"Guns Germs and Steel" Reading Notes / 分类：历史，社会

[Excalibur]

经人推荐入手的一本，先贴一个简介。以后补充自己的总结。

The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. 

The author argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures (for example, by facilitating commerce and trade between different cultures) and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.

[Excalibur]

The author worked in New Guinea and a local scholar Yali asked him why Western societies are more developed than others, like New Guinea. It is called "Yali's question" by the author. This book tries to answer it.

There are 3 common explanations to it, but the author does not completely agree with them.

1. Genetic advantage

   This explanation claims that Europeans have better genes and are smarter. 

   The author argued that people like New Guineans were no less smart than others, it was because they were brought up in a different environment. What we consider to be common, like using electronics, are alien to them. In contrast, we are really bad at surviving in jungles, but they are good at it.

   

2. Climate difference:

   This explanation claims that many Europeans live in cold climate, which forces them to struggle and invent things to survive. So they tend to have more achiements. While people living in a mild climate are spoiled.  

   The author argued that northern Europe only started to contribute to civilization development in the last 1000 years. There were also advananced civilization developed in Mexico and Africa.

   

3. Irrigation

   This explanation claims that civilization tends to thrive in river valleys because the need for irrigation. e.g. Tigris, Euphrates, Nile. 

   The author argued that the irrigation systems were only developed after the civilization already developed. There was a lag. Centralized bureaucracies actually helped to build them.

   

   

[Excalibur]

Chapter 1 Up to the Starting line

Starting point, 11,000 B.C. This date corresponds approximately to the beginnings of village life in a few parts of the world, the first undisputed peopling of the Americas, the end of the Pleistocene Era and last Ice Age, and the start of what geologists term the Recent Era.

Human history at last took off around 50,000 years ago, at the time of what I have termed our Great Leap Forward. The earliest definite signs of that leap come from East African sites with standardized stone tools and the first preserved jewelry (ostrich-shell beads).

THE COLONIZATION of Australia / New Guinea was not achieved until around the time of the Great Leap Forward. Another extension of human range that soon followed was the one into the coldest parts of Eurasia.

North America and South America are the ones with the shortest human prehistories.

WITH THE OCCUPATION of the Americas, most habitable areas of the continents and continental islands, plus oceanic islands from Indonesia to east of New Guinea, supported humans. 

An observer transported back in time to 11,000 B.C. could not have predicted on which continent human societies would develop most quickly, but could have made a strong case for any of the continents. With hindsight, of course, we know that Eurasia was the one. The actual reasons behind the more rapid development of Eurasian societies were not at all the straightforward ones.

[swortal]

In 50,000 years of human history, only around 3k years are recorded history which indicates civilization, and then only 200 years since industrial revolution, and only 30 years since IT revolution. Will such civilization last another 50k years? I'm very pessimistic. I think it may only last another 200 - 300 years until fossil energy is used up. 

[Excalibur]

Me neither. I believe the Great Filter theory is reasonable and human beings are about to hit a filter in the near future, especially if the world keeps doing what it is doing now, or doing something even worse, like drawing out from environment protection agreements. It just blows my mind when a good number of citizens in the world's most powerful country, can "PROUDLY" say "I don'

t believe in science".

So three-body aliens, please come in 300 years. If the world is bound to end, it had better end in an epic fight. 

[Excalibur]

Chapter 2&3:

Environmental variables caused differences in Polynesian societies : island climate, geological type, marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation, and isolation.

Pizarro’s (Spaniard colonist) success (in Cajamarc) included military technology based on guns, steel weapons, and horses; infectious diseases endemic in Eurasia; European maritime technology; the centralized political organization of European states; and writing.

[Excalibur]

I finished a few more chapters but decided to stop there. The narration of the author is a bit verbose and he tends to repeat himself. I got some basic ideas from him and feel like that's good enough for me on this topic, so I will be moving on to other books.

[swortal]

Would you mind sharing some of interesting points in this book?

[Excalibur]

Last a few chapters I read are about food production development, e.g. Hunter-gatherers vs Farmers

The author's argument is that people with a head start on food production also had a head start on more advanced civilization, although the founding agriculture was harder than hunting.

Regions that are suitable for agriculture did not necessarily guarantee farming civilizations. People need to domesticate both plants and animals. Some species are just hard to be domesticated.

Continental orientation also affects the diffusion of agriculture: America (including south and north) has longer south-north expansion, while Asia has longer east-west expansion. 

Eventually, hunter-gatherer civilizations turned farming one, or conquered by farming civilization, unless they confined themselves to a place where no other people want to stay.