Can Guns, Germs, and Steel Explain Human History?

“Guns, Germs, and Steel,” the documentary series and bestselling book by biologist Jared Diamond, offers a fascinating if a provocative theory of human development, a kind of geographical determinism that discounts individual human action or inaction. In this forum, historians discuss the pros and cons of Diamond’s theories.

Diamond’s theories aren’t quite so simple. He acknowledges that geography, location, climate, isolation, fertile land, plentiful plants, productive crops, and ability to domesticate animals, particularly horses, made a big difference in human development. In Papua, New Guinea, where Diamond did most of his fieldwork, only pigs were commonplace, not other animals, and the remaining environment was far harsher than in Europe and North America. There were only two major crops;