title: Guns, Germs and Steel by: Diamond, Jared M. published: 1998 read: 2023-02 preview

Yep, the more serious stuff, and I believe to remember that the author took a few decades to finish this one.  Well, me too, with a factor 1/50 or so.  Still.

So, Diamond gives an answer to the question: what is the reason that Europe started dominating the world?  Why did not the Incas slaughter the Spanish?  The Africans sell the French, the British and the Dutch?  The Indians kill the “Americans”?  The Aboriginals do away with the Brits?

The answer is, of course, not so simple if one starts considering the last few tens of thousands of years, in which humanity went from hunters–gatherers to farmers.  

Spoiler alert; skip this, if you don’t want me to paraphrase the main argument of this fascinating book.

In short: it has to do, for a large part, with that transition.  As hunter–gatherers, tribes can’t grow.  Everyone look for their own food, and that’s it.  But once agriculture comes in, there is food surplus, and people can start specialising.  There can be food people, but also then fighters; rulers; material wealth; and then judicial and financial systems evolve, and expansion.  Also more complex medical systems, because people start living in large groups, leading to epidemics.  

These epidemics, by the way, were crucial in a large part of conquering the world, e.g., killed ninetysomething percent of Indians (those tribes in America, I mean); while the Europeans were immune and/or had medications.

Why did such systems evolve in Europe?  Two reasons: wheat and barley growing in very fertile areas; and appropriate breedable animals of appropriate size (horse, cow, sheep, pig, goat; did I forget one?).  If at at all available on other continents, similar beasts were already made extinct by humans thousands of years ago.

There you go: the combination of animal power and fertile soil did it.

I am not a great fan of factual books. For that, I liked this one a lot, and have since been using it as “my” knowledge on the history of mankind. And it answers a bunch of questions about this part of history. That gives it a good basis for further understanding of human development. I forgot why Diamond needed so many pages to make this story, but he does it well and makes it all credible.

I’m left with a feeling of, OK, but why do humans have to conquer all the time? Take the Normans, the Vikings. Somewhere between 800 and 1100 they went “shopping” around the world for wealth, and killing and stealing where they liked; also being a great factor in ending the Christian reign of Charlemagne. Why? Charlemagne himself was instrumental in establishing Greek culture in Persia. Caesar killed all Celts in France to reinhabit it with Romans. And Ghengis Khan did great stuff for humanity by killing between 30 and 80 million people. All those great rulers of the past…