GUNS GERMS AND STEEL

I found the way Jared Diamond introduces the two paths of human history to be an eye-opening reality for me. I have never thought of how there are agricultural practices and hunter gatherer practices are differentiated. In chapter 4 Jared Diamond speaks on how hunter gatherers tend to only have children once every four years because they need their children to can run with the tribe before rearing another young. He also points out that hunter gatherers generally don’t have political systems or the same hierarchical structure as with agricultural based societies. It is proposed that having these resources being heavily available (an excess of available calories) allows for individuals to differentiate themselves beyond the pressures of a “normal life” such and hunting and gathering. This is when you see kingdoms, taxes, Priests, armies etc. In chapter 4 on page 93 Jared Diamond begins to ask why crops and agriculture developed in early years in places like Iraq and Mexico but not the Eastern United states. He used many comparisons of geographic landscapes to make his point however it made me feel somewhat left out of the conversation. He used these examples to make a point regarding agricultural success in certain areas compared to others, however for myself I don’t understand the difference in agricultural capacities of Iraq versus California or eastern Europe versus Eastern United states. I feel as though if he had said Why did agriculture develop in the marshy wet pre-colonized Iraq versus the dry desolate California desert I would have felt more of an impact from what he was saying. “we should not suppose that the decision to adopt farming was made in a vacuum, as if the people had previously had no means to feed themselves”, is a great point made by Jared Diamond on page 109. We tend to think of agriculture as how we have always fed ourselves. This however is not true, for most our species and descendant’s history we were hunter gatherers, and the idea of cultivation and concentration of resources would have seemed like a futile endeavor. On Page 138 Jared Diamond begins describing five advantages that lead to the success of the fertile crescent. The first is that it is  “ world’s largest zone of Mediterranean climate” allowing for more area for the development of agriculture. The second was that “among Mediterranean zones, Western Eurasia experiences the greatest climatic variation from season to season and year to year” which allowed for natural selection to be a stronger driving force. The third is that it “provides a wide range of altitudes and topographies within a short distance” which allowed for diverse subsets of environments within the fertile crescent bringing irrigation, and different climates for diverse crop types.

The fourth was “its wealth in ancestors not only of valuable crops but also domesticated big animals” which allowed the first “farmers” to utilize them like tools for landscaping. The fifth reason was “it may have faced lower less competition from the hunter gatherer lifestyle than that in some other areas”.

Jared Diamond (1997). Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies. New York, New York: W.W. Norton.