Jared diamond- guns, germs and steel?

Question

what do you think? did he leave anyhting out? Do you think he's wrong beacause his perspective comes from a western scientific model? thank you

Answer 1

Had to read it for summer work and it open my eyes a lot!

I do not think he left anything out.

Answer 2

GG&S was an excellent anthropological text, as was his followup work, "Collapse".

I can see your viewpoint about potential Eurocentric bias, given that he is descended from Europeans. However, I think he is aware of that potential and actively sought a balanced perspective. His discussions of European triumphs were not a chest-thumping triumphal roar, but were (I thought) an accurate and valid description of the crushing European conquest of the Americas and Asia. He also explains the root of European power convincingly as the confluence of the mild European climate with the grains and animals of the Fertile Crescent; he makes it clear that it was an accident of history and geography that led to European conquest, not inherent superiority.

It's also interesting in the latter part of the book when he examines the European attempted settlement of Africa. There, the climate worked AGAINST them, and the germs (malaria in particular) were killing THEM, not the natives who had evolved a style of living compatible with their environment millennia earlier. Their failure in Africa, with its continuing ramifications today, only reinforces Diamond's thesis.