In a world where there is an increasing tendency to ignore or write out of history many of the more unpalatable actions of our ancestors, this book makes a refreshing change. Its underlying thesis - that the resources available on the Eurasian continent were greater than those available on the other continents - is not new, but Prof Diamond brings to his work a rigour and a use of the advances of modern understanding that sets his work apart.

The main thesis of the book is that Eurasians became dominant because of a combination of three circumstances:

1. Eurasia had more high yield plants capable of domestication.
2. Eurasia had more large wild mammal species capable of being domesticated.
3. The main axis of Eurasia is East-west rather than North-South (as it is for Africa and the Americas).

I don't plan to repeat the arguments of the book in detail, but the basic thrust is that many more crops were domesticated in Eurasia than elsewhere. And that's not all - the crops domesticated in Eurasia provided a better nutritious package than the crops domesticated elsewhere. The surplus allowed the creation of the first urban communities, as opposed to bands of hunter gatherers.

Later on it was Eurasia that also had the most domestic animals - more than the rest of the world put together. This had a twofold effect. Yet again there was a rise in productivity allowing even more urban consolidation, and with it the flowering of writing and new types of political organisation.

Domesticated animals, though, were a mixed blessing, because it was from them that the epidemic diseases - plague, influenza, typhus, cholera, etc came. As the diseases mutated to use humans as hosts, rather than domestic animals, the humans were setting up all the correct conditions for the spread and survival of epidemic disease - dense urban areas for local spread, and inter-community trade for spread to new areas.

It was these epidemic diseases that slaughtered vast numbers of inhabitants of the other continents on the arrival of Europeans. The superior technology of guns and steel Europeans brought with them merely finished the job.

Finally, the spread of domestic plants and animals was much more noticeable in Eurasia than in either Africa or the Americas. Why was this? Prof Diamond suggests that the root cause lies in the axis of Eurasia. Crops and herds are essentially a temperate innovation, and in Eurasia because of its east-west axis there is a loosely linked belt of temperate regions stretching from the Western European Atlantic coast right the way through to the Pacific coast of China. This meant that independent discoveries could easily be transmitted between the different temperate zones.

Contrast this with Africa and the Americas where temperate zones are separated by desert and tropical jungle. In the American case there were three separate areas where domestication took place - The Mississippi delta, MesoAmerica, and the High Andes - but there was little or no diffusion of crops between them because of the intervening jungles and deserts.

This brief review doesn't do justice to Prof Diamond's carefully reasoned arguments - and I haven't even mentioned his excellent treatment of human migrations in the ancient world - I'd urge you to get yourself a copy of this book and read it. There is much in it that will surprise you. I was totally fascinated, I want to know more. I especially want to know why Eurasia had all the best domesticable crops and animals...

Alan Lenton
25 July, 1998

'Guns, Germs and Steel' by Jared Diamond.
Pub Vintage/Random House ISBN 0-09-930278-0
(Note: the publisher and ISBN may be different for the US Edition)

Order this book from Amazon.com.

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