by MadScience

Created on: February 07, 2007   Last Updated: May 20, 2007

OK, let's get philosophical shall we? Why are we here? Is there life after death? How did it all begin? These can be described as the A-list questions that humans have asked since we developed enough intelligence to stop sitting around picking fleas off each other and think about such things. A slightly less fundamental question (a B-list question if you like) but one which probably has much more bearing on our everyday lives and our interaction with other people from different cultures is How did we get from clever apes to where we are today?' And as a follow up- Why did a one section of humanity manage to impose itself over the rest?'

This is what Jared Diamond attempts to answer in this fascinating book. On the front of my edition it states that this is A Short History Of Everybody For The Last 13,000 years' and this is exactly right.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Diamond starts by looking at the modern world and asking how is it that Eurasian civilization came to dominate the native American, African or Polynesian civilizations sometimes as in the case of the Spanish in central and south America defying all the odds. In order to answer this we have to look at the possibility that Eurasian peoples themselves are in some way superior to other racial' denominations around the world. This argument would state that Eurasians are cleverer, more ingenious more inventive and have the potential to be better organised that other inferior races' in the world. This is a very dangerous argument to accept, as it would justify racism, and persecution of less developed societies. In fact this is exactly what happened when European explorers and settlers came face to face with the native populations of the Americas and Africa, leading to violent subjugation and slavery.

Diamond quickly and rightly dismisses this false premise and argues that in many cases once native populations have been introduced to new technologies they have been better at exploiting and developing these than the Eurasian originators. Once we have dismissed the idea that there is fundamental difference in the inherent abilities of different racial groups we are still left with the question why is that the Eurasian people developed in to the most advanced technological society in human history while some human populations were still living a stone age existence.

Diamond begins to answer this question by taking us back 13,000 years, a point in human development were there were no clear cut differences in different

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