Guns, Germs, and Steel
Also known as Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years
Jared Diamond's 1997 argument that geography, not genes, explains why Eurasian societies conquered others.
At a glance
Key ideas
Yali's question, Few domesticable animals, The east–west axis …
See all 5Criticism
Antipode, 2003
Connections
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- Diamond starts from a question put to him by Yali, a Papua New Guinean politician: why did white people have so much more "cargo"?
- He argues that gaps in power and technology between societies come mainly from their environments, not from any inherent superiority.
- Eurasia had more plants and animals that could be domesticated, and an east–west axis along which crops, animals and ideas spread easily.
- Farming led to dense populations, states, technology and epidemic diseases, which let Europeans conquer other continents.
Why it matters
- It became an international best-seller and won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction; specialists in the regions it covers have criticised it widely.
Key facts
- Author
- Jared Diamond1
- Published
- 19971
- Awards
- Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction (1998); Aventis Prize for Science Books; Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science (1997)2
- Translations
- 33 languages2
- Documentary
- Produced by the National Geographic Society, broadcast on PBS in July 20051
Key ideas
-
Yali's question1
Why Europeans, not Papua New Guineans, developed so many inventions and goods.
-
Few domesticable animals1
Only 14 of 148 candidate large mammals were domesticated: the Anna Karenina principle.
-
The east–west axis1
Crops could spread along Eurasia at one latitude; the north–south Americas and Africa blocked them.
-
Germs1
Living close to livestock gave Eurasians diseases, and immunity to them, that devastated the peoples they met.
-
A divided Europe1
Competition between Europe's many states kept governments from suppressing progress for long, unlike China.
Criticism
-
Antipode, 20032
The geography journal published a series of reviews by specialists, all critical of its claims and logical consistency.
Connections
Written by
Links
Sources
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