Guns Germs and Steel
...s, and why production spread on different rates at different continents. In part three the author argues that the settled communities made possible by production of plant and animal food allowed diseases to leap from domesticated animals to humans. He also links success in food production to the inventions of writing and of technology. These he relates also to government and religion, which he characterizes as “kleptocracy”. After all this research and explanation the author returns to reconsider the course of human development on each continent. Starting first with Australia and New Guinea, then with China, Polynesia, Eurasia and the Americas and finally Africa. Jared Diamond sees food production, or the domestication of plants and animals, as the central key to human history. In a relatively short display (part two), the author outlines the origins of agriculture. He describes when and where food production originated, how it spread from the Fertile Crescent to other parts of the world and why. There is a deep explanation about the types of crops around the world, and a thorough description why the large seeded wild plants in Eurasia were easy to domesticate. Eurasia had the same climate over its long east-west axis whereas the Americas and Africa had a huge variation and thus could not grow those kinds of plants. The characteristics of these crops are extensively discussed, driving us, the readers, to the conclusion that food production indeed played a major role in a material sense, mental sense, as an agent of civilization and as a source of power. Firstly, the author argues that ancient farmers had to develop more advanced tools for producing more amounts of food and had the opportunity to support people that did not work in the fields, such as politicians, warriors, priests and so on. As a result of that, farmers became materialistically richer than hunter-gatherers who stayed in relatively small groups, because hunters could not support people that were not able to hunt and kill wild animals. More food available meant, and still does, more people. More people to feed requires better technology and also soldiers to guard, politicians to make laws, priests to have as spiritual leaders and so on. Through this argument we can see that new techniques were being invented and new levels of hierarchy as well. So, in a nutshell, with food as basis the farmers were able to first build the materials, then establish some sort of a hierarchical system, which led to the invention of the alphabet and the rise of major civilizations. A similar analysis is carried out for the domestication of large mammals. Here, again, Eurasia was favored with almost all the suitable species. The author in this particular section gives modern examples of modern animal breeders that were not able to domesticate some wild large mammals of Africa and justifies why ancient Africans and other peoples could not domesticate them either. Then, he continues on to demonstrate that when large animals such as horses became available to some of those peoples, such as the Native Americans, they adopted them and ...