In the first half of the book Diamond presents his thesis why certain continents are richer than other continents. This is fascinating reading as long as Diamond describes pre-historic times. His arguments are the strongest I have seen so far. Diamond is much less convincing when he moves to historic times and tries to explain differential performance within a given continent. The second half of the book describe individual continents and is quite tedious, but there is no need to read this section unless you have special interests in a particular region.

The first half or the book is so interesting and thoughtful so it is a must read.

Btw, do not buy the DVD with Diamond, it is quite dull. The book is much better.

This is a truly profound book, and quite elegantly written. The central insight is how geography has been a main driving factor in the development of civilizations. Diamond comes at this thesis from several different angles, most importantly after looking at how development has differed between different regions.
Diamond builds a very compelling argument, and is helped by his intimate knowledge of many places - knowledge which comes from actually having spent quite a deal of traveling. He is also helped by his diverse background - as a scientist he has also written two brilliant books on biology (The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (P.S.) & Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality (Science Masters)).
This is popular science at its best, easily understandable, yet deep in insight.

This is a fascinating study of how societies developed, however, it's frustrating that Diamond takes such an ideological position at the outset, ruling out some factors simply because he doesn't like them.

"Inexcusably for an evolutionary biologist, Diamond fails to inform his readers that it is different environments that cause, via natural selection, biological differences among populations. All of the Eurasian developments he described created positive feedback loops selecting for increased intelligence and various personality traits (e.g., altruism, rule-following, etc.)."

Dr. Diamond's magnum opus for which he has won an Oscar. Or maybe it was the Pullet Surprise. Something like that.

Unrivaled, in the experience of this humble reviewer, in either clarity or insight, GGS, is one of the best books I have ever read. Diamond is a gifted writer and is able to present complex issues simply and clearly. He also presents several interesting hypotheses regarding the evolution of civilization about how the humans had uncomfortably little to do with anything. We are the products of the plants and animals we domesticated. So go read the book before I domesticate you...

It took me a while to open this book, as I was absolutely convinced that, with a title like Guns, Germs and Steel, the subject could only be war. Eventually, however, I opened the book, and was absolutely fascinated by it. The premise of the book is Yali's question. Yali, a native of New Guinea, has never been out of his country, is "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"
The answer to this question takes about 430 pages of very interesting reading, going back to the rise and spread of food production, from food to guns, germs and steel, around the world in 5 chapters. The writer, Jared Diamond delves into pre-history, how and why the nomadic hunter/gatherers became more stationary, and started to form villages, and what effect that had on their way of life. What is necessary to sustain villages. The advance of specialisation. Why some areas were more susceptible to change than others. The geographic climate that helped or hindered.
As I say, this is a very interesting book, and one that will long live with you. However, it is perhaps rather hard reading, insofar as it is written probably for college students. It is not a book that should be read in a hurry, but should be savoured.

I know everyone says this - just adding my voice.

The author needs to define his terms - what does he mean by 'smart' when talking about the New Guineans. What does he mean by calling Australia 'backwards'? I wish he developed these vague/biased terms.

I was tempted to give Jared 5 stars based on the extent of his information and his strength of his argument. I gave him only 4 stars because, although I think he is 75% correct, I think he has ignored or denies factors that may be important.

Early in his book, Kali, an intelligent New Guinean and would-be shaker and mover asks a significant question. "Why does the white man have more cargo [goods, stuff, useful things] than we do? Jared, correctly in my opinion, refutes the politically incorrect view that New Guineans must be less intelligent than whites. Quite the contrary, Jared asserts. New Guineans, on the average, are more intelligent than whites.

A little like Jared, I've had the opportunity to live with 'primitive' people and have seen their superiority to me in things like bushcraft, tracking, spacial orientation and other things....yet.... they are not necessarily more intelligent than I am. Their experience is simply different than mine. I agree, however, that they are, on the average, intelligent people dealing with problems somewhat different those of 'civilized' individuals.

Jared attributes the dominance of Western Man over almost all other peoples of the earth because of our geographical location and because of the fortuitous presence of large wild animals that had the potential for domestication i.e. animals like the auroch, wild horse, ibex, wild sheep etc. In the Americas, for instance--despite the fact that the meso-Americans and Andean peoples may have been superior to Western peoples in terms of agriculture--the only domesticatable wild animal available to them may have been the vicuna. Therefore, native-americans were obliged to carry things themselves. Hence Cortes conquered Mexico, rather than Montezuma conquering Spain.....but....We know, from toys discovered that the ancient Americans understood the wheel. Why then didn't they discover the wheel-barrow propelled by a single person? It would have made the construction of monuments and almost everything else, a lot easier.

Maybe. On the other hand, the horse, cattle, sheep, goats and a myriad of other creatures were available to the peoples of the entire 'old world.' Despite this, Europeans and Middle Easterners made the most effective use of them. Why?

Indeed, why? Let me postulate another couple of scenario. Let us imagine, that human societies spread over the earth are like the atmosphere spread over the earth. Why a storm in one place and not another? Perhaps a very minor, almost imperceptible perturbation, causes major changes down the line. A slight shift in atmospheric pressure over China and there's a devastating hurricane in Louisiana...a slight cultural perturbation, perhaps in now Albania, and Pizarro burns Atahualpa at the stake? Maybe the 'superiority' of Western culture is no more than a happenstance.

Also, although now largely discredited, who really knows if there are differences in the way that different brains work? This is not to say that certain brains are necessarily 'better' than others but that they might be different. Also, who is to say that industrialized, 'civilized' society is better than hunter gatherer societies? In many ways, it isn't. Civilized society is ulcerogenic. Hunter-gatherer societies are probably more satisfying and fun. Genesis, in the Bible, talks of man being thrown out of Paradise and having to work by the sweat of his brow. This is almost certainly an allegory about the replacement of enjoyable and care-free hunter-gatherer existence as opposed to the drudgery of early civilization.

Why is domination a function of a pressure wave produced by black powder in a pipe propelling a leaden slug? Luck?

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Conquest of Mexico

A rich gravy of erudition smothers a thin slice of slightly rotten meat, i.e. the thesis (it's all geography & luck) is undoubtedly wrong, or, at the very best, accounts for tiny proportion of the discrepancies he attempts to explain. For detailed analysis, see the # 1 review by Christopher Smith (whom I don't know). There's more critical thought in that review than in the book itself.

On the other hand, the "gravy" alone, the research and erudition, is probably worth the price of the book. Otherwise, see David Landes, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations."

I'd wondered for a long time why certain aspects of history that you learn as facts in school turned out the way they did, e.g. why European diseases basically wiped out Native Americans but not vice-versa. I bought the book because I heard that Jared Diamond answered these types of questions. He does, to an extent. At the very least, he gives convincing arguments for why history turned out the way it did based on the traits of geographic regions. The best part about having read this book is that now I feel like I can open a world map and use it to explain to someone why Eurasia came to dominate the world and not people from somewhere else. The argument is speculation, but it's convincing and sound enough for my satisfaction. In that way, it's exactly what I wanted.

The only problem isn't in the content; it's in the fact that Diamond just didn't write a perfect book around that content, so I'll give him four stars instead of five. If it had been about two-thirds the length, it might have been perfect. Instead, I sometimes got the feeling that Diamond was thinking, "I've made a really great point here, and it's done, but if I talked about this example for a few more pages this book would look nice and fat wedged into the shelf at the bookstore." Nevertheless, my questions did get answered, and overall I recommend this to anyone who wants a geographic perspective on historic trends.

Jared Diamond is a professor of physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, he expanded into evolutionary biology and biogeography. This book attempts to explain why certain parts of the world became predominant given the basic equality of humanity (p.16). Diamond questions whether "civilization" is better (p.18). It brings a longer life span, less murder, better medical care, etc. Are "Stone Age" peoples more intelligent than industrialized peoples (p.19)? [The former are not misinformed by the corporate media.] There is a difference between densely populated societies and sparsely populated societies (p.21). "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among the peoples themselves" (p.23). When Diamond talks about modern events you can see his faults. The Cuban Missile Crisis was in 1962 (p.279). There was no "isolationism" in the US as per the Briand-Kellogg Pact (p.412). That problem of "China's unity" is really the faults of any monopoly (p.413). That applies to the transistor as well (p.417).

The basis for development is to produce enough food to support craft specialists who develop technologies. This leads to governments, large nations, armies, wars of conquest, navies, and fleets for colonies. Diamond identifies several groups of environmental factors to explain the history of the world for the past 13,000 years (p.31). Can a single book provide all the answers? There was a huge change in human capabilities about fifty to a hundred millenia ago (p.40). [The simplest explanation for the demise of animals is the consumption of their eggs and young by humans (p.43).] Chapter 2 tells about the Maori invasion of the Chatham Islands in December 1835. They exterminated the Moriori people (p.53). This shows how environments affect human societies (p.54). Diamond compares Polynesian societies to show the effects of the environment (p.58). The population had the same ancestral society yet their cultural differences are explained by their varying environment (p.65).

Chapter 4 explains why agriculture and livestock are the foundation for human advancement. Both require more labor than in hunting-gathering societies (p.105). Livestock that give milk provide more calories than from a slaughtered animal. Vegetables and animals are adapted to the climate by latitude (p.184). Diseases limited the range of domesticated animals (pp.186-187). Diseases are spread by livestock and pet animals (Chapter 11). Until WW II diseases killed more soldiers than battle (p.197). European cities had a higher death rate than rural villages before the 20th century (p.205). Writing transmits knowledge with accuracy, quantity, and detail (Chapter 12). Is Diamond correct about Iraqi literacy (p.216)? Weren't Europeans more advanced in nuclear science (p.225)?

Diamond's comments about inventions are wrong or misleading (p.243). Otto invented his engine to provide power from a waste product from oil refining (p.247). Henry Ford `invented' the automobile specifically to replace horses (p.243). Steam locomotives were designed to replace horses and their expensive fodder. Diamond is wrong about the supersonic transport (p.249). You could buy a Dvorak keyboard if people wanted them (p.248); just as a country could drive with a steering wheel on the right. Chapter 18 summarizes this book. Chapter 19 tells about the peoples and languages of Africa. Diamond seems very sure in describing events from 5,000 years ago when he wasn't present as an observer. The condensed version of this book made an interesting movie on TV. This book should have fewer pages by eliminating redundant or extraneous material, and be faster paced. I wonder if there are any opposing viewpoints to his opinions?

i haven't finish reading this book, i'm on the tenth chapter...but it is really interresting and that all ican say about this book.

Diamond traces the spread of human culture, language, and empire-building across the globe in terms of "geographic determinism"--a pejorative term he deplores: ". . . Societies developed differently on different continents because of differences in continental environments, not in human biology."

Specifically, he traces the ultimate causes that some human societies who (literally and sometimes figuratively) developed guns, germs and steel were able to subjugate the continental areas of the globe: domestication of plants for food, domestication of animals for food, transportation, power, and military purposes, and east/west continental axes that enabled food production techniques and the resulting political organization, language, and technology to spread most quickly.

Diamond makes a compelling case in a way that takes the racism out of much of the "manifest destiny" writing that surrounds this topic. Doing so, however, he takes a purely evolutionary view of human history. No allowance is made, for example, for events such as a single point of creation, dispersal of language from Babel outward (even though it would address a mystery he is unable to solve), or a world-wide flood which wiped out existing patterns of human dispersal and restarted human history from another single point.

This book is interesting for those who prefer non-fiction. I bought this book for a friend.

Without a doubt, this has got to be the worst book I have read in a long time. What would have been an interesting blurb in the sociology section of 'Time' magazine, becomes hundreds of pages of pure mindless dreck in the hands of Jared Diamond. Let me save you a few days of your life by summing up the book: The reason why white, western / European societies flourished and the rest of the of the non-white, non-western world did not was because the European climate and terrain favored domestication of plants and animals while the rest of the world's terrain and climate did not. Therefore, western man had more free time on his hands to invent stuff and put a man on the moon, while the rest of the world, to this day, is still screwed up. Wow. I am so annoyed I read this book and wasted so much time doing so.

While this book is difficult for many high school students, its ideas and the methods used to create his thesis are concepts your students can get. This would be a great jumping off point for an interdisciplinary unit and as the years go on, history and social studies teachers need to change the way we present history if we want students to be ready for the 21st century. In a time when students can get facts right off of Google faster than we could give it to them, we need to teach history as concepts and not focus on students learning only facts. Diamond interprets the facts to create a a thesis on why certain societies excel and come out on top. You could compare and contrast his thesis to the Human Web or the Kennedy's Rise and Fall of Great Powers. On its own, GGS could be a powerful tool in the classroom and teachers of all disciplines should read this text. All texts are biased and no one should expect perfection so if you want to be convinced of one particular view then you shouldn't read it. But if you are open to learning more and having more questions when you are finished (which is not a bad thing), then you should read this and give select passages to students.
For non-teachers, this book really makes learning history easy and interesting which may be different from your own educational experience.

Many reviews claim this book to be biased and bereft of some important additional components that have influenced human evolutionary history. Diamond actually does mention many of these components, but seems to think they're merely subsidiaries of the broader agents behind history's patterns (which he lists as government/religion, germs, writing, and technology).

This book isn't perfect, but it's a great start and leaves the door wide open for those interested in pursuing the study of human evolution. It's boldest claim is that geography was the greatest SINGLE determinant of the evolution of human societies (continental axes, climate, biology, geology, etc.). He doesn't claim geography did it all and does indeed discuss important other factors such as cultural receptivity to new technology, progress, and change. But I think it's interesting that he goes so far as to claim that the essence of it all is mere geographical location, and from that simple starting point our many complex differences have spawned.

I believe there are few individuals (I'm talking especially about laypeople like myself here) who won't benefit from reading Guns, Germs and Steel. While Diamond's hypothesis may not necessarily represent the *complete* picture, may be biased, and may not be indisputable, it indeed "lays a foundation for understanding human history" as Bill Gates reviewed it.

Diamond provides a convincing, well-worded argument leading the reader to believe geographical differences between continents played a major role in shaping the fates of human societies, at the very least.

Diamond initiates the book with a simple but valid and very interesting question of why the current power distribution in the world is as it is as opposed to some other way. He takes us thru from the point where everything was equal - at least it appeared to be so - to where we are now and attempts to explain the way things progressed as they did and how different parts of the world advanced as opposed to others; not only how this took place but also why it did not take place in other parts of the world too.

Going thru the arguments are really enjoyable, un-put-downable and teaching. It can be used as a great teaching material and that was the reason I have ordered a new copy for my son who is 14 for him to learn, question and understand intricacies of these social and technological developments as well as appreciate the value and capability of all societies.

Diamond concludes every chapter as well as exploring in detail in the last chapter the importance of consequential circumstances in these events. This makes us more knowledgeable in relation to where we are as societies and allows us to understand that this is not only result of the intelligence of races but also environmental consequences. This is an important message that needs to be expanded all around the world, specially in the west and lately in the far-east that we should look at our successes with more humility and stop acting as if such successes are only attributable to our own race and/or being the chosen one.

I endorse this view and therefore I recommend this book to everyone who wants a better understanding of the history of these developments in our world.

Diamond explores the link between geography, and the way that societies develop, on a grand scale over thousands of years. It's the ultimate history book, in which world events shrink to localised inevitabilities in the grand scheme of things. It's a study that relates to history in the same way that "climate" relates to "weather".
Most illuminating and thoroughly researched are the relationships between the available species of plant and animal available to early farmers, and the development of farming and with it "civilization". One uses the word with caution given the extensive discourse that Diamond has upon the subject. Of similar interest is the way that linguistics are used to underpin and cross-reference archealogical data concerning the movement and development of peoples on a global geographical scale.

The thing that really brings the book to life is the personal passion of Diamond himself. He has worked at close quarters with "primitive" peoples - a word whose use he would object to - and he is at pains to debunk the notion of one society being in some way genetically superior to another. He mixes research data with personal anecdotes and experiences in a way that illuminates and illustrates what he is saying, without losing the scientific objectivity of his principal vantage point.

The book is well-written, has a clear structure and flows well. At certain points it can be a little laboured, some commonsense points being explained over several pages, but this usually happens when he is tackling some commonly held misperception. He uses the question of a New Guinea friend, basically "why do some societies do better than others" as opening background, though as an attention-grabber it seemed a little weak and as a "red thread" came over as slightly contrived. The book really gets into its stride in about the second or third chapter. However, this is a very minor criticism of a work of masterly proportions and execution.

I would thoroughly recommend this book. If nothing else, the reader will be able to watch television documentaries about far-flung places and spot the triteness and popular inexactitude of some of the commentary. However, in terms of driving a stake into the ground, and saying "this is where we come from" and why, this is the defining work, and well deserving it is of its Pulitzer Prize status.

Great book but it easily could have been reduced to 30 % of it's size. It got so repetitive that I thought I had actually lost my page and wound up at an earlier chapter. This author completely beats his topics to death. Had I known what I was getting into, I would have bought the documentary DVD instead.

Guns, Germs and Steel is a scientific historical treatment on the rise and fall of civilizations and the reasons why the western world is considered successful. In many ways Jared Diamond has built a city with one stone. He has established the necessity for the scientific method in history, reversed the problem of a western biased orientation of the analysis and identified several challenges to a racist explanation for western success.

The book comes about as a result of a fundamental question raised by the friend of the authors from New Guinea. Yali asked in a roundabout way why whites have been more successful than blacks. Diamond felt that human genetic diversity in the form of racism did not answer this question and proceeded to produce this deep treatise which looks more at environmental factors as the causal agent of success or failure.

Chapter 1: Up to the Starting Line
This chapter does a brief synopsis of the evolution of humans and deals with the Great Leap Forward, extinctions and the Clovis culture in Americas in 11,000 BC.

Chapter 2: A Natural Experiment of History
Diamond shows that common stocks can produce very diverse cultures based on the environment. He cites the case of the Maoris victory over the Morioris on the Chatham islands in 1835. Both are Polynesian decedents.

Chapter 3: Collision at Cajamarca
Francisco Pizarro conquers the Inca emperor Atahuallpa in Cajamarca Peru in 1532. Guns, germs, steel and horses decide the victory as well as the Inca making serious mistakes many times over. It is this situation that requires an explanation as to how things got to this point and is what this book is about.

Chapter 4: Farmer Power
Food production is a huge part of this book and occurs frequently throughout. The book might well have been called 'farming' there is so much of it. This is an extensive fact based chapter that deals with food production. A lot of it is raw data and tables. Crops and animal domestication get the full treatment. There is an important link between animals and human germs brought up.

Chapter 5: History's Haves and Have-Nots
This chapter deals with carbon dating and is an extension of the last chapter verifying the types of crops and animals various civilizations had or didn't and why.

Chapter 6: To Farm or Not to Farm
Diamond explains the slow progress of farming and why hunter gatherers simply had more than early farmers but farming eventually outgrew hunter-gathering. He explains why some civilizations didn't adopt it based on lack of domesticated crops and animals and or inappropriate environments.

Chapter 7: How to Make an Almond
Because wild almonds are poisonous Diamond explains how mutations and breeding selection produces edible crops. More importantly he discusses why some crops are not edible and how this effects civilizations depending on their environment. Some civilizations had it easier than others.

Chapter 8: Apples or Indians
Here the Fertile Crescent richness is compared with places of sparse productivity. It becomes clear that a very low percentage of biological life can be domesticated for human consumption.

Chapter 9: Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle
Some animals cannot be domesticated and thus domesticated animals must be imported. This chapter is about the failure to domesticate certain animals and why. It is also about the spread of domesticated animals.

Chapter 10: Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes
Geography plays an important part in how wide a naturally occurring or bred species can spread. East to west is much easier than north to south because of climate. This explains why species spreading across Europe and Asia is easier than up and down North and South America.

Chapter 11: Lethal Gift of Livestock
Animals are responsible for a lot of human diseases and plagues. Diamond links animal husbandry and large populations with developing immunity against epidemics.

Chapter 12: Blueprints and Borrowed Letters
The evolution of writing. This chapter may be worth the book alone. Diamond covers the evolution of writing and is one of the reasons why this book (containing writing!) has a nice twist in its tale. Writing is important because it became a method of communication over long distances and record keeping for farmers and supplies.

Chapter 13: Necessity's Mother
This deals with the Cretan Minoan Phaistos disk of 1700 BC and is a continuation of the previous chapter but deals more with why technologies develop. Diamond correctly identifies that technologies don't spring out of nowhere. They evolve.

Chapter 14: From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy
The evolution of governments. This is a heavy data and fact laden account of the evolution of governments from small bands to tribes to cities. It is all about how societies get organized.

Chapter 15: Yali's People
Here Diamond applies everything we have learned to the conquest of New Guinea by Europeans. He shows how essentially they are the victims of their own environment. The conquest of Australia is also examined in the same way.

Chapter 16: How China Became Chinese
This is about how China's many inter-civilizations interacted and the Austronesian migration of people to the Far East and Australia.

Chapter 17: Speedboat to Polynesia
Moving on from the previous chapter Diamond explores the colonization of Polynesia and the evolution of the double-canoe.

Chapter 18: Hemisphere's Colliding
Revising everything, Diamond goes back to Chapter 3: Collision at Cajamarca and attempts to explain how things led up to that point. Food production, domestication, metallurgy, weapons, cavalry, transport, writing and political organization lead the way. The environment is given a reason behind the slower development of these points by the Inca. Diamond then reveals that the Norse, not Columbus, were the first Europeans to visit the Americas through Greenland.

Chapter 19: How Africa Became Black
This examines how Africa evolved internally, the various tribes involved and their long battles that have lasted centuries as well as the slow movement of technologies and discoveries from the north to the south.

Epilogue: The Future of Human History as a Science
Diamond puts forward his case for scientific history, dispenses with the idiosyncratic Great Man theory, points out that there are social factors involved and possibly even chaotic ones before calling on the use of the scientific historical method to predict future outcomes for humanity.

There is no arguing the point that Diamond is making and he has established it very scientifically. Environmental conditions have an impact on how a civilization will appear and act. This is Darwinian in every sense. Using the examples of the same genetic stock from the same culture developing into two opposite lifestyles in short spaces of time because of island separation and geological differences is a good argument. You can't help but note the degree of luck and opportunity involved in success and as Diamond so aptly puts it, this is much more about the quality of real estate than the quality of a race. This is not to say that slight genetic variations don't make a difference, they do and Diamond doesn't challenge that as some have wrongly accused of him of saying (as a note the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins often cites Diamond's work). What Diamond does is to challenge that genetic variations within a species are a sufficient explanation for the success of white man. He may be riding a wave of political correctness with this book but he does dispute justifications for racism scientifically. He also breaks down absolutism by showing that success is relative when it comes to doing one's best in the environment they are in. As he points out, Aborigines conquered some of the harshest lands in the world.

Diamond himself knows the problem with his oversimplification. His findings when applied to all civilizations throughout history will turn up contradictions that fly in the face of his reasoning but he has explained the big picture of social conquest and doesn't need to shuffle genes to do it.

There are a few more problems with Guns, Germs and Steel though. His overall reasoning touches on environmental determinism. Diamond does deal with this serious predicament by elaborating on the social conditions and cultural qualities at play. He believes and states often that human choices influence things. Diamond does his best to cover these in the political organisation sections and throughout but a type of environmental determinism does emerge as the overall message even if it is caricatured by his critics to mean geological determinism without human influence. Diamond is not saying that. What is really the problem here is not that Diamond says the environment plays a major role in the forces at play but that he doesn't do enough to challenge the view that environmental determinism is the sufficient explanation for the success of white man. Diamond doesn't say it is sufficient but it is his conclusion that amounts to most of what he is writing. So he leaves himself open and quite frankly gets intellectually decked quite easily because a lot of people leave this book thinking as environmental determinists. Environmental determinism is just as false as racism. We go from prejudice based on skin color to prejudice based on country. He really deals with this problem in the space of just a paragraph in the epilogue and that just doesn't cut it.

The other problems are that sometimes the picture plates are not linked to anything in the text and this book is such a torrent of facts that casual readers may find themselves skipping huge sections about which part of which country developed wheat or camels first and in which quantities just to get to his overall point. Guns, germs and steel can be taxing at the best of times because of this. There is also an expectation that maybe you would find more about evolutionary biology or important battles along with at least some case made for genes. Instead the evolution is minimal, important battles limited and no genetic defence appears. This is all about how much corn Europe can produce, how many horses Asia can tame and how much politics does the Zulu need.

There are other weaknesses here but he does have a huge task set for himself into 400 pages. It is doubtful that the truth is the complete opposite of what Diamond is suggesting but more of a deeper elaboration of what is being said while attributing more socio-economic reasons for success along with his geographical ones. You can also just play the probability card by saying 80% of humans lived in Eurasia but the improbable does happen and has happened and the geological explanation needs to be covered anyway.

Experts in world history may view this work as being too simple and even go as far as to call it wrong, but Diamond's task is to show the importance of environmental factors not just genetic ones when it comes to the progress of modern humans. Experts want to make that environment plus socio-economic but both are on the same side when it comes to criticizing those who argue solely the race card.

The main point behind reading Guns, germs and steel is that it changes how we think about ourselves and the conditions leading to how we got here. At the very least your horizons will be broadened and at the very most you will be hitting the environmental determinism socio-economic debate and both are a far cry from discrimination ideologies based on Ethnic identities.

(As an end note it is my understanding that Diamond is aware of these criticism and answered it by... writing another book that includes more of a socio-economic dynamic, called 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed'. So see you there for a follow up review).

Guns, Germs and Steel is a scientific historical treatment on the rise and fall of civilizations and the reasons why the western world is considered successful. In many ways Jared Diamond has built a city with one stone. He has established the necessity for the scientific method in history, reversed the problem of a western biased orientation of the analysis and identified several challenges to a racist explanation for western success.

The book comes about as a result of a fundamental question raised by the friend of the authors from New Guinea. Yali asked in a roundabout way why whites have been more successful than blacks. Diamond felt that human genetic diversity in the form of racism did not answer this question and proceeded to produce this deep treatise which looks more at environmental factors as the causal agent of success or failure.

Chapter 1: Up to the Starting Line
This chapter does a brief synopsis of the evolution of humans and deals with the Great Leap Forward, extinctions and the Clovis culture in Americas in 11,000 BC.

Chapter 2: A Natural Experiment of History
Diamond shows that common stocks can produce very diverse cultures based on the environment. He cites the case of the Maoris victory over the Morioris on the Chatham islands in 1835. Both are Polynesian decedents.

Chapter 3: Collision at Cajamarca
Francisco Pizarro conquers the Inca emperor Atahuallpa in Cajamarca Peru in 1532. Guns, germs, steel and horses decide the victory as well as the Inca making serious mistakes many times over. It is this situation that requires an explanation as to how things got to this point and is what this book is about.

Chapter 4: Farmer Power
Food production is a huge part of this book and occurs frequently throughout. The book might well have been called 'farming' there is so much of it. This is an extensive fact based chapter that deals with food production. A lot of it is raw data and tables. Crops and animal domestication get the full treatment. There is an important link between animals and human germs brought up.

Chapter 5: History's Haves and Have-Nots
This chapter deals with carbon dating and is an extension of the last chapter verifying the types of crops and animals various civilizations had or didn't and why.

Chapter 6: To Farm or Not to Farm
Diamond explains the slow progress of farming and why hunter gatherers simply had more than early farmers but farming eventually outgrew hunter-gathering. He explains why some civilizations didn't adopt it based on lack of domesticated crops and animals and or inappropriate environments.

Chapter 7: How to Make an Almond
Because wild almonds are poisonous Diamond explains how mutations and breeding selection produces edible crops. More importantly he discusses why some crops are not edible and how this effects civilizations depending on their environment. Some civilizations had it easier than others.

Chapter 8: Apples or Indians
Here the Fertile Crescent richness is compared with places of sparse productivity. It becomes clear that a very low percentage of biological life can be domesticated for human consumption.

Chapter 9: Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle
Some animals cannot be domesticated and thus domesticated animals must be imported. This chapter is about the failure to domesticate certain animals and why. It is also about the spread of domesticated animals.

Chapter 10: Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes
Geography plays an important part in how wide a naturally occurring or bred species can spread. East to west is much easier than north to south because of climate. This explains why species spreading across Europe and Asia is easier than up and down North and South America.

Chapter 11: Lethal Gift of Livestock
Animals are responsible for a lot of human diseases and plagues. Diamond links animal husbandry and large populations with developing immunity against epidemics.

Chapter 12: Blueprints and Borrowed Letters
The evolution of writing. This chapter may be worth the book alone. Diamond covers the evolution of writing and is one of the reasons why this book (containing writing!) has a nice twist in its tale. Writing is important because it became a method of communication over long distances and record keeping for farmers and supplies.

Chapter 13: Necessity's Mother
This deals with the Cretan Minoan Phaistos disk of 1700 BC and is a continuation of the previous chapter but deals more with why technologies develop. Diamond correctly identifies that technologies don't spring out of nowhere. They evolve.

Chapter 14: From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy
The evolution of governments. This is a heavy data and fact laden account of the evolution of governments from small bands to tribes to cities. It is all about how societies get organized.

Chapter 15: Yali's People
Here Diamond applies everything we have learned to the conquest of New Guinea by Europeans. He shows how essentially they are the victims of their own environment. The conquest of Australia is also examined in the same way.

Chapter 16: How China Became Chinese
This is about how China's many inter-civilizations interacted and the Austronesian migration of people to the Far East and Australia.

Chapter 17: Speedboat to Polynesia
Moving on from the previous chapter Diamond explores the colonization of Polynesia and the evolution of the double-canoe.

Chapter 18: Hemisphere's Colliding
Revising everything, Diamond goes back to Chapter 3: Collision at Cajamarca and attempts to explain how things led up to that point. Food production, domestication, metallurgy, weapons, cavalry, transport, writing and political organization lead the way. The environment is given a reason behind the slower development of these points by the Inca. Diamond then reveals that the Norse, not Columbus, were the first Europeans to visit the Americas through Greenland.

Chapter 19: How Africa Became Black
This examines how Africa evolved internally, the various tribes involved and their long battles that have lasted centuries as well as the slow movement of technologies and discoveries from the north to the south.

Epilogue: The Future of Human History as a Science
Diamond puts forward his case for scientific history, dispenses with the idiosyncratic Great Man theory, points out that there are social factors involved and possibly even chaotic ones before calling on the use of the scientific historical method to predict future outcomes for humanity.

There is no arguing the point that Diamond is making and he has established it very scientifically. Environmental conditions have an impact on how a civilization will appear and act. This is Darwinian in every sense. Using the examples of the same genetic stock from the same culture developing into two opposite lifestyles in short spaces of time because of island separation and geological differences is a good argument. You can't help but note the degree of luck and opportunity involved in success and as Diamond so aptly puts it, this is much more about the quality of real estate than the quality of a race. This is not to say that slight genetic variations don't make a difference, they do and Diamond doesn't challenge that as some have wrongly accused of him of saying (as a note the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins often cites Diamond's work). What Diamond does is to challenge that genetic variations within a species are a sufficient explanation for the success of white man. He may be riding a wave of political correctness with this book but he does dispute justifications for racism scientifically. He also breaks down absolutism by showing that success is relative when it comes to doing one's best in the environment they are in. As he points out, Aborigines conquered some of the harshest lands in the world.

Diamond himself knows the problem with his oversimplification. His findings when applied to all civilizations throughout history will turn up contradictions that fly in the face of his reasoning but he has explained the big picture of social conquest and doesn't need to shuffle genes to do it.

There are a few more problems with Guns, Germs and Steel though. His overall reasoning touches on environmental determinism. Diamond does deal with this serious predicament by elaborating on the social conditions and cultural qualities at play. He believes and states often that human choices influence things. Diamond does his best to cover these in the political organisation sections and throughout but a type of environmental determinism does emerge as the overall message even if it is caricatured by his critics to mean geological determinism without human influence. Diamond is not saying that. What is really the problem here is not that Diamond says the environment plays a major role in the forces at play but that he doesn't do enough to challenge the view that environmental determinism is the sufficient explanation for the success of white man. Diamond doesn't say it is sufficient but it is his conclusion that amounts to most of what he is writing. So he leaves himself open and quite frankly gets intellectually decked quite easily because a lot of people leave this book thinking as environmental determinists. Environmental determinism is just as false as racism. We go from prejudice based on skin color to prejudice based on country. He really deals with this problem in the space of just a paragraph in the epilogue and that just doesn't cut it.

The other problems are that sometimes the picture plates are not linked to anything in the text and this book is such a torrent of facts that casual readers may find themselves skipping huge sections about which part of which country developed wheat or camels first and in which quantities just to get to his overall point. Guns, germs and steel can be taxing at the best of times because of this. There is also an expectation that maybe you would find more about evolutionary biology or important battles along with at least some case made for genes. Instead the evolution is minimal, important battles limited and no genetic defence appears. This is all about how much corn Europe can produce, how many horses Asia can tame and how much politics does the Zulu need.

There are other weaknesses here but he does have a huge task set for himself into 400 pages. It is doubtful that the truth is the complete opposite of what Diamond is suggesting but more of a deeper elaboration of what is being said while attributing more socio-economic reasons for success along with his geographical ones. You can also just play the probability card by saying 80% of humans lived in Eurasia but the improbable does happen and has happened and the geological explanation needs to be covered anyway.

Experts in world history may view this work as being too simple and even go as far as to call it wrong, but Diamond's task is to show the importance of environmental factors not just genetic ones when it comes to the progress of modern humans. Experts want to make that environment plus socio-economic but both are on the same side when it comes to criticizing those who argue solely the race card.

The main point behind reading Guns, germs and steel is that it changes how we think about ourselves and the conditions leading to how we got here. At the very least your horizons will be broadened and at the very most you will be hitting the environmental determinism socio-economic debate and both are a far cry from discrimination ideologies based on Ethnic identities.

Have you ever heard of "the Galileo Defense?" The phrase describes the phenomenon of honest, accurate science attempting to defend itself against ideology-driven accusations of those who are opposed to the implications of the scientist's work. A good example would be Darwin as he faced charges of atheism, satanism, etc. If the Galileo Defense has an opposite, it would certainly apply to this book. To save you the trouble, Guns, Germs, and Steel basically articulates the first moderately believable and (most importantly) politically correct attempt to explain why the West was able to enjoy a position of relative dominance during the past few hundred years. Unfortunately, his assertions rely on numerous glaring omissions and flawed assumptions that really undermine his credibility. The existence of peanuts is one notable example that will be easily understood by those who've read the book. Those who haven't should do themselves a favor and skip ahead to L. Ron Hubbard.

I found that Guns, Germs, & Steel filled in a lot of missing pieces but the best thing was it gives a fresh outlook on why we have so many equalities among races. Until we find hard evidence we will continue to believe some of the old racist notions of genetic determinacy.
Rahasya Poe, Lotus Guide Magazine [...]

I can't add much to the good reviews, but I wanted to suggest that if your child is taking history in school or shows an interest before that, please buy them this book.

This action will reflect the main premise of this theory, it will create the environment for growth.

Mr. Diamond must be admired for this epic work on humanity. Is it perfect, of course not, but what is perfect. He gives us a different way to view history and how geography has influnced it. I enjoyed the read and have assigned it to my students for reading and reviewing. The majority of them said it was worth the effort and it has given some instances of lively discussion in the classroom. We should tip our hats to a man who at least gives us something to think about.

G, G, & S is pretentious but shallow and illustrates the corruption of too much of American academia where political correctness masquerades as objective scholarship. It is as false as Lysenko's "biology." Diamond sets up a strawman, "biological differences," and destroys him with his academic beanbags of dubious validity.

I won't recount all of this unfortunate book's deficiencies, as many reviewers have already done so in voluminous detail. It is a strained and selective exposition of history in a vain attempt to support the author's preconceived opinions, i.e., that geography determines everything, which even casual observers would conclude is nonsense. It completely ignores the roles of human creativity, innovation, energy, drive, and motivation. To Diamond everything is predestined by geography. This sounds vaguely religious, i.e., politically correct.

To Diamond, physics, engineering, and mathematics would have been developed in New Guinea, if not for what? Who knows?

An alternative exposition on roughly the same topic is, "Carnage and Culture," by Victor D. Hanson. It displays vastly superior, i.e., objective scholarship.

Diamond's final analysis proves a good point. Many dominant countries today are not only in Europe and East Asia, but are also ones that have been largely repopulated by the descendants of those peoples, like the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Taiwan, and Singapore. Other countries rising to power today, like Southeast Asia's "Little Tiger" economies (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines), also contain descendants of invading conquerors nearly 10,000 years ago. China and India are now back in power to their historical positions. The Eurasian continent is the only one with a advanced history since the beginning of the Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution. Look at South America, and you'll find that the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) are ones with mostly European-descended populations like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, and the poorest ones are the ones with the largest indigenous, native populations like Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala. Diamond is so right in this regard.

Pulling together research from a wide variety of fields, Diamond sets out to answer the question of why civilization as we know it developed and flourished in some parts of the world, while other areas were left behind.

The gist: it's all about the geography. In order for civilization to develop, people have to be living in large groups, with food plentiful enough so that some people can be spared from the business of survival to specialize in organization and crafts. In order for that to happen, they must have agriculture and livestock. In order to have agriculture and livestock, they must have either native animals that are domesticable or trading opportunities to obtain them. In other words, it all comes down to where they started from.

I admit to a little hesitation before I chose this book. I read through several reviews, and quite a few reviewers claimed it promoted the concept of racial superiority, and I really didn't want to end up reading several hundred pages of racist propaganda. Still, the majority of the reviews were positive, and there were also quite a few negative reviews complaining that it overlooked the racial factors, so I was intrigued enough by the question to give it a try.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is decidedly not racist propaganda. Diamond bends over backward to ensure that it's not, and even raises the very intriguing question of who's actually smarter--the westerner with the comfortable lifestyle or the jungle native who has to depend on his own knowledge and judgment for survival.

What I enjoyed most about the book was how thorough it was, putting together... well, I was going to say all the pieces of the puzzle, but when it comes to human history, that's just not possible--but enough of the puzzle to see the big picture, rather than just the small segments you get by focusing on a single discipline. It's not enough to describe, for example, how the development of language affected civilization--it's put into perspective along with all the other developments happening at the same time.

A lot of reviewers have gone into detail about author Jared Diamond's arguments in Guns, Germs and Steel, so I won't repeat them. Essentially, he says that geography was a major factor, although not the only factor, in determining why some societies are more advanced than others. He also says that cultural and individual factors played a role in the success or failure of individual societies.

Overall, GGS is easy to read and understand. It can get a little boring and does go into too much detail on occasions but mostly it is an engrossing book. Diamond starts many of the chapters with a set of questions, gives some background, and then answers those questions. Even if you're not very knowledgeable when it comes to this subject area the format makes it for the most part understandable.

Some negative reviewers complain that Diamond is anti-European/anti-white and is simply making excuses for less successful societies. But this isn't true. It is not just Europeans who have conquered and displaced others peoples. Diamond goes into a lot of detail about Bantu farmers transplanting other groups in Africa and Chinese domination of Asia.

What Diamond does do is put to rest the idea of genetic superiority. He goes into detail about various groups, such as Polynesians, that were separated into different environments. He explains how those groups, even though the same genetically, fared very differently based on the environments of the islands they settled.

He also explains that even though some peoples are primitive by our standards they are not unintelligent, which is something many people in advanced societies believe. However, Diamond does support the idea of cultural superiority to some extent. He says that conservative cultures that are not open to innovation either gets transplanted or taken over by those that are open to innovation.

This book is really a macro look at the development of human societies. For example, the book's goal is not to explain why European peoples (including Americans) currently dominate the world instead of the Chinese (although some reasons are given). Rather, the goal is to explain why Eurasians had the potential to dominate but peoples like Native Americans and Australian Aborigines didn't.

..it wouldn't be "one damn fact after the other," a comment on the study of history that Diamond references. His historical book is the antithesis of the "big man" version of history, so-and-so meets X, and says this and that, and decides Y. His is a study of history in its broadest swaths, examining the proximate reasons for a given outcome, but always striving to ground his work in the ultimate causations.

One of the numerous strengths of this book is Diamond's multidisciplinary command of the increasingly fragmented fields of human knowledge. He can readily draw on linguistic theories, archeology, paleontology, literature, agriculture, etc. I found his brief explanation of Carbon-14 dating lucid, with the important emphasis on the recently discovered variability in this isotope in the earth's atmosphere over the last 50,000 years. He draws on his long anthropological experience in New Guinea to buttress his central premises, and I personally found his account of the human expansion into South East Asia, Australia and Polynesia most illuminating. Another high point was his description of the Spanish defeat of the Incas at Cajamarca in 1532.

He provides very plausible answers to seemingly difficult questions as to how 168 Spaniards could defeat 80,000 Incas, as well as the central question of the book, "Yali's question," why the "whites" had most of the "cargo," and the New Guineans so little. His thesis is that the environment and geography are the paramount determinants, and it was where particular mammals could be domesticated, and certain grains could be cultivated that determined where "civilizations" would eventually arise. With a class of individuals not devoted to acquiring food full-time, they had the time to develop technological improvements to the human condition. In addition, an incidental condition occurred due to man's proximity to domesticated animals - diseases, which certain individuals developed immunity to, and which decimated populations not previously exposed, as in the Americas. He does not totally dismiss that quirky "human factor" of a few great and not so great men, and specifically speculates how the world might have been different if Hitler had been killed in the 1944 assassination attempt, or even earlier, in a 1930 car accident.

Aside from the numerous thought-provoking aspects of the book itself, I found myself reading many of the 93 1-star reviews of this book posted at Amazon (out of at 1048 as of this writing). How could this many people strongly dislike the book? (By way of comparison, another best seller, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" has only 3 1-star reviews out of 216). Many simply denounced the book for being "politically correct," meaning that he provided a non-racist answer for why some societies are more technologically advanced than others (but not necessarily happier!). Others fell asleep (!) reading this enthralling account of humankind's development, but I really could find no one who indicated factual errors (some were claimed, but I wondered if they had actually read the book, because they made assertions that Diamond did not.) I too looked for assertions I would contest, and felt his statement that the wheel would not have helped the people of Mesoamerica without domesticated animals to be incorrect (for anyone who has ever used a wheel barrel), but later in the book, Diamond also raises this point.

Overall, a superlative book, and a start towards making the study of history a science.

Although this book does contain a decent number of interesting historical accounts, the interpretation as to the cause of this events is eerily similar to the Marxist view. That is, availability of resources, not ideas, drives history and shapes human civilization. Tragically, this is the essential thesis of this book and it is wrong.

Jared Diamond has written a comprehensive readable book describing some of the prominent reasons that societies have failed in the past and often succumbed to invaders. It seemed well written to me and although I thought the title a little pretensious, the subject matter is good.

The problem with attributing human social development to externalities is that it glosses over the essential differences between all societies- that is how labor is socially organized and who decides how to allocate and use the social surplus. While geography tempers social development, it is the method of social production that is the overwhelming determinant of social success. Slave societies out produce hunter-gatherers. Feudal out-produces slave, and wage labor out produces slavery and feudal systems.

What is more more instructive is how current social relations restrict and hamper social development by wasting social production on useless activities like military ventures and individualized social decision-making. e.g. Individuals riding in cars instead of individuals sharing mass transportation, a more socially efficient transportation system.

This is a must read for those who are interested in both history and the future of humankind!

The Aborigines of Australia built mankind's first known watercraft 40,000 plus years ago, yet today they are the most primitive stone age people of any continent. Why is that?

Did the mother of invention arise from people living in harsh tropical/desert climates forced to invent in order to survive? Or did it arise in colder climates more readily because people were trapped in their warm home with nothing else to do but experiment? Was it both?

Most critics of this book sound to me like they have only read the summary on the back of the book. Their arguments are preconceived.

Even if you are one of those critics, read it. Disagree with it afterwards if you still want to, regardless I think it will add new perspective to human history for you. If you decide you want to write your own book based on how genetics and anthropometry shaped human history, by all means do so. I'd gladly read that too.

But don't just shrug if off before hearing him out. That's selfish cynicism and counterproductive to scientific understanding.

It is remarkable and disappointing that Diamond's attempt to discover reasons for industrialization and technological development in certain cultures skirts the history of MONEY.

Ever wonder how the Europeans managed to conquor the Americas, and not the other way around? Well, if you're unfortunate enough to have that much time on your hands, there's now a book tailor-made for you! Jared Diamond details how some civilizations have come to conquor others, and not vice versa. Obviously, they do this by utilizing guns, germs, and steel (gee, wonder where he gets the title from?)...but the underlying question, of course, is HOW certain societies got those advances, and how others did not?

I'm not a professional historian, biologist, anthropologist, or what-have-you, so I can't state boldly that Diamond's evidence holds up. But his argument does have a certain logic about it. Not saying there aren't other factors that he should consider (environment can't be the only reason people do what they do), but he does present a convincing argument, at least to this layman (and the fact that we're still reading this book 10 years later suggests professionals have found it food for thought as well).

A note to casual readers, as many of you probably are. There are sections of this book that become a bit monotonous; the three chapters detailing the rise of food production in various world societies is a bit mind-numbing (blame our violence-soaked media), and there's a lot of information that gets tossed around here without thorough explanation. Never fear, though--this book is well-worth the read, and is largely entertaining. Diamond's prose would make for a good textbook (there are questions in the back accompanying this volume; not sure what class you could read this in, but I would reccommend it for anyone interesting in trying it); he places a bit too much emphasis upon New Guinea (where he has performed years of field research), but we can't blame him for writing about what he loves, can we? "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is an interesting, thought-provoking book about the rise and fall of society throughout the ages. Highly reccommended for anyone with even a passing interest on the subject.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in human history. The ideas in the book are innovative and thought provoking -- a look at human history that gives new perspective. Also very important is the suggestion in the Epilogue that a science of human history should be developed to study the issues raised in the book in more detail. A great idea.

The book is very well written -- well organized and easily understandable. The author uses many contractions that don't often appear in formal writing, but in the context of this book, that less formal style works.

The author incorporates many disciplines into the discussion -- anthropology, biology, history. The concept of available native food groups and available domesticable animals is well presented, with historical examples from all human civilizations. Whether you ultimately agree with the author's perspective (and I personally think he mostly got it right), the book raises so many interesting issues that it is required reading.

From a biology point of view, this book was fascinating. Jared Diamond explained plant and animal domestication and the movement of human populations in a very clear way. His exploration of how different societies developed at different rates was also very interesting in that he claims that this difference is based only on geography. This even involves the east-west and north-south axes of the continents and obstacles to communication. And I use the word claims intentionally. Although he makes a good case for his theory, he does not present any alternatives. Just because his theory seems logical, it does not mean that it is the only possible explanation; it might be one of several. Yet Diamond presented his thesis as a proven fact. Indeed, the only shortcoming of this book was that the author got preachy at times, which annoys me even if he is "preaching to the choir." In other words, even if I agree with the thesis, I don't like being beaten about the head with it. But if you don't mind the dogmatic tone, then this book is well worth the time.

Reading this book I wasn't able to buy into his arguments. Too many sweeping generalizations and too many factual errors in the text. For example, when talking about bananas he writes about early man selecting for smaller and smaller seeds until there weren't any more. Modern seedless bananas are that way because they are triploid and sterile. This is something that has happened fairly recently, probably within the last couple of hundred years. Sloppy terminology, factual errors and the sweeping generalizations ruined this book for me.

In 1532, in the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca, a decisive moment took place during the greatest collision in modern history. A ragtag group of 168 Spanish soldiers, led by the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, captured the Inca emperor Atahuallpa who was surrounded by his army of 80,000 soldiers in the heart of the Inca Empire. In "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Jared Diamond, uses this dramatic episode of human history to trace a chain of causation starting with a set of proximate factors and leading to ultimate causes explaining this outcome and that of many similar collisions between colonizers and native peoples. Steel swords and armor, guns, horses, maritime technology, and writing systems used by the Spaniards, as well as diseases that arrived with the Europeans, and resulted in a power struggle dividing the Inca Empire, are the proximate factors that Diamond lumps in the term "Guns, Germs, and Steel". He then goes into pursuit of the ultimate causes in the chain. He seeks the broad patterns of history that explain why the rise of complex human societies unfolded differently on different continents over the last 13,000 years, since the end of the last ice age known as the Pleistocene. After extensive research and analysis on world history, geography, botany, zoology, archeology, linguistics, anthropology, and other fields, he concludes that differences in continental environments, not in human biology, led to the rise of complex human societies.


The ultimate factor according to Diamond concerns the rise of food production. This is influenced by several environmental factors such as the availability of domestic-able plants and animals. It is not sufficient to have Mediterranean-like climates which are the most suitable for growing crops. Such climates exist in California