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Feb 04, 2018dnk rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
The thesis, well-known at this point, is that it is not inherent biological or "racial" differences that account for variations in success during certain points in history, but rather the geography and climate peoples started out in. The better the conditions, the earlier the development of food production, which then leads to a population growth and more "developed" government institutions and innovations such as writing and military technology. The darker part of the thesis is that early exposure to animals leads to both the evolution of hybridized animal-human diseases (chicken pox, the bubonic plague, smallpox, etc.) and immunity to them. As Diamond notes, this is the deadliest weapon "civilizations" have in their arsenal against peoples not as far along on the food production/complex government path, as shown by the conquests of both the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia. Although Diamond is careful not to pass judgment or pull at heartstrings (which may be warranted in many instances), he does note that the pivotal moment in the long race for development was the extinction of many of the large mammals in Australia and the Americas. Had those animals survived and been domesticatable, the fate of the Americas in particular might have gone the other way. However, Eurasia was the continent with the most geogrpahic advantages, the most significant being the east-west axis, which goes hand in hand with similar latitudes throughout the continent. Similar latitudes, in turn, make it easier to pass crops from one end of the continent to another. That Africa and the Americas are dominated by a north-south latitude means that it is difficult to pass crops froms one end of the continents to the other. Towards the end, Diamond is careful to point out that while geography gives a head start, it is not a guarantee, and political considerations must be taken into account when trying to determine which country- or even business- will win. Throughout the book, Diamond mentions in several places that although the Americas and other regions hadn't achieved certain milestones by the time they met with the Eurasians, that didn't mean that they weren't going to if left alone. He also notes that in the indigenous cultures he's worked closely with, he's met some brilliant inventors. I thought the thesis was inherently not racist, and I'm not getting- at all- some reviewers complaints about that. In fact, at the beginning, Diamond points out reasons why the average member of the indigenous population of New Guinea is arguably more inherently intelligent than the average member of a given Western civilization: because New Guineans have a longer history of hunter-gathering, the primary killer among them is murder. Evading such a death requires more intelligence than evading death by infectious disease, which is more likely to fell a Westerner. Also, because hunting and gathering for food requires more skill and knowledge than going to a supermarket for food, survival doubly demands intelligence. Finally, most New Guineans lack the distractions Americans, Europeans and many upwardly mobile Asian countries have (television, internet, etc.) which have been shown to impede intellectual development, particularly in young children. Diamond makes that point not to prove the intellectual superiority of a certain country or "race", but to show that ultimately, it doesn't matter; no one would argue that the New Guinean legacy has been more successful through the world than the Eurasian.