A Rotarian friend recommended this text by Jared Diamond, in order to give me a different perspective on the huge discrepancies in living conditions between the developed and third worlds. Diamond is a physiology professor at UCLA; he won a Pulitzer for this scientific analysis on the evolution of human societies, and the environmental conditions that contributed to the unequal "progress" of human societies across the globe. From a very general perspective, he incorporates natural history and anthropologic evidence into his theories on why human history unfolded as it did. Due to his earlier field research, he also concentrates on the native cultures of the remote New Guinea highlands as "un-Westernized" examples of how ancient human societies functioned and how they interact with our modern world. He also has a new book (Collapse) about the causes of failed human societies, and The Third Chimpanzee describes the physiologic and behavioral differences that allowed humans to rise above their primate cousins.
Just a quick summary of the main points if you're interested. For anyone who has played those computer strategy games like Civilizations and Age of Empires, this info may sound fairly familiar - but the paradigm is valid: those who obtain food production, technology, and specialized social structure first (and they all go hand in hand) are more able to conquer & out compete their rivals. Now Diamond seeks to understand WHY some cultures were able to advance much more rapidly than others, and eventually conquer or assimilate the "stragglers". Why did the Conquistadors capture the Aztec and Incan capitols, and not the other way around? Was it purely due to the "superior" intellect and ambitions of Europeans? Or Divine Will or racial differences? Europeans spread from Mesopotamia - why did "civilization" flourish there, and not in sub-Saharan Africa or Aboriginal Australia? This book is completely apolitical and color blind; it seeks to present the evolution of human societies as cause and effect of man interacting with nature and each other, not as some manifest-destiny teleological tale of human progress and glory.
But since I am political, I will go further: based on arguments in this text, the notion of modern Western (white) culture and democracy as the pinnacle of human progress is scientifically invalid. This book helps present a logical argument that environment and cultural exchange dictate the speed and scale of human progress more than inherent social or ethnic differences. Diamond debases Western exceptionalism without denigrating the amazing accomplishments of the human animal (in all their forms, whether it be blow darts or space shuttles to the stars). In other words, the fact that humans were able to rise from their primitive roots and establish farming, writing, and militaries is amazing - but it does not imply that those who developed such advancements first somehow had "better" cultures than those who didn't. And in many cases, the victors can't even take credit for their conquests - ecology and trade routes probably did more to advance Western and Asian civilizations than the greatest generals, intellectuals, and statesmen in the history books - because the latter group could not exist without the former.
And yes, I know this email is LONG (even more than usual), but I’m condensing 400 pages into 10, so cut me some slack. ;)
FOOD
Diamond argues that the domestication, storage, and sharing of plants and animals were the keys to human advancement - and it's hard to argue with him. We take food production for granted these days, but compared to primitive peoples in the Amazon or Outback, we see what a difference it makes for daily life. But with the means and opportunity, why did some cultures adopt food production much sooner than others, and some not at all?
Of course many thousands of years ago, early humans were faced with an unconscious decision: live as nomadic or semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers, or adopt a sedentary, food cultivation lifestyle. To us, the choice seems like a no-brainer. But the major cost-benefit decision: did hunting-gathering offer such bleak prospects that a switch to full-fledged farming was all but vital for survival? Or did food production hold such significant advantages over previous methods that its adoption was uncontroversial? For peoples living in lush environments with plentiful food and game (Pacific USA, tropical Africa, New Guinea), there was no INCENTIVE to switch to farming. They were in Eden and loving it. Prehistoric humans didn't need to consider that farming would make their tribe/society rise above and out compete others, they had enough to live, be happy, and procreate - despite the fact that food acquisition consumed the majority of the tribe's time and effort.
But for places like the Fertile Crescent and Eastern China, local flora may not have been so easily attainable, and over-hunting/species extinctions during the Pleistocene made game more rare. So instead of starving, an alternative needed to be developed. Just because someone wants to farm does not guarantee they can. Humans needed access to viable, nutritious, and sustainable crops that offered advantages over foraged wild species. Looking at the archaeological record via carbon dating and genetic analysis of crops versus their wild analogues, it's fairly clear that food production developed independently in the Middle East, China, Sahel Africa, and the Americas - but using different species and at vastly different times (8500 BC for Mesopotamia to 2500 BC for the present-day Eastern USA). And to dispel some misconceptions, it's not like hunter-gatherers suddenly decided to become farmers - there existed a spectrum of farming commitment and varying degrees of sophistication. And ironically, when considering the time and labor involved with farming - it was actually MORE efficient to live as hunter-gatherers (calorie intake from food versus energy expended to acquire). So the advantages from farming were not abundantly obvious.
Farming merely engendered social stratification and labor specialization - which are the basic hallmarks of "civilization". Hunter-gatherer societies were more communal and egalitarian. Yes, the peasant farmers toiled harder and reaped less benefit per capita than their hunter-gatherer brethren, but they labored so that chieftains, artisans, and soldiers didn't have to worry about filling their bellies and could concentrate on other advanced activities - like conquering less-equipped hunter-gatherer societies. In a later chapter, Diamond asserts that control mechanisms like religion and patriotism allowed the kleptocratic elites to profit from compliant masses who sustained the economy and waged war on command (but we'll get into that issue another time).
So the evolution of food production involved the culmination of thousands of small, sometimes unconscious cost-benefit decisions (based on temporal and environmental factors) in order to gain some sort of advantage over food derived directly from the wild. While wild flora develop by the principles of natural selection (forgive me all you creationists!), artificial "human selection" gave preference to genetic freaks that offered certain benefits (bigger yield, easier harvest, hardier seeds, etc.), even at the peril of the plant - such as seedless fruit. As we all know, plants make fruit/seeds to propagate the species, and often encase the germ tissue in tasty packages that animals will consume and spread (often via stool, a natural fertilizer). As quick examples, wild pea pods fill with gas and explode, thereby distributing the seeds more effectively. Wheat stalks grow tall and then shatter, another way to disseminate. Eventually, humans found plants with non-exploding pods and non-shattering stalks. They found such specimens were easier to exploit, so they gave them genetic preference. But it's not like every plant out there can become productive: some are poisonous/allergenic, some taste bad, some are too hard/slow to grow & harvest, some lose favorable mutations or have picky fertilization, some don't yield enough nutrition. Of course human ingenuity and observation (not to mention hunger) fostered impressive crop development, but it was also a matter of luck and availability of usable flora & sustainable mutations.
Currently, the major crops of the world can be divided into cereals (wheat), pulses (beans), fiber (cotton), roots (yams), and melons (squash). By Roman times, all of our modern major crops were domesticated somewhere, but in a highly irregular distribution. Farming only works in a society if one can obtain all the balanced nutrition required for human growth and maintenance. A culture that farms exceptional rice but nothing else has no real advantage over hunter-gatherers. Higher-protein pulses must compliment lower-protein cereals, or people don't grow very big or live very long. And veggies can be complemented with animal products, which provide a ton of calories and other perks (we'll discuss more in the next section). Now for geography: most of the world's super crops grow in Mediterranean climates, because the long hot summers and mild, wet winters are favorable for growth. Not coincidentally, farming first emerged in the Mediterranean zones of the Fertile Crescent and African Sahel. However, indigenous farming never developed in California or Australia (other Med zones) ... why? We'll get a good explanation soon.
So already, those peoples who lived in Mediterranean zones had geographic advantages. 60% of the world's edible large-seed grasses (that may produce cereals) exist in Europe, N Africa, and the Middle East. Very few exist in the Americas or Australia. To illustrate the importance of cereals for sustaining human civilization, 5 of the 12 main crops today are cereals. So even though the climate was good, the right plants weren't available until explorers came. By then, it was too late for Indians and Aborigines to keep up with whites. Of the fundamental crop groups I mentioned in the last paragraph, very few places in the world had domesticable wild plants of all categories (which cumulatively provide textiles, rope, carbohydrates, and protein). So the Assyrian farming "package" was much more potent than the Incas', by no human fault at all. Food production in the Americas developed much later, because the vital crop of corn took thousands of years longer to domesticate. Why? Just bad luck I guess. If anyone has seen wild corn, its ears are about the size of a thumb, not too useful. Early Aztec "genetic engineers" needed a lot of experimentation to produce bigger corn that looks like what we buy in the store. So the dearth of advantageous domesticable plants contributed to the Native Americans' slower adoption of farming versus Eurasians. The same can be said of all the "backwards" dark peoples of the world who are currently leagues behind Western Civilization. After the discovery of robust corn, the Aztec population boomed, but again - they were too late to hold the line against European invaders. A lack of smallpox resistance didn't help either.
Also, by charting the time-dependent spread of crops, we can see that useful crops did not diffuse evenly over the globe. Genetic analysis reveals that Euro and Indian wheat was derived from earlier Mesopotamian wheat, and refutes the unlikely event that wheat was domesticated in separate locations independently. It's always easier to share a good thing than develop it on your own (like cheating on a school exam). Both the American and African continents have north-south major axes, while Eurasia has an east-west axis (beneficial because regions on the same latitude have similar daylight and weather at a certain elevation). Plants do not tend to grow well under foreign conditions, as pineapple lovers in Alaska can attest. The Americas have parched desert, tropical forest, and everything in between within 2000 miles of latitude, same with Africa. The weather in Mexico City is much different than Winnipeg (so corn grows well in one but not the other), but the climate in France is similar to Japan half the globe away (so barley grows well in both) - hence the importance of the Eurasian axis to facilitating the spread of farming. Also geographic barriers deter trade and diffusion of ideas/goods, we see this trend with farming, writing, and other technologies. The Med Sea and Silk Road connected empires separated by many time zones, but the jungles, mountains, and narrowness of Central America separated the Aztec from Incas. South Africa was inaccessible to the Egyptians due to the Sahara and rainforest belt. Australia was totally isolated from Asia by a lot of water. So not only did Eurasians benefit from better climate and availability of useful plants for large-scale farming, they also had the advantage of easier spread once a useful crop was developed and shared. The isolation enjoyed by the Aztecs and Aborigines was a handicap rather than a protection. They missed out on acquiring wheat farming, disease resistance, and gunpowder from their neighbors until it was too late.
So food production led to higher population densities (10-100 times more than hunter-gatherers), which in turn required more efficient food production, and the auto-catalytic upward spiral continued - with inherent advances in technology, government, and writing included to manage this robust food production and human consumption machine. The system fueled explorers, missionaries, and militaries that eventually displaced, assimilated, or annihilated less competitive peoples within their reach.
ANIMALS AND GERMS
Besides farming, the domestication of livestock was the second major turning point for humans to progress from hunter-gatherer bands to more advanced societies. And again, the unequal distribution of large terrestrial mammals and avians also worked in the favor of Eurasians. Germ warfare and resistance went hand-in-hand with domesticated animals, because most major human diseases today were probably derived from contact with farm animals (and simians in the case of HIV).
In our grocery store culture, we often take the importance of livestock for granted. But in the pre-industrial world, animals weren't just tasty dishes, accounting for the majority of protein, fat, and dairy intake - which are invaluable nutritional supplements and calories (not to mention the clothing & warmth derived from hides/fur/wool). In addition, such animals also provided heavy labor for plowing and towing (once the wheel cart was invented). And the largest domesticates were also used for long distance transport and warfare as cavalry. Societies that possessed domesticated animals had a tremendous advantage over those that didn't.
Just to get the definitions straight, domesticated animals are not the same as tamed animals. Cultures have tamed falcons, elephants, and dolphins to serve man in some way or another. But domestication implies captive breeding and deliberate genetic manipulation (deviating from natural selection in order to favor human selection), as was the case with plants. Nothing remotely resembling a modern dairy cow or chicken exists in the wild - and for good reason (their wild ancestors died out long ago, with humans preferring more meat and milk to genetic fitness). I guess you could even say that bacteria and viruses have now been "domesticated" by the major superpowers to eat garbage/oil or kill people (even though an int'l ban supposedly terminated their research and stockpile).
While poultry and silkworms were useful to some ancient societies, the heavy livestock were more prized. Only 14 such species were domesticated before 1900 (goat, sheep, pig, water buffalo, camel, horse, cow, etc - most before 2000 BC), so it wasn't easy, as modern geneticists & zoologists struggling with endangered species will attest. For the Americas, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa - only one animal makes the list, the marginally useful llama. Eurasians bred the other 13. So conquistadors could go to war with heavy horse, and Incas were powerless to stop them (llamas were unfortunately not raised for battle). If we limit useful livestock candidates to non-carnivorous terrestrial mammals above 100 lbs, the Eurasian continents hold the most candidates (72), and the less fortunate 4 continents have 76 total (Diamond is unclear whether these numbers comprise modern species only or include ancient extincts as well). 18% of Eurasian candidates were successfully domesticated, while only 1/76 worked for the other continents. Were Eurasians somehow better "animal people"? Unlikely, since Indian tribes quickly produced some of the most skilled riders in history once Euros introduced the horse to North America. And African herdsmen raised excellent livestock once they were brought south of the Sahara 2000 years ago.
Diamond uses the analogy of marriage: everything has to be right for a marriage to succeed or an animal to be domesticated - but one negative trait can ruin it all. That's the problem with many non-Eurasian candidates, they had one or more negative traits that precluded or severely hampered domestication. Diet, growth rate, breeding issues, socialization with humans and herd mates, as well as wildness could make animals impossible for captivity - such as potentially useful species like bucking zebras, hungry elephants, and non-canine ornery carnivores. So Eurasia had a larger supply of domesticable animal species, and people quickly took advantage of such resources, while societies of the other continents met tremendous challenges. Their geographic isolation also retarded their exposure to useful species until it was too late.
Besides the direct benefits of domesticated animals, they also conferred germ resistance over time (and with many casualties). The major killers of mankind today were all spread from domesticates (we know this by genetically comparing human microbes to their closely related animal-borne pathogens). Cattle gave us measles, TB, and smallpox. Avians gave us malaria and many of the flus out there. Nature did not intend for this many human-modified species to exist in such density and close proximity to man. Pathogens are chomping at the bit, figuratively. Since I work near a dairy research lab, I can see cattle packed into tight pens like sardines. It's a piece of cake for pathogens to rapidly spread within the herd (or to their human caretakers) via insect vectors or air/fluid contamination.
Once an animal pathogen mutates to infect and spread in humans, our only defense is sacrificing many lives until the survivors develop immunity and propagate. Germ theory is a recent discovery, and quarantine was logistically difficult in ancient times as well as today. Or humans had to wait until vaccines were developed in the 20th century to confer artificial immunity (by then Eurasian peoples had already dominated the globe), and of course microbes can further mutate and develop their own immunity. Actually the unsanitary and packed nature of pre-industrial Eurasian populations was advantageous, permitting rapid disease spread and resistance (by necessity), sometimes with terrible losses like the Plague. But the survivors inherited a very lethal weapon to consciously or unwittingly inflict upon other peoples once contact was achieved.
In pre-WWII warfare, more soldiers died from microbes than battle wounds. More people died from Spanish Flu than all of WWI a few years prior. Disease decimates populations much more than swords, cannon, or bombs could ever hope for. And the only pre-1900 defenses were fleeing the infectious invaders or sacrificing a portion of your population until immunity is achieved. As I mentioned from "Lies my Teacher Told Me", many history books under-represent the population of pre-Colombian American societies because they forget (or prefer to ignore) how many natives died from smallpox and other diseases (many texts list the Indian population of N America at 1 mil, but it was more like 20 mil according to archaeologists). Probably 95% of Native Americans died from Eurasian diseases during the Age of Exploration. Similarly, Eurasian diseases killed 50-100% of Polynesian, Aboriginal Aussie, or southern African peoples. So even if the other continents were technologically and intellectually on par with Euro cultures during the Age of Exploration, their lack of immune resistance made them unable to resist domination.
No American-origin diseases ever spread back and decimated Eurasian populations, maybe minus syphilis - which has indeterminate origin. The only impediment to whites was the spread of Eurasian malaria to new tropical environments like Central Africa and Latin America (which slowed exploration and exploitation), but water-borne microbes that cause Montezuma's revenge and other pathologies never spread to Eurasia (and were neutralized by modern sanitation and filtration anyway). Why the discrepancy? You can probably guess. It was less likely for diseases to spread for Non-Eurasians hunter-gatherers (who maintained that lifestyle centuries longer than Eurasians), and sedentary societies had 10-100 times more population density to confer disease resistance more effectively. Non-Eurasians domesticated many fewer animal species, thereby reducing their exposure to animal-borne diseases. And finally, the geographic barriers of water, forest, and desert prevented cultures from interacting and sharing diseases (and resistance).
Part II coming later if you like (writing, technology, government, and religion).
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