Guns, Germs, and Steel

The documentary presents an original theory about "Guns, Germs and Steel". The series graphically portray several episodes strongly supporting the theory, and defend the theory against common criticism.

I was deeply puzzled to find user comments complaining about lack of new information in these series. They say documentary presents information which is taught in middle school. Indeed, it does. In fact, I greatly enjoyed the original look at the information which I have known since middle school and the unexpected analysis.

So, if you like knowing WHY things work, if you have taken apart the telephone trying to determine how it worked, if you have gone to the farm to see how farm works and how cows are milked, you will enjoy this series. A definite recommendation.

"Jared Diamond made a point in the first episode that other peoples of the world didn't have animals to domesticate but Europeans did, and that accounts for why we were able to make steel and invent complex machines". --- It is obvious that the person who wrote this comment hasn't understood the reasoning behind this documentary or the original book. Please don't ruin this great piece by your simple mindedness. The reasons are far more complex than the single thing you mentioned. Please read the book as is it a great source of information. I enjoyed it a lot. This book is even a taught as a text book at some universities.

This series asks the question: why do Westerners have so much materially and the natives of New Guinea have so little?

Jared Diamond's thesis in Guns, Germs and Steel is that because Europeans had geographical conditions which were favorable to farming and domesticating animals they had natural advantages which allowed them to develop a high degree of civilization and conquer the world. I usually enjoy these video documentaries though I know that I'm getting watered-down history with great visuals. But 'Guns, Germs & Steel' is too weak an idea to carry through more than one episode, let alone three. I was willing to buy his notion that access to domesticating animals allowed for more productive farming and therefore greater civilizational advances. But he fails to explain why other civilizations that had those same advantages, for example China, India, the Middle East, didn't develop the science and technology that allowed Europe to dominate the world.

The final episode is about Africa and shows that traditional African culture had many of the same advantages that Europeans had: domesticated animals, immunity to common diseases and efficient farming, yet never developed a higher level of technology. He becomes openly emotional about the current poverty of Africans while failing to explain why other cultures, like India and much of Asia, though formerly colonized, have now managed to advance scientifically and socially while much of Africa remains in misery and backwardness.

Diamond likes to refer to the "greed" and "aggressiveness" of European colonizing powers, but isn't everybody "greedy?" How did the Incas (which he uses to illustrate his point) gain a huge empire and amass all that treasure? The Incas had 80,000 men under arms, so they weren't exactly a peaceful people. Farther to the north the Aztecs were not just warlike, but bloodthirsty in the extreme. How did they so easily succumb to the relatively few Spanish invaders? Now that is an interesting question which Diamond touches on in passing but then drops for the rest of the series. He seems to be saying that Western success is merely the result of evil impulses like greed and desire to conquer. This fits the politically correct narrative about the 'evil' West and 'innocent' natives. Unfortunately he can't express this idea openly because it's too simplistic and fails to account for reality.

The answer to that question is, at least in part, provided by Victor Davis Hanson's book "Carnage and Culture" where he demonstrates how Western armies often won the day when outnumbered by virtue of superior military discipline.

By the end of the three part series his thesis dissolves in contradictions and tediously repeated visual images. The first episode is interesting if a bit elementary, the other 2 are depressing and hollow. He fails to explain, or even attempt to explain, how it was that the scientific and industrial revolutions happened in Europe and nowhere else.

If you are in an anthropology class and get an essay question on the final, and you don't answer the question, what sort of grade will you get?

The question "Guns, Germs and Steel" purportedly set out to answer was: "Why do white people have so much cargo, but we New Guineans have so little?"

"Cargo" originally referred to the manufactured goods brought in on cargo planes, and became a general term to describe all sorts of stuff, including pens, paper, radios, factory made clothes, books, boxes of cornflakes, fertilizer, cars, etc. So the question is why Western countries make more manufactured products than under-developed countries like New Guinea.

GG&S instead talks about how, beginning some 10,000 years ago, various agricultural techniques, crops and animals contributed to the development of more advanced, complex civilizations. Diamond doesn't say whether he took an introductory cultural anthropology course, but if he had, he would have probably learned about this; the theory has been around for at least 40 years.

He then talks about why Western countries were able to conquer and colonize the Americas and much of Asia: Because of superior weapons and, incidentally, germs that killed people in these new regions by the millions. OK, got it. But when the Europeans arrived, they weren't bringing tons of cargo in their small sailing ships, beyond that needed to do a little bartering.

The "cargo" comes much later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and has little to do with agrarian practices, and much to do with the industrial and scientific revolution that was born in Europe. So to answer the New Guinean's question, Diamond should have explained the origins of science and technology, and its applications in industrial and factory production, including the assembly line.

But why did this scientific and technological revolution occur in Europe, when the Middle East, China, and ancient Greece and Rome had at least some science and technology that just sort of petered out?

Diamond doesn't say.

He does say that he thinks the New Guineans and the people of other under developed countries are as intelligent as people in developed countries. I agree with this; there is absolutely no link between genetics of groups and IQ. What you do have is a vast difference in education and knowledge.

Europeans found a way to, in a sense, pool individual intelligence and knowledge. A vital step was the creation by Queen Elizabeth at the suggestion of Sir Francis Bacon of the first government supported and funded scientific societies. These societies enabled scientists to share and critique each others' work, and to publish these findings for anyone to read, a truly revolutionary idea.

This not only spurred further scientific research that spanned generations, but made it possible for any common person with common sense to apply these scientific principles to technological innovation and produce a product that could make them rich. Throw in mass produced books, newspapers and journals by movable type printing presses, patent protection, and a free market with economic mobility, and you got "progress," a self-propelling growth of new ideas, new technology and commerce. This is where the "cargo" comes from.

Why didn't regions like China, India or the Muslim Middle East create "progress"? In part, because they valued tradition and stability more highly. Another reason is because they value the social group more highly than the individual; Europe placed more value on individual non- conformity. This is why these regions still lack self-generating progress (much of China's "progress" comes from industrial espionage, theft of intellectual property and general plagiarism).

If you want to learn where the "cargo" came from, what you really need to watch (and read - the documentary is the key work, but he talks very fast) is James Burke's "Connections," a true work of genius. I have read a fair amount about the history of science, and I can tell you that I have never seen anything like what Burke's account. Sure, he relies on the historical work of others, but he shows the chance, non-linear connections between science and technology, step by step, and why they occurred. (It's available on Youtube.)

For these connections to occur, there needed to be a culture that encouraged the sharing and expansion of knowledge. That's what was different about Europe over the past 500 years from every other region of the world in all other eras of history. You can't explain that by guns, germs and steel.

So if this were Jared Diamond's essay test in cultural anthropology, he would deserve a C minus, for not answering the question. There is far too much redundancy, with the second and third episodes spending far too much time recapitulating the previous episodes -- padding the program. It is also short on originality over what social scientists already knew, though there do appear to be some original ideas. But it is still worth watching, puts those ideas together in a novel way, and provides a perspective on the history of the world that many people will find interesting, especially high school students.

I get that Prof. Diamond is trying to answer the big questions of "why?" some civilizations invented "cargo" (material goods) and others didn't. I have not read the book, and just watched the first episode of this miniseries.

A lot of the details of the argument ring true to me. The worldwide distribution of beasts of burden, types of farm crops and weather patterns all certainly have an effect of the rise of civilizations. But this can't be the whole story, or even the major part.

When showing Diamond interacting wit the New Guinea folks, the emphasis was on the New Guinea struggles to get food. Hunting is inefficient, and farming is difficult labor due to the crops and lack of domesticated animals. Okay - but what was really striking is what was the lack of a written language. At the end of the episode, Diamond says something to the effect that if only geography had been different, then the New Guineans would have invented the helicopter, and not Westerners.

The problem with this argument, is that in order to invent a helicopter, you must first understand fuel, energy, materials, densities, air molecules, physics, weather, and hydraulics, just to name a few things. I agree with Diamond that the New Guineans are plenty smart to understand all those things, but in order to generate knowledge, a society must have a physical way to disseminate knowledge (scrolls, printing presses, paper, etc) and culture of acceptance of new ideas (criticism of new ideas is fine, indeed necessary to refine knowledge). Diamond didn't discuss the role of culture at all, and this is a huge omission.

Ultimately any theory of the rise of civilizations can be supported by cherry-picking data. This is a historians job, not a scientific endeavor. Diamond has his theory, and any number of people have their own theories. I personally don't find Diamond's theory to be very compelling.