Book review: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

August 24, 2009

I’ve had this book for while though never got round to reading it until recently, daunted by the sheer size of the book. But, having already read Jared Diamond‘s fascinating, follow-up book Collapse, and hearing nothing but good reports on Guns, Germs, and Steel, I knew I had to get my arse into gear and read the darn thing. And, I’m sure glad I finally did.

The main motivation for the book, Diamond recalls is a conversation with friend, Yali, a Papua New Guinean politician who in 1972 asked Diamond as to why it was Europeans with the ‘cargo’ and Papua New Guineans without. At the time, Diamond was largely unable to give a concise answer and so – two and a half decades on – this book set out in the aims of doing so.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is an incredibly ambitious book looking at the evolution and migratory patterns of modern humans, particularly from 13,000 years ago onwards – from around the time humans in the Fertile Cresent first began to move from hunter-gathering towards subsistence farming, and determining facts as to why some humans ‘developed’ more than others and as such managed to conquer foreign lands by means for their acquired guns, germs, and steel.

It’s a colossal task to take into account all the possible factors as to why some groups managed to progress to further stages of development, whereas others were largely unable to do. Though, through Diamond’s thorough research and sheer intellect, he successfully does so, and in doing so opens the floodgate to a whole new approach of the science of human evolution. And, whilst doing so closes the gate on the racist theories of the past as to why some groups prospered and spread whereas other did not.

In his book, Diamond explains how the guiding factors behind why peoples of the Eurasian continent were largely able to develop and progress at a more advanced rate than indigenous peoples of other continents were largely due to environmental and physical factors rather than any intrinsic racial difference between peoples of different continents in terms of intelligence and ingenuity. Environmental examples given as to why Eurasia was able to proceed at an accelerated rate compared with other continents include: being blessed with the most productive crops for food consumption; containing a large mass of land within the temperate climatic region, where the bulk of the world’s grains and livestock are located; having the good fortune of having the most malleable and reliable animals in which to domesticate; and having a predominately east-west continental axis allowing for comparatively easy transferring of domesticated crops throughout the continent due to similar daylight hours and seasonal patterns compared with the continents of the Americas and Africa which follow a predominately north-south axis.

So, as such, Eurasians were blessed with being born in the right location in order for them to develop subsistence farming which enabled them to give up hunter-gathering, enabling more time for child-rearing and food production, which produced greater populations and population density, which in time gave birth to a hierarchical system whereby chiefs, kings, armies, slaves and cities were created which would then move on in order to appropriate more land and resources, and the domino effect continued until reaching the New World, Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia and Oceania where the peoples of Eurasia’s superior weaponry, wealth, legal systems – and in particular, imported diseases, largely decimated indigenous peoples of the previously mentioned continents.

Diamond’s book was not without its critics however – which was inevitable given the sheer scope, worth of material, and potentially controversial topics and fields of study in the book. However, in his follow-up editions of the initial publication, Diamond has largely answered his critics – in my opinion, successfully – in terms of discussing reasons as to why it was Europe and not China, a long-running hotbed of civilization and inventions, that managed to colonise so much of the world and not vice versa. More recent editions also include a section on Japan, its current position in the global hegemony and just how it got to that position.

I haven’t nearly done justice to explaining the theories and principles behind Diamond’s book, and strongly recommend you to read this important book to further your knowledge of human migration and evolution, and in doing so realise that it was largely chance – being born in the right place at the right time – as to why Eurasian people got to their point of relative affluence today. The book is quite lengthy and in some sections a tad technical but should be readable for any adult or teenager, and as such would make a great resource book for high school or university students studying a variety of fields ranging from physiology to geology and evolutionary biology.

I strongly recommend Guns, Germs, and Steel and his follow-up book, Collapse, which focuses more closely on examples from the past provided in Guns, Germs, and Steel; and also looks at modern implications of the environment, climate and how strongly it determines our very existence. I give this book a top five out of five stars, and am looking forward to acquiring Diamond’s two previous books, The Third Chimpanzee and Why Sex is Fun?

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What’s in a name?

July 21, 2009

What’s in a name?

I guess it all boils down to how much value you put in it. Some love to look back to their roots, search through the records to determine their ancestors and in doing so, perhaps learn a little more about themselves. Whereas others are content with the here and now, and leaving the past just where it is, in the past. I definitely fall into the former category. For a long time I’ve had an interest in finding out more about my roots, where my ancestors came from, what type of people they were, and why they chose to move where they did.

So far I’ve relied mainly on other family members to gain knowledge on what can be found of my roots, though with the passing on of the extended family’s main knowledge gatherer a year back, perhaps that new knowledge gatherer should become me.

Korea still displays extensive – and some would say, obsessive – reverence to their ancestors and family line, where seemingly all families contain records on their family lines, and bloodlines are treated with utmost importance – hence the resistance for many to even consider marrying outside the Han minjok (Korean ethnic group). Though, this is changing rapidly. So, no doubt, living here – where many bask on their ‘pure’, ‘undiluted’ bloodline has no doubt prompted me to learn more about my ‘mixed’, ‘diluted’ bloodline.

Yesterday, I happened across this site, which seems like a great, free! first stepping point in learning just a snippet about your family history – your and your ancestors’ surname. The site provides a clear, concise history on – at this stage – largely European, in particular Anglo-Celtic, surnames. It’s a interesting site to look at if you know a few of your ancestors’ last names.

From the knowledge given to me both through word of mouth and through previously mentioned relative’s research I know I have ancestral links to Salisbury, Wiltshire and Cornwall in England, Lowland Scotland, County Tipperary in  Ireland, and numerous other locales in the British Isles. Most of my ancestors seemed to have landed on the British Isles somewhere between the last two thousand and two hundred years, and most probably came from anywhere and everywhere in Europe such as Normandy, the Iberian peninsula, the Dutch Lowlands, Roman lands, Scandinavia and Saxony in getting there. Brits as a whole are a very mixed lot – as are all groups of people once people take their nationalist and ethnic bias away.

I also possess some Jewish ancestry and it’s strongly suspected, though thus far not proven without doubt, that I also have some indigenous Australian ancestry – most probably Wiradjuri as said relative – whose records are frustrating scant* lived in the Gulgong area of New South Wales, just west of the Great Dividing Range within the realm of the Wiradjuri people. (* – there’s many reasons for this all somewhat sad, depressing but true. Them being, 1. Indigenous people weren’t regarded as people – at least in the terms of being equal to European Australians are were thus not counted in Censuses or other Government documents in the 18th, 19th and 20th century leading up until 1966 – depressing ain’t it!; 2. People of mixed ancestry, or half-castes as they were known were often taken from their families in order to be brought up as ‘civilised’ members of society; and 3. ‘being stained with the tar brush’ ie. having some native ancestry was something so shameful – more so that being of convict stock – that individuals with knowledge of their true ancestry would go out of their way to conceal or disguise their ancestry by saying they were Black Irish or some such.)

I ended spending an hour looking up all the surnames of ancestors that I can remember starting from closest to most distant and the interesting thing is that the information on the surnames on the website largely correlates with the information I have been provided by my family members and relatives. So, if you happen to be have of the following surnames, or have a relative or ancestor with one of the following surnames, say g’day as we may well have a tenuous link with each other!

GRAHAM, CORNISH, PEACOCK, HANCOCK (HANDCOCK), MACNEILL, BARRETT, GOULDTHORPE, O’SHEA, SMITH

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Book review : ’1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance’

April 29, 2009

Here is my first – of what will probably become a semi-regular feature of my blog (depends on how quickly I can crank through the books!) – book review. The book is ’1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance’ by Gavin Menzies and is a sequel to his previous book, ’1421: The Year China Discovered America’ in which he somewhat controversially asserted that it was the Chinese not the Europeans who were the first non-indigenous peoples to discover the New World, citing many and varied references – both valid and somewhat dubious, including shipwrecks, artifacts, the appearance of flora and fauna of Asian origin in Pre-Columbian America, indigenous American accounts of ‘yellow-skinned’ foreigners, words and languages of partially Asian origin in the Americas, DNA evidence etc. – to back-up his claims of Chinese discovery of the Americas. His first book proved to be so controversial that it spawned a plethora of anti-1421 websites such as this one, and even books, which set about debunking Menzies’ myths.

But, just as sure as Menzies had his critics, he surely had his followers in greater numbers. So much so that his book went on to become a bestseller, spawned a host of supportive websites (including his own where people can leave their own research and accounts of Chinese discoveries), and spawned several documentaries with talk of feature films being in the mix. Menzies, who possesses a passion for his topic which is uncontrollable and frankly, contagious, brushed aside all criticisms saying that a lot of these critics have based their lives and professional careers around the most accepted beliefs that Columbus and the Europeans were the first to reach the Americas and as such they have the most to lose and understandably are going out of their way to debunk his claims.

1421 described how during the peak of the Ming dynasty in its expansionary, outward-looking phase, great fleets of Chinese fleets led by the great general, Zheng He, would set forth from Nanjing onto Southeast Asia, India and Africa exchanging goods, knowledge and wealth in return for each provinces’ acceptance that the Middle Kingdom was their rightful superior. Many provinces indeed enjoyed the transfer of goods, materials and knowledge from the ‘benevolent father’ and warmly provided dowries for their superiors from the Middle Kingdom. Indeed, it’s irrefutable that there were established trade links between China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and possibly Africa with ports such Guangzhou, Malacca, Kerala, Mombasa possessing ample evidence of significant trade to and from East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Africa.

Menzies goes one step further in 1421 to assert that the Chinese didn’t just stop with the Indian Ocean on their quest for worldwide discovery and power, that they indeed traveled to any points of the globe including the Americas, Africa, Australia and even as far afield as Greenland. To back these claims, Menzies points to evidence, which truth be told is quite convincing in the Americas, particularly in certain pockets of the Americas to somewhat dubious when it comes to Greenland, Australia and farther afield. But, despite its downsides where Menzies almost seems to be trying too hard to find a link when there quite likely isn’t one, all in all I came out of the book a believer – believing that there was at least some Chinese settlement, discovery, transfer of knowledge and trade in the New World before the conventional history of  the Europeans being the first to ‘discover’ the New World. Polynesia in particular, is one region of the world where there was no doubt at least some Chinese interaction within the last 1000 years before Cook and co. came around due to DNA evidence, and flora and fauna species.

So, this leads onto to 1434 where Menzies goes one step further in his claims to say that it was indeed the Chinese – through their trade, interaction and transfer of knowledge – who provided the spark to ignite the renaissance and awaken Europe from its prolonged coma of nigh on a millenia. Menzies uses some quite compelling points to indicate that there must have been at least some transfer of knowledge, ideas and philosphies for there to have been this sudden renaissance, where in the space of less than 60 years Europe all of a sudden made significant gains in the fields of astronomy, cartography, geography, weaponry, navigation and shipbuilding. All of which fields the Chinese had superior and exisitng knowledge, and wherby the Europeans seemed to have had an uncanny knack of replicating these products, ideas and philosophies to such a degree that it points to more than coincidence.

But, if the Chinese interacted with the West, why isn’t there any existing Western literature of these grand fleets of learned Oriental gentleman setting forth on the ports of Europe and dispelling their infinite knowledge and wisdom? This is one point that Menzies can’t adequately address in my opinion and one that you can’t help but question yourself. I, for one, am sure that the Chinese – who before their self-imposed retreat from the mid-1400′s onwards were superior to most any civilisation in a host of fields by several centuries and definitely beleive that they did indeed managed to set foot on many lands previously claimed to have been ‘discovered’ by Europeans. I also firmly believe that the transfer of knowledge, goods and materials circulated from Asia to Europe via established Indian Ocean trade routes and the Silk Road. However, I am not as certain as Menzies as to the validity of Chinese vessals actually traveling to Europe as I’m sure had it been the case I’m sure there would have more than snippets of anedoctal evidence to back these claims. That said, I enjoyed 1434 a lot. Perhaps not quite as much as 1421 which really did manage to sink me into the prospect of China having set forth and discovering all these ‘new’ lands. But, nevertheless it’s a great read with some very valid points made along the way. No doubt there are some parts which seem more dubious than others but as I mentioned before, Menzies’ infectious enthusiasm makes you want to believe it all regardless. I gave it 4 and a half stars. I believe no matter what your views on history are, it’s an interesting and exciting read. Whether you believe it’s actual history or pseudo-history, it’s worth a read for you to decide.

The thing I really appreciate about writers such as Menzies and Jared Diamond is their knowledge of their subjects, enthusiasm, thirst for more knowledge and ability to write in layman’s terms about topics which many people may previously thought of as dry and boring into interesting, fascinating and compelling reads. If you have a love for history, geography and social sciences such as myself, I strong recommend you check out their books.

Who knows? Maybe I am Chinese after all! ;)

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