IP Blog

Anyone who has read Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, would be able to clearly see that the most immediate casue of spread of food production would have to be location. he sees mankind’s developmental trajectory in any region of the Earth as determined by the number and kind of domesticable plants and animals the region contained, and its barriers to travel. In particular, the unique advantages in all three respects of the famed “Fertile Crescent” after the last Ice Age 13,000 years ago was the decisive accident of history.To take farming first, the area of Southwest Asia around the Tigris-Euphrates valley, was reportedly rich in the right wild varieties of wheat and barley. One trait that especially suits a grass species for domestication is the heaviness of its seed—the part that contains the nutrients—and 32 of the world’s 56 heaviest-seeded grass plants are native to Southwest Asia. Only four of these grasses are found in Sub-Saharan Africa and eleven in all of the Americas.The shift from hunting-gathering to farming, Prof. Diamond argues (surely correctly), was not the inspiration of a lone genius, but was incremental and largely unplanned. Hunter-gatherers first took note of especially desirable plants, then began to return to the most vigorous stands of those plants, then settled permanently near those stands, then began consciously to tend them, and then consciously to sow future crops.More efficient than hunting or gathering, farming yielded food surpluses that allowed sharp increases in population density, which in turn supported specialized non-farming classes of scribes, intellectuals, soldiers, and, eventually, government bureaucrats. Farm-supported societies tended toward greater complexity, the production of new ideas and inventions, and military domination of their neighbors. Diamond argues specifically that all this happened in the Fertile Crescent long before it happened elsewhere in great part because of the accident mentioned before—the presence of so many domesticable plants. This, rather than any inherent superiority of its inhabitants, led to its becoming the “cradle of civilization.” Other parts of the world never had a chance. Either they had no suitable plants at all, or had so few, and began farming so late, that they were overwhelmed by the descendants of those southwest Asians who had begun to urbanize by 8,500 B.C.
According to Diamond’s reckoning, there are only 148 species of large, wild creatures that can be tamed (and of these only 14 species have made it to the farm). In the plant realm, only several hundred of 200,000 species can yield good protein. The ancestors of these mammals and plants — which include pigs, barley, and rice — just happened to be in the Fertile Crescent and China. Moreover, only the Eurasian continent has an east-west axis allowing diffusion of plants, animals, and people across similar, somewhat Mediterranean-style climate and terrain. The north-south axis of Africa and America inhibited diffusion due to severe changes in climate. For example, the tropical jungle of central America effectively stopped the southward migration of domestic corn from Mexico and the northward migration of the domestic llama from Peru. Five thousand years after llamas had been domesticated in the Andes, the Maya, Aztecs, and all the other native societies of Mexico remained without pack animals. Similarly, the Saharan desert and tropical rainforests of Africa impeded the southward spread of technology from the Fertile Crescent of the Middle-East.
Thus, agriculturally wealthy Eurasians had a long head start in developing a surplus population with a division of labor that enabled the tools of civilization to arise. Agricultural settlements led small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers to coalesce into village-based tribes. These grew into chiefdoms comprising thousands of people from many villages. Chiefdoms led conflict-mediating laws to be codified. Ruling classes and elites emerged to mobilize citizens and their resources to wage war, build public works, and increase political power. Finally, the state arose and with it the large populations and technological developments including political organizations that produced fleets of soldiers engaging in transoceanic conquest. This then brings me back to my opening statement of the importance of location because witthout the propper location, nations were not able to evolve.Before agriculture it seems that the impetus for evolution was external or environmental. Agriculture itself undoubtedly arose in some connection with global environmental changes. But since agriculture it seemed that humans have created evolution themselves, their actions destroying species and causing adaptations. Perhaps most importantly the civilizations that have arisen due to the advent of agriculture are now altering the global climate. Maybe we have come full circle and since we have taken evolution into our own hands, we will be our own destroyers.