World History attempts to offer a global perspective on the collective chronicles of the Earth’s societies. This is necessary, for to view history from the perspective of any individual society is to peer through the lenses of subjective experience and thought. Science seeks an objective truth, not one riddled with misconceptions, erroneous impressions, and outright lies meant to serve the agenda of a particular group. While World History has been searching for the concrete answers, the realm of the abstract has “been the preserve mainly of mythologists, theologians, metaphysicians, and philosophers of history,” as Bruce Mazlish has said. Jared Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, endeavors to approach both the concrete and abstract, such as “What is the meaning of history?” and “Why did particular groups of people prevail over others in the evolution of complex society?” These types of questions are what Diamond refers to as the “big” questions. There are many theories that strive to answer them, such as the technological and materialist theories, the racist theories, and even the more unorthodox ancient astronauts and the early psychonauts theories. Diamond finds flaws in all of these and puts forth his hypothesis of environmental determinism. To help explain the need to return to these “big” questions, we can briefly examine these theories. The technological and materialist theories propose that particular groups of people overtook others due to their ability to construct better tools and weapons. While this certainly played a role, it does not answer the questions of why or how they developed better tools and weapons. The racist theory simply attributes superiority to the more industrialized people, but does not answer how this superiority came about, other than alluding to genetics. The last two feature a dues ex machina theme which leaves the realm of science altogether, but should be mentioned to maintain a quirky completeness. Diamond’s theory manages to either answer these big questions or dispute their validity in a concise and efficient manner. The importance of these big questions becomes apparent when Diamond’s friend Yali asks him a seemingly simple question, “Why is it you white people developed so much cargo… but us black people had little cargo of our own?” To understand the answer to this question, I will succinctly discuss the main points of the environmental determinism thesis. Diamond posits that the movement from a hunter-gatherer society to one that actively practices plant and animal domestication is highly influenced by its geographic location. Eurasia is situated predominantly on an East-West axis, which presents major advantages over the North-South axis found in the Africas, Americas, and New Guinea and Australia. The East-West axis preserves a similar climate across the land, allowing for the easier spread of plant life, travel of people and animal life, and recurrent exposure to similar diseases. A North-South axis presents a larger variation in these elements, limiting the possibilities of diffusion and slowing the diffusion rates of domesticates in comparison to those of the East-West axis. This continental alignment either propelled or hindered the journey, but not necessarily a progress towards social complexity. This movement begins with the increasing rarity of game to hunt. By observed and accidental experiments in plant growing, through the passing of seeds through the digestive process and in garbage heaps, and by necessity, these hunter-gatherers begin to domesticate plants. This eventually, but not initially, leads to an increase in available calories, which can support a higher population in this now sedentary society. The population increases due to the higher frequency in birth rates now that the society has abandoned its nomadic ways. This agriculture results in two important events: the advent of surplus food, and an increase in leisure time. Now people are free to pursue specialized trades and can be supported by the surplus. This leads to pottery, which only increases the driving force towards higher complexity by allowing the storage and preparation of food, and eventually to government, with developed religious and military aspects. All of this and the rate of its development is dependent upon the continental alignment. Ultimately, this nexus forms the answer to Yali’s question, and presents a seemingly valid theory of the rise of social complexity.
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For more discussions on social complexities, such as thevedic society, please visit Jared B. Hobbs at his blog Meditations and become a Scholar of Consciousness!
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