The Fates of Human Societies

In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond offers a theoretical framework for why the world is currently divided into rich and poor and strong and weak societies. His main thesis for explaining these divisions is that differences in environment have shaped the different fates of human societies. The environment in Eurasia nations helped societies develop dense populations and food surpluses, as well as disease resistance and greater domestication of animals. Not only were these societies able to achieve these features of complex societies, but they also developed systems of religion and politics. Because of their geographical conditions, Eurasian nations were more readily able to transfer knowledge and technologies as opposed to those with different geographies where each society had to develop their own features in isolation. Diamond covers development in the east-west continents of Eurasia against those in the north-south continents of the Americas, Australia and Africa to demonstrate the validity of his thesis that explains why even to today there are inequities between these continents in political and economic power. Typically, anthropologists and others have speculated on racial differences or differences in innate intelligence or other factors to explain such inequities. These are inadequate explanations for Diamond (25) who maintains, "History followed different courses for different peoples because

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ties had a far grater number of potentially domesticable plant and animal species. As such, natural selection promoted sedentary agriculture in relation to other continents like Africa or Australia. This led to larger populations and greater population growth that required organization and centralization of political and religious institutions. It also led to a surplus of food which freed many individuals from having to engage in farming as a career. This gave rise to clergy, bureaucrats, inventors, and other occupations that also increased the cultural capital of a society, from medicine and writing to military leaders and inventors. These provided for more sophisticated networks of communication as well as the generation of surplus resources. More importantly, all of these aspects of complex civilizations were more readily shared or transferred to neighboring societies because of the geographical and climate advantages of continents like Eurasia compared to Australia, Africa or the Americas where mountains, deserts, and different climates prohibited such exchange. On these continents, development of such aspects of society was slower because each society had to evolve in a vacuum compared to those on east-west oriented co

Category: Psychology - T