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Why the World is the Way It Is

© Frank Monaldo

At first glance the Incan-Spanish encounter at the Peruvian highland town Cajamarca in 1531 seemed to be lopsided in favor of the Atahuallapa. The Incan emperor commanded an army of 80,000. The Spanish Conquistador, Pizarro, led a contingent of only 169 men 1,000 miles from potential Spanish reinforcements. A little treachery plus the advantage of metal swords, daggers, and horses amounted to the slaughter of Incas and the capture of Atahuallapa. This same story repeated itself throughout the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Even more devastating to indigenous Americans were the contagious diseases brought by the Europeans.

How is that Eurasians have come to dominate the modern world? Why didn't Native Americanss conquer Africa and enslave Europeans? Why is the world like it is? Jared Diamond, a professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, uses the encounter at Cajamarca to begin an inquiry into this question in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

Diamond begins by quickly dismissing the possibility of genetic differences between peoples. Diamond concludes that "efforts to date have not succeeded in convincingly establishing the postulated genetic deficiency in IQs of nonwhite peoples." Indeed, "civilization," Diamond argues, may have dysgenic effect on intelligence. A hunter-gatherer existence is unforgiving to low intelligence. In contemporary society, stupidity is not nearly so lethal. It might even get you elected to public office.

Diamond argues for a geographic determinism. Certain areas of the world are blessed with a variety of easily domesticated grains and animals that make possible a sedentary civilization that can produces language, metal tools, and social organizations that yield sufficient surplus to support expansive cultures. Hunter-gatherers, even if well fed, will not manufacture metal weapons or produce printing presses. These easily domesticated grains and animals were present in the "Cradle of Civilization," the "Fertile Crescent" in present-day Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and ultimately spread east and west to Europe and Asia.

The importance of animal domestication cannot be over-estimated. The possession of the horse provides an overwhelming advantage over foot soldiers in combat. Even more important, the close proximity of humans and their domesticated animals, in conjunction with the increased population densities possible in an agriculturally based society, incubated contagious diseases. These diseases often ravaged agricultural societies. In the long run, these populations became resistant. However, when these civilizations came in contact with other peoples, the biological advantage proved more important than any military technology.