Book: 20200201 to 20200420, "Guns Germs & Steel" by Jared Diamond

20200202, Preface: Why is world history like an onion?

"Sapiens" tells us the major factors/principles of human civilization evolvement. This books tells us why and how. The explanations are like the layers of an onion. Jared Diamond trys to push the onion to the core.

Amazing. I cannot wait to read it now.

20200209, Prologue: Yali's question - The regionally differing courses of history

Jared Diamond tries to use "science" to analyse history. He tries to find the pattern based on everything we know about history, including evolutionary biology, geology, and climatology, etc.

Yali's question is the ultimate question of human history.

To answer it, we need to understand our 13,000 year history, cross the whole world.

Hopefully, that can also help us to find our future direction.

Part One: From Eden to Cajamarca

20200214, Chapter 1: Up to the starting line - What happened on all the continents before 11,000 B.C.?

Homo Sapiens might start from Africa, at around 7 million years ago. They eventually spread to the whole world, 13,000 years ago.

Continents all have different environment. Is that the reason that diffent continent envolved at different pace? Why people in Africa and Australia evolve so slowly?

20200216, Chapter 2: A natural experiment of history - How geography molded societies on Polynesian islands

The collision between Maori (from New Zealand) and Moriori (from Chatham islands) in 1835 is shocking. Where is "justice"? It's a joke. Natural human rights? Another joke.

I will never forget this story. Now I can see how ridiculous it is that Aboriginal people declare that they own the land of Australia. They don't own it. They don't have this privilege.

In early stage of human history (before the invention of writing), civilization progress mainly depends on at least six environmental variables, such as climate, geological type, marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation, and isolation.


So, maybe, it's those environmental variables decide the development pace of civilization? The author doesn't even start to mention "guns, germs or steel" yet.

20200221, Chapter 3: Collision at Cajamarca - Why the Inca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture King Charles I of Spain

Another shocking story. Pizarro arrived South America at 1527, and captured Atahuallpa at 1532 in ridiculous way.

200 people beat 80,000 army. Pure slaughter.

How did he make it?

1. Information.

It's mainly about "writing", which helps to spread information and knowledge.

2. Gun, horse, boat, etc.

These tools also heavily rely on "writing".

3. Political organization and financial system

It also heavily rely on "writing".

4. Disease

Without the help of contagious diseases, the colonization would take longer time.

Why Europians got "writing" first? Why Europians got the immunization system? Although Egyption got "writing" first, why they didn't develop technology and financial system first?

Part Two: The rise and spread of food production

20200222, Chapter 4: Farmer power - The roots of guns, germs, and steel

Agriculture provides us food, cloth, transportation "vehicle" and war machine (horse).

It's the prerequisite of the invention of writing, policitcal system and professional soldiers. 

It's the foundation of all developments.

Farming provide much, much higher production compare with hunting and gathering, and it makes "accumulation" possible. Then high density living area appeared, which drastically improved the productivity of cooperation.

That also caused problem. High density animal make germs mutate more effectively, and then spread to people. From this point of view, it's better to work from home, and better building less apartments.

I am surprised that "horse" is so powerful in battle. Especially when it is combined with long distance weapon, such as bow and arrow.

20200223, Chapter 5: History's haves and have-nots - Geographic differences in the onset of food production

C14 is generated when cosmic ray hit C12 at the top level of atmosphere. Only 1 millionth of Carbon is C14, and half of C14 content decays into C12 every 5,700 years, until after about 40,000 years.

This is how archaeologists calculate the age of material. It is called radiocarbon.

Farming needs some prerequisites, such as warm temperature, wet environment, etc. But those don't guarantee the invention of agriculture.

Why? 

20200228, Chapter 6: To farm or not to farm - Causes of the spread of food production

The first principle: Calories produced per acre.

More calories means higher population density, means higher productivity, means competition advantage over other hunter-gathering tribes.

If people don't need to move everyday to collect wild plants and animals, they can accumulate what they gathered/produced/invented(technology, tools, etc.) everyday. They don't need to spend a lot of time walking. Instead, they can do more meaningful work.

However, if there are plenty of wild plants and wild animals and less population, or if the environment is not suitable for farming, then people don't have choice but keep their hunter-gathering life style.

So, why there are less than one million Aboriginal people in Australia after around 40,000 years? Most of the people die at early age. Maybe they cannot get enough food, maybe there are too many battles among tribes.

20200307, Chapter 7: How to make an almond - The unconscious development of ancient crops

We always we are part of nature. So, natural selections always contains artifical selections.

As human accumulated more and more knowledge, artifical selections are taking larger and larger part in natural selections.

The next step should be "Gene editing". That is still faraway, but once it's arrived, everything will be changed.

Biotech nano robots (similar to virus) can change our gene even for grown-ups.

And for food, fibre and other plants and animals......it's hard to imagine what people cannot do.

Why ark acorn is still not tamed? 10+ years growth stage, stealing from wild animals such as squirrels, and the bitterness caused by complex multiple genes. Together these factors make acorn still wild plants.

20200309, Chapter 8: Apples or Indians - Why did peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants?

It's very, very hard to domesticate plants. Even for the people as smart as us, and fully understand 29 different local mushrooms.

Limited by the plant species, there might not exist good enough choices in the wild.

20200314, Chapter 9: Zebras, unhappy marriages, and the Anna Karenina principle - Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated?

Wild animals need to meet many conditions to be possible of domesticating.

All of the current wild animals lack one of the condition, such as diet, growth rate, mating habits, disposition, tendency to panic, etc.

20200321, Chapter 10: Spacious skies and tilted axes - Why did food production spread at different rates on different continents?

Why food production could not spread quickly to other area?

Plants need similar climate to grow. Without the support of plants, domesticated animal also cannot spread.

Tropical area isolated those plants and animals. That's why Eurasia is the only continent suits for the "spread": it's huge, and extend east-west direction.

So, in the end, why civilization arise in some area but not other area? It's not about people, but about environment.

It's all about luck. 

Without luck, the civilization still may arise, but needs much, much longer time. 

Part Three: From food to guns, germs, and steel

20200329, Chapter 11: Lethal gift of livestock - The evolution of germs

Germs come with population density, domesticated animal density and intimacy between human and those animals.

So, if alien visit Earth someday in the future, we need to be very careful of the germs from them. Their germs may kill us all easily.

Some other thoughts: Infectious virus's gene can be merged into our gene. People die when this type of merge fails. Fortunately most of people can survive.

Vaccine does the same thing: change our gene a little bit to protect us from virus. But, the bad news is, most of vaccines don't work for people over 70.

What does that mean? If scientists can find some "medicine" to let people live forever, quite possible this medicine is some type of vaccine. And it doesn't work for old people.

So I will get much less chance to live for longer time.

20200331, Chapter 12: Blueprints and borrowed letters - The evolution of writing

From what I can see, the writing based on Alphabet is more advanced that the one based on Logogram. Alphabet is easier to master.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_systems

Is this difference related to "creativity"? Maybe not.

Jared Diamond thinks that agriculture is necessary condition of  the invention of writing, but not sufficient condition. But maybe it is. It may just need thousands of years AFTER starting food producing.

Invented new writing with the help of blueprint or idea of another type of writing, is much easier. Most writing are invented this way.

20200404, Chapter 13: Necessity's mother - The evolution of technology

It's shocking to know that someone invented "printing" 3700 years ago!

Phaistos Disc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc

Why this "printing" invention was lost 1700BC? Because it's not useful by that time, and it's not good enough. There is no paper, no book, no ink, and even no alphabetic language. Easy to understand why "printing" was not populated in China in 1200AD.

Same thing happened again and again. New invention only get populated when it is useful and is better than any alternative existing solution.

Now I can easily understand why EV is struggling with ICE with so much advantages: it's like comparing the first generation iron tool with the ultimate generation bronze tool.

So, in one word, "population" is the mother of creativity, at least in the early history. But nowadays, things are different, I believe. Although population is still very important, the social institution which encourages creativity is the source of invention.

20200408, Chapter 14: From egalitarianism to kleptocracy - The evolution of government and religion

Band, tribe, chiefdom, state.

It's a bit like the evolution of life. If some creature is complex, then it needs nerve system or even brain to control the body.

The reason prehistory people explore new land? The bands have no choice. They had to move away from their enemy after being defeated, sometimes they had to leave the land to try their luck in ocean.

When the population density goes higher, people need writing to communicate with each other. And with higher productive food production, specialists of non-food-producer appeared.

No one wanted to merge into a larger society, unless they had no other choice. It's always with blood.

For example,  one Fayu man spotted the  man who  had killed his  father.  The  son raised his ax and rushed at the murderer but was wrestled to the ground by friends; then the murderer came  at the prostrate  son with an ax and was  also  wrestled  down.  Both  men were  held,  screaming  in rage,  until they seemed sufficiently exhausted to be released.  Other men periodically shouted  insults  at  each  other,  shook  with  anger  and  frustration,  and pounded the ground with their axes. That tension continued for the several days of the gathering, while Doug prayed that the visit would not end in violence.

----- <GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL>, p290

A typical answer went like this:  "My first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband, seeking to avenge his murder."

----- <GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL>, p303

Part Four: Around the world in five chapters

20200411, Chapter 15: Yali's people - The histories of Australia and New Guinea

Australia is not suitable for agriculture. That's the reason aboriginals stayed in hunting-gathering stage for 40,000 years. The climate (no annual pattern), the poor soil, the temperature, etc. killed the possibility of agriculture.

New Guinea is slightly better, but only got entry level agriculture.

Both of them were actually isolated from other parts of the world, so, no new technology can be spread there.

And because of Torres Strait, new technology could not be spread from New Guinea to Australia.

The only weapon for New Guinea people to go against Europeans is Germs. Is it possible that some Germs are waiting for us on Mars? Possible, but no likely.

Again, high dense population bring us food, technology, etc. It also brings us disease and livestock.

So, the farming land in Australia heavily depends on modern technology. That means, if something really, really bad happened, Australia could be the first one back to pre-civilization stage.

This is horrible. It's really important to turn into sustainable energy supply, and switch to EV.

20200412, Chapter 16: How China became Chinese - The history of East Asia

Why China is so unified from the very beginning?

1. Agriculture arose around maybe 10,000 years ago, in the north of China;
2. There is no natural obstacles (such as desert or narrow isthmus) to stop the technology spread to other area;
3. Yellow River and Yangtze River helped helped new tech or crops spreading to other area, which preempted other competitive cultures;

By the end of Qin Dynasty, the whole China was unified. Qin Shi Huang burned almost all historical books, which further removed those competitive cultures.

So, only the "Han" culture was left, and occupied the whole China.

I think this unification will last for long, long time.

PS: The prehistory of China must be boring to Jared Diamond. It's monotonous and rigid.

20200414, Chapter 17: Speedboat to Polynesia - The history of Austronesian expansion

How can you speak of ice to the summertime bugs?

Well, we can do it through logical analysis.

This book tries to analyze the past 1 million year human history. It's hard, but possible after hundreds of years' effort.

In early stage of human history, when different "races" met, the one with higher population density would "win", in most cases. High density of population means the antibody capability of germs, and advanced technology.

Population density is not the root cause of this advantage, but the indicator of those advantages, such as technology and germs antibody.

In the history of China, in the last 2000 years, "big events" happened every 300 years. Normally the "big events" means wars. Population may lose between 30% to 95%. Why is that? Did similar thing happen in other continents?

Is that the reason why there were only 300,000 people lived in Australia when Europeans arrived 300 years ago? No. There are no enough food to support more people.

Diversification is the source of creativity, and it can "split" a critical conflict into many smaller scale conflicts. Maybe this is the problem with China. China is the only state in the world that has much less "diversification" compare to other states of the world. So, their evolution progress was frozen, and from time to time, their population were "reset" by critical wars.

Why the population grew so much between 1749 and 1811 during the Qing dynasty? Kang Xi and Qian Long, both love western civilization. Their minds were relative open.

http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_population.htm
https://kknews.cc/history/z68gz6q.html

20200415, Chapter 18: Hemispheres colliding - The histories of Eurasia and the Americas compared

The Theory of Evolution has not 3 but 4 cornerstones: Diversity, Inheritance, Variation and Population.

Diversity is critical. This is the reason that China's civilization progress stuck in the last 1000 years.

Eurasia is completely different. There are so many states, and most of them has unique culture, language, technical advantages, etc. This helped Eurasian with better perception of natural rules.

Native Americans didn't stand a chance against the invaders from Old World. 

20200417, Chapter 19: How Africa became black - The history of Africa

A bit disappointed as this chapter doesn't tell us why black man is black. Maybe this is not so hard to guess. Homo sapiens appeared in Africa 7 million years ago, and started to migrated to other continents around 1 million years ago. 

For the first 6 million years, there were enough time to change the appearance of people to adapt to local environments. When people moved to other continents 1 million years ago, there was still enough time to turn the skin to lighter color when people moved to some place with less UV. 

As the link below shows, people with darker skin are less likely to get sunburn.

https://www.healthline.com/health/can-black-people-get-sunburn#sunburn-risk

What happened in Africa is just like other place. The civilization progress depends on population density (enough rainfall, not too cold, etc.), diversity (plants and animals suitable with domestication), and variation (the obstacle of spread of new technology/plants/animals).

Language analysis is really a powerful tool to decode the prehistory of some races.

PS: For prehistory, "inheritance" is not a problem.

20200419, Chapter 20: Who are the Japanese? - The history of Japan

The prehistory of Japan is really complicated.

Affected by Ice Age, it's connected with both the north side islands with north Asia, and south side islands with southeast Asia. So, quite possible, different race came to Japan at the same time.

Because of the end of Ice Age, Japan was isolated again by ocean. But Japan has perfect climate environment, which provided rich natural food sources, which supported people there to live in both huntering-gathering and sedentary life style, instead of nomadic life style. But this is only for Ainu/Jomon people. Ainu people seems came to Japan from north Asia.

Yayoi people may actually came from southeast Asia, and they were driven away from Korea, and emigrated to Japan in 400 B.C. They were the ancestors of modern Japanese.
 

20200420, Epilogue: The future of human history as a science

Jared tries to turn human history into science. It is possible, and natural experiments are the key. 

It's also critical.

For example, will China go up or down. It has gone up for 40 years, but, can it replace US? After reading "Guns Germs & Steel", everyone would agree that China will go down. It may need another 40 years, but it may happen very soon.

We should not bet against super-long term trend, if we care about our grandchildren's grandchildren.

20200420, 2017 Afterwords

This chapter is the essence of this book.

Why we should learn history? It helps us to make decision on big issues.

 How to turn poor country into rich country?

1. Food supply; (Geography and climate)
2. Transportation; (Geography)
3. Average perception of modern institution of local people; (History and Geography)

The last one needs hundreds of years' training and accumulation. The alternative way is read.

If someone keeps reading best books, he/she will set up accurate perception of the world quickly, hence change his/her destiny.