such theories are supposedly so “loathsome” Diamond does not take the trouble to explain. He presumably takes it as given, or as self-evident, and assumes that his readership shares his moral revulsion, as most of them no doubt do.^[18]

Yet we would do well to remember that, if ideas are indeed loathsome, this has no bearing on whether they are also true.

For example, many Christians considered the heliocentric astronomical model introduced by Copernicus and Galileo similarly objectionable; many still consider the Darwin’s theory of natural selection objectionable. Yet this does not lead us to reject these theories.

The fact that many people die horrible painful deaths through no fault of their own may also be “loathsome”, but this does nothing to prevent it also being true.

Moreover, we must ask why anyone would consider theories of racial differences in intelligence so objectionable in the first.

After all, almost everyone accepts that different individuals differ in intelligence. Few of us have any difficulty accepting that, for example, Albert Einstein is probably more intelligent than we will ever be. Why are group differences any more difficult to accept?

Maturity is coming to accept that you cannot be the best at everything, and indeed are unlikely to be the very best at anything.

Indeed, most of us do indeed accept the existence of group differences in ability, certainly of sex differences, and indeed even of racial differences, in other spheres. For example, most white Americans, I suspect, have little difficulty accepting that blacks are, on average, better at basketball, Kenyans better at marathons, and Asians at math.

Accepting the existence of race differences in intelligence seems, in principle, little different.

Indeed, for most people, being intelligent isn’t all that important. Most men, I suspect, would rather be considered brave, strong and athletic than a ‘brainy nerd’, and most women, in my experience, would rather be considered pretty or beautiful than as what was once formerly derisively termed a ‘bluestocking’.

As to the other part of Diamond’s objection to race realist theories, namely, not that they are “loathsome”, but also that they are “wrong”, we might question whether someone who has such an oddly visceral emotional reaction to a scientific theory as to refer to it as “loathsome” is really the person best suited to accurately assess its objective merits.

Yet, although he acknowledges the existence of an “enormous” literature in psychometrics, intelligence research and behaviour genetics on the question of race differences in intelligence and their alleged societal correlates, Diamond does not engage with this literature at all, but rather curtly dismisses this entire body of research in just a single paragraph (p19).

Given Diamond’s own cursory dismissal of this research tradition, a review of Diamond’s book is therefore not the place to discuss this body of scientific research.

However, for those interested, I have previously discussed this body of research here, here, here, here and, in the most depth, here.

With respect to the possible consequences of these differences for different levels of development and technological progress in different parts of the world, I discuss this matter here, here and here.

Conclusion

In conclusion, with regard to the topic of differential rates of development in different parts of the globe both today and throughout history, we still await a full explanation. This is a vast and important topic upon which much research, discussion and debate is surely yet to be conducted.

But one thing is surely certain—any complete explanation, and completely convincing explanation, will surely have to consider, not only the geographic factors so monolithically focussed upon by Diamond, but also the full range of possible contributing factors, howsoever politically incorrect the latter might be.

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[Note] Readers may be interested that I am now cross-posting this and future posts at https://contemporaryheretic.substack.com for those who prefer that format. [NB: Not THEcontemporaryheretic.substack.com, which address was already taken by someone else.] This specific post is accessible at: https://contemporaryheretic.substack.com/p/aurochs-annuals-africa-and-the-americas

[1] A more obvious, and perhaps more accurate title, might have been ‘Yali’s Question’, a reference to the question, supposedly posed by a New Guinean native of Diamond’s acquaintance, as to why the newly arrived European colonizers had so much more ‘cargo’ (i.e. imported technologies and other useful manufactured products) than did the indigenous aboriginals, that he claims provoked him to investigate the ultimate causes of differential development in different regions of the globe and among different peoples.

[2] Whereas the diseases introduced by European colonizers brought death and destruction in their wake throughout the Americas, often travelling ahead of their original European hosts, and hence decimating indigenous populations long before Europeans even arrived in many parts of America, indigenous American diseases seem to have had much less of an impact on their European colonizers themselves. To my knowledge, the only major infectious disease thought to have been introduced into Europe from the Americas is syphilis, though even this is in doubt, as the origin of this once devastating disease is still much disputed.

[3] As for indigenous birds and mammals of the Galapagos Islands and Antarctic, which humans discovered and inhabited only in recent times, these species, Diamond reports, were saved from extinction only by “protective measures” imposed by early pioneering conservationists, and otherwise remain “incurably tame” (i.e. hopelessly unafraid of humans, and hence vulnerable to human predation) to this day (p43).

[4] Actually, although he makes very clear that this is the hypothesis that he favours, Diamond actually remains strictly agnostic regarding the causes of the mass extinctions that engulfed the Americas and Australasia around the time of the arrival of the first humans. Thus, he notes that an alternative theory is that “America’s big mammals instead became extinct because of climate changes at the end of the last Ice Age”, but comments sardonically:

“The Americas’ big animals had already survived the ends of 22 previous Ice Ages. Why did most of them pick the 23rd to expire in concert, in the presence of all those supposedly harmless humans? Why did they disappear in all habitats, not only in habitats that contracted but also in ones that greatly expanded at the end of the last Ice Age?” (p47).

Yet, despite this persuasive argument, Diamond nevertheless charitably concedes “the debate remains unresolved” (Ibid.).
Likewise, he reports, it has been argued that the indigenous fauna of Australia and New Guinea that died out around the time of the first arrival of humans in that continent may instead have “succumbed instead to a change in climate, such as a severe drought on the already chronically dry Australian continent” (p43).
Again, however, Diamond is skeptical, observing:

“I can’t fathom why Australia’s giants should have survived innumerable droughts in their tens of millions of years of Australian history, and then have chosen to drop dead almost simultaneously (at least on a time scale of millions of years) precisely and just coincidentally when the first humans arrived” (p43).

Those who doubt the human role in prehistoric mass extinctions typically attribute these theories to human arrogance and anthropocentrism. It is true, they observe, that humans today, with our advanced technologies (e.g. guns), are indeed formidable predators capable of wreaking unparalleled environmental damage. However, ancient hunter-gatherers were no doubt much less formidable.
This is indeed true. However, as compared, not to modern technologically advanced humans, but rather to other species of predator, our ancient ancestors may already have been formidable hunters, long before we evolved modern technologies such as guns.
Indeed, our greatest innovation was likely the capacity for cultural and technological innovation itself.
Thus, whereas other species must usually biologically evolve a new hunting technique, or superior weaponry (e.g. sharper teeth, longer claws), which takes many generations of gradual natural selection, humans are unique in our capacity to invent a new hunting method, or a new weapon (spear, bow and arrow). This new invention may be quite sudden, and can spread through an entire population in less than generation.
Prey species lack this same capacity for rapid innovation. They are therefore always playing catch-up. Therefore, in the ongoing evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, humans are at an enormous advantage as compared to any other species.
Even ancient man was therefore no doubt a formidable apex predator.

[5] An alternative possibility, which might explain why the indigenous fauna of Europe did not come to be hunted to extinction on the first arrival of humans in the same way as did the indigenous fauna of Australasia and the Americas when humans later arrived in these regions, is that the first humans to venture out of Africa were perhaps not yet such formidable hunters. Thus, it is known that the diet of hunter-gatherer groups in tropical sub–Saharan Africa is dependent more on plant food than on meat, with the former providing most of the caloric requirements of the group. However, as one moves from the tropics into temperate climes, meat comes to provide an increasing proportion of the hunter-gatherer diets, because plant foods are less widely available, especially during the cold winter months, necessitating an increasingly reliance on carnivory, which reaches an extreme in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, where plant foods are almost entirely unavailable for most of the year, and foragers such as Eskimos ate a largely carnivorous diet.
Alternatively, perhaps Eurasian prey species were not so vulnerable to the sudden influx of formidable human hunters, because they had, unlike species in the Americas, previously been exposed to earlier waves of prehuman hominid who had spread out of Africa, but who were somewhat less formidable hunters, at least on first arrival, allowing the indigenous fauna to gradually develop counteradaptations to hominid predation as successive waves of hominids successively colonized the region.

[6] Of course, it is possible the relatively greater number of large terrestrial herbivores in Africa as compared to Europe is partly attributable to certain species in Europe being driven to extinction in historical times by human predation and habitat loss. For example, tarpans, the last surviving subspecies of wild horse, are thought to have gone extinct in the late-nineteenth century, while wolves (not, of course, a herbivore) were driven to extinction in the British Isles some time earlier. However, for the theoretical reasons discussed above (namely, Africa is where anatomically modern humans first evolved, such that prey species will have evolved counter adaptations to human predation as humans themselves gradually evolved to become formidable hunters), it is likely that Africa had a relatively large number of large terrestrial mammals, as compared to Europe and other continents, even in ancient times, namely the timescale of interest for the purposes of evaluating Diamond’s theory.

[7] Actually, the latest evidence, not available to Diamond at the time he authored his book, has modified this conclusion somewhat. Thus, whereas Diamond reports that not a single large terrestrial herbivorous or omnivorous mammal was domesticated out of the fifty or so available in sub-Saharan Africa, the latest genetic evidence suggests that African wild asses (i.e. donkeys) were first domesticated, not in North Africa as formerly thought, but rather in East Africa, albeit possibly the Horn of Africa, which is culturally and racially, closely linked to the Middle East. In addition, it ought to be noted that guineafowl were also first domesticated in sub-Saharan Africa, but, as a bird species, obviously do not qualify as a large terrestrial herbivorous or omnivorous mammal.

[8] Actually, as discussed in the previous endnote, though it was formerly thought that they had first been domesticated in North Africa, the latest DNA evidence suggests that donkeys themselves were first domesticated in East Africa. This would mean that, contrary to what Diamond claims, one large terrestrial herbivorous mammal was domesticated in sub-Saharan Africa, namely donkeys. Along with the guineafowl, this would mean that at least two species of animal were first domesticated in sub-Saharan Africa.

[9] Though today concern is, understandably, primarily focussed at the suffering experienced by the bull (understandably since, unlike the human participants, the bull is unable to express consent to participating in the sporting spectacle), it ought to be noted that both bull riding and bullfighting are also dangerous sports for the human participant. Indeed, bull riding, an American rodeo sport, seems to be an exceptionally dangerous sport, almost unbelievably so. Indeed, relative to the its short duration (a bull ride is considered successful if the rider manages to stay on the bucking bull for just eight seconds, but, today, only a minority of elite riders manage to stay on even this long), bull riding is, I suspect, the most dangerous sport this side of Russian roulette.
Bull baiting, a once popular, now banned, blood sport of British origin, that involved pitting a pack of dogs (specially bred ‘bulldogs’) and against a bull, was also more dangerous for the dogs than for the bull, in the sense that more dogs died in the process than did bulls, even though the death of the bull, and its consumption as meat, was, along with entertainment and spectacle, among the ostensible purposes of the practice, an odd folk belief holding that meat from bulls that had been ‘baited’ was more tender and succulent.
I recount these facts to emphasize that, even after domestication, the bull remains a formidable and potentially deadly adversary, both for humans and packs of fierce dogs.

[10] Elephants, Diamond argues, were not worth domesticating, not so much on account of their size, but rather because of their slow developmental rate:

“What would-be… elephant rancher would wait 15 years for his herd to reach adult size? Modern Asians who want work elephants find it much cheaper to capture them in the wild and tame them” (p169).

[11] Cattle farmers today generally advise that it is possible, albeit ill-advised unless absolutely necessary due to, say, limited available land, to keep two bulls in a single field, but only under certain conditions (e.g. not during the mating season), and, even then, they must be carefully managed. However, since the reduction of aggression is one of the principle aims and effects of domestication, and therefore wild male aurochs were almost certainly far more aggressive than modern bulls, this may not have been possible for the first tame aurochs, prior to full domestication.

[12] Scientific knowledge has certainly sped up the process of domestication. The ancient humans responsible for beginning the process of domesticating the first wild species probably had little idea what they were doing, and inadvertently selected for certain traits rather than doing so deliberately as a consequence of an understanding of heredity. In contrast, a famous Russian experiment allowed for the partial (self-)domestication of foxes in just a few decades.
Most recently, scientists have even developed various forms of genetic engineering which allow them to directly edit the genome of a species, remove or deactivate genes, insert genes from different species and rearrange genetic sequences. However, these techniques are, even today, very much in their infancy. Certainly, it is not yet possible to domesticate a wild species through genetic engineering alone, and nor can such techniques, as yet, even speed up the process to any significant degree. Successfully domesticating a wild species still requires many generations of selective breeding.

[13] Of course, human generations are generally longer than the generation time for most domesticated and wild species. Therefore, more generations will have passed among the species in question than among the humans who failed to domesticate them. However, this still leaves only a relatively short period of time, and number of generations, given that domestication can take literally thousands of years.

[14] Admittedly, the transplant of plants and animals that were first domesticated in one region to another region was not always possible, often because climatic or other environmental factors precluded this. Indeed, this is a major theme of Diamond’s book. Thus, plants first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent were often unsuited to tropical Africa, but sometimes could be adopted in Southern African where the climate is more similar to that prevailing in much of Eurasia.
Also, since I have focussed here on the failure of Africans to domesticate zebras, it is worth noting the difficulty of transplanting their fellow equine, the domestic horse, to sub-Saharan Africa, where they were afflicted with sleeping sickness spread by the tsetse fly. However, while this may indeed explain the failure of sub-Saharan Africans to adopt horses, nevertheless horses were introduced and widely and successfully employed in colonial Africa, especially in Southern Africa, which, for climatic reasons, was the only part of sub-Saharan Africa settled by large numbers of whites.
Interestingly, the ill-suitedness of horses to sub-Saharan Africa due to the prevalence of sleeping sickness has been posited as the reason Africa never developed the wheel, since, in the absence of the suitable draft animal, wheels are supposedly of little value. For example, Diamond himself makes a similar argument in respect of the failure of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations to make full use of the wheel, lamenting how, for the geographic reasons discussed above:

“The wheels invented in Mesoamerica as parts of toys never met the llamas domesticated in the Andes, to generate wheeled transport for the New World” (p367).

The problem with this argument, however, is that wheels are useful even in the absence of a draft animal. First, they can be used for non-transport purposes – namely, the spinning wheel, the potter’s wheel, even water wheels. Indeed, in Eurasia, the potter’s wheel was actually invented and used before the use of wheels for transport purposes.
Moreover, even for transport, wheels are useful even in the absence of a draft animal. Thus, humans ourselves can be employed as a draft animal, as with wheelbarrows and pulled rickshaws. Ironically, Diamond himself acknowledges as much elsewhere, writing of how:

“[Wheels] had become the basis of most Eurasian land transport—not only for animal-drawn vehicles but also for human-powered wheelbarrows, which enabled one or more people, still using just human muscle power, to transport much greater weights than they could have otherwise” (p359).

Thus, he acknowledges the paradox whereby, in Mesoamerica, the use of wheels was confined to what appear to be toys and the technology eventually, he reports, disappeared altogether, even though, he concedes, even without a draft animal, “they could presumably have been useful in human-powered  wheelbarrows” (p370).

[15] Although in this piece, I have focussed on the situation in Eurasia, Africa and the Americas, it ought to be noted that Australia had many other manifest geographic disadvantages as compared to other continents, as Diamond himself rightly emphasizes. Thus, quite apart from their isolation from other continents, the climate and terrain of much of Australia, namely the Australian Outback is such that it can support only a very low population density, and then only in very trying conditions and at bare subsistence levels. Meanwhile, those few regions of the continent where conditions were more hospitable, and which are today quite densely populated, were, not only isolated from other continents, but also from one another by largely uninhabitable intermediate areas of the interior.
Even more isolated than Australia were some Pacific islands. However, unlike Australia, these were generally settled by humans relatively late in human history, and hence often benefited from the technologies, and the domesticates, that the settlers brought with them, not least the advanced seafaring knowledge that enabled them to reach and settle these remote Pacific Islands in the first place.

[16] Interestingly, author Tim Marshall, in his book Prisoners of Geography, identifies one factor that supposedly impeded the movement of peoples, and hence of technologies, within Africa, namely a lack of navigable rivers. Whereas in much of Eurasia, transport by river was, prior to modern times, usually easier and quicker than by land, in Africa this was not generally possible, because, although replete with rivers, many rivers in Africa have waterfalls that make transport by river very dangerous if not impossible.

[17] Actually, it is now generally believed that the first to  invent the concept of zero was neither the Mayans nor the Indians, nor indeed Islamic civilization, which is also sometimes credited with this achievement. In fact, both the Indians and the Muslims seem to have inherited this innovation from the ancient Babylonians, although it was Indians who took full advantage of this innovation by developing mathematics in such a way as this innovation made possible. The Maya, like the Mesopotamians, also failed take full mathematical advantage of this innovation, but, unlike both the Indians and the Muslims, they can claim to have independently hit upon this innovation, not adopted it from without.

[18] Curiously, despite his oddly visceral aversion and distaste for theories of racial differences in intelligence, and curt dismissal of such theories as both “loathsome” and scientifically unsupported just a couple of paragraphs previously, Diamond nevertheless then proceeds to proffer one such theory of his own, speculatively theorizing:

“In mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners, and they surely are superior in escaping the devastating developmental disadvantages under which most children in industrialized societies grow up” (p21). 

Thus, he contends that, whereas New Guineans have to survive on their wits, using their intelligence to avoid dying from such causes as “murder, chronic tribal warfare, accidents, and problems in procuring food”, in densely populated western societies most early mortality was a consequence of disease, which, Diamond argues, would have struck quite randomly, or as a consequence of random biochemical variations between individuals, rather than being related to intelligence. Thus, he concludes:

“Natural selection promoting genes for intelligence has probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body chemistry was instead more potent” (p21).

In addition, he argues that the intelligence of westerners is surely suppressed due to their spending too much time watching television and movies in childhood (p21). In fact, however, since IQs have increased over the course of the twentieth century concomitantly with increases in television viewership, it is far from obvious that inceased time watching television, or playing computer games, necessarily suppresses intellectual development. On the contrary, some researchers have even suggested that increasingly complex and stimulating visual media may be behind some of this increase.
At any rate, Richard Lynn reports the average IQ of New Guineans as just 62 (Race Differences in Intelligence: p112-3). Although he bases this on only a few studies, this average IQ is almost identical that reported for Australian Aboriginals, to whom New Guineans are closely related, and for whom Lynn has much more abundent data from the Australian school system (Race Differences in Intelligence: p104).

References

Hawkes (1991) Showing off: Tests of an hypothesis about men’s foraging goals. Ethology and Sociobiology 12(1): 29-54.