What seems to be true (from preliminary studies) is that the gene variants that were under strong selection (reached fixation) over the last 10k years are different in different clusters. That is, the way that modern people in each cluster differ, due to natural selection, from their own ancestors 10k years ago is not the same in each cluster — we have been, at least at the genetic level, experiencing divergent evolution.

In fact, recent research suggests that 7% or more of all our genes are mutant versions that replaced earlier variants through natural selection over the last tens of thousands of years. There was little gene flow between continental clusters (”races”) during that period, so there is circumstantial evidence for group differences beyond the already established ones (superficial appearance, disease resistance).

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for-race.html

Interestingly, his newer book “Collapse” is about how societies must be responsible for their own survival by maintaining their environment, so it seems like he realized that he went too far with geographic determinism in “Guns, Germs and Steel.”

He argues that it was worth no-one’s while to domesticate a non-standard wild barley, because of the existence of the already domesticated variety in Eurasia. But he doesn’t apply the same argument to zebra, arguing that they are just bad candidates for being domesticated—even though horses had already been spread there by that time.

The title itself is misleading—the Spaniards didn’t beat the Aztecs through “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” Their numbers were far too small for Guns and Steel, and they did win militarily faster than Germs take. They won in large part because they allied with the Tlaxcaltecasthat were subjugated to the Aztecs and had to pay tribute, and got them to besiege the Aztecs, providing thousands of men to the Aztec’s hundreds. Tactics certainly played a role as well—the Aztec conception of war had to do more with individual one on one warfare rather than coordinated group attacks.

Even at the end he has to resort to luck or the decisions of the elite to try to explain why the Chinese weren’t more successful—the famous edict banning the naval explorations of the time.

The oil point, I think is very true. Many have noted that nations with oil alone tend to be really screwed up. Consider this article on the “Dutch disease or the “Devil’s Excrement,” talking about the probems of oil wealth.

Yeah. It’s a tough question, certainly. Geography and natural resources can help a nation flourish and develop good institutions. On the other hand, good institutions can help one develop natural resources. There are many theories of history out there, all of them pointing to some hugely significant factor that shapes history. (Great Man theories, theories of luck, theories of culture and work ethic, everything else.) Reality is probably a mix of a lot of them.

Diamond’s book claims that Europeans did so well because the horse was such an excellent candidate for being domesticated, unlike the native animals on other continents. Yet at the same time he shows how corn was domesticated over thousands of years from a wild plant whose cobs were incredibly tiny to one whose cobs were about the size of a thumb, and then to the modern size we have today. If it took so long to domesticate corn from a starting point so far away but it happened, perhaps those other native animals weren’t all that impossible to domesticate. Maybe it just worked out better or someone had more patience. It’s very hard to know.

Sometimes the book smacks of hindsight bias. Something happened, so it had to happen that way. What was domesticated was the easiest to domesticate. Hard to say. Good governments and natural resources go together. However, good governments often develop new types of natural resources and ways to productively use their people and their people’s ingenuity. It’s hard to blame him too much for the overselling that pretty much anyone does with their pet theory, though.

On the subject of useful, though, I do often think that it’s better to focus on what can be changed, like culture and government, than what cannot, like luck and geography, even though all may play a role. (And of course not to focus on pernicious things like race.) Even if geography plays a large role, culture and government can still affect things a lot. Argentina is one piece of evidence for that. So is Botswana, in Africa. Botswana is fairly wealthy, by African standards. It also has a good supply of diamonds and a long-lived stable multiparty democracy. Which came first? Which caused the other? How do they all interlink? Tough questions. But most African states would do better not to moan about their lack of diamonds but to concentrate on the stable democracy and rule of law.

Michael

I’m afaid that I don’t really know enough about South America and don’t have time to do the research that I would need to adequately continue this line of discussion, but I will add this. There are actually several countries with oil where it is not an overwhelmingly corrupting factor, but these are all countries which also have a lot of other things going for them. Canada, USA, Norway, Russia, and some others all have decent amounts of oil, but also have other resources and industries, as well as populations of qualified experts necessary for the functioning of a modern state.

If you look at the title of this blog post, you’ll notice that I called it “a reader’s exercise.” I’m not necessarily a believer that Diamond’s theories of geography can explain everything about human societal development, but I just read the book this week and I’m trying out his arguments on a different example. Think of it like an interactive book review. By playing around with his theory instead of just reading and forgetting I can think about it deeply enough to decide what I really think about its validity, and discussion helps.

By the way, interesting that you should mention silicon and sand. Did you know that there is a silicon shortage? Of course there’s plenty of sand, but the facilities needed to refine high quality pure silicon crystals are very expensive, and the combined growth of the microelectronics and solar power industries may required hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment in new silicon processing plants.

That hardly explains the decline of Uruguay, “the Switzerland of the Americas,” in the early 20th century. Brazil’s relative decline far preceded the advent of illegal drugs, despite being endowed with navigable rivers, ports, and massive natural resources. It’s relative high point was much earlier (due indeed in part to lacking the benefical governments of Uruguay and Argentina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). Argentina was incredibly wealthy in the early 20th century, thanks to many natural and human benefits, including its excellent constitution and following the beliefs of the great economist Juan Bautista Alberdi. Its per capita income exceeded Spain and was equal to Germany and the Benelux nations at the outbreak of World War I. Its foreign trade exceeded Canada’s and was a quarter of the US’s. Buenos Aires was the second largest city on the Atlantic, with massive trade and investment. It’s not illegal drugs that harmed Argentina either. Political troubles, culminating in the 1943 coup, and subsequent rule by Peron (and bad economics) did most of the damage.

Did geography make the disastrous War of the Triple Alliance inevitable in 19th century South America? I don’t think so. Paraguay in particular was utterly devastated. Fanaticism that made Paraguay fight on until two-thirds of its adult males died was more important than geography.

Geography is certainly important, but Dr. Diamond overstates it, like anyone with a theory. The counterexamples are too numerous to mention. Successful societies do successfully exploit their natural resources, but they also create resources where none existed before. As they say, sand is not a resource until you invent integrated circuits and have a use for silicon. So was oil until technology found a use for it. While natural resources help, in the family of nations there are too few nations which have even managed to successfully use what they do have that it makes little sense to focus on geography so much. Hong Kong and Singapore are hardly the only locations favorable to be trading ports. Reducing everything to geography and resources is as silly as reducing everything to culture or historical events.

It does seem like oil is almost a curse, though. Countries with oil rarely handle it well at all.

And not that I didn’t just say that the problem was a lack of natural resources, but a lack of all natural resources EXCEPT for oil. The fact that oil requires little more than exploitation by the elite class for them to receive benefit puts in in a different class of natural resource from those that require a large industrial complex to fully exploit. Diamonds could be another similar example, or perhaps narcotics.