Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond

If you ask Paul Stamets about the potential of mushrooms to cure diseases and save the planet his response will probably take hyperbolic detours across the symbiotic relationship of mycelium with the soil and plants and trees.  He might veer into concepts around the Earth's nervous system, networks and signals - an ancient language that somehow, we are intimately a part of.  For Stamets, fungus is the key to fixing us.  He really believes this.  On his head is a testament to his love for this world - he often wears a hat made from a specific type of fungus called amadou.  It's hard no to take in his enthusiasm for the kingdom of fungi.  It's an endlessly fascinating subject.  False Morels, often of the Gyomitra genus, produce monomethyl hydrazine, a type of rocket fuel.  Paxillus involutus produces an antigen that causes the body to attack it's own red blood cells, often many years after consumption.  Ganoderma lingzi, commonly known as Reishi, contains unique beneficial compounds like beta-glucans and triterpenes.  It's a nutritional powerhouse for the liver.  There's even a fungus, Pestalotiopsis microspora, that eats plastic!  Fungi are chemical factories that churn out all kinds of common and exotic compounds.   Stamets has studied many of these for decades.
 
People who spend decades studying a certain field invariably find exclusive answers in said field.  This can be at times a huge benefit.  An expert can narrow in on a question, a hypothesis, and maybe a solution to complex unsolved problem.  The specialization comes at a price, too - overlooked are other fields of knowledge, or other experts.  Most of the criticism thrown at Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize winning history Guns, Germs, and Steel concerns, in the eyes of certain critics, is the narrow viewpoint from which the book treats its expansive subject.  The term often used is "geographic determinism", a kind of pejorative to describe Diamond's singular methodology.  In short, they see his treatment of large periods of history and human evolution as mostly or entirely subject to the physical variables laid out in and around the human population in question, namely:  latitude and longitude, domesticable animals, energy content of nearby grains and pulses, co-evolution and resistance to germs, and access to other resources and waterways. 
 
From a high level, then, Diamond's approach makes me think of a video game, say Sim City, or Civilization, where human tribes are merely scuttling around in petri dishes entirely subject to the variables within their surrounding environment.  Their success and demise are functions of the "luck of the land" - of time and place and what "God" decided to put what and where.  Diamond, of course, dismisses the "geographic determinism" tag.  Surely, he doesn't appreciate the term, nor, in his defense, does he believe his story reduces human populations and their success, or lack-there-of, to these environmental variables.  
 
To understand this question more fully, and to try and arrive at a reasonable answer, first, I think, it's important to dive deeper into the subject matter contained within Guns, Germs, and Steel.  Although his general thesis is easy enough to pin down, the nuance and examples expounded upon within the book help to illustrate his major points, and they also showcase some of the amazing feats and tragedies that befall different societies as they interact with their environment and other cultures, willing or not.  To better understand their journeys, we better understand our own. 

For example, the Mediterranean zone, a region covering parts of Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, 32 of the world's 56 large, seeded grass species grow wild and in abudance.  Some of these seeds were the ancestors of modern domesticated mega-crops like lentils, wheat, barley and sorghum.  Ideal growing conditions in this expansive region like temperate climate, little to no winter freezing, long growing periods, and adequate natural rainfall drew in hunter-gather groups who recognized the potential of cultivation.  Thousands of years of experimentation and hybridization increased the caloric and nutritional value of the original wild grains, so that today what we see is surely unrecognizable to what first grasses naturally evolved there.  

Hunting and gathering is a method of survival that puts a ceiling on population growth because it's a direct function of available wild game, seafood, and seasonality/distribution of edible fruits, tubers etc.  Despite emergent methods within different hunter-gatherer cultures to preserve meat and fruits through drying, fermenting, or salting, spoilage is also a greater issue versus dried grains.  Utilizing natural rainfall and man-made irrigation on fertile soils provided large surpluses of stored calories as grains which could be unlocked any time of year for many months or years after cultivation.  No longer were groups of people completely dependent on herd and fish migrations or seasonal fruit blooms.  This surplus in calories increased the size of hunter-gather bands and tribes into villages.  Villages differentiated into labor specializations as the need for apex hunting skills diminished and time used for gathering dwindled. 

The cost-benefit of this transition can be, and is debated today - what have we lost as a species as we entered the agricultural revolution?  With the transition to more of a grain-based diet, what has happened to the physical and mental health of the species?  If you ask Weston A Price, probably all is not so good.  Dental carries, brittle bones, smaller bodies, poor jawbones, mental health issues, etc. all came out of our transition toward more grains, and less animal products and wild fruits.  This depravity surely only accelerated with the Industrial Revolution as many staple foods became denatured and preserved with exotic chemicals.  

Of course, animal protein wasn't all forgotten, with the domestication of grains starting first, as far as we know, in the Middle East around the Fertile Crescent.  Domestication of animals happened, too.  Goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, and camels were domesticated in different parts of Asia - as far back as 8000 BC for goats, sheep, and pigs.  Camels came later around 2500 BC.  The domestication of these animals spread east to west and west to east across central Asia, what is commonly referred to now as the Silk Road - these routes became essential for trade and warfare.  The wild animals these domesticated analogues came from were naturally more docile and social, hence the incorporation into human societies.  Not all animals are like this.  Casual observers may believe that Central Asian, Chinese, and European animal and grain domestication came about because of cultural or intellectual “magic”, but there's evidence, according to Diamond, that sub-Saharan Africans attempted to domesticate species within their region as well, including zebras and gazelles.  These animals would seem like good fits for domestication.  However, the temperament of zebras makes it impossible, so much that even today, no group anywhere has domesticated them.   Zebras are very difficult to lasso because they watch ropes closely and duck their heads to avoid it, and they bite a lot.  They have a nasty disposition, according to Diamond.  The same difficulty in domestication applies to gazelles, but for different reasons.  Gazelles can jump really high - close to 30 feet - if they need to, and they are very fast.  They're difficult to get close to because they panic easily, and if confined, they may bash themselves into enclosures.  Furthermore, they aren't huge animals, and at some point, economics factor in - how much fence do you need to build to keep gazelles penned in for the little meat you'd get off one animal?   Other sub-Saharan animals have since been domesticated including the common eland.  However, early domestication may have been discouraged because they are relatively large and dangerous animals, mild temperaments notwithstanding. 

The broader point, is sub-Saharan Africa, being cut-off from Europe and Central Asia by a major physical barrier in the Sahara Desert, (how would a tribe cross it on foot?), was limited to the crops and animals in the region.  When some domesticated animals did cross the Sahara Desert through Silk Road trading, making their way to the Khoisan people about 2000 years ago, they were readily adopted to the point where many hunter-gatherer Khoisan people were displaced by those taking advantage of imported herd animals.  The same is true of the Bantu people who adopted central Asian and European cows and sheep and quickly overran hunter-gatherer tribes in sub-Saharan Africa.

With the early domestication of animals came increased exposure and proximity to them.  This introduced early agricultural societies to animal originated diseases, and subsequently immunity.  The common colds and flu bugs of today are commonly believed to be viruses that originated with domesticated animals like chickens and pigs which were domesticated many thousands of years ago.  These viruses have co-evolved with different species and have long since become endemic to human populations.  The interesting aspect to this, is populations north of the Sahara, on the Asian continent, seem have more innate immunity to these viruses.  The prime example of this, of course, is when these common viruses, which many Europeans had developed some innate immunity made their way into North America where they devasted Native America populations who hadn't been exposed before.  Similarly, but of course to a lesser degree, Europeans who venture to equatorial countries do very poorly with viruses and other diseases like yellow fever, malaria, and dengue, endemic to tropical zones.  Sickle cell anemia, a disease caused by genetic mutation in some African people, seems to be a natural defense against the tropical disease malaria, although sickle cell can also cause blood flow issues.

Diamond goes much deeper into these issues and the explanatory power of his thesis is commendable and interesting - even if the apt term "geographic determinism" is an accurate moniker for his work.  Again, I know he doesn’t appreciate the term, and the critics who've used it may not have meant it complimentarily, I still think his work should be celebrated from this perspective.  No doubt, Diamond knows many more factors have contributed to human development, but viewing his work through this lens is still invaluable and ranks as a major contribution to human understanding.  The more we look at our natural and social world, the more we understand that nothing exists in a vacuum.  It's not just an ongoing chain of causality, nor a collection of perfectly free-willed beings with infinite potential, but a multi-dimensional network of dynamic factors that affect many aspects of life directly and indirectly.  The environment we are born into and the circumstances that arise within it, impact our lives and trajectory in ways known and unknown, even if what we choose to do with our circumstances is ultimately up to us.


Summary:  Valuable contribution to our understanding of human developement, and the varying influence of geography, flora, and fauna.   

Rating:  9.0

-E.B.  2023-01-06