Reddit reviews Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
We found 10 Reddit comments about Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
NORTON
There are two books that I have read that have done a great deal to help me understand the dynamics that allowed Europe to rise to dominance starting in the 17th century: Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Why Nations Fail. The former talks about the geographical and ecological considerations that stifled development outside of Europe. The latter talks about the role if extractive institutions, set up by colonial powers, that remained after decolonization and prevented previously-colonized nations from developing. I can't do their arguments justice here, but if you are sincerely interested in changing your view I strongly recommend reading those books. I'll try to address your specific points:
> it seems to me that those of European heritage have made the most long-lasting and significant contributions to mankind. To name a few: space travel, internet, modern technology and medicine.
All of these marvels are founded in the scientific method, which developed during the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment has been successfully exported to multiple non-European countries, most notably Japan. So, it's not just Europeans who are able to appreciate Enlightenment values. But the Enlightenment did start in Europe. So, to believe that the Enlightenment proves that Europeans are superior you must prove that the cause of the enlightenment was the innate character of Europeans, and not any contingent factors. That is...very difficult to do. And, yes, the burden of proof is on you, here, since the null hypothesis is that the biological distinctiveness of Europeans is unrelated to the start of the Enlightenment.
> I realize Arabs of ancient times also contributed a lot in the realms of mathematics and medicine.
Yes. Different civilizations have become world leaders at different points in history, which makes the idea of some kind of innate superiority of one civilization really hard to believe. It just so happens that the Islamic Golden Age occurred at a time when it was impossible to communicate over large distances, while the European Golden Age (which we are now in) occurred at a time when communication is instantaneous and we can project military power across the entire world. In other words, the global dominance of Europeans is historically contingent, not an immutable fact of biology.
>One argument I frequently hear to counter this position is that other nations have failed to develop due to colonization and exploitation.
This is an excellent argument, and is, essentially, correct.
> if they were on the same level as Europeans intellectually and strength wise, why couldn't they have found the means to fight back and turn the tables?
Although they were at the same level as Europeans "intellectually and strength wise", they were not at the same level technologically. Europe was in a golden age, Africa, India, and China were not. Again, the key here is that the European Golden Age occurred at a time when it was possible to travel the oceans and project military power worldwide. That was not the case in the Islamic Golden Age or the Indian Golden Age, which explains why those civilizations didn't conquer the world in the way the Europeans of the 19th century did.
>Instead of Europeans doing what they've done to others, why couldn't it have been the other way around?
Guns, Germs, and Steel does the best job of explaining this. In short: Europeans were blessed with livestock that could be domesticated and a consistent climate that allowed them to produce lots of food more efficiently that other regions of the world could, which allowed them to spend more time on other things, like technology. Again, the full argument is the length of a (very good) book, so I suggest you pick it up to get more details.
You also read Jared Diamond, am I right?
Great Book.
This is a loaded question. As you can expect, there are many reasons, some of which are still being debated.
One main thing to remember about the Native Americans is that they, until the first Europeans began to come (1500s ish?) and interact with them, didn't have any contact with the the rest of the world. Contact between Asia and Europe and even Africa spread many cultural ideas and innovations. The native Americans didn't have the Silk Road. Simply put, it's hard to be as advanced as the rest of the world when you're working all by yourself.
Why didn't the inuits in the north trade and diffuse "advancement" with the Iroquois in modern New York, or with the Incans and Mayans? An interesting (and probably true) theory is that this is due to the axis of the americas versus the axis of the rest of the world.
Throughout the rest of the world, people spread and migrate easily because they generally are moving on an east to west axis with much less change in latitude. The Americas are relatively narrow in comparison to the "Old World," and most "spreading out" would be done on a north-south axis. This is MUCH harder to do on a large, noticeable scale because different latitudes come with different temperatures, climates, etc. People in modern day New Mexico did not have the necessities to travel to modern day Alaska, and vice versa.
It's important also to note that while the native Americans as a whole weren't as "advanced" as the rest of the world, certain societies (specifically the Incas and Aztecs) built massive and advanced cultures and civilizations that awed even the Spanish conquistadors.
Edit: I'm so happy that everyone is mentioning Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. This is truly a great book that broadens your world view!!
In addition to the previous answers, I would mention that Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, while not highly regarded by academic historians, contains a long discussion about the scholarship leading to the numbers of indigenous population deaths from European-borne disease that we can cite today. If you're interested in understanding the subtlety of the conversation, you'll find a good summary there.
The book's overall thesis, which is far from a consensus, is that Europeans were able to spread so widely and successfully across the globe because they had a unique mix of natural and animal resources, as well as a variety of disease immunities that were not shared by other cultures. So, the guns, germs, and steel were all on the side of the Europeans, thanks to the random distribution of minerals and resources around the globe. Again, not really a consensus, but it explains how you can have this conversation without falling back on which culture is "better" in some false way.
One important element of Diamond's argument is that it is perhaps impossible to know exactly how large indigenous population centers were, and therefor how many people were killed by disease. The invading Europeans weren't exactly interested in keeping track, and probably couldn't have done so even if they wanted to. Indigenous American cultures were also structured far differently from Europeans, not in small part because the Americas are enormous and everything was a big more spread out. This contributed to their lack of disease immunities common in Europeans, but how could an entire hemisphere of people be completely smallpox-naive?
Some historians might answer that, because the continent of Europe had a somewhat unique mix of livestock and because that livestock lived in close quarters with Europeans, disease jumped from animals to humans more quickly, and there were many more diseases in all the animals that Europeans lived with. As a result, there was a much richer tapestry of disease flooding through Europe, and that same domestic animal disease vector was almost completely absent from the Americas, which have virtually no useful native livestock species apart from the llama.
So Europeans, especially children, died from infectious disease a lot. The ones that survived carried diseases that European adult society was largely immune to, since the surviving adults had almost certainly been infected with and survived the same diseases in childhood.
Smallpox, for example, was startlingly common in Europe at the time of the American invasion. The disease is deadly, virulent, impossible to cure with contemporary medical techniques. (sidebar: Even today, smallpox is a terrifying disease. If a terrorist somehow released an airborne infectious smallpox virus in Times Square, modern Americans could expect an terrifying near-epidemic before the disease was contained, very similar to the Spanish Flu of the early 20th century. Part of that is because we don't have many doses of smallpox vaccines, and another part is because there is no known cure for smallpox infection, even today. But the biggest problem is that no one is immune to smallpox anymore because no one gets it—the last known case was in 1977 in Somalia—putting us in virtually the same immunity situation as the indigenous American populations during the European invasion.) As might be expected, it shredded the population of the Americas, which not only had no immunity to the disease, but were likely utterly unfamiliar with how the disease spread.
I hope I haven't made too many errors in my blunt summary of the topic, but hopefully this can give you a sense of an answer to your question.
And done!!!
Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Why Evolution is True
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (free online!)
Guns, Germs, Steel
The God Delusion
Misquoting Jesus (Conceptional this is very compatible with Mormonism--the Bible not being translated correctly so we need the BoM!--but the specifics about what got mistranslated are devastating as Mormonism doubled down on the mistranslated parts. oops.)
Don't even both learning anything more about Mormonism. Just be widely read and you'll soon see that the Mormon version of history is in incongruent with reality. This will cause cognitive dissonance and when you're ready to resolve it, go back and read independent sources about Mormonism and it will be very obvious that the narrative they indoctrinated into you as a child doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Check out the book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393354326/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521472428&sr=1-1&keywords=guns+germs+and+steel+by+jared+diamond.
Depends on what you liked about it I guess. It's a bit unique in the way it covers so many topics.
If you liked the stuff about evolution, check out https://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Fish-Journey-3-5-Billion-Year/dp/0307277453/
If you liked the history:
https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393354326
If you like true crime:
https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Beside-Me-Ann-Rule/
Or if you just liked how it went from topic to topic and you could never really predict what would be next, try this podcast:
https://stownpodcast.org/
In his book Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond addresses this. He says that no large carnivores have been domesticated because feeding them would take more effort than they're worth. The only large domesticated animals are herbivores. He actally has quite a discussion about which animals were domesticated and why.