Report of Guns, Germs, and Steel

By Jared Diamond

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond, is about the evolution of civilization. He answers the general question: why did civilization develop, when and where it did. His approach to this question was rather unique, in my opinion. He used his experiences in New Guinea to study the spread and rise of the proximate causes and the effects of ultimate causes, as he calls them.

He explains that the Indonesian/Polynesian region was a good place to study the evolution of civilization. His reasons are that the development, spread, isolation, and recentness of the colonization of these islands give us a short range, microscopic view of human history. Mr. Diamond’s discussion and exploration takes the viewpoint that there are ultimate and proximate causes to the development of human civilization. The ultimate causes were environment, bio-diversity, and population density. The proximate causes were technology, food production, writing, and germs.

Ultimate causes are related to each other in that bio-diversity and population density are dependent on environment. Environment can make or break bio-diversity depending on the altitude, latitude and soil. The harshness of environments has the same effect on population density-the less available food the lower the population density. At the point in time, that food production arose, the Fertile Crescent was the location of the best of all these ultimates. It had the right environment to support bio-diversity and thus population density.

Proximate causes followed because of the ultimate causes. These proximates were developed because the ultimate causes allowed for food production, which in turn allowed division of labor. Division of labor and settled villages allowed for people to do other things besides look for food and a place to sleep every night. Technology and writing were the human creations that came out of this. Germs on the other hand were a result of the combination of animals and humans living in continuous close proximity. Animal diseases learned to jump to humans-humans that had the population density and animals to become infected, develope immunity to them and became carriers. The results, as we know, were rather devastating, the black-plague, small pox in the Americas and other places in the world.

After reading this book it is a wonder that we all have not been wiped out or that we are not living in a state with one ruler over the whole world. Until you consider that isolation, decisions, and changing environments keep us on our collective toes. Maybe as our technology becomes more and more advanced the world will become home to a single society with many sub-societies and cultures. Once this happens, I think we will be out in space as well and then we will have a completely new area but with the same old problems to deal with. Planets are much like islands and solar systems are much like continents. Human history is likely to repeat itself in micro-scale every hundred years or so, but we will also, 1,000 years from now look back and see that we have started the whole process over again. Maybe we will not develop any ultimate germs or technology that will inhibit this, time and history will tell.