Chapter 5 of Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel is about the social inequality that has always existed within society. He begins the chapter by writing “Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between haves and the have-nots: between people with farmer power and those without it” (Diamond, 93). He goes through various cultures citing dates and discusses the overview of the inequality faced, and why it existed.
Diamond asks for a basic explanation as to why food production did not emerge in certain places where it would have drastically improved the conditions of the people living there. He notes that food production could not spring up in a desert because they lacked sources of irrigation.
Diamond sets down a global timeline for when food production began in various cultures occupying different geographies. The oldest culture he includes dates back to 8,500 BC in the Fertile Crescent, which is thought to be the birthplace of civilization. Not long after that in China, food production sprang up in 7,500 BC as the Chinese began growing their own rice, soybeans, millet, hemp and raising pigs and silk warms. In Mesoamerica by the year 3,500 BC people were growing staples like corn and beans in addition to other crops. In the Amazon crop production also began in 3,500 BC. Other cultures mentioned include The Eastern US in 2500 BC, the sub-Sahara in 5000 BC, tropical Africa in 3000 BC, and New Guinea in 7000BC. Diamond also makes mention of areas that imported food or were overrun by producers, as happened in Western Europe, Egypt and the Indus Valley. He explains that a culture that produced its own food had a competitive advantage over other cultures.
As Chapter five looks at when cultures decided to farm, Chapter 6 analyzes what lay behind that decision. What causes a culture to move from being hunter gatherers to farmers and herders? After, “Formerly, all people on earth were hunter-gathers” (Diamond, 104). So, why the switch? Diamond points out that food production was neither a discovery nor an invention. He points out that the switch was not made as a conscious choice between two alternatives, because farming, had no reference point for the hunter/gather societies that made the switch. Rather, much like species evolved, agriculture evolved from “decisions made without awareness of their consequences” (Diamond, 106). Some societies, for example, did become sedentary without producing food, such as in North America’s Pacific Northwest and possibly Australia.
There were also nomads who produced food, such as those living in New Guinea’s Lakes Planes. Food production in the cultures that adopted the method happened gradually, one step at a time. Sometimes this happened as a necessity, as happened on Easter Island. Though the settlers who came in A. D. 500 brought chickens with them, they did not have chickens as a staple to their diet until other food sources—wild birds and porpoises—became scarce. A similar thing happened in New Zeland. After the populations of seabirds and land birds dwindled form over consumption they began to step up their efforts of their own food production. The heart of these two chapters is the point that though food production led to power, it was not a conscious decision to get that power, but merely one made out of necessity.
Work Cited:
Diamond, Jared M.. Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998. Print.
