Guns, Germs, and Steel is another book that I found in the “top 100 books that everyone should read before they die” list that I mentioned in a previous post. This book is also recommended by both Bill Gates and Charlie Munger, two of the world’s most successful billionaires. The motivation behind the book was to answer the question of why history unfolded differently on different continents. For example, why did the western Eurasian societies become disproportionately powerful and innovative?

Jared believes that there were four main factors to why the world is the way it is now.

The first factor is the availability of wild animals and plants for domestication. Through the domestication of animals and plants people’s lifestyle changed from hunter-gatherers to more sedentary, which allowed more time for development of specialised activities such as writing or pottery. The high availability of crop and animal candidates in Eurasia, particularly in the Fertile Crescent region (see map below), gave a huge advantage to the development of the Eurasian societies that we see today. One interesting fact from the book was that the crops we managed to domesticate were the wild mutant plants (this just made me think of the X-men movies!). An example is wild peas, genetically wild peas germinated through the pods exploding to release the seeds. However, pods of mutant peas don’t explode and these were the ones that humans were able to harvest and start planting.

Map Source: http://www.ancient.eu/Fertile_Crescent/

The second factor is the rate of diffusion and migration of animals, domesticated crops, technology, culture, etc. within a continent. Eurasia has a higher rate of diffusion due to its East-West axis compare to America or Africa’s North-South axis. Places that are distributed east and west of each other share similar seasonal variations which make dispersion of crops and animals domestication easier and faster. In addition the modest ecological and geographical barriers in Eurasia allowed progress towards distribution of technology, ideas, culture, and food production.

The third factor, which is related to the second one, is the rate of migration between continents. “Ease of intercontinental diffusion has varied because some continents are more isolated than others”. For example, the sole proven contribution from Eurasia to Australia was the dingo. This was due to the geographical isolation of Australia by water barriers of the Indonesian Archipelago.

The second and third factors above did not only contribute to the dispersion rate of food production but also the distribution rate of diseases. Note that diseases also represent evolution in progress as microbes, some of which originated from animals, adapt by natural selection to their new human hosts.

The final factor is the population density in an area. “A larger area or population means more potential inventors, more competing societies, more innovations available to adopt…” In this sense Eurasia has the largest area and number of competing societies which the author believes resulted in more competition and innovation and lead to its current status in the world.

There are many parallels between business nowadays and the historical inferences presented in this book. An example is related to the fourth factor mentioned above whereby having small groups or units in a business environment will increase innovation and competitive ability, while isolation for example from government policy or a local monopoly, decreases competition and efficiency.

Although I have learned a number of things from the book, I found the book is quite repetitive around these four factors. The prologue and epilogue of the book would be good reading for those who want a high-level awareness of what Jared is trying to say on world history. However, if you want to know the details of whether it was barley or wheat that was the first crop to be domesticated in the Fertile Crescent or how many animals were available in different continents to be domesticated, then the book provides you with sufficient details.