79 pages • 2 hours read
Guns, Germs, and Steel
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Part 2, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: "The Rise and Spread of Food Production"
Chapter 4 Summary: “Farmer Power”
Diamond recalls working at a farm owned by a Swiss man who had settled in America when he was a teenager. One of Diamond’s fellow farmhands was a Native American man named Levi, and Diamond had been surprised one day when he heard Levi drunkenly cursing the farmer. Up to this point, Diamond had believed what he and other white schoolchildren had been taught about the heroic conquest of the American West, yet he now perceived that Levi’s tribe of hunters and warriors had been robbed of its land. This reminiscence prompts the question of how European farmers managed to triumph over these warriors.
Diamond explains that, since the ancestors of modern humans diverged from the ancestors of great apes around seven million years ago, humans have, for the most part, fed themselves by hunting and gathering. It is only within the last 11,000 years that some have turned to food production. Crucially, food production was an indirect prerequisite for the production of guns, germs, and steel. Whether or not peoples on different continents became farmers and herders thus helps to explain the different development of their societies.
Agricultural societies prospered because the availability of more consumable calories led to a greater number of people within those societies. Farmers and herders were therefore plentiful in number and had easier access to food in comparison with hunter-gatherers. Livestock fed people in four main ways: by furnishing meat, milk, and fertilizer, and by pulling plows.
A more indirect advantage of agricultural societies is the sedentary lifestyle often linked with food production. Whereas hunter-gatherers could not afford to remain in one place, farmers needed to tend to their land on a continuous basis. A hunter-gatherer mother was able to carry only one child, along with a few possessions, from one site to the next, and this meant that she could not afford to have several children within a short time frame. Women in farming communities, meanwhile, could give birth in quicker succession, adding to the population density.
A settled existence also allowed for the storage of food supplies, which was vital for feeding non-food-producing specialists. Once food can be stockpiled, a political elite can assert control over the food produced by others, apply taxation, and devote itself full-time to political activities. Besides kings and bureaucrats, other specialists could be supported by a food surplus built up by taxation—notably, professional soldiers. Stored food could also feed priests, who provided religious justification for war; artisans, who developed technologies that included swords and guns; and scribes, who preserved a much greater amount of information than would otherwise be possible.
The cultivation of crops and livestock also provided natural fibers necessary for producing rope, nets, clothing, and blankets. Large domestic animals were useful as the main means of land travel prior to the development of railroads, enabling the transfer of heavy goods. Moreover, horses played a key role in wars of conquest up until the implementation of trucks in World War I.
Germs were similarly important in warfare, with infectious viruses such as smallpox mutating from germs that infected animals. People who domesticated animals were thus the first to fall victim to such diseases, but they evolved to develop resistance to them. When they traveled to other locations, however, they brought these diseases into contact with people who had not developed resistance. The cultivation of domestic animals is thus the origin of diseases that later resulted in epidemics that could wipe out up to 99 percent of a previously unexposed population.
Chapter 5 Summary: “History’s Haves and Have-nots”
Human history has involved unequal relations between people with farm power and those without it—or between those who acquired it at different times. It is not surprising that farming did not arise in some areas for ecological reasons. What is surprising is that, in some cases, food production failed to emerge in suitable areas until modern times.
The means by which food production developed are also puzzling in their geological differences, raising the question of why it developed in different places at such different times. Only a few areas developed food production on a completely independent basis, and this occurred at widely differing times. Other areas were suitable for food production, but did not evolve or acquire agriculture in prehistoric times. Their inhabitants therefore maintained their existence as hunter-gatherers until they were assimilated into the modern world. Those who started food production early had an advantage, though, as this set them on the path that would lead towards the development of guns, germs, and steel.
Chapter 6 Summary: “To Farm or Not to Farm”
If all people were originally hunter-gatherers, then why did any of them turn to food production? The drawbacks of being a hunter-gatherer may seem obvious from a modern perspective: It was a lifestyle that involved hard work, the constant threat of starvation, a lack of basic material comforts, and the prospect of early death. However, even today, food production can involve significant toil, discomfort, and hardship for those living outside of the affluent First World.
Where hunter-gatherers had watched their neighbors engage in food production, some continued to reject the supposed blessings of this lifestyle. Others, meanwhile, did become farmers but only after what may seem to us a particularly long delay. So, the question is what made them change their minds?
Firstly, it is necessary to dispel some misconceptions about how food production originated. We may assume that it was discovered or invented but, really, people often did not make a conscious choice between hunting-gathering and food production. Rather, food production evolved as a by-product of various decisions. Another misconception is that people were either sedentary food producers or nomadic hunter-gatherers. In reality, hunter-gatherers sometimes became sedentary while food producers sometimes became mobile, moving to areas in which they could profit from seasonal changes. Another false assumption supposes that food producers were always managers of their land whereas hunter-gatherers merely collected the land’s wild produce. In truth, some hunter-gatherers managed their land intensively, promoting the growth of new edible plants or clearing away trees that hindered the growth of existing plants. Moreover, in the early stages of food production, people often collected wild foods while also raising cultivated ones.
Diamond argues that the underlying reason for this piecemeal transition is that food production involves many separate decisions about the allocation of time and effort. As he explains, people typically select options that are most likely to afford significant rewards with the least amount of effort. Moderate yet reliable returns are also preferable, in that they help maintain stability. Cultural norms can also inform people’s practices. Lastly, people’s priorities are shaped by the relative values that they attach to different lifestyles—it is notable that, throughout history, hunter-gatherers have tended to see farmers as ignorant, while farmers have often deemed hunter-gatherers primitive.
While the first farmers had no prior model to follow, once they were established, hunter-gatherers could observe their practices and made a conscious choice about whether or not to follow suit. They could consequently embrace farming in its entirety, adopt some aspects of it while leaving out others, or reject it.
It is therefore clear that farming did not develop in a vacuum. Food production and hunting and gathering need to be seen as alternative strategies, yet one must also recognize that, over the last 10,000 years, there has been a major shift towards food production. The next question, then, is what tipped the balance in favor of this method.
The first factor that prompted a shift towards farming was a decline in the availability of wild foods and animals, or even animal extinction. This consequently made the hunter-gatherer lifestyle less tenable and rewarding, while the increased availability of wild plants that could be domesticated made food production more rewarding. Another influence was the development of technologies for collecting, processing, and storing wild foods; these technologies invented to cultivate and reap cereals appeared in the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia after 11,000 BCE.
The two-way link between population density and food production was also crucial: Food production yields more edible calories and therefore tends to result in increased population densities. Conversely, as population densities rise, food production becomes favored as a means of feeding this increased number of people. Once people start to produce food and become sedentary, the gap between births also becomes shorter. This consequently results in a greater population requiring more food.
These factors help to explain why food production began around 8500 BCE in the Fertile Crescent. While food production could have begun earlier in this area, hunting-gathering was still more rewarding at that point due to an abundance of wild mammals; and wild cereals were not yet plentiful and technologies for processing and storing cereals had not yet been developed. Also, population densities were not high enough to make food production advantageous.
A final factor came into play once the population of food-producing areas had grown in density. Though sheer numbers, plus the other advantages associated with food production—such as technology, germs, and professional soldiers—food producers were able to displace or kill remaining hunter-gatherers. It was only where strong ecological or geographic barriers existed that hunter-gatherers were able to maintain their lifestyle into modern times.
Part 2, Chapters 4-6 Analysis
By asking how European farmers subjugated Native American warriors, Diamond turns to one of the book’s key themes: the sometimes fraught relationship between hunting-gathering and food production. This is a crucial matter because as we see in the ensuing chapters of this book, food production was a vital prerequisite for guns, germs, and steel.
Food production led to increased population density by producing an increased amount of consumable calories, the domestication of animals, a sedentary lifestyle that allowed more frequent childbirth, and the storing of food supplies. A political elite could assert control over food produced by others and tax it, shifting away from earlier, more informal arrangements towards more complex, regimented societies. Stored food could also support other specialists, like soldiers, priests, artisans, and scribes, who enabled societies to instigate wars of conquest, providing both practical tools and a rationale for people to potentially sacrifice themselves in the interests of the greater social good. The overall effect was that food producing communities developed into a dominant force that, ultimately, became the modern state.
It is puzzling that some fertile areas did not develop food production until the modern era. This meant that early food producers gained a head start on the road to guns, germs, and steel.
Food production and hunting and gathering were not always mutually exclusive; people sometimes continued to collect wild plants while simultaneously cultivating food. Thus, the adoption of food production was gradual in some cases. Nonetheless, there has been a major shift towards food production over the last 10,000 years, as people found this lifestyle to be more rewarding and sustainable, especially with advancements in agricultural technology.
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