"But we are still left with the fundamental question why all those immediate advantages came to lie more with Europe than with the New World. Why weren't the Incas the ones to invent guns and steel swords, to be mounted on animals as fearsome as horses, to bear diseases to which European lacked resistance, to develop oceangoing ships and advanced political organization, and to be able to draw on the experience of thousands of years of written history? Those are no longer the questions of proximate causation that this chapter has been discussing, but questions of ultimate causation that will take the next two parts of this book."
The chapter is the first of 7 chapters that make the second part of the book, "The Rise and Spread of Food Production." It can be the most important chapter of the second part of the book!
The chapter starts with a story of two men in southwestern Montana from different backgrounds. The first, Fred Hirschy, is an immigrant from Switzerland, who moved to Montana as a teenager in 1890. He became very successful and was one of the first people to develop farms in the area. The second man, Levi was a member of the Blackfoot Indian tribe who worked for Fred. One Sunday morning, Levi walked into the home drunk and cursing after a Saturday night binge. Among his curses, one stood out: “Damn you, Fred Hirschy, and damn that ship that brought you from Switzerland!” It is the typical perspective the Indians have towards their conquerors in the American West. Levi’s tribe of hunters and famous warriors had been robbed of its lands by the immigrant white farmers. This chapter focuses on how the farmers were able to win out over the famous warriors.
Main theme: This chapter traces the main connections through which food production led to all the advantages that enabled Fred Hirschy's people to dispossess Levi's (86).
1. Availability of more consumable calories.
The population of the European farmers who domesticated the few edible species of plants and animals grew tremendously compared to the hunters and warriors. Most wild plant species and animals were useless as food to the hunters because they were either indigestible, poisonous, of low nutritional value, tedious to prepare, difficult to gather, or dangerous to hunt for the case of some wild animals. The human societies possessing domestic animals benefitted in four distinct ways: the livestock were a source of meat, milk, and fertilizer and by pulling plows. This is one direct way in which plant and animal domestication led to denser human populations by yielding more food than did the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This meant that the population densities of the farming societies increased tremendously compared to that of the nomadic hunter-gatherers.
2. The consequences of a sedentary lifestyle enforced by food production.
Diamond mentions this as one indirect cause for the success of the Europeans (farmers) in conquering the hunters [farmer power]. The hunters frequently moved in search of wild foods, but farmers remained near their fields and orchards. This contributed to even denser human population among the farmers by permitting a shortened birth interval. Nomadic hunter-gatherers had to space their children about four years because the mothers cannot afford to the mothers cannot afford to bear the next child until the previous toddler can walk fast enough to keep up with the tribe. On the other hand, sedentary people can bear as many children as they can feed. They are not constrained by problems of carrying young children on treks. That higher birthrate together with their ability to feed more people per acre lets them achieve much higher population densities than hunter-gatherers.
Another consequence of the sedentary lifestyle that worked in favor of the farmers was the ability to store food surpluses. While nomadic hunter-gatherers may occasionally bag more food than they can consume in a few days, it’s still of little use to them because they cannot store/protect it. It would be pointless to store the food if one didn’t remain nearby to guard the stored food. The nomadic hunter-gatherers didn’t, therefore, have bureaucrats and kings who relied on stored food since they didn’t produce it themselves. On the other hand, moderate sized agricultural societies were able to organize themselves into chiefdoms and kingdoms because the political elite are able to gain control of food produced by others, assert the right taxation, and still engage in full-time political activities. They are the ones who mobilized their communities to conquer others.
3. Crops and livestock provided very valuable materials which the nomadic hunter-gatherers lacked.
Crops and livestock yield fibers for making clothing, blankets, nets, and ropes. Big domestic mammals were also used as a means for transport until the development of railroads in the 19th century. Eurasia’s horses were used during wars of conquest by the farming communities. The horses, for instance, enabled foreign people, the Hyksos, to conquer then horseless Egypt and establish themselves as the temporary pharaohs. These are only a few of the benefits the farmers got due to plant and animal domestication.
4.The role of germs.
Germs that evolved in human societies with domestic animals also had a role to play in wars of conquest. Infectious disease like smallpox, measles, and flu arose as specialized germs of humans, derived by mutation of small germs that infected the domesticated animals. The farmers were the first to be affected by the newly evolved germs, but they evolved substantial resistance to the new diseases. When these farmers who were partly immune came into contact with nomadic hunter-gatherers who had no previous exposure to the germs, epidemics resulted which killed up to 99 percent of the hunters and gatherers. Germs thus acquired ultimately from domestic animals played a significant role in the European conquests of Native Americans, Australians, South Africans, and Pacific Islanders.
The availability of domestic plants and animals ultimately explains why empires, literacy, and steel weapons developed earliest in Eurasia and later on other continents.
This chapter covers all the major links between food production and conquest (the only chapter in Part 2 that draws the direct connection between food production and conquest) that are discussed in the chapters that follow.
In summary, the second part of Guns, Germs, and Steel is organized this way:
Chapter 4: The roots of guns, germs, and steel.
Chapter 5: Geographic differences in the onset of food production.
Chapter 6: Causes of the spread of food production.
Chapter 7: The unconcious development of ancient crops.
Chapter 8: Why did peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants?
Chapter 9: Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated?
Chapter 10: Why did food production spread at different rates in different continents?
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