Ironically, Northern and Western Europeans have contributed among the least to what we could consider human civilization. For example, there is no sign of relevant civilizations ever existing in Scandinavia.

African nations have been trading with other parts of the world for millennia. Ancient Nubia had strong trade relationships with nations inside as well as outside of Africa for thousands of years and at one point even ruled over Egypt. Ethiopians were also among the first people to adopt Christianity in 4th century AD. How could this have come about if there was little contact with countries outside of Africa? Yemen is only a stone’s throw from Ethiopia; the countries are divided by the “Bab el Mandeb” (Red Sea/Gulf of Aden).

To convince one’s self that civilization and technological advancement have only come about within the parameters of that arbitrary border confining what Jared Diamond refers to as Eurasia is ridicules, especially in the face of Archeological and Anthropological evidence to the contrary. Any first year Cultural Anthropology student would know this.

In East Africa Swahili were building ships for centuries that were superior in quality to early European ships called “mtepe;” and were trading with China, Arabia and India by sea, becoming very wealthy as a result. Most of China’s ivory for some time came from direct trade with the Swahili. According to many authors including Schmidt and Avery (1978, 1979, 1986) and a review in American Anthropologist (Kusimba, 1997), Africans between 1500-2000 years ago were smelting iron at temperatures not reached in Europe until the industrial age. These Africans (in Tanzania) are believed to be among the first to produce carbon steel, using a special preheating method.

In West Africa the civilizations of Ghana, Mali, Songhai and Timbuktu attracted people from all over the world. In the early part of the fourteenth century to the time of the Moroccan invasion in the late sixteenth century, the city of Timbuktu became an important intellectual and spiritual center of the Islamic world, attracting people from as far away as Saudi Arabia to study there. Great mosques, universities, schools, and libraries were built under the Mali and Songhay Empires, some of which still stand today.

A large number of innovations that many Europeans today recognize as being uniquely their own, such as fire arms and the old trade ships once used for commerce (The kind used by Columbus for example) trace their history back to technologies and influences acquired through Islamic contacts in the Iberian Peninsula. In the year 711 AD, Islamic invaders conquered that part of Europe known today as Spain and Portugal and ruled over the region for close to 800 years (711 to 1492). Europe as a result saw a number of improvements in various areas of life and interest, ranging from the medical sciences to military; to paved roads, and street lamps. The Moor also introduced Europe to its first Universities and the numerical system currently in popular use today.

Scholars describe the Moor as originating in the Senegal River valley in Southern Mauritania as Almoravides, and then gathering followers from many ethic groups before overwhelming the Iberian Peninsula. The Almoravides were a group of devout Muslims also partially responsible for the destabilization and eventual demise of the Kingdom of Ghana — located in what is today Northern Senegal and Southern Mauritania — in and around the same time as the Iberian siege.

The spread of Islam into Africa is not mentioned in Jared Diamond’s theory, nor is the fact that the Saharan Desert is only between 5000-2000 years old, making his claims of isolation seem all the more ridiculous in from a broad perspective. Further, it has also been shown that the current inhabitants of Europe do not resemble Neolithic and Bronze Age Europeans in craniofacial form, but share close affinities with sub-Saharan Africans (Brace et al, 2006). I am curious why Jared Diamond does not incorporate these bits of historical, geographic and Anthropologic information into his makeshift post hoc hypothesis.

At the time of Columbus’s arrival in the America’s the Aztec were using math, astronomy and agriculture that was superior to Europeans. If it were not for contact with South American Amerindians (initially by accident) much of Europe would have likely died of starvation; as the continent was experiencing sever famine at the time. It was South American agriculture and crops that saved Europe from near death. Ironically, in exchange for this vitally needed learning the Europeans inadvertently killed off between 80-95% of Amerindian populations; completely wiping out many Aboriginal Caribbean native groups with new-world diseases, and then slavery.

THE REASON EUROPEANS CONQURED THE NEW WORLD IS BECAUSE THE TURKS WERE BLOCKING EUROPEAN PASSAGE TO THE SILK ROAD, AND SO THEY HAD TO FIND ANOTHER ROUT TO INDIA/CHINA. ATTEMPTING THIS BY SEA EUROPEANS EVENTUALLY DISOVERED THE AMERICAS; INADVERTLYING, THROUGH SHERE INCOMPETENCE (COLUMBUS WOULD ACTUCALLY NAME THE NATIVES AMERICANS “INDIANS”). THIS ENCOUNTER WOULD END UP WIPING OUT 80-95% OF THE NATIVE POPULATION WITH EUROPEAN BORN DISEASES. MAKING LATER CONQUEST ESPECIALLY EASY!

Africans had access to guns, too – but like the Arabs, who introduced the weapon to Europeans, initially found them inconvenient for traditional warfare. In effect, Africans also had guns germs and steal, which refutes a large part of Jared Diamond’s ridiculous theory.

Several well known left of center blogs have been enjoying a fine set-to in the last few days, occasioned by the recent TV series based on Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. There are distinct echoes of the recent…

Diamond operates in a different universe than we do. I don’t think I am overstepping by saying that probably, for the group of young scholars here, what makes us professionally envious is stuff like seeing somebody we went to graduate school with get an article published in a major journal, or land a hyper presitigious job. That any of us think, “dammit, that should have been *my* PBS special” when we watch a 70 year old man tottering about on public television is, well, a truly baffling line of attack. You might think we are motivated by bad faith, but we are certainly not motivated by that kind of bad faith.

C. Northcote Parkinson was the first to identify the phenomenon of “injelitance”–the jealousy that the less-than-competent feel for the capable. Here we have a classic case from the anthropologists at Savage Mind, who are both positively green with …

You are sometimes confusing me with Kerim. I didn’t make the point about inequality within societies, he did (though I agree with him that it is, again, telling that Diamond evinces no interest in this problem).

I understand that my comments make no sense to you. At base, we have a disagreement about whether Jared Diamond’s attitude toward PNGuineans is “incredibly warm and sympathetic” or so patronizing it makes one’s teeth ache. One of the things that is very striking about this entire debate is how it doesn’t seem to matter how often the anthropologists and geographers say that Diamond’s thesis does not convince specialists, people are insistent that it just has to be so, anyway, because it makes sense to them. as someone else said somewhere else in all this (and I am sorry to not be able to give attribution), GG&S is a “just so” story. Arguing with this is like beating one’s head against a wall.

Furthermore, your point about PNG makes even less sense. Of course there are urban Papua New Guineans with internet access, but you’ll notice they weren’t urban Papua New Guineans with internet access before Portugal invaded. And I have no idea where you get this idea that Diamond thinks of ” (certain) PNG societies as a problem to be solved”. He writes with incredible warmth and sympathy about PNG and its societies all the way through the book. What PNG societies do you think he thinks are a problem to be solved, and where’s your evidence?

Finally, you are right that inequality within societies are important. Diamond wouldn’t question this. But it has absolutely no bearing on the question at hand. There were many, many different societies in Eurasia, Africa , the Americas and Asia, all with varying levels of inequality. That doesn’t change the fact that it was Eurasian societies who conquered the others, thanks in large part due to superior technology and partial immunity to epidemic diseases, and not the other way round.

The posts that Ozma and I wrote about Guns, Germs and Steel seem to have struck a nerve, and already t [...]

This post is simply a way for me to organize the growing number of blog links that are discussing the recently-concluded Guns, Germs and Steel mini-series on PBS. In just the past two days I’ve noticed a sharp increase in…