Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies
By Jared Diamond
Diamond’s book begins with a fascinating and horrifying
account of how, in the sixteenth century, a group of barely
150 Spaniards defeated an Inca army numbering in the thousands.
On its face, this event seems to pose the archetypal argument
for the "superiority" of Western technology (and
by extension, of Western culture). From that point of departure,
Diamond embarks on an incredibly thorough – and equally
compelling – deconstruction of the geographic, climactic,
and evolutionary forces that shaped the development of Western
culture in relation to other world regions. He demonstrates
how the north/south orientation of the Americas and Africa
resulted in extreme variations of climate and geography that
precluded the sharing of agricultural practices and the establishment
of large societies. He then shows how the physical isolation
of the indigenous peoples in those regions left them at the
mercy of the ravaging diseases brought by the conquering
Europeans. (By contrast, the east/west orientation of Eurasia,
with its navigable landmass, temperate climate, and domesticable
species, enabled the advent of technological innovation and
other "cultural" factors to a degree unimaginable
in areas with a north/south orientation.) Diamond’s
exhaustive, thought-provoking study debunks the myth of Western
cultural superiority, and exposes the brutish tendencies
inherent in the West’s efforts to impose "civilization" on
the "backward" peoples subjugated by its empires.
Neal Kane
©Copyright 2008 Libretto,
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