Diamond did not have a history background, but when he studied earlier ‘Great Civilizations’, like the Egyptians, Greek, Romans, and Mayan people, he found they all had a more advanced technology, larger populations, and well-organized workforces in comparison with other nations.
But, where did these advantages start?
To support a larger population and facilitate a good organization and come up with improved technology requires a surplus of food. In tropical rainforests, it simply took too much time and energy to develop such a society.
Nevertheless, in ‘The Fertile Crescent’ we find the earliest evidence for the first agricultural revolution. Archeologists have found the ruins of fairly large granaries in the Dead Sea area, where surplus wheat and barley could be stored for quite some time. And this facilitated a growing population with significant specialization.
Diamond ascribes the area as most suitable because of the climatic conditions (at the time) and the availability of wheat and barley varieties.
When, over time, the climate changed, perhaps as a result of overgrazing, the Fertile Crescent was in a perfect location as people could migrate long distances to the East and the West, where they encountered lands with fairly similar climates. This allowed the migrating nations to take with them their crops and livestock, which gave them again a great advantage. Talking about livestock; Diamond found that the availability and diversity of useful livestock was the greatest on the Eurasian landmass.
In the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadores very effectively dominated and destroyed the enormous Inca Empire in South America. Although this continent missed an agricultural revolution because of geography and less productive crops and livestock, nevertheless the Incas had built a well-organized society with a fairly large percentage of its population outside the agricultural sector of its economy.
So, what made the Spanish conquistadores so powerful and effective in comparison with the Inca rulers? Diamond lists a number of key advantages. The Spanish had a lot of experience with horses, which gave them greater mobility and power, certainly in the Americas, where no animals were or could be ridden. Nevertheless, the Inca rulers did not think a relatively small group of foreigners stood a chance against their own great army and their superior gods. Yet, the Spaniards’ weaponry and experience in warfare. Gunpowder and horses were of some advantage, but their long swords of quality steel were very effective in the battles. Also, the conquistadores could learn from the published records of earlier confrontations between the Spanish and the Aztecs in Central American lands.
Although Chinese inventions of gunpowder and the printing press could transfer through the Silk Road and beyond. According to Diamond, again the East-West route was much more effective for the exchange of people groups and their technology, while the North-South axis in the Americas proved to be much more restrictive. So, Diamond argues that large-scale geography was in many respects favorable to the Europeans. Through agricultural and technological progress, they could increase their power, and thereby make them more effective in conquest.
Another, unexpected ally came in the form of germs. When one of the slaves came to Central America with the variola (or smallpox) virus, it had a devastating effect, first among the Aztecs, then among the Incas. Europeans had probably been exposed to more germs through domesticated animals and earlier epidemics, that had killed many of their own, but in the end had given them some level of herd immunity.
The continent of Africa does not fit Diamond’s theories quite so well. Europeans did settle in the far South, which provided climate conditions comparable with southern Europe. But, in contrast with North America, the European settlers remained a minority, while the indigenous people groups were not really integrated in their society. When the Europeans migrated North, they started to experience serious problems when they reached the Tropics as they were badly fit for the agricultural conditions and the tropical diseases.
While Africa’s interior had not been an obstacle for other people groups, Europeans relied on access from sea. Only when Europe began to enter the industrial era did European greed and power result in a period of major abuse, where local citizens were forced to gather and hand over the rubber and minerals Europe could use for their industries. Railways and rivers to some extent overcame the interior transportation troubles.
Diamond admits that Africans had animal husbandry and some antibodies against livestock-related diseases. Transportation and large-scale agriculture were limited in the landscapes under extreme climates from dry deserts to humid-hot tropical rain forests.
Racism Redefined
Jared Diamond’s research and conclusions are mostly limited to geographic factors, but this does not suggest that cultural, religious, and political factors did not play a role. Besides, one cannot reduce human beings to homo economicus, as if all humans see the pursuit of economic benefit (and the resulting improved nutrition, higher life expectancy, and greater wealth) as the primary or only goal in life. In fact, Critical Theorists would or might argue that this pursuit is linked with the oppressive whiteness, that dominated European thinking and was designed by them in order to oppress the colored races. In fact, this overarching conviction results some critics to dismiss Diamond as a racist. Why?‘Racism’ used to mean the view that colored people are per definition inferior and incapable of producing ‘cargo’ through science and technology. In this original sense, Diamond refused to take that route. In the eyes of Critical theorists, however, looking for geographic factors to explain the different outcomes is an implicit rejection for the only non-debatable fact: Europeans are per definition racists and oppressive to people of color. Diamond, in his ‘badly-biased research’ is thus attempting to let ‘white man’ off the hook. Henry Farrell, for instance, simply suggested that Diamond’s kind of reasoning is ‘inherently racist and repugnant to right thinking (!) people’.
Thomas Sowell points out that slavery was one of the longest living, most universal institutes in history. In the first half of the 17th century, there were more European white men captured and used as slaves by North African Muslims than Africans were taken as slaves across the Atlantic. He also argues that simple observation clearly demonstrates that different people have different capabilities. Yet, those who insist that people have been born with equal opportunities want to believe so and then demonize those who give evidence to the contrary.
“The idea that the world would be a level playing field, if it were not for either genes or discrimination, is a preconception that defies both logic and facts. Nothing is easier to find than sins among human beings, but to make those sins the sole or primary cause of different outcomes among different people is to ignore many other reasons for those disparities. Geography and demography are among the many factors that make equal or random outcomes among human beings very unlikely.”
Personal Observations
After looking at Joseph Needham, the scientist and his (implied) search for the roots of modern science, we now looked at Jared Diamond, the geographer. As geographer, he would naturally explore the economic revolutions that helped to give the western world its advantages in health and wealth. So, he explored to spatial distribution that facilitated both agricultural and industrial revolution as well as the linked potential for battling various deadly germs.
If we put Diamond’s thesis in light of a biblical worldview, this would suggest that God does not give equal gifts to all people (groups). When Paul addressed the philosophers of Athens (Acts 17), he argued that God had created all nations, allocating to them their times and locations. Well, some of these people groups were led to desert areas, others to tropical rainforests, and again others to temperate forests or semi-arid grasslands. Each of these biomes would offer a unique set of opportunities and challenges in topography, climate, soil conditions, as well as available flora and fauna. Even if all people groups have the same potential for nature observation and technological creativity (and I am not denying this), it would seem possible that different opportunities and challenges might stimulate or hamper their motivation to explore these and to utilize them or use them to modify their environments.
Indeed, there is plenty of evidence in the Bible that God has giving varying gifts and opportunities to people and people groups, whereby those, who have received the greater gifts are also made accountable to a higher degree to produce God-pleasing fruit for their Creator-Provider God.
In today’s Post-Modern Western world, it is increasingly unpopular yet vital for the church to let God be God and to maintain that, although God’s ways are different from ours, that he is Just in all his ways, even if today’s ‘Social Justice’ refuses to admit it.
When God brings his last judgments on the people of the earth, there will be two kinds of responses. Some will exclaim, “You are just in these judgments, O Holy One”. All others will curse the name of God, while they will refuse to repent and glorify him.
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