Guns, Germs, and Steel

In this chapter, Diamond discusses Australia and New Guinea, explaining that Australia is the world’s driest, flattest, most infertile, and climatically most unpredictable continent. Home to the most distinctive human societies, it was the last continent Europeans conquered. Did the distinctiveness of Australia’s environment lead to its distinctive societies?

Native Australian societies are often regarded as “backward”; indeed, less cultural change accumulated in Australia over the last 13,000 years than in any other continent. However, Native Australians developed some of the earliest known stone tools, the earliest watercraft, and some of the oldest paintings found on rock surfaces. It may even be that anatomically modern humans settled Australia before they settled Western Europe. Australians would therefore seem to have had a head start, so it is curious that Europeans conquered them rather than the other way around.

Australia and New Guinea used to be separated only by dry land; even though rising sea levels separated them by water, geographically, New Guinea and Australia are close enough that canoes traverse the islands scattered between them. In modern times, the human societies of these two hemi-continents developed in significantly different ways: Most New Guineans lived in tribes and engaged in farming, while Australian Aborigines were nomadic/semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. Because of food production, New Guinea supported a higher population density. Also, New Guineans typically had more substantial dwellings, more seaworthy boats, and utensils that were more numerous and varied. So, again, one may ask why Australia remained so underdeveloped.

Native Australians and New Guineans diverged from each other genetically, physically, and linguistically, reflecting their lengthy isolation in dissimilar environments. New Guinea is one of the wettest regions on earth, while Australia is arid. New Guinea’s equatorial climate varies minimally from season to season and year to year, whereas Australia’s climate is highly seasonal. New Guinea features permanent large rivers; in Australia, by contrast, permanent rivers are confined to the eastern region in most years. Lastly, volcanic and glacier activity has meant that New Guinea is covered with young, fertile soil. Australia’s soil is almost infertile.

When Australia and New Guinea were still joined as Greater Australia, the most intensive food production and densest population occurred in the highland valleys of New Guinea. Ultimately, only New Guineans engaged in farming or fishing that developed the most advanced societies, technology, and political organization. Still, despite being more advanced than native Australians, New Guineans are still classed as “primitive” from an urban American/European standpoint because of their continued use of stone tools and their failure to form chiefdoms and states. Diamond various biological and geographical reasons for this: New Guinean food production yielded little protein; the sole domesticated animals (chickens and pigs) could not be used to pull carts; the low density population failed to evolve epidemics; and since only a certain elevation was suitable for food production, exchanges between communities never developed.

In consequence, the traditional New Guinean population never exceeded 1,000,000, and this meant that New Guinea could not develop writing, technology, or political systems. Its population was also fragmented, which meant that the inflow of ideas and technology from other areas was restricted. It was only with the Austronesian expansion around 1600 BCE that food producers of Asian origin occupied Indonesia, bringing with them agriculture, technology, and domestic animals. New Guinea became part of a trade route and consequently received a variety of Southeast Asian goods.

While New Guinea managed to develop agriculture, Australia’s climate and geographical conditions meant that agriculture was not viable and that nomadism was more judicious, along with “firestick farming” as a substitute for food production. Fires could, for instance, drive animals out of thickets and stimulate the growth of new vegetation. Aboriginal food-gathering methods intensified in some regions during the last 5,000 years and population density likewise increased. Australia did not develop metal tools, writing, or politically complex societies because Aborigines remained hunter-gatherers rather than food producers. In addition, Australia’s geographical limitations curbed the numbers of this hunting-gathering population, and communities were spaced far apart. This meant fewer potential inventors, fewer societies to test out innovations, and a lack of communication and exchange.

What seems most puzzling is that the Australians were resistant to New Guinean influence; especially given that both Australia and New Guinea engaged in trading with the islands dotted along the Torres Strait. Diamond argues that “New Guinea became attenuated along that island chain” (315), so that its cultural influence had decreased substantially by the time trade reached Muralug, the island nearest Australia. Moreover, relations between coastal Aborigines and the Muralug islanders were not always friendly, alternating between trade and war. In spite of this, some New Guinean influence did reach Australia; notably, shell fishhooks and outrigger canoes. However, the coastal Aborigines did not adopt New Guinean agriculture or bows and arrows. If the farmers in New Guinea’s highlands had been in close contact with the Aborigines in the cool highlands of southeastern Australia, then things may have panned out differently.

Diamond now turns his attention to Australia’s and New Guinea’s encounters with Iron Age Europeans. A Portuguese explorer “discovered” New Guinea in 1526, and, by 1960, European governments had enacted political control over most New Guineans. The number of settlers was always small, and the country remains populated largely by New Guineans; by contrast, European settlers largely replaced the native populations of Australia, the Americas, and South Africa— attempts to settle New Guinea’s lowlands were hampered by tropical diseases.

Eurasian germs did not strike down New Guineans because by the time of the first European settlements in the 1880s, the New Guineans benefited from public health discoveries that helped to keep European diseases under control. Also, New Guineans had already been exposed to diseases carried by Indonesian traders and settlers, meaning that they had built up some immunity. Finally, the crops and livestock of prospective European settlers failed in New Guinea’s climate, and Eastern New Guinea continued to be occupied by New Guineans. Western New Guinea, however, is now occupied by Indonesians, who share a similar history of exposure to diseases and have therefore succeeded where the Europeans failed. Likewise, they already shared some of the staple crops of New Guinean agriculture and were thus better prepared to settle in this area.

European settlers displaced Australia’s Aboriginal population due in large part to Australia’s suitability for European food production and settlement. Additionally, guns and disease helped the Europeans realize their plans. Australia’s climate and soils could pose problems; still, there were some fertile regions that could support European farming. Furthermore, Australians lacked diseases sufficient to keep out the Europeans. Colonists replied upon advancements made within the Eurasian culture from which they hailed—they lived in Australia or New Guinea with the aid of imported goods and technology. In Australia, Aborigines created a society. That this society was not a food producing, literate, technological democracy was due to environmental conditions rather than deficiencies in the Aborigines themselves.