Guns, Germs & Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) is the Pulitzer prize winning book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at UCLA.

Below is Part One of the documentary based on the book, broadcast on PBS in July 2005, and produced by the National Geographic Society.

Also Watch: Part 2 / Part 3

In the book, Diamond attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations have come to offer the most dominant cultural forms on the planet. Diamond also refutes the suggestion that Eurasian hegemony is due to some kind of intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority.

Instead, Diamond exlains how gaps in power and technology between all human societies originate from environmental differences - amplified by various positive feedback loops; and that, if cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example Chinese improved disease resistance among Eurasians), it is only so because of the influence of geography.

Diamond points out that most civilizational achievements (scientific, artistic, architectural, political, etc.) have occurred on the Eurasian continent, while the peoples of other continents (Sub-Saharan Africans, Native Americans, and Aboriginal Australians/New Guineans) have been largely conquered, displaced, and in some extreme cases - referring to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, and South Africa's indigenous Khoisan peoples - were exterminated by Eurasian military and political advantages stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the last Ice Age.

The book's title is a reference to the means by which European nations conquered populations of other areas and maintained their dominance, often despite being vastly out-numbered: superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns), European diseases weakened the local populations and thus made it easier to maintain control over them (germs), and centralized governmental systems promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel).

Some critics of the book argue that it is derivative of the work of such cultural evolutionists as Leslie White, Julian Steward, and Ester Boserup, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture and economic and political growth; and such historians as William McNeill and Alfred Crosby, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture, European expansion, and disease.