Why were some cultures able to conquer others? Why do some populations barely scrape by when others have more loot than closet space? Is it genetics? Work ethic? Plain dumb luck?
Or is geography the answer? That's what Jared Diamond posits in Guns, Germs, and Steel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book and, now, a three-part PBS series.
Diamond's theory goes something like this: Societies in agriculture-friendly environments began to master cultivation of their crops and domestication of their animals. Able to spend less time seeking food, these populations devoted more effort to the development of new technologies, some of which (guns, steel) gave them an enormous edge when confronting other societies.
Another advantage for agricultural societies was resistance to deadly diseases. Populations that lived with domesticated animals developed protections against certain diseases; hunters and gatherers didn't. Diseases crossed the oceans, conquerors survived and indigenous people did not.
Diamond discussed his provocative theories during a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles.
Wired News: What's the big question you ask in the PBS series?
Jared Diamond: The series asks why, among the world's many human populations, it was the human populations of the Eurasian continent and specifically Europe that expanded around the world and ended up conquering other people. Why didn't other peoples expand and conquer them?
WN: What's the answer?
Diamond: In one sentence, it all has to do with geography and environment. It has nothing to do with biological differences between the different populations.
WN: Location, location, location.
Diamond: You got it.
WN: But geography isn't the only factor, obviously -- your new book, Collapse, demonstrates how societies can self-destruct.
Diamond: Geography has effects. Some of them are hard to shake off, and others can be shaken off. An example of a geography that's impossible to shake off is that of the Arctic. There is no way the Inuit people could develop agriculture.
At the opposite extreme, if you want to understand why South Korea is rich and why North Korea is in abysmal poverty, you don't look at the geography. You look at the different political and economic systems.
WN: What mechanisms are at play?
Diamond: The reason why some people got that head start on developing civilization was not that they were smarter or had the Judeo-Christian work ethic. They had the good fortune to live in areas with the greatest diversity of valuable wild plants and animals suitable for agriculture and domestication.
WN: What has been the conventional wisdom here? Why do people think Europeans were able to dominate the Americas and Africa?
Diamond: I would say a frank statement would be, "I really hate to say this, but it's brains." People think Europeans are smarter or they have a Judeo-Christian work ethic. Few academics would say it straight-out but when cornered they may have said it.
WN: And there's strong evidence to the contrary?
Diamond: What happens when you put Europeans and non-Europeans together on a footing of equality? It happened in Greenland in the Middle Ages. The Norse lost their guns, germs and steel and came into conflict with the Inuit. If European brains had been the advantage, the Norse should have exterminated the Inuits. But the Inuits exterminated the Norse.
WN: That's what you describe in the book as a "natural experiment." It's amazing how you weave together all sorts of research -- history, biology, linguistics and many other fields -- into a coherent, convincing theory.
Diamond: The evidence comes from languages, from the pigs and domestic animals, and from human bones and genetics, from the plants, from archeology. What strengthens the argument is that all of those different lines of evidence point to the same conclusion.
WN: It seems like more and more scientists are synthesizing research from different places.
Diamond: Scientists are trying to do it in some areas. I think it is unusual to do it to the extent I did it in Guns, Germs, and Steel. My professional background is as a scientist interested in history, so that I had the technical background in genetics and physiology and animal behavior and languages.
Historians are trained to go into archives and assess documents. They aren't trained in assessing the DNA of pigs. But the DNA of pigs is important to understand human history.
WN: What kind of response did you get to your book?
Diamond: Some people disagree, but a surprisingly small minority. It's been a pleasant surprise how widely Guns, Germs, and Steel has been accepted. Resistance has been mostly from the extremes of the political spectrum.
WN: In the series and the book, we see that the people of the Fertile Crescent, where agriculture and civilization took great leaps forward, destroyed their environment. What can we learn from that?
Diamond: That those on top on history now aren't necessarily going to be on top for the rest of history. A dramatic example is Iraq, where writing and agriculture were invented. Today literacy in Iraq is around 50 percent, and Iraq is anything but a leader in agriculture. Iraq lost its head start.
WN: Partly because of environment?
Diamond: A big reason the populations of the Fertile Crescent fell behind is that they had the misfortune to live in a fragile environment which they messed up, unintentionally, by deforestation and salination and soil erosion. Those on top ended up down below. That's a lesson for today.
