guns germs and steel

I recently watched a three part documentary called Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. I highly recommend it in case you haven't seen it yet and haven't read the original book upon which it was based. I will attempt to write a short summary which will hopefully trigger you to see the documentary or read the book.

In the documentary Diamond basically explains why it is that Europeans were able to conquer the world, and why there is such inequality between the peoples on this planet these days in terms of the resources that they possess.

Image from the Guns, Germs, and Steel documentary, showing the fertile crescent and the directions in which people,
certain crops and farm animals were able to spread.

The theory starts in the so called fertile crescent, which is an area which is located in what is today divided into nations such as Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, and so on. Many thousands of years ago the people in this part of the Middle East were farmers that 1) were able to farm wheat and barley, and 2) held domesticated animals such as pigs, sheep, goats, cows, etc. Because these people produced food in such a productive manner (using animals for meat, milk, clothing and especially muscle power, as well as sowing crops in stead of gathering or planting them), they were able to create a surplus of food. This wasn't the case in other areas on the planet, where the people had to devote a lot more time to feeding themselves, and because they hunted and gathered, they also moved around a lot.

In the fertile crescent the people lived in one place (because of their way of managing crops and domestic animals), where they constructed long lasting homes. As their villages grew bigger, they were able to produce more food because of the increased population. This increase in population and the change in the way of life changed their society/ organisation. Because of this change, some people could devote themselves to doing other things than producing food: developing new skills and technologies. One of those important new technologies involved using fire to heat stones, which could then be used to make plaster for use in their homes. This led to learning how to work with fire, which eventually led to being able to forge steel with it.

Another important fact that the documentary highlights, is that these farm animals and crops were indigenous to the climate zone in which Europe, Northern Africa and a big part of Asia are situated. Therefore these animals and crops were able to easily spread along the same line of latitude, but not far south or north of it (see image), which is what the people in the fertile crescent were also forced to do when the area was hit by drought. This led to the transformation of societies along these lines, and into Europe. Because the people who now lived in Europe had an advantage compared to the rest of the world, their development was sped up greatly.

In the next thousands of years the people living in Europe evolved into civilisations which then fought amongst themselves, and thusly developed advanced weaponry and other technologies were useful in battle. Eventually they crossed oceans in order to satisfy their greed for new resources in the new world. The documentary gives the example of the Spanish heading into Inca territory in South America. They had a great advantage over the indigenous peoples there because they brought with them their developed technology (i.e. guns and high quality swords). Another "weapon" they used without knowing, were the germs that the Spanish carried into Mexico years earlier. Smallpox was killing people from Central America all the way down to the Inca Empire, while the Europeans were able to withstand diseases much better because they had encountered several plagues in the past. Because of this, possibly up to 95% of the indigenous people were decimated by the raging plague, so the continent was virtually emptied for the Europeans to colonize.

All these facts combined give a pretty good explanation to the question I mentioned earlier. The people in Europe developed faster because they had a geographical advantage. The benefits of living there gave them a head start, which people in many other parts of the world didn't get. It is still a theory of course, but it sure sounds a lot more convincing to me than attributing the advantage of the European peoples to them being bolder or more inventive.

Note: The documentary also goes on to describe why the Europeans failed to advance their colonies further north on the continent of Africa, and obviously explains what I have explained above in much greater detail.