“Guns, Germs & Steel” was one of only 3 books in my entire life that I couldn’t finish. It’s that bad. Here’s the synopsis:The book is full of contrived theories about ancient people where he has no evidence. In some cases, people have no written records, yet he somehow pretends to know everything about them.In the opening chapter he clearly states That he believes the 5’ tall Stone Age Pygmies of Papua New Guinea are more intelligent than Europeans. His rationale? He hung out with them and felt like it because they knew all the types of plants, and also their kids didn’t have TVs (I’m not kidding).
He also observed that unlike Europeans, they were constantly hacking each other to death with crude instruments. Which leads him to believe that they evolved to be smarter, because you need intelligence to survive permanent tribal warfare. Unlike cooperative farming. I really wish I was kidding about this.
He concludes therefore that any and all modern differences in technology and wealth are the result strictly of environmental factors. He spends the next 400 pages desperately cooking up insanely convoluted theories about why living in a food scarce frozen wasteland actually gives people far more free time to invent things than eating an inexhaustible supply of bananas on a tropical island would.
He tells several stories about the 20th century. Stories that can easily be checked with Google. And they were gross distortions. If he cannot get 20th century facts right, how likely is it that he got facts from millennia ago?
I thought the book would be interesting because of its many awards, and because the question of explaining European success of the last millennium is an important one. But he says it was all luck, and tests do not back up his more specific theories.
Here is a more revealing interview of Diamond, this week. It all seems like garbage to me, but listen or read for yourself.
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