Notes on Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

I just finished reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond, and I must admit it was quite a slog. The book is long, detailed, and not too entertaining.

It was recommended by Charles Munger in his Almanack, and I had heard about it many times before. The book's core question is indeed an interesting one: Why did some countries and societies develop so much more than others, conquering others and creating better life for their people? Is it due to racial differences or something else?

The book is #1 on Amazon in the category of "geography," and I think that was part of the slog of reading it; the extremely detailed info on the history, environment, and topography of all the different parts of the Earth was just less compelling to read as so many of the sub-points and background were not well connected to the main question in the book. The most interesting parts for me were the beginning and the end, which basically answer the question by saying that the differing environments and natural resources of the continents as well as the different societal organizational structures contributed to different levels of diffusion, migration, and technology development that allowed some societies to prosper more than others.

I did enjoy the discussion of how languages built on top of one another and how writing systems played a big role in societal development. It was obvious to me from the start how guns and steel would be useful for societies, but all the stuff about germs, food production, and animal domestication was a lot less obvious to from the start and was interesting to learn (though way too detailed and at times off topic for my taste).

Below are some of my notes and takeaways from the different chapters. If you really love history and geography as well as archaeology or the science of researching the past, this book is a good one for you. If not, I wouldn't recommend it.

Prologue
Differences between lifestyles in societies
Why did wealth and power become distributed as they are now?
Different rates of development
Europeans ended up with guns, the worst germs, and steel tools
Diversity in New Guinea; 6,000 human languages and 1,000 of them in New Guinea

Part 1

1 head start
New Guinea would've seemed to have gotten head start

2 a natural experiment
Polynesian history provides good test of development

3 collision
Guns
Ability to write

Part 2 the rise of food production

4 farmer power
Prerequisite for production of guns, germs, and steel
Horses
Manure

5 haves and have nots
Different resources and starting habits 

6 to farm or not to farm

7 how to make an almond
Crop development
Plants adapt to animals that eat them

8 apples or Indians
Fertile Crescent had better variety of plants and environment

9 domesticable animals
Need many factors like diet and character to work out for an animal to be domesticated for food production and hunting

10 spacious skies and tilted axes
Axis orientations of continents affected food production and resources

Part 3 from food to guns germs and steel

11 lethal gift of livestock
Germs from animals and people

12 blueprints and borrowed letters
Writing transmits knowledge
Borrowing writing systems

13 necessity mother

14 egalitarianism to kleptocracy
Religion supports politicians
Food production makes complex societies possible

Part 4 around the world

Ch 15 Australia and New Guinea 
Less cultural change

16 how china became Chinese

17 Polynesia
Outrigger canoe allowed travel over waves

18 hemispheres colliding
European discovery of America 
Food production tech and tools allowed Europeans to sail
Big domesticated animals in europe 
More germs in europe from crowded living created immunities
Metal tool use much more in europe
Sailing vessels
More use of writing in europe
Organization into states in europe

19 how Africa became black
Huge diversity
Language families show origins of people and their travel around world

Epilogue
Differences in societies due to differing environments
Diffusion and migration

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