Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

by Jared Diamond

  The following are accounts of plant domestication and crops in specific parts of the world. For Europe and the Fertile Crescent: Willem van Zeist et al., eds., Progress in Old World Palaeoethnobotany (Rotterdam: Balkema, 1991), and Jane Renfrew, Paleoethnobotany (London: Methuen, 1973). For the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley, and for the Indian subcontinent in general: Steven Weber, Plants and Harappan Subsistence (New Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1991). For New World crops: Charles Heiser, Jr., “New perspectives on the origin and evolution of New World domesticated plants: Summary,” Economic Botany 44(3 suppl.): 111–16 (1990), and the same author’s “Origins of some cultivated New World plants,” Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics 10:309–26 (1979). For a Mexican site that may document the transition from hunting-gathering to early agriculture in Mesoamerica: Kent Flannery, ed., Guilá Naquitz (New York: Academic Press, 1986). For an account of crops grown in the Andes during Inca times, and their potential uses today: National Research Council, Lost Crops of the Incas (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989). For plant domestication in the eastern and / or southwestern United States: Bruce Smith “Origins of agriculture in eastern North America,” Science 246:1566–71 (1989); William Keegan, ed., Emergent Horticultural Economies of the Eastern Woodlands (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1987); Richard Ford, ed., Prehistoric Food Production in North America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, 1985); and R. G. Matson, The Origins of Southwestern Agriculture (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991). Bruce Smith, “The origins of agriculture in the Americas,” Evolutionary Anthropology 3:174–84 (1995), discusses the revisionist view, based on accelerator mass spectrometry dating of very small plant samples, that the origins of agriculture in the Americas were much more recent than previously believed.

  The following are accounts of animal domestication and livestock in specific parts of the world. For central and eastern Europe: S. Bökönyi, History of Domestic Mammals in Central and Eastern Europe (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadö, 1974). For Africa: Andrew Smith, Pastoralism in Africa (London: Hurst, 1992). For the Andes: Elizabeth Wing, “Domestication of Andean mammals,” pp. 246–64 in F. Vuilleumier and M. Monasterio, eds., High Altitude Tropical Biogeography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

  References on specific important crops include the following. Thomas Sodestrom et al., eds., Grass Systematics and Evolution (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987), is a comprehensive multi-author account of grasses, the plant group that gave rise to our cereals, now the world’s most important crops. Hugh Iltis, “From teosinte to maize: The catastrophic sexual transmutation,” Science 222:886–94 (1983), gives an account of the drastic changes in reproductive biology involved in the evolution of corn from teosinte, its wild ancestor. Yan Wenming, “China’s earliest rice agricultural remains,” Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association Bulletin 10:118–26 (1991), discusses early rice domestication in South China. Two books by Charles Heiser, Jr., are popular accounts of particular crops: The Sunflower (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976) and The Gourd Book (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979).

  Many papers or books are devoted to accounts of particular domesticated animal species. R. T. Loftus et al., “Evidence for two independent domestications of cattle,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A. 91:2757–61 (1994), uses evidence from mitochondrial DNA to demonstrate that cattle were domesticated independently in western Eurasia and in the Indian subcontinent. For horses: Juliet Clutton-Brock, Horse Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), Richard Meadow and Hans-Peter Uerpmann, eds., Equids in the Ancient World (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1986), Matthew J. Kust, Man and Horse in History (Alexandria, Va.: Plutarch Press, 1983), and Robin Law, The Horse in West African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). For pigs: Colin Groves, Ancestors for the Pigs: Taxonomy and Phylogeny of the Genus Sus (Technical Bulletin no. 3, Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University [1981]). For llamas: Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus, and Robert Reynolds, The Flocks of the Wamani (San Diego: Academic Press, 1989). For dogs: Stanley Olsen, Origins of the Domestic Dog (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985). John Varner and Jeannette Varner, Dogs of the Conquest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983), describes the Spaniards’ use of dogs as military weapons to kill Indians during the Spanish conquests of the Americas. Clive Spinnage, The Natural History of Antelopes (New York: Facts on File, 1986), gives an account of the biology of antelopes, and hence a starting point for trying to understand why none of these seemingly obvious candidates for domestication was actually domesticated. Derek Goodwin, Domestic Birds (London: Museum Press, 1965), summarizes the bird species that have been domesticated, and R. A. Donkin, The Muscovy Duck Cairina moschata domestica (Rotterdam: Balkema, 1989), discusses one of the sole two bird species domesticated in the New World.

  Finally, the complexities of calibrating radiocarbon dates are discussed by G. W. Pearson, “How to cope with calibration,” Antiquity 61:98–103 (1987), R. E. Taylor, eds., Radiocarbon after Four Decades: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (New York: Springer, 1992), M. Stuiver et al., “Calibration,” Radiocarbon 35:1–244 (1993), S. Bowman “Using radiocarbon: An update,” Antiquity 68:838–43 (1994), and R. E. Taylor, M. Stuiver, and C. Vance Haynes, Jr., “Calibration of the Late Pleistocene radiocarbon time scale: Clovis and Folsom age estimates,” Antiquity vol. 70 (1996).

  Chapter 11

  For a gripping account of the impact of disease on a human population, nothing can match Thucydides’ account of the plague of Athens, in book 2 of his Peloponnesian War (available in many translations).

  Three classic accounts of disease in history are Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice, and History (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), Geddes Smith, A Plague on Us (New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1941), and William McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976). The last book, written by a distinguished historian rather than by a physician, has been especially influential in bringing historians to recognize the impacts of disease, as have been the two books by Alfred Crosby listed under the further readings for the Prologue.

  Friedrich Vogel and Arno Motulsky, Human Genetics, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Springer, 1986), the standard textbook on human genetics, is a convenient reference for natural selection of human populations by disease, and for the development of genetic resistance against specific diseases. Roy Anderson and Robert May, Infectious Diseases of Humans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), is a clear mathematical treatment of disease dynamics, transmission, and epidemiology. MacFarlane Burnet, Natural History of Infectious Disease (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), is a classic by a distinguished medical researcher, while Arno Karlen, Man and Microbes (New York: Putnam, 1995), is a recent popular account.

  Books and articles specifically concerned with the evolution of human infectious diseases include Aidan Cockburn, Infectious Diseases: Their Evolution and Eradication (Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, 1967); the same author’s “Where did our infectious diseases come from?” pp. 103–13 in Health and Disease in Tribal Societies, CIBA Foundation Symposium, no. 49 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1977); George Williams and Randolph Nesse, “The dawn of Darwinian medicine,” Quarterly Reviews of Biology 66:1–62 (1991); and Paul Ewald, Evolution of Infectious Disease (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

  Francis Black, “Infectious diseases in primitive societies,” Science 187:515–18 (1975), discusses the differences between endemic and acute diseases in their impact on, and maintenance in, small isolated societies. Frank Fenner, “Myxoma virus and Oryctolagus cuniculus: Two colonizing species,” pp. 485–501 in H. G. Baker and G. L. Stebbins, eds., Genetics of Colonizing Species (New York: Academic Press, 1965), describes the spread and evolution of Myxoma virus among Australian rabbits. Peter Panum, Observations Made during the Epidemic of Measles on the Faroe Islands in the Year 1846 (New York: American Public Health Association, 1940), illustrates how t
he arrival of an acute epidemic disease in an isolated nonresistant population quickly kills or immunizes the whole population. Francis Black, “Measles endemicity in insular populations: Critical community size and its evolutionary implication,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 11:207–11 (1966), uses such measles epidemics to calculate the minimum size of population required to maintain measles. Andrew Dobson, “The population biology of parasite-induced changes in host behavior,” Quarterly Reviews of Biology 63:139–65 (1988), discusses how parasites enhance their own transmission by changing the behavior of their host. Aidan Cockburn and Eve Cockburn, eds., Mummies, Diseases, and Ancient Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), illustrates what can be learned from mummies about past impacts of diseases.

  As for accounts of disease impacts on previously unexposed populations, Henry Dobyns, Their Number Became Thinned (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), marshals evidence for the view that European-introduced diseases killed up to 95 percent of all Native Americans. Subsequent books or articles arguing that controversial thesis include John Verano and Douglas Ubelaker, eds., Disease and Demography in the Americas (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992); Ann Ramenofsky, Vectors of Death (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987); Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987); and Dean Snow, “Microchronology and demographic evidence relating to the size of the pre-Columbian North American Indian population,” Science 268:1601–4 (1995). Two accounts of depopulation caused by European-introduced diseases among Hawaii’s Polynesian population are David Stannard, Before the Horror: The Population of Hawaii on the Eve of Western Contact (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), and O. A. Bushnell, The Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993). The near-extermination of the Sadlermiut Eskimos by a dysentery epidemic in the winter of 1902–3 is described by Susan Rowley, “The Sadlermiut: Mysterious or misunderstood?” pp. 361–84 in David Morrison and Jean-Luc Pilon, eds., Threads of Arctic Prehistory (Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994). The reverse phenomenon, of European deaths due to diseases encountered overseas, is discussed by Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the 19th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

  Among accounts of specific diseases, Stephen Morse, ed., Emerging Viruses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), contains many valuable chapters on “new” viral diseases of humans; so does Mary Wilson et al., eds., Disease in Evolution, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 740 (New York, 1995). References for other diseases include the following. For bubonic plague: Colin McEvedy, “Bubonic plague,” Scientific American 258(2): 118–23 (1988). For cholera: Norman Longmate, King Cholera (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966). For influenza: Edwin Kilbourne, Influenza (New York: Plenum, 1987), and Robert Webster et al., “Evolution and ecology of influenza A viruses,” Microbiological Reviews 56:152–79 (1992). For Lyme disease: Alan Barbour and Durland Fish, “The biological and social phenomenon of Lyme disease,” Science 260:1610–16 (1993), and Allan Steere, “Lyme disease: A growing threat to urban populations,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 91:2378–83 (1994).

  For the evolutionary relationships of human malarial parasites: Thomas McCutchan et al., “Evolutionary relatedness of Plasmodium species as determined by the structure of DNA,” Science 225:808–11 (1984), and A. P. Waters et al., “Plasmodium falciparum appears to have arisen as a result of lateral transfer between avian and human hosts,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 88:3140–44 (1991). For the evolutionary relationships of measles virus: E. Norrby et al., “Is rinderpest virus the archevirus of the Morbillivirus genus?” Intervirology 23:228–32 (1985), and Keith Murray et al., “A morbillivirus that caused fatal disease in horses and humans,” Science 268:94–97 (1995). For pertussis, also known as whooping cough: R. Gross et al., “Genetics of pertussis toxin,” Molecular Microbiology 3:119–24 (1989). For smallpox: Donald Hopkins, Princes and Peasants: Smallpox in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); F. Vogel and M. R. Chakravartti, “ABO blood groups and smallpox in a rural population of West Bengal and Bihar (India),” Human Genetics 3:166–80 (1966); and my article “A pox upon our genes,” Natural History 99(2): 26–30 (1990). For monkeypox, a disease related to smallpox: Zdenk Jeek and Frank Fenner, Human Monkeypox (Basel: Karger, 1988). For syphilis: Claude Quétel, History of Syphilis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). For tuberculosis: Guy Youmans, Tuberculosis (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1979). For the claim that human tuberculosis was present in Native Americans before Columbus’s arrival: in favor, Wilmar Salo et al., “Identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA in a pre-Columbian Peruvian mummy,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 91:2091–94 (1994); opposed, William Stead et al., “When did Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection first occur in the New World?” American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine 151:1267–68 (1995).

  Chapter 12

  Books providing general accounts of writing and of particular writing systems include David Diringer, Writing (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982), I. J. Gelb, A Study of Writing, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), Geoffrey Sampson, Writing Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), John DeFrancis, Visible Speech (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), Wayne Senner, ed., The Origins of Writing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), and J. T. Hooker, ed., Reading the Past (London: British Museum Press, 1990). A comprehensive account of significant writing systems, with plates depicting texts in each system, is David Diringer, The Alphabet, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (London: Hutchinson, 1968). Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), and Robert Logan, The Alphabet Effect (New York: Morrow, 1986), discuss the impact of literacy in general and of the alphabet in particular. Uses of early writing are discussed by Nicholas Postgate et al., “The evidence for early writing: Utilitarian or ceremonial?” Antiquity 69:459–80 (1995).

  Exciting accounts of decipherments of previously illegible scripts are given by Maurice Pope, The Story of Decipherment (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), Michael Coe, Breaking the Maya Code (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992), John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Yves Duhoux, Thomas Palaima, and John Bennet, eds., Problems in Decipherment (Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1989), and John Justeson and Terrence Kaufman, “A decipherment of epi-Olmec hieroglyphic writing,” Science 259:1703–11 (1993).

  Denise Schmandt-Besserat’s two-volume Before Writing (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992) presents her controversial reconstruction of the origins of Sumerian writing from clay tokens over the course of nearly 5,000 years. Hans Nissen et al., eds., Archaic Bookkeeping (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), describes Mesopotamian tablets that represent the earliest stages of cuneiform itself. Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet (Leiden: Brill, 1982), traces the emergence of alphabets in the eastern Mediterranean region. The remarkable Ugaritic alphabet is the subject of Gernot Windfuhr, “The cuneiform signs of Ugarit,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 29:48–51 (1970). Joyce Marcus, Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), and Elizabeth Boone and Walter Mignolo, Writing without Words (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), describe the development and uses of Mesoamerican writing systems. William Boltz, The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1994), and the same author’s “Early Chinese writing,” World Archaeology 17:420–36 (1986), do the same for China. Finally, Janet Klausner, Sequoyah’s Gift (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), is an account readable by children, but equally interesting to adults, of Sequoyah’s development of the Cherokee syllabary.

  Chapter 13

  The standard detailed history of technology is t
he eight-volume A History of Technology, by Charles Singer et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954–84). One-volume histories are Donald Cardwell, The Fontana History of Technology (London: Fontana Press, 1994), Arnold Pacey, Technology in World Civilization (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), and Trevor Williams, The History of Invention (New York: Facts on File, 1987). R. A. Buchanan, The Power of the Machine (London: Penguin Books, 1994), is a short history of technology focusing on the centuries since A.D. 1700. Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), discusses why the rate of development of technology has varied with time and place. George Basalla, The Evolution of Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), presents an evolutionary view of technological change. Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 3rd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1983), summarizes modern research on the transfer of innovations, including the QWERTY keyboard. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), dissects the relative contributions of blueprint copying, idea diffusion (by espionage), and independent invention to the Soviet atomic bomb.

  Preeminent among regional accounts of technology is the series Science and Civilization in China, by Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), of which 5 volumes in 16 parts have appeared since 1954, with a dozen more parts on the way. Ahmad al-Hassan and Donald Hill, Islamic Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), and K. D. White, Greek and Roman Technology (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), summarize technology’s history for those cultures.