Guns, Germs and Steel – The roots of global inequality

I have been reading Jared Diamond’s book ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ the last few days. Jared diamond embarks on a quest to understand the roots of global inequality. Jared Diamond is an evolutionary biologist and he ascribes global inequality to geographical factors. Although his mission is noble and egalatarian, he dismisses all the other political, behavioural and cultural factors responsible for inequality. He contends that these are secondary factors born out of the basic geographical factors.

He starts his journey of discovery into the roots of global inequality from Papua New Guinea where he interacts with one of the aborginals. The aborginal questions him on how the white man has so much ‘Cargo’ (meaning consumer goods). Jared Diamond ventures into this discovery by analysing the way civilizations started from the hunter-gatherer tribes to farming (crops & livestock) to modern industrialization. Those geographies which helped farming and livestock thrived as farming enables the storage of food and provides leisure time. The leisure time is utilized by these cultures to develop in other areas. He also goes in depth analysing the different cereal crops and livestock that was adopted for farming by the Europeans, arabs and asians. As opposed to them the tribes in africa, the australian aborgines and the native people of america never could cultivate these cereals and animals. He describes the  history of cultivation of cereals like Wheat, Rice, Millet, Maize and Barley. He goes into details how animals like cow, pig, poultry, goat, sheep and horse were domesticated and why other animals from the wild were found unsuitable for domestication.He also talks about how the physical proximities between the european and asian communities enabled them to develop resistance to diseases and also develop industry by exploiting raw materials better.

This book is an excellent read. Like most researchers who try to find answers through certain specific branch of sciences, Jared Diamond ignores several other hypothesis related to cultural and behavioural factors. His single minded focus on the geographical and biological evolution of civilization brings about a logically convincing argument. His intentions are noble as he treats all men and races as equal.

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