Screaming Penguin

There has been a good bit of chatter, criticism of and praise for, Jared Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel". Now, I am only about 75% of the way through the book right now, but I find it very compelling. The overarching theme is a kind of Godel Esher Bach analysis of commonalites between environmental resources and levels of development. Brad Delong hammers on some of the more rediculous criticisms of the book, but Kevin Drum brings up some interesting questions...

As interesting and compelling as this thesis is, however, a lot of readers come away dissatisfied because it doesn't go far enough. After all, it's a nice explanation for why Eurasia ended up dominating the world, but it doesn't explain why Europe ended up dominating the world. Why not the Muslims, the Hindus, or the Chinese, all of whom were also Eurasians and would have been long odds favorites over the Europeans if space aliens had been placing bets around 1,000 AD? What's especially peculiar about this dissatisfaction with GG&S — and I shared it when I first read the book — is that it's completely unjustified. GG&S is about Eurasian civilization from around 8,000 BC to 1,000 AD, which is a plenty broad and demanding topic all by itself, and Diamond simply doesn't address the question of why Europe turned out to be top dog among the various Eurasian contenders. What's more, he even has a chapter at the end of GG&S where he specifically says this isn't the subject of his book and then lays out a bit of speculation on the question.

While I find myself wishing there were "more", I think Kevin is actually touching on some of the things that strike me about the book, while those make Kevin's point moot, they do affect the overaching theme of the book, but only slightly. One of the things I was really taken aback by is the lack of discussion of the Khans in GG&S. I admit, books like this are high on my list and right now if I was going to put two books on anybodys "history" reading list, it would be this, and H.G. Wells Outline of World History. Wells, however, gives the Khans their due. The Mongolians that both took in external domesticated animals and then turned themselves into a hunter-gatherer *empire* goes directly against the nature of the book. However, this, along with the kind of silly question as to why its the Euorpeans and not the Central Asians or the Chinese that rule the world is rather like asking during the time of the Golden Khans why it is the east Asian steppe people rule the world. History is still in flux. Now, through that critical level, yes, it was the Europeans that built empires by sailing the ocean blue and all that. However, that was, in many ways, a freak of timing. Moreover, you have to look at Diamond's discussion of conservatism in the adoption of technology -- very specifically foreign technology. He spends some time discussion, for instance, how the Japanese developed very fine firearms around 1500 then as a nation abandoned them because they were a threat to the nature of the Samurai. Certainly in terms of China and India the rigueur of their respective flavor of caste system, as well as a general social conservatism inspired by their faith certainly affected that "race to the world". All in all, though, I admit I find the whole premise of GG&S a truely inspiring story, one that shows humans everywhere move to the best possible use of what is around them. Some people certainly got luckier than others, and lord knows that in raw timelines as populations, the Mediterranian peoples got a long head start on the Mesoamericans. Even still, I think the point that a 5500 AD Mayan empire might look very much like a 1500 AD European one very telling -- and if nothing else, the Mesoamericans were advancing FASTER than the Eurasians, they just got a 25,000 year late start. I will post some more on GG&S once I finish it -- maybe this weekend. There are actually quite a number of things from the book I would like to talk about.