Chapter 8 - Apples or Indians

Spriha Shrestha
CollegeWriting R1A
Peter Vahle
Guns, Germs & Steel Outline

In Chapter 8, Jared Diamond explores why some societies were unable to domesticate plants in ecologically feasible areas (i.e.: California) in the past that are successful now; the question he tries to answer is why did agriculture arise at different places at different times? We learn that out of the population of plants, although much larger and varied than that of animals, only a few hundred are eaten by humans and only a dozen (wheat, corn, rice, barley, sorghum, soybean, potato, manioc, sweet potato, sugar cane, sugar beet, and banana) make up for 80% of the food source; and apparently "no new food plants have been discovered in modern time." Thus the assumption that all of them have been explored is presented as one that is valid. Diamond then goes on to explain that there are two possibilities that need to be looked at in order to find a feasible explain: one is the possibility that the problem could be in the plants themselves and the second is that there was a cultural barrier that could have possibly gotten in the way. 

To explore this he focuses on the Mediterranean climate, which is ideal for farming because it is home to annuals (which grow on a yearly cycle), there is a pleasant temperature and more fertile soil, the transition from the wild to domesticating the plants is easy, and there were many “selfers” in these regions that didn’t need other plants to reproduce. The Fertile Crescent is a great example because it was the area where most of the crops we use today were first domesticated- and done quite successfully, for which Diamond presents five reasons: size of the area, climatic variation, carrying altitudes/ topography/ habitats which meant staggered harvest times that weren’t overwhelming, wealth of ancestral plants and less competition to the hunter gatherer lifestyle (shown by the quick transition away from hunting and gathering to domesticating and farming). Mesoamerica didn’t have this advantage because it only had two native domestic animals; turkeys and dogs in comparison to the Eurasian abundance in both animals and plants of this type. Some plants that were domesticated in one place were not domesticated in a nearby place, even if they could be- why? Diamond explains this by explaining that the advantages of growing flax, which is a textile fiber plant, are far less than growing a grain. So when it came to choosing which one to grow, it would only make sense to grow a grain rather than the flax. This just goes to prove that just because you can grow something doesn’t mean you should. So there was a clear advantage in some Mediterranean climates as opposed to others, but as Diamond points out, other factors are at work.

Next, Diamond looks at the human factors that could have contributed. Though there are arguments that things like genetic differences between populations are also crucial, but Diamond argues that they are not as strong as the geographical and climatic factors simply because there is nothing that makes one culture more likely to take up agriculture than another. In fact, throughout history, when people have been introduced to more advanced agricultural techniques they have made attempts to adopt them and have done so successfully to advance their agricultural level. To demonstrate this claim Diamond asks the question which is the namesake of this chapter- Apples or Indians?  He describes the New Guinean disadvantages in farming earlier on due to the lack of ancestral plants and animals that could be domesticated (which cause a lack of protein among other things), then draws a parallel to the Eastern parts of the US, where the same issues arose. Before the introduction of corn, which mesa before the well renowned "three sisters", the Native American society had to sustain itself on crops that were not adequate to allow the society to thrive- which made the impact of the introduction of corn one of the most (if not the most) impactful agricultural change- which came late. 
In the end, Diamond concludes that the reason that the Native Americans did not domesticate apples was not that they did not want to, or that the apples were unable to adapt- apples, as it turns out were a more advanced fruit to farm and were farmed in Eurasia and other parts of the world quite late. Which meant that the Native Americans were not able to domesticate apples based on their significant lateness in terms of agricultural advancement, which was a result of their "modest potential for domestication" (Diamond). 

This chapter has made me wonder how the dynamics of the world could have been different if the fertile crescent had not been populated at the time that is was, or if there was a different arrangement of plate tectonics that displaced these areas that Diamond talks about (Fertile Crescent, Australia, California, etc...) I guess this would go to prove his point even further- the civilizations and farming would be shaped based on geographic advantages and disadvantages. Although this can be tied into the thesis, I think there will be more development in the next chapter to connect it to the thesis as a whole. So far I've been trying to read the rest of the book but I have not gotten very far into it to be able to talk about the relationship between the main thesis and all the subsequent chapters. 

Works Cited

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. Print.