Guns, Germs, And Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies

Jared Diamond, a geography professor and the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, was asked a question posed by a native, Yali, to the island of New Guinea. Why do some people have “cargo”, meaning material goods and other useful items, but others did not? This simple question had such complex possible answers and Diamond attempted to create his own. According to Diamond the environment where societies initially started evolving was the main factor that decided whether a society would become more advanced than other societies because aspects of the environment such as arability of land would control the types and rates of development and advancement of technology, the types of governments societies had, the types …show more content…
Materials like iron or durable stone would be needed to form spearheads for effective spears to be utilized. If there was more material available, then more tools could be made and the tools would be more available for the population.
However, even if the materials for tools were available, Diamond claimed, technology would not be able to advance if there was no need for it to advance. There would be no need for someone to develop a sword if all they need to find an adequate amount of food is a sharp stick. There would also be no need for better methods of communication to be invented if there were very few people to communicate with. For examples, the New Zealand islanders had a need to take over other lands because of their dense population but the Chatham islanders, whom the New Zealand islanders invaded, had no such …show more content…
Instead, McNeill argues, Diamond gave far too much credit to the original environment societies originated from, much too easily attributing non-biological developments to being a “reflex of numbers”.
McNeill contended that horizontal evolution, the spread of adaptations throughout the generation rather than through the future, was also a major factor that contributed to the evolution of technology. As the rate of the spread of knowledge increased, the rate of technological advancement in a society increased. For example, with the development of the Gutenberg press, accurate information was spread throughout Europe much more quickly than when everything had to be handwritten or stamped.
McNeill believed that creativity and innovation were more than just a “reflex of numbers”, meaning that he did not feel that Diamond was completely justified in saying that human innovation depended solely upon how many people a person could interact with. McNeill claims that conscious human actions, like the creation of writing, and advancement of technology eventually decreased the stranglehold the environment had over human