Community Reviews
PFS Book Club --- 22ND April, 23
Today we reviewed book called “Guns, Germs and steel” by Jared Diamond. He from Papua New Guinea and observed natives very closely there. He is ornithologist by profession.
Manish started today’s discussion with Spain conquest of the Inca empire (also known as the Peru in current south America). He mentioned that how in 1532, 168 Spanish soldiers killed 8000 Inca clan soldiers in their pursuit of Inca empire. And Spanish was able to do the same not because of sheer supremacy but because of the certain advantage Eurasia had. Book tells that how Europeans were dominant powers and intelligent rather than east Asia not because of genetics but because of favorable geographic conditions. Farming arose early in fertile crescent (what we call today as west Asia and part of Africa bordering Asia and Europe like Sudan) and most of the staple crops were grown in this area except rice which used to be grown in China as well. Also Europeans transition from hunter gatherer to settled life was possible due to presence of large domesticated animals. Diamond identified 14 domesticated mammals, only two (one of them was llama in south America) were indigenous outside Eurasia and 5 most useful like cow, horse, sheep, goat and pig were limited to Eurasia which gave Europeans the edge to conquer whole world and helped them in possessing big military and economic advantages.
Book also tells that how lot of American population was killed off by diseases brought by Europeans. Manish told that how most infectious diseases evolved from similar diseases of animals leading to infections in humans. With Europeans closer proximity to domesticated animals helped them in getting better immunity over these diseases. Manish also mentioned on spread of agriculture, technology and innovation due to geographical orientation of Europe and Asia (east - west) compared to Americas (north-south).
Even Harari is been inspired by Diamond for his book Homo sapiens. Harari book is not his research and ais accumulation of different works with his interpretation. Guru gave very nice analogy that Like Jagjit Singh made ghazals popular though he was not purist in the same. Similarly, Harari has made anthropology and human evolution interesting and consumable by a common man.
Discussion meandered through many interesting engaging topics. The way Manish did the review of the book, I am ordering copy of this book for my next read.
Yet another amazing session 😊
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