10 things I learned from Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
1. As recently as 1800 large parts of the world were pre industrial, hunter gatherers and even Stone Age
Until they were conquered by people with guns many parts of the world had huge empires with Iron Age, or even Stone Age tools.
2. New Guinea has over 1000 distinct languages
Wow!
3. Geography has a lot to do with technological advancement
Often technology was used to overcome some geographical shortcomings, mathematics and language were less necessary in climate where everything for survival was around you.
4. If you go back 11,000 years any continent might have emerged as the most technologically advanced and dominant
5. Warfare using horses (cavalry) was dominant for 6000 years until WWI
If you had horses and your opponent did not you were likely to win. This was a key advantage of the Spanish when conquering South America.
6. Used measure of calories per acre as a military advantage in farming
As plants and animals were domesticated, farmers could get a lot more calories out of a given acre than hunter gatherers. Because they were able to consolidate the calorie production, it was able to be tended by fewer people and give people more free time to fight each other.
I had never heard this used as a metric, but it certainly makes sense, and is a very concise way to describe the advantages of increased food production.
7. Food production techniques are on a continuum
Most cultures were not 100% farmers or hunter gatherers. There was a mix and also a wide definition of what "farming " entails: throwing seeds or burying tubers to grow new food all the way to "modern" concepts of row based farming.
8. Author’s theory that early farming techniques led to accidental selective breeding
He said that if you plant by just throwing seeds on the ground, only the ones that are easy to grow will sprout and turn into trees or barley or whatever you're trying to grow. In this way, after a few generations, only the easiest to grow seeds will have survived to be replanted. He goes into a lot more detail about this type of accidental processes.
9. The first chapter of “The Origins of Species” was about farming and crop selection
I didn't bother to fact check this one but sounded plausible enough.
10. The prehistoric domestication of plants and animals was an important factor influencing how the world exists today
The author pointed out that most farm crops started in the Fertile Crescent. So places with similar climates all over the world from areas in Africa, South America, what is modern day, California, and Australia were able to develop similar agriculture. He also points out that out of thousands and thousands of plants, and a few hundred edible varieties there are only about 12 types of plants that are commercially grown in large quantities today. This is due to centuries of selection by humans. What we know is corn today started off as smaller than your thumb and has been growing and selected into the relatively gigantic ears that we get today.
I also learned that the author is far more interested in this topic than I am. He spends the first half of the book talking about this. I'm glad somebody's interested!
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