"Guns Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond

I picked up Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs and Steel" a few years ago because I liked the title and the cover and then I got interested in the blurb. It's basically about why advanced civilisations developed in certain areas of the world and not in others. I don't have the book with me now because I lent it to someone and they lent it on, but I've often thought about it since I read it and I think it's a great book.

The basic thesis of the book I think is that there were specific circumstances which led to advances which people were able to build on and which created the environment for future opportunities. One crucial point that I remember was the development of hunter-gatherer societies into farming societies. Once that has happened a society has a chance of producing a surplus food supply and will be able to devote time to other needs. A hunter-gatherer society is more fragile (more likely to suffer shortages, less likely to be able to store food to tide them over lean times).

Diamond proposes (as I remember) that the necessary conditions for the development of wide scale farming were domesticated crops and animals that could be used for farming (i.e. for work and for food). Horses and cows lived in Africa, Europe and Asia, but not America. Another very interesting point he makes is that the general orientation of continental land masses made it more possible to transfer crops and animals across Europe, Middle East and Asia (because they exist at similar latitudes and therefore have somewhat similar climates) than from North to South America and vice versa, so that the number of crops and animals domesticated in one part of Middle East - Europe - Asia and transferred to another is much higher than what could be transferred up / down the American continent. Another crucial difference arose from the domestication of animals, because close contact with those animals exposed the people from Europe and Asia to new diseases to which they developed some immunity. When these diseases were transported to new countries by the people and animals, the indiginous people of the new countries were suddenly exposed to the diseases with dire effects.

I think Diamond sees the main purpose of his book as being to counter the racist argument that the reason for the disparity in development between the Eurasian-originating peoples and the African and American - originating peoples is genetic; that you can account for the differences using IQ comparisons. Diamond says there are other reasons for the disparities, which he describes in his book.