Diamond in English ("short" version)

Why Jared Diamond is wrong

Let’s look at Diamond’s main points:

-Geographical position of the continents and climate (mainly chapter 10 but important for the whole story)
-Agriculture (chapters 4, 6, 7 & 8)
-Domesticated Animals (chapters 9 and 11)
-Writing & Technology (chapters 12 and 13)

Geographical position and Climates
Diamond claims that the geographical position of the various continents is of fundamental importance for human development. I disagree.

He gives us a world map and shows us America and Africa have a north-south axe and Eurasia has a east-west axe. The east-west axe, he thinks, makes the distribution of “ideas” (like agriculture, writing, wheels, etc…) far more easy than the north-south axe. This, mainly because of the various climates that stretch from east to west, like the steppe climate of Eurasia that covers thousands of kilometers between China and Europe.

He compares the African and American situation with Eurasia and mentions the warm rainforests between the cool Andes mountains and the cool Mexican plateau, and the dry desert between northern and southern Africa.

Now, there is indeed a rainforest between the Mexican plateau and the Peruvian Andes, but…

a) There is a rainforest from Mexico to central Ecuador, not between. Maya’s from the Petén rainforest shouldn’t have that much trouble crossing the same rainforest environment in Panama.

b) To cross North and South America from Canada in the north to Chili in the South you only have to cross 5 different climate zones. Less than the east-west route from china to France. Furthermore, there are no mountains, nor deserts, nor large waters to cross as in Eurasia. You go from a dry cold land climate (from the Ice Sea to Mexico… the more you go south, the warmer it gets of course), to a warm rainy climate (from Mexico tot Ecuador), and finally, you end with the cool Andes climate (from Colombia to southern Chili). So the big (Andes) mountains aren’t between anything, they’re your final destination, quite different from the situation in Eurasia where you have to pass the Himalayan. Even if you take the steppes to the north, you still have to make it to warm and cold, dry and wet (Europe) climates.

c) The so called desert that, as Diamond claims, separates Mexico and the US (a blockade to Mexican agriculture achieving northward) simply doesn’t exist in the east (between Texas and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas). In the west it does but… This desert is the American southwest. Again, there’s nothing in between the two areas…

d) South American and Mexican agriculture already crossed each other in Panama by about 5000BC

e) Eurasia’s north-south axe is almost as long as its east-west axe… The longest north-south axe in the “Old World” (Norway-South Africa) is almost as long as the American north-south axe & the longest east-west axe is from Norway, all the way trough Siberia , to the Hudson Bay in Canada…

f) One can very easily go by boat in America. This is impossible in Eurasia without rounding Africa.

g) African agriculture started south of the Sahara (by that time not even a desert) so there was no trouble getting agricultural products across it. It already was south of it…

Agriculture
Diamond claims that American agriculture was less well developed and produced less than Eurasian agriculture, largely because there were no ploughs and oxen or wheels. I disagree because:

a) More than 60% of the worlds agricultural products today comes from the Americas. Not only maize and tubers like potatoes and manioc, but also most beans, tomatoes, chocolate and peanuts. Besides food, we also owe things like rubber, tobacco and quinine to indigenous agriculture.

b) Most American Indians in 1492 were farmers, just like in Eurasia or in Africa. About 60% of the total surface of the American continent was occupied by farmers, just like in Africa or in Eurasia. Of course there were more people in Eurasia. The total landmass is considerably larger.
c) Agricultural ruins of terraces in the Andes for example show that a bigger amount of land was under cultivation back than, than it is nowadays.

Domesticated animals
Diamond claims there were no domesticated animals in the Americans except for the lama’s and guinea pigs that weren’t able to cross the warm lands of Central America and therefore never reached Mexico where they could have used the Mexican idea of the wheel. He further states that the reason for the lack of domesticates is the lack of the right wild candidates. Again I disagree because:

a) Diamond himself gives in a table the huge number of American candidates that are indeed there like the wild American pigs, the wild American sheep, the wild American cows (bison), the wild American reindeer and moose, the wild American goats and all the other American candidates that aren’t part of his “big 5/12”, like American tapirs, huge rodents, deer and birds.

b) A lot of these animals were domesticated, semi-domesticated, kept as pets, or otherwise like the Mexican pigs, deer and tapir, like the American bison, like turtles and fish in the Amazon, like the many birds (turkey, chicken, macaw, parrot, muskovy duck…), etc..

c) Lamas and guinea pigs aren’t at all bound to cool and dry ecosystems. The guinea pig was present in the Caribean (wet and warm) and the lama present at the coast of Ecuador (warm and wet), Peru (warm and dry), and Chaco region in Bolivia/Paraguay (warm and wet). There are even suggestions that lamas were present in the lowlands of Brazil. The same point goes for the bison in north America, not at all an animal bound to the American plains, but in 1492 present from Alaska to Mexico and from New York to California…

d) There is no good answer to why American reindeer (caribou) and American elks (moose) weren’t domesticated in America while the very same specie was indeed domesticated in Siberia (east-west axe!). There even was a considerable contact between American and Siberian peoples…

e) If it was so that lamas couldn’t cross the warm lowlands of central America (which is not true), a way to the Mexican wheel, why than didn’t the wheel crossed over to Peru? Wheels don’t mind warmth, do they?

f) Even if the Indians completely had domesticated there wild sheep, cows, and pigs… that wouldn’t have mattered for the “Old World” diseases to spread rapidly across the American continent because these sicknesses came from different species of cows, pigs, sheep, and goats. The only possible “extra advantage” the Americans would have had, is that Europeans (perhaps) also would have died “en masse” of the American sicknesses.

Writing & technology
Diamond (like others) again, and again claims that Native American peoples were “technically” less well developed than Eurasians. The only difference Diamond makes is that he blames the natural causes (axes, climate, access to wild animals , and the presence of useful minerals) instead of the “racist” option that they somehow were “dumber” than Eurasians. These claims mostly cumulate around three basic things: writing, the wheel, and the use of metals (especially iron). Diamond claims these things were not present in America in 1492 or were (due to his so called “wrong” axes) limited to very small areas and “not well used”. I don’t think anyone would be surprised if I would say I don’t agree. Why don’t I?

a) Mexican writing was present from Mexico to Costa Rica, and Indians from Chili to Costa Rica used a form of quipu, probably a unique way of writing (that’s at least what the Spaniards themselves told us and what specialists today are finding out)

b) There are countless claims and forms of American writing systems. Most of them are seen by some as evidence that Europeans (or Romans, or Greeks, or Israelites, or Phoenicians) came over to the Americas before Columbus and the Vikings. Others react to that saying there’s no evidence for that, so all are false. Nobody seems to make a statement for indigenous writing. Indians just couldn’t invent something like that… Other recognized indigenous writing systems (from the north) are recognized but are without any doubt said to have been originated after Europeans came. They are even credited for inventing whole systems.

c) Even Diamond acknowledges that Indians did have wheels. “But the Mexians only used it for toys, lacking the right animals to use it”. Well… again… this region is bigger than Mexico alone and these so called toys are actually small clay representations of animals (deer and dogs) who ride on these wheels. How then can one claim that there were no useful animals to use these wheels? By the way, the wheel wasn’t that much used in Europe either back than and one thing is for sure: the reason why the Indians didn’t use the wheel for pottery or the wheelbarrow is not because they lacked the right animals…

d) Indians did had the products to make wheels, like wood, stone, and metals. They even had rubber, something completely unknown to Europeans (or any other non-American people) in 1492. I further don’t see why the Peruvians (Andeans) couldn’t have invented the wheel. But, if they really wanted it, again, the Mexicans could have introduced it easily.

e) Indians did use there rubber to make balls for there ballgames. These things, obviously could role, and what is more: the “yokes” the Mexican ballplayers used around their hips was nothing less than a perfect rubber made tire… Another game was the “Flying game” in Mexico (and again, this game was also used in other countries, like Costa Rica) were Indians actively used the wheel to “fly” along a pole by, like a bungee jumper, jumping of that pole with a rope on their feet. The wheel above the pole (where the ropes were putted on) made the men ‘fly” in circles until they reached the ground.

f) A lot of images (petroglyphs for example) and objects actually resemble wheels very much but, just as the “writing systems”, most if not all of them are seen as something else, falsifications or European-influenced representations. My only question is: why?

g) Metals were in use from Greenland to Argentina. And from about 6000BC tot 1492, just like in other parts of the world. It started with the use of copper in a place where nobody would expect it: around the great Lakes in North America. From about 2000BC onwards, another metal industry started in the Americas. The Andeans began working with copper and gold. Finally, in 1492, the three famous big ones (Aztecs, Maya’s, Incas) used a lot of different metals. One could say that they were Bronze Age peoples because they didn’t use iron in the same way as Europeans did. But they had it. Iron came from three places: the indigenous mineral, meteors (most used), and introductions from outside America (Europe via Greenland, and Asia via Alaska). The Aztec had iron knives but bronze was more used. The people who used it the most were the Eskimos and the peoples of the American northwest. It was not because iron couldn’t be smelted, they didn’t make that many use of it. Indians in Ecuador invented ways to work with platinum (much higher melting point), about 2000 years before Europeans learned how to do it. The most favored indigenous metal (actually an alloy), tumbaga, proved to be almost as strong as the iron swords of the Spaniards. And again: they had enormous amounts of useful minerals in their grounds. Chili is the world’s largest “copper mine” and Brazil has the highest iron production in the world. A lot of native peoples simply saw things differently. Metals weren’t praised that much for their strength. They had other minerals for that (obsidian, hardwood...). Metals were, by a lot of people, viewed as beautiful glittering and smelling (!) items. A lot of metals also had a religious meaning and were praised if they were flexible. Not if they were hard. For us perhaps difficult to understand but it didn’t effect the outcomes of Spanish-Indian fights, contrary to what is commonly believed. By the way: Indians in the Andean region also possessed enormous amounts of minerals for making gunpowder. They even had bamboo, just like the Chinese who invented the first guns of the world which were made of bamboo sticks.

h) Indians built huge cities and irrigation works. The Aztec capital was far bigger than any European city at the time. And it wasn’t the only one. There existed cities in North, Central, and South America. In jungles, as well as in mountains, deserts or European-style environments. They existed in Costa Rica, and in Colombia and there is no reason why Panama wouldn’t be a part off it. We know from the early European historical sources, that exactly this Darién region was very well populated and a region of very active commerce.

i) Commerce and trade was also something very common in the Americas. Trading systems indeed linked Peru with Mexico, the Andes with the Amazon en Mexico with North-America. All this in contradiction to what Diamond wants us to believe. Even money and international markets existed.

Conclusions
I can be very short. The main conclusion is that Diamond didn’t do much research on the topic he wrote about. Some things (like the so called desert between the eastern US and Mexico) are even rather stupid. These things are very easily checked so perhaps it’s even worse then “wrong research”. On some pages it is all to obvious that Diamond is taking a stand in highly controversial topics (such as the arrival of humans in the Americas and the extinction of animals at the end of the Ice-Age) to make his story actually work. I doubt it, after more than 6 years of studying his work, that he hasn’t put things in his book only because they would make his story workable or credible. Or, to put it in another way: I do believe he actually ignored (some) facts that could challenge his theory. The theory that Eurasians have an advantage over Americans/Africans because of “natural circumstances”.

Yes, it is true that Europeans “won” in their colonization of the Americas due to diseases, but it is not true that it was somehow predicted 10.000 years ago that Europe would conquer America (or Africa) due to the (in my eyes fictive) “natural circumstances/advantages” of the continent. This, in agreement with my theory that Columbus didn’t discover anything because he knew what he was searching for (Asia) and ignored where he had landed (America). Someone who searches something, cannot discover it so it was pure “luck” Europeans entered America before Asians or Africans or before Americans entered the other continents. There were indeed connections between the continents before Columbus. The Pacific stood in contact with America (and visa versa), and Americans crossed over to Asia (Siberia) and Europe (Iceland, Denmark, Norway). Vikings came to Greenland and Canada, and it is highly probable that east Asians reached the North American west coast (at least Siberians stood in contact with Alaskans). So who “discovered” who and what is “discovering” anyway?