Jared Diamond is a biologist, who had a passion for studying birds, particularly the birds of New Guinea. He came to know and appreciate the many native people he met in his work, the question asked by a New Guinean named Yani remained with him. Why was it that westerners had so much relative to New Guinean natives, who had been living on that land for forty thousand years.
Many advocated racial exceptionalism as the explanation. Diamond decided to find out. Was one group of people smarter than another? Why was there such dimorphism in the amount of cargo produced and toted by different groups?
The core of Diamond’s explanation is that Europeans were essentially lucky in two respects. First, they had unusually many easily domesticable plant and animal species in and around the fertile crescent, the “birthplace” of civilization. Second, since Europe is oriented East-West rather than North-South, a species which is domesticated in one part of Europe has a good chance of thriving in another, so there are many opportunities to swap farming technology between different areas.
It helps that there is an easily navigable river system, and also that there are no impassible deserts or mountain ranges. These conditions are not reproduced in most other parts of the world; Diamond has a range of interesting tables, showing how few useful domesticable species there are elsewhere. Because we got efficient farming earlier than most other people, we also got cities and advanced technology earlier, and everything else followed from that initial lead we established.
Some of the conclusions may seem far-fetched, but Jared always backs up all his conclusions with extensive backing data, and always provides a list of other, rejected hypotheses, and the reasons why they were rejected. His reasoning is always sound, and presented in a manner digestible for a lay reader, with no in-depth subject matter knowledge.
I strongly recommend this book. It is a long read, and often presents like a text book or course-work. But persevere through, the book definitely deserves all its accolades.