Ultimately, the failure to adopt food production is not a sign of inferiority or ineptitude. Hostile climate conditions and terrain, for example, could hinder the diffusion of food production to peoples who might have been able to reap its benefits. These setbacks could affect local resources and the import of resources from other areas. The overriding argument is twofold: Food production was a vital first step on the road to establishing more advanced societies that benefited from “guns, germs, and steel.” However, not everyone was in an equally favorable position when it came to adopting food production, as various geographical and ecological setbacks limited the crops and livestock available in some regions. Diamond details such events across the five continents, endeavoring to find out why some peoples triumphed over others. Still, Diamond draws attention to major historical episodes involving conquest and colonization, with one well-known example being the European conquest of the Americas in 1492. Wars of conquest constitute a major theme throughout this book, although, in some cases, these were not so much wars as instances of a single food producing community vanquishing a group of hunter-gatherers. Also, those who had developed resistance could transport diseases abroad for use as weapons during wars of conquest. This had two benefits: if another group of people attempted to displace or conquer a community, diseases to which the invaders had not developed resistance could thwart such attempts. However, epidemics allowed survivors to develop resistance. Germs, which originated from the livestock, might not seem like a positive development, especially where they caused epidemics that swept through food producing communities. This is not just a dietary matter, as food production was the key to other developments such as more sophisticated technology, as well as writing, religion, as well as “guns, germs, and steel.”

However, rather than dwelling on the earliest stages of humanity, Diamond’s focus is on what happened when human beings evolved to the level of modern humans and showed evidence of more advanced thought processing and skills (as indicated by the artifacts they left behind).Ībove all, Diamond is concerned with the move from hunting and gathering to food production: a move that occurred more rapidly in some settings than others, or failed to occur at all. Guns, Germs, and Steel won the Pulitzer Prize, among numerous other honors, and was adapted into a documentary by the National Geographic Society.ĭiamond covers a vast time period and geographical terrain throughout this book, starting with the beginning of humanity and covering human development and expansion into the earth’s five habitable continents: Africa, Europe, Eurasia, and North and South America.

Guns germs steel book