Guns germs steel book5/22/2023 ![]() ![]() Yet the emergence of such societies in Eurasia was no accident. Even so-called world histories focus overwhelmingly on literate Eurasian states since 3000 BC. That broadest pattern poses history’s biggest unsolved question, which historians scarcely discuss today. ![]() Why did history unfold that way? Why didn’t Africans instead conquer Eurasia, bringing Native Americans as slaves? Obviously, that is why Eurasians (especially Europeans) conquered peoples of other continents. By 1492 AD, that was still true in all of Australia, much of the Americas, and some of sub-Saharan Africa, but populous Eurasian societies already had state governments, writing, iron technology, and standing armies. In 11,000 BC, all societies everywhere were bands of preliterate hunter-gatherers with stone tools. History’s broadest pattern is its different unfolding on different continents over the last 13,000 years. My focus is on trends over whole continents since the last Ice Age his, on much smaller areas for shorter times. Without disputing the value of McNeill’s approach, I believe that our differences arise from the different historical scales that we consider. McNeill identifies two contrasting approaches to history: the traditional emphasis on autonomous cultural developments that he favors, versus my book’s emphasis on environmental factors. After warmly praising my book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies as “artful, informative, and delightful”, the distinguished historian William H. ![]()
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