GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES
Jared Diamond

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

WHY IS WORLD HISTORY LIKE AN ONION?

THIS BOOK ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE A SHORT HISTORY OF everybody for the last

13,000 years. The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold

differently on different continents? In case this question immediately makes

you shudder at the thought that you are about to read a racist treatise, you

aren’t: as you will see, the answers to the question don’t involve human racial

differences at all. The book’s emphasis is on the search for ultimate

explanations, and on pushing back the chain of historical causation as far as

possible.

Most books that set out to recount world history concentrate on histories

of literate Eurasian and North African societies. Native societies of other parts

of the world—sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Island Southeast Asia,

Australia, New Guinea, the Pacific Islands—receive only brief treatment,

mainly as concerns what happened to them very late in their history, after they

were discovered and subjugated by western Europeans. Even within Eurasia,

much more space gets devoted to the history of western Eurasia than of

China, India, Japan, tropical Southeast Asia, and other eastern Eurasian

societies. History before the emergence of writing around 3,000 B.C. also

receives brief treatment, although it constitutes 99.9% of the five-million-year

history of the human species.

Such narrowly focused accounts of world history suffer from three

disadvantages. First, increasing numbers of people today are, quite

understandably, interested in other societies besides those of western Eurasia.

After all, those “other” societies encompass most of the world’s population

and the vast majority of the world’s ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups.

Some of them already are, and others are becoming, among the world’s most

powerful economies and political forces.

Second, even for people specifically interested in the shaping of the

modern world, a history limited to developments since the emergence of

writing cannot provide deep understanding. It is not the case that societies on

the different continents were comparable to each other until 3,000 B.C.,

whereupon western Eurasian societies suddenly developed writing and began

for the first time to pull ahead in other respects as well. Instead, already by

3,000 B.C., there were Eurasian and North African societies not only with

incipient writing but also with centralized state governments, cities,

widespread use of metal tools and weapons, use of domesticated animals for

transport and traction and mechanical power, and reliance on agriculture and

domestic animals for food. Throughout most or all parts of other continents,

none of those things existed at that time; some but not all of them emerged

later in parts of the Native Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, but only over

the course of the next five millennia; and none of them emerged in Aboriginal

Australia. That should already warn us that the roots of western Eurasian

dominance in the modern world lie in the preliterate past before 3,000 B.C.

(By western Eurasian dominance, I mean the dominance of western Eurasian

societies themselves and of the societies that they spawned on other

continents.)

Third, a history focused on western Eurasian societies completely

bypasses the obvious big question. Why were those societies the ones that

became disproportionately powerful and innovative? The usual answers to

that question invoke proximate forces, such as the rise of capitalism,

mercantilism, scientific inquiry, technology, and nasty germs that killed

peoples of other continents when they came into contact with western

Eurasians. But why did all those ingredients of conquest arise in western

Eurasia, and arise elsewhere only to a lesser degree or not at all?

All those ingredients are just proximate factors, not ultimate explanations.

Why didn’t capitalism flourish in Native Mexico, mercantilism in sub-

Saharan Africa, scientific inquiry in China, advanced technology in Native

North America, and nasty germs in Aboriginal Australia? If one responds by

invoking idiosyncratic cultural factors—e.g., scientific inquiry supposedly

stifled in China by Confucianism but stimulated in western Eurasia by Greek

or Judaeo-Christian traditions—then one is continuing to ignore the need for

ultimate explanations: why didn’t traditions like Confucianism and the

Judaeo-Christian ethic instead develop in western Eurasia and China,

respectively? In addition, one is ignoring the fact that Confucian China was

technologically more advanced than western Eurasia until about A.D. 1400.

It is impossible to understand even just western Eurasian societies

themselves, if one focuses on them. The interesting questions concern the

distinctions between them and other societies. Answering those questions

requires us to understand all those other societies as well, so that western

Eurasian societies can be fitted into the broader context.

Some readers may feel that I am going to the opposite extreme from

conventional histories, by devoting too little space to western Eurasia at the

expense of other parts of the world. I would answer that some other parts of

the world are very instructive, because they encompass so many societies and

such diverse societies within a small geographical area. Other readers may

find themselves agreeing with one reviewer of this book. With mildly critical

tongue in cheek, the reviewer wrote that I seem to view world history as an

onion, of which the modern world constitutes only the surface, and whose

layers are to be peeled back in the search for historical understanding. Yes,

world history is indeed such an onion! But that peeling back of the onion’s

layers is fascinating, challenging—and of overwhelming importance to us

today, as we seek to grasp our past’s lessons for our future.

J. D.





PROLOGUE

YALI’S QUESTION

WE ALL KNOW THAT HISTORY HAS PROCEEDED VERY DIFFERENTLY for peoples

from different parts of the globe. In the 13,000 years since the end of the last

Ice Age, some parts of the world developed literate industrial societies with

metal tools, other parts developed only nonliterate farming societies, and still

others retained societies of hunter-gatherers with stone tools. Those historical

inequalities have cast long shadows on the modern world, because the literate

societies with metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies.

While those differences constitute the most basic fact of world history, the

reasons for them remain uncertain and controversial. This puzzling question

of their origins was posed to me 25 years ago in a simple, personal form.

In July 1972 I was walking along a beach on the tropical island of New

Guinea, where as a biologist I study bird evolution. I had already heard about

a remarkable local politician named Yali, who was touring the district then.

By chance, Yali and I were walking in the same direction on that day, and he

overtook me. We walked together for an hour, talking during the whole time.

Yali radiated charisma and energy. His eyes flashed in a mesmerizing

way. He talked confidently about himself, but he also asked lots of probing

questions and listened intently. Our conversation began with a subject then on

every New Guinean’s mind—the rapid pace of political developments. Papua

New Guinea, as Yali’s nation is now called, was at that time still administered

by Australia as a mandate of the United Nations, but independence was in the

air. Yali explained to me his role in getting local people to prepare for self-

government.

After a while, Yali turned the conversation and began to quiz me. He had

never been outside New Guinea and had not been educated beyond high

school, but his curiosity was insatiable. First, he wanted to know about my

work on New Guinea birds (including how much I got paid for it). I explained

to him how different groups of birds had colonized New Guinea over the

course of millions of years. He then asked how the ancestors of his own

people had reached New Guinea over the last tens of thousands of years, and

how white Europeans had colonized New Guinea within the last 200 years.

The conversation remained friendly, even though the tension between the

two societies that Yali and I represented was familiar to both of us. Two

centuries ago, all New Guineans were still “living in the Stone Age.” That is,

they still used stone tools similar to those superseded in Europe by metal tools

thousands of years ago, and they dwelt in villages not organized under any

centralized political authority. Whites had arrived, imposed centralized

government, and brought material goods whose value New Guineans instantly

recognized, ranging from steel axes, matches, and medicines to clothing, soft

drinks, and umbrellas. In New Guinea all these goods were referred to

collectively as “cargo.”

Many of the white colonialists openly despised New Guineans as

“primitive.” Even the least able of New Guinea’s white “masters,” as they

were still called in 1972, enjoyed a far higher standard of living than New

Guineans, higher even than charismatic politicians like Yali. Yet Yali had

quizzed lots of whites as he was then quizzing me, and I had quizzed lots of

New Guineans. He and I both knew perfectly well that New Guineans are on

the average at least as smart as Europeans. All those things must have been on

Yali’s mind when, with yet another penetrating glance of his flashing eyes, he

asked me, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and

brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”

It was a simple question that went to the heart of life as Yali experienced

it. Yes, there still is a huge difference between the lifestyle of the average

New Guinean and that of the average European or American. Comparable

differences separate the lifestyles of other peoples of the world as well. Those

huge disparities must have potent causes that one might think would be

obvious.

Yet Yali’s apparently simple question is a difficult one to answer. I didn’t

have an answer then. Professional historians still disagree about the solution;

most are no longer even asking the question. In the years since Yali and I had

that conversation, I have studied and written about other aspects of human

evolution, history, and language. This book, written twenty-five years later,

attempts to answer Yali.



ALTHOUGH YALI’S QUESTION concerned only the contrasting lifestyles of New

Guineans and of European whites, it can be extended to a larger set of

contrasts within the modern world. Peoples of Eurasian origin, especially

those still living in Europe and eastern Asia, plus those transplanted to North

America, dominate the modern world in wealth and power. Other peoples,

including most Africans, have thrown off European colonial domination but

remain far behind in wealth and power. Still other peoples, such as the

aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, the Americas, and southernmost Africa,

are no longer even masters of their own lands but have been decimated,

subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists.

Thus, questions about inequality in the modern world can be reformulated

as follows. Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are,

rather than in some other way? For instance, why weren’t Native Americans,

Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or

exterminated Europeans and Asians?

We can easily push this question back one step. As of the year A.D. 1500,

when Europe’s worldwide colonial expansion was just beginning, peoples on

different continents already differed greatly in technology and political

organization. Much of Europe, Asia, and North Africa was the site of metal-

equipped states or empires, some of them on the threshold of industrialization.

Two Native American peoples, the Aztecs and the Incas, ruled over empires

with stone tools. Parts of sub-Saharan Africa were divided among small states

or chiefdoms with iron tools. Most other peoples—including all those of

Australia and New Guinea, many Pacific islands, much of the Americas, and

small parts of sub-Saharan Africa—lived as farming tribes or even still as

hunter-gatherer bands using stone tools.

Of course, those technological and political differences as of A.D. 1500

were the immediate cause of the modern world’s inequalities. Empires with

steel weapons were able to conquer or exterminate tribes with weapons of

stone and wood. How, though, did the world get to be the way it was in A.D.

1500?

Once again, we can easily push this question back one step further, by

drawing on written histories and archaeological discoveries. Until the end of

the last Ice Age, around 11,000 B.C., all peoples on all continents were still

hunter-gatherers. Different rates of development on different continents, from

11,000 B.C. to A.D. 1500, were what led to the technological and political

inequalities of A.D. 1500. While Aboriginal Australians and many Native

Americans remained hunter-gatherers, most of Eurasia and much of the

Americas and sub-Saharan Africa gradually developed agriculture, herding,

metallurgy, and complex political organization. Parts of Eurasia, and one area

of the Americas, independently developed writing as well. However, each of

these new developments appeared earlier in Eurasia than elsewhere. For

instance, the mass production of bronze tools, which was just beginning in the

South American Andes in the centuries before A.D. 1500, was already

established in parts of Eurasia over 4,000 years earlier. The stone technology

of the Tasmanians, when first encountered by European explorers in A.D.

1642, was simpler than that prevalent in parts of Upper Paleolithic Europe

tens of thousands of years earlier.

Thus, we can finally rephrase the question about the modern world’s

inequalities as follows: why did human development proceed at such different

rates on different continents? Those disparate rates constitute history’s

broadest pattern and my book’s subject.

While this book is thus ultimately about history and prehistory, its subject

is not of just academic interest but also of overwhelming practical and

political importance. The history of interactions among disparate peoples is

what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics, and genocide.

Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after

many centuries, and that are actively continuing in some of the world’s most

troubled areas today.

For example, much of Africa is still struggling with its legacies from

recent colonialism. In other regions—including much of Central America,

Mexico, Peru, New Caledonia, the former Soviet Union, and parts of

Indonesia—civil unrest or guerrilla warfare pits still-numerous indigenous

populations against governments dominated by descendants of invading

conquerors. Many other indigenous populations—such as native Hawaiians,

Aboriginal Australians, native Siberians, and Indians in the United States,

Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile—became so reduced in numbers by

genocide and disease that they are now greatly outnumbered by the

descendants of invaders. Although thus incapable of mounting a civil war,

they are nevertheless increasingly asserting their rights.

In addition to these current political and economic reverberations of past

collisions among peoples, there are current linguistic reverberations—

especially the impending disappearance of most of the modern world’s 6,000

surviving languages, becoming replaced by English, Chinese, Russian, and a

few other languages whose numbers of speakers have increased enormously

in recent centuries. All these problems of the modern world result from the

different historical trajectories implicit in Yali’s question.



BEFORE SEEKING ANSWERS to Yali’s question, we should pause to consider

some objections to discussing it at all. Some people take offense at the mere

posing of the question, for several reasons.

One objection goes as follows. If we succeed in explaining how some

people came to dominate other people, may this not seem to justify the

domination? Doesn’t it seem to say that the outcome was inevitable, and that

it would therefore be futile to try to change the outcome today? This objection

rests on a common tendency to confuse an explanation of causes with a

justification or acceptance of results. What use one makes of a historical

explanation is a question separate from the explanation itself. Understanding

is more often used to try to alter an outcome than to repeat or perpetuate it.

That’s why psychologists try to understand the minds of murderers and

rapists, why social historians try to understand genocide, and why physicians

try to understand the causes of human disease. Those investigators do not

seek to justify murder, rape, genocide, and illness. Instead, they seek to use

their understanding of a chain of causes to interrupt the chain.

Second, doesn’t addressing Yali’s question automatically involve a

Eurocentric approach to history, a glorification of western Europeans, and an

obsession with the prominence of western Europe and Europeanized America

in the modern world? Isn’t that prominence just an ephemeral phenomenon of

the last few centuries, now fading behind the prominence of Japan and

Southeast Asia? In fact, most of this book will deal with peoples other than

Europeans. Rather than focus solely on interactions between Europeans and

non-Europeans, we shall also examine interactions between different non-

European peoples—especially those that took place within sub-Saharan

Africa, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and New Guinea, among peoples native to

those areas. Far from glorifying peoples of western European origin, we shall

see that most basic elements of their civilization were developed by other

peoples living elsewhere and were then imported to western Europe.

Third, don’t words such as “civilization,” and phrases such as “rise of

civilization,” convey the false impression that civilization is good, tribal

hunter-gatherers are miserable, and history for the past 13,000 years has

involved progress toward greater human happiness? In fact, I do not assume

that industrialized states are “better” than hunter-gatherer tribes, or that the

abandonment of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for iron-based statehood

represents “progress,” or that it has led to an increase in human happiness. My

own impression, from having divided my life between United States cities

and New Guinea villages, is that the so-called blessings of civilization are

mixed. For example, compared with hunter-gatherers, citizens of modern

industrialized states enjoy better medical care, lower risk of death by

homicide, and a longer life span, but receive much less social support from

friendships and extended families. My motive for investigating these

geographic differences in human societies is not to celebrate one type of

society over another but simply to understand what happened in history.



DOES YALI’S QUESTION really need another book to answer it? Don’t we

already know the answer? If so, what is it?

Probably the commonest explanation involves implicitly or explicitly

assuming biological differences among peoples. In the centuries after A.D.

1500, as European explorers became aware of the wide differences among the

world’s peoples in technology and political organization, they assumed that

those differences arose from differences in innate ability. With the rise of

Darwinian theory, explanations were recast in terms of natural selection and

of evolutionary descent. Technologically primitive peoples were considered

evolutionary vestiges of human descent from apelike ancestors. The

displacement of such peoples by colonists from industrialized societies

exemplified the survival of the fittest. With the later rise of genetics, the

explanations were recast once again, in genetic terms. Europeans became

considered genetically more intelligent than Africans, and especially more so

than Aboriginal Australians.

Today, segments of Western society publicly repudiate racism. Yet many

(perhaps most!) Westerners continue to accept racist explanations privately or

subconsciously. In Japan and many other countries, such explanations are still

advanced publicly and without apology. Even educated white Americans,

Europeans, and Australians, when the subject of Australian Aborigines comes

up, assume that there is something primitive about the Aborigines themselves.

They certainly look different from whites. Many of the living descendants of

those Aborigines who survived the era of European colonization are now

finding it difficult to succeed economically in white Australian society.

A seemingly compelling argument goes as follows. White immigrants to

Australia built a literate, industrialized, politically centralized, democratic

state based on metal tools and on food production, all within a century of

colonizing a continent where the Aborigines had been living as tribal hunter-

gatherers without metal for at least 40,000 years. Here were two successive

experiments in human development, in which the environment was identical

and the sole variable was the people occupying that environment. What

further proof could be wanted to establish that the differences between

Aboriginal Australian and European societies arose from differences between

the peoples themselves?

The objection to such racist explanations is not just that they are

loathsome, but also that they are wrong. Sound evidence for the existence of

human differences in intelligence that parallel human differences in

technology is lacking. In fact, as I shall explain in a moment, modern “Stone

Age” peoples are on the average probably more intelligent, not less

intelligent, than industrialized peoples. Paradoxical as it may sound, we shall

see in Chapter 15 that white immigrants to Australia do not deserve the credit

usually accorded to them for building a literate industrialized society with the

other virtues mentioned above. In addition, peoples who until recently were

technologically primitive—such as Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans

—routinely master industrial technologies when given opportunities to do so.

An enormous effort by cognitive psychologists has gone into the search

for differences in IQ between peoples of different geographic origins now

living in the same country. In particular, numerous white American

psychologists have been trying for decades to demonstrate that black

Americans of African origins are innately less intelligent than white

Americans of European origins. However, as is well known, the peoples

compared differ greatly in their social environment and educational

opportunities. This fact creates double difficulties for efforts to test the

hypothesis that intellectual differences underlie technological differences.

First, even our cognitive abilities as adults are heavily influenced by the social

environment that we experienced during childhood, making it hard to discern

any influence of preexisting genetic differences. Second, tests of cognitive

ability (like IQ tests) tend to measure cultural learning and not pure innate

intelligence, whatever that is. Because of those undoubted effects of

childhood environment and learned knowledge on IQ test results, the

psychologists’ efforts to date have not succeeded in convincingly establishing

the postulated genetic deficiency in IQs of nonwhite peoples.

My perspective on this controversy comes from 33 years of working with

New Guineans in their own intact societies. From the very beginning of my

work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more

intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and

people around them than the average European or American is. At some tasks

that one might reasonably suppose to reflect aspects of brain function, such as

the ability to form a mental map of unfamiliar surroundings, they appear

considerably more adept than Westerners. Of course, New Guineans tend to

perform poorly at tasks that Westerners have been trained to perform since

childhood and that New Guineans have not. Hence when unschooled New

Guineans from remote villages visit towns, they look stupid to Westerners.

Conversely, I am constantly aware of how stupid I look to New Guineans

when I’m with them in the jungle, displaying my incompetence at simple

tasks (such as following a jungle trail or erecting a shelter) at which New

Guineans have been trained since childhood and I have not.

It’s easy to recognize two reasons why my impression that New Guineans

are smarter than Westerners may be correct. First, Europeans have for

thousands of years been living in densely populated societies with central

governments, police, and judiciaries. In those societies, infectious epidemic

diseases of dense populations (such as smallpox) were historically the major

cause of death, while murders were relatively uncommon and a state of war

was the exception rather than the rule. Most Europeans who escaped fatal

infections also escaped other potential causes of death and proceeded to pass

on their genes. Today, most live-born Western infants survive fatal infections

as well and reproduce themselves, regardless of their intelligence and the

genes they bear. In contrast, New Guineans have been living in societies

where human numbers were too low for epidemic diseases of dense

populations to evolve. Instead, traditional New Guineans suffered high

mortality from murder, chronic tribal warfare, accidents, and problems in

procuring food.

Intelligent people are likelier than less intelligent ones to escape those

causes of high mortality in traditional New Guinea societies. However, the

differential mortality from epidemic diseases in traditional European societies

had little to do with intelligence, and instead involved genetic resistance

dependent on details of body chemistry. For example, people with blood

group B or O have a greater resistance to smallpox than do people with blood

group A. That is, natural selection promoting genes for intelligence has

probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely

populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body

chemistry was instead more potent.

Besides this genetic reason, there is also a second reason why New

Guineans may have come to be smarter than Westerners. Modern European

and American children spend much of their time being passively entertained

by television, radio, and movies. In the average American household, the TV

set is on for seven hours per day. In contrast, traditional New Guinea children

have virtually no such opportunities for passive entertainment and instead

spend almost all of their waking hours actively doing something, such as

talking or playing with other children or adults. Almost all studies of child

development emphasize the role of childhood stimulation and activity in

promoting mental development, and stress the irreversible mental stunting

associated with reduced childhood stimulation. This effect surely contributes

a non-genetic component to the superior average mental function displayed

by New Guineans.

That is, in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior

to Westerners, and they surely are superior in escaping the devastating

developmental disadvantages under which most children in industrialized

societies now grow up. Certainly, there is no hint at all of any intellectual

dis advantage of New Guineans that could serve to answer Yali’s question.

The same two genetic and childhood developmental factors are likely to

distinguish not only New Guineans from Westerners, but also hunter-

gatherers and other members of technologically primitive societies from

members of technologically advanced societies in general. Thus, the usual

racist assumption has to be turned on its head. Why is it that Europeans,

despite their likely genetic disadvantage and (in modern times) their

undoubted developmental disadvantage, ended up with much more of the

cargo? Why did New Guineans wind up technologically primitive, despite

what I believe to be their superior intelligence?



A GENETIC EXPLANATION isn’t the only possible answer to Yali’s question.

Another one, popular with inhabitants of northern Europe, invokes the

supposed stimulatory effects of their homeland’s cold climate and the

inhibitory effects of hot, humid, tropical climates on human creativity and

energy. Perhaps the seasonally variable climate at high latitudes poses more

diverse challenges than does a seasonally constant tropical climate. Perhaps

cold climates require one to be more technologically inventive to survive,

because one must build a warm home and make warm clothing, whereas one

can survive in the tropics with simpler housing and no clothing. Or the

argument can be reversed to reach the same conclusion: the long winters at

high latitudes leave people with much time in which to sit indoors and invent.

Although formerly popular, this type of explanation, too, fails to survive

scrutiny. As we shall see, the peoples of northern Europe contributed nothing

of fundamental importance to Eurasian civilization until the last thousand

years; they simply had the good luck to live at a geographic location where

they were likely to receive advances (such as agriculture, wheels, writing, and

metallurgy) developed in warmer parts of Eurasia. In the New World the cold

regions at high latitude were even more of a human backwater. The sole

Native American societies to develop writing arose in Mexico south of the

Tropic of Cancer; the oldest New World pottery comes from near the equator

in tropical South America; and the New World society generally considered

the most advanced in art, astronomy, and other respects was the Classic Maya

society of the tropical Yucatán and Guatemala in the first millennium A.D.

Still a third type of answer to Yali invokes the supposed importance of

lowland river valleys in dry climates, where highly productive agriculture

depended on large-scale irrigation systems that in turn required centralized

bureaucracies. This explanation was suggested by the undoubted fact that the

earliest known empires and writing systems arose in the Tigris and Euphrates

Valleys of the Fertile Crescent and in the Nile Valley of Egypt. Water control

systems also appear to have been associated with centralized political

organization in some other areas of the world, including the Indus Valley of

the Indian subcontinent, the Yellow and Yangtze Valleys of China, the Maya

lowlands of Mesoamerica, and the coastal desert of Peru.

However, detailed archaeological studies have shown that complex

irrigation systems did not accompany the rise of centralized bureaucracies but

followed after a considerable lag. That is, political centralization arose for

some other reason and then permitted construction of complex irrigation

systems. None of the crucial developments preceding political centralization

in those same parts of the world were associated with river valleys or with

complex irrigation systems. For example, in the Fertile Crescent food

production and village life originated in hills and mountains, not in lowland

river valleys. The Nile Valley remained a cultural backwater for about 3,000

years after village food production began to flourish in the hills of the Fertile

Crescent. River valleys of the southwestern United States eventually came to

support irrigation agriculture and complex societies, but only after many of

the developments on which those societies rested had been imported from

Mexico. The river valleys of southeastern Australia remained occupied by

tribal societies without agriculture.

Yet another type of explanation lists the immediate factors that enabled

Europeans to kill or conquer other peoples—especially European guns,

infectious diseases, steel tools, and manufactured products. Such an

explanation is on the right track, as those factors demonstrably were directly

responsible for European conquests. However, this hypothesis is incomplete,

because it still offers only a proximate (first-stage) explanation identifying

immediate causes. It invites a search for ultimate causes: why were

Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with

guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?

While some progress has been made in identifying those ultimate causes

in the case of Europe’s conquest of the New World, Africa remains a big

puzzle. Africa is the continent where protohumans evolved for the longest

time, where anatomically modern humans may also have arisen, and where

native diseases like malaria and yellow fever killed European explorers. If a

long head start counts for anything, why didn’t guns and steel arise first in

Africa, permitting Africans and their germs to conquer Europe? And what

accounts for the failure of Aboriginal Australians to pass beyond the stage of

hunter-gatherers with stone tools?

Questions that emerge from worldwide comparisons of human societies

formerly attracted much attention from historians and geographers. The best-

known modern example of such an effort was Arnold Toynbee’s 12-volume

Study of History. Toynbee was especially interested in the internal dynamics

of 23 advanced civilizations, of which 22 were literate and 19 were Eurasian.

He was less interested in prehistory and in simpler, nonliterate societies. Yet

the roots of inequality in the modern world lie far back in prehistory. Hence

Toynbee did not pose Yali’s question, nor did he come to grips with what I see

as history’s broadest pattern. Other available books on world history similarly

tend to focus on advanced literate Eurasian civilizations of the last 5,000

years; they have a very brief treatment of pre-Columbian Native American

civilizations, and an even briefer discussion of the rest of the world except for

its recent interactions with Eurasian civilizations. Since Toynbee’s attempt,

worldwide syntheses of historical causation have fallen into disfavor among

most historians, as posing an apparently intractable problem.

Specialists from several disciplines have provided global syntheses of

their subjects. Especially useful contributions have been made by ecological

geographers, cultural anthropologists, biologists studying plant and animal

domestication, and scholars concerned with the impact of infectious diseases

on history. These studies have called attention to parts of the puzzle, but they

provide only pieces of the needed broad synthesis that has been missing.

Thus, there is no generally accepted answer to Yali’s question. On the one

hand, the proximate explanations are clear: some peoples developed guns,

germs, steel, and other factors conferring political and economic power before

others did; and some peoples never developed these power factors at all. On

the other hand, the ultimate explanations—for example, why bronze tools

appeared early in parts of Eurasia, late and only locally in the New World, and

never in Aboriginal Australia—remain unclear.

Our present lack of such ultimate explanations leaves a big intellectual

gap, since the broadest pattern of history thus remains unexplained. Much

more serious, though, is the moral gap left unfilled. It is perfectly obvious to

everyone, whether an overt racist or not, that different peoples have fared

differently in history. The modern United States is a European-molded

society, occupying lands conquered from Native Americans and incorporating

the descendants of millions of sub-Saharan black Africans brought to

America as slaves. Modern Europe is not a society molded by sub-Saharan

black Africans who brought millions of Native Americans as slaves.

These results are completely lopsided: it was not the case that 51 percent

of the Americas, Australia, and Africa was conquered by Europeans, while 49

percent of Europe was conquered by Native Americans, Aboriginal

Australians, or Africans. The whole modern world has been shaped by

lopsided outcomes. Hence they must have inexorable explanations, ones more

basic than mere details concerning who happened to win some battle or

develop some invention on one occasion a few thousand years ago.

It seems logical to suppose that history’s pattern reflects innate differences

among people themselves. Of course, we’re taught that it’s not polite to say so

in public. We read of technical studies claiming to demonstrate inborn

differences, and we also read rebuttals claiming that those studies suffer from

technical flaws. We see in our daily lives that some of the conquered peoples

continue to form an underclass, centuries after the conquests or slave imports

took place. We’re told that this too is to be attributed not to any biological

shortcomings but to social disadvantages and limited opportunities.

Nevertheless, we have to wonder. We keep seeing all those glaring,

persistent differences in peoples’ status. We’re assured that the seemingly

transparent biological explanation for the world’s inequalities as of A.D. 1500

is wrong, but we’re not told what the correct explanation is. Until we have

some convincing, detailed, agreed-upon explanation for the broad pattern of

history, most people will continue to suspect that the racist biological

explanation is correct after all. That seems to me the strongest argument for

writing this book.



AUTHORS ARE REGULARLY asked by journalists to summarize a long book in

one sentence. For this book, here is such a sentence: “History followed

different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’

environments, not because of biological differences among peoples

themselves.”

Naturally, the notion that environmental geography and biogeography

influenced societal development is an old idea. Nowadays, though, the view is

not held in esteem by historians; it is considered wrong or simplistic, or it is

caricatured as environmental determinism and dismissed, or else the whole

subject of trying to understand worldwide differences is shelved as too

difficult. Yet geography obviously has some effect on history; the open

question concerns how much effect, and whether geography can account for

history’s broad pattern.

The time is now ripe for a fresh look at these questions, because of new

information from scientific disciplines seemingly remote from human history.

Those disciplines include, above all, genetics, molecular biology, and

biogeography as applied to crops and their wild ancestors; the same

disciplines plus behavioral ecology, as applied to domestic animals and their

wild ancestors; molecular biology of human germs and related germs of

animals; epidemiology of human diseases; human genetics; linguistics;

archaeological studies on all continents and major islands; and studies of the

histories of technology, writing, and political organization.

This diversity of disciplines poses problems for would-be authors of a

book aimed at answering Yali’s question. The author must possess a range of

expertise spanning the above disciplines, so that relevant advances can be

synthesized. The history and prehistory of each continent must be similarly

synthesized. The book’s subject matter is history, but the approach is that of

science—in particular, that of historical sciences such as evolutionary biology

and geology. The author must understand from firsthand experience a range

of human societies, from hunter-gatherer societies to modern space-age

civilizations.

These requirements seem at first to demand a multi-author work. Yet that

approach would be doomed from the outset, because the essence of the

problem is to develop a unified synthesis. That consideration dictates single

authorship, despite all the difficulties that it poses. Inevitably, that single

author will have to sweat copiously in order to assimilate material from many

disciplines, and will require guidance from many colleagues.

My background had led me to several of these disciplines even before

Yali put his question to me in 1972. My mother is a teacher and linguist; my

father, a physician specializing in the genetics of childhood diseases. Because

of my father’s example, I went through school expecting to become a

physician. I had also become a fanatical bird-watcher by the age of seven. It

was thus an easy step, in my last undergraduate year at university, to shift

from my initial goal of medicine to the goal of biological research. However,

throughout my school and undergraduate years, my training was mainly in

languages, history, and writing. Even after deciding to obtain a Ph.D. in

physiology, I nearly dropped out of science during my first year of graduate

school to become a linguist.

Since completing my Ph.D. in 1961, I have divided my scientific research

efforts between two fields: molecular physiology on the one hand,

evolutionary biology and biogeography on the other hand. As an unforeseen

bonus for the purposes of this book, evolutionary biology is a historical

science forced to use methods different from those of the laboratory sciences.

That experience has made the difficulties in devising a scientific approach to

human history familiar to me. Living in Europe from 1958 to 1962, among

European friends whose lives had been brutally traumatized by 20th-century

European history, made me start to think more seriously about how chains of

causes operate in history’s unfolding.

For the last 33 years my fieldwork as an evolutionary biologist has

brought me into close contact with a wide range of human societies. My

specialty is bird evolution, which I have studied in South America, southern

Africa, Indonesia, Australia, and especially New Guinea. Through living with

native peoples of these areas, I have become familiar with many

technologically primitive human societies, from those of hunter-gatherers to

those of tribal farmers and fishing peoples who depended until recently on

stone tools. Thus, what most literate people would consider strange lifestyles

of remote prehistory are for me the most vivid part of my life. New Guinea,

though it accounts for only a small fraction of the world’s land area,

encompasses a disproportionate fraction of its human diversity. Of the modern

world’s 6,000 languages, 1,000 are confined to New Guinea. In the course of

my work on New Guinea birds, my interests in language were rekindled, by

the need to elicit lists of local names of bird species in nearly 100 of those

New Guinea languages.

Out of all those interests grew my most recent book, a nontechnical

account of human evolution entitled The Third Chimpanzee. Its Chapter 14,

called “Accidental Conquerors,” sought to understand the outcome of the

encounter between Europeans and Native Americans. After I had completed

that book, I realized that other modern, as well as prehistoric, encounters

between peoples raised similar questions. I saw that the question with which I

had wrestled in that Chapter 14 was in essence the question Yali had asked me

in 1972, merely transferred to a different part of the world. And so at last,

with the help of many friends, I shall attempt to satisfy Yali’s curiosity—and

my own.



THIS BOOK’S CHAPTERS are divided into four parts. Part 1, entitled “From

Eden to Cajamarca,” consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 provides a

whirlwind tour of human evolution and history, extending from our

divergence from apes, around 7 million years ago, until the end of the last Ice

Age, around 13,000 years ago. We shall trace the spread of ancestral humans,

from our origins in Africa to the other continents, in order to understand the

state of the world just before the events often lumped into the term “rise of

civilization” began. It turns out that human development on some continents

got a head start in time over developments on others.

Chapter 2 prepares us for exploring effects of continental environments

on history over the past 13,000 years, by briefly examining effects of island

environments on history over smaller time scales and areas. When ancestral

Polynesians spread into the Pacific around 3,200 years ago, they encountered

islands differing greatly in their environments. Within a few millennia that

single ancestral Polynesian society had spawned on those diverse islands a

range of diverse daughter societies, from hunter-gatherer tribes to proto-

empires. That radiation can serve as a model for the longer, larger-scale, and

less understood radiation of societies on different continents since the end of

the last Ice Age, to become variously hunter-gatherer tribes and empires.

The third chapter introduces us to collisions between peoples from

different continents, by retelling through contemporary eyewitness accounts

the most dramatic such encounter in history: the capture of the last

independent Inca emperor, Atahuallpa, in the presence of his whole army, by

Francisco Pizarro and his tiny band of conquistadores, at the Peruvian city of

Cajamarca. We can identify the chain of proximate factors that enabled

Pizarro to capture Atahuallpa, and that operated in European conquests of

other Native American societies as well. Those factors included Spanish

germs, horses, literacy, political organization, and technology (especially

ships and weapons). That analysis of proximate causes is the easy part of this

book; the hard part is to identify the ultimate causes leading to them and to

the actual outcome, rather than to the opposite possible outcome of

Atahuallpa’s coming to Madrid and capturing King Charles I of Spain.

Part 2, entitled “The Rise and Spread of Food Production” and consisting

of Chapters 4–10, is devoted to what I believe to be the most important

constellation of ultimate causes. Chapter 4 sketches how food production—

that is, the growing of food by agriculture or herding, instead of the hunting

and gathering of wild foods—ultimately led to the immediate factors

permitting Pizarro’s triumph. But the rise of food production varied around

the globe. As we shall see in Chapter 5, peoples in some parts of the world

developed food production by themselves; some other peoples acquired it in

prehistoric times from those independent centers; and still others neither

developed nor acquired food production prehistorically but remained hunter-

gatherers until modern times. Chapter 6 explores the numerous factors driving

the shift from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle toward food production, in some

areas but not in others.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 then show how crops and livestock came in

prehistoric times to be domesticated from ancestral wild plants and animals,

by incipient farmers and herders who could have had no vision of the

outcome. Geographic differences in the local suites of wild plants and animals

available for domestication go a long way toward explaining why only a few

areas became independent centers of food production, and why it arose earlier

in some of those areas than in others. From those few centers of origin, food

production spread much more rapidly to some areas than to others. A major

factor contributing to those differing rates of spread turns out to have been the

orientation of the continents’ axes: predominantly west-east for Eurasia,

predominantly north-south for the Americas and Africa (Chapter 10).

Thus, Chapter 3 sketched the immediate factors behind Europe’s conquest

of Native Americans, and Chapter 4 the development of those factors from

the ultimate cause of food production. In Part 3 (“From Food to Guns, Germs,

and Steel,” Chapters 11–14), the connections from ultimate to proximate

causes are traced in detail, beginning with the evolution of germs

characteristic of dense human populations (Chapter 11). Far more Native

Americans and other non-Eurasian peoples were killed by Eurasian germs

than by Eurasian guns or steel weapons. Conversely, few or no distinctive

lethal germs awaited would-be European conquerors in the New World. Why

was the germ exchange so unequal? Here, the results of recent molecular

biological studies are illuminating in linking germs to the rise of food

production, in Eurasia much more than in the Americas.

Another chain of causation led from food production to writing, possibly

the most important single invention of the last few thousand years (Chapter

12). Writing has evolved de novo only a few times in human history, in areas

that had been the earliest sites of the rise of food production in their

respective regions. All other societies that have become literate did so by the

diffusion of writing systems or of the idea of writing from one of those few

primary centers. Hence, for the student of world history, the phenomenon of

writing is particularly useful for exploring another important constellation of

causes: geography’s effect on the ease with which ideas and inventions

spread.

What holds for writing also holds for technology (Chapter 13). A crucial

question is whether technological innovation is so dependent on rare inventor-

geniuses, and on many idiosyncratic cultural factors, as to defy an

understanding of world patterns. In fact, we shall see that, paradoxically, this

large number of cultural factors makes it easier, not harder, to understand

world patterns of technology. By enabling farmers to generate food surpluses,

food production permitted farming societies to support full-time craft

specialists who did not grow their own food and who developed technologies.

Besides sustaining scribes and inventors, food production also enabled

farmers to support politicians (Chapter 14). Mobile bands of hunter-gatherers

are relatively egalitarian, and their political sphere is confined to the band’s

own territory and to shifting alliances with neighboring bands. With the rise

of dense, sedentary, food-producing populations came the rise of chiefs,

kings, and bureaucrats. Such bureaucracies were essential not only to

governing large and populous domains but also to maintaining standing

armies, sending out fleets of exploration, and organizing wars of conquest.

Part 4 (“Around the World in Five Chapters,” Chapters 15–19) applies the

lessons of Parts 2 and 3 to each of the continents and some important islands.

Chapter 15 examines the history of Australia itself, and of the large island of

New Guinea, formerly joined to Australia in a single continent. The case of

Australia, home to the recent human societies with the simplest technologies,

and the sole continent where food production did not develop indigenously,

poses a critical test of theories about intercontinental differences in human

societies. We shall see why Aboriginal Australians remained hunter-gatherers,

even while most peoples of neighboring New Guinea became food producers.

Chapters 16 and 17 integrate developments in Australia and New Guinea

into the perspective of the whole region encompassing the East Asian

mainland and Pacific islands. The rise of food production in China spawned

several great prehistoric movements of human populations, or of cultural

traits, or of both. One of those movements, within China itself, created the

political and cultural phenomenon of China as we know it today. Another

resulted in a replacement, throughout almost the whole of tropical Southeast

Asia, of indigenous hunter-gatherers by farmers of ultimately South Chinese

origin. Still another, the Austronesian expansion, similarly replaced the

indigenous hunter-gatherers of the Philippines and Indonesia and spread out

to the most remote islands of Polynesia, but was unable to colonize Australia

and most of New Guinea. To the student of world history, all those collisions

among East Asian and Pacific peoples are doubly important: they formed the

countries where one-third of the modern world’s population lives, and in

which economic power is increasingly becoming concentrated; and they

furnish especially clear models for understanding the histories of peoples

elsewhere in the world.

Chapter 18 returns to the problem introduced in Chapter 3, the collision

between European and Native American peoples. A summary of the last

13,000 years of New World and western Eurasian history makes clear how

Europe’s conquest of the Americas was merely the culmination of two long

and mostly separate historical trajectories. The differences between those

trajectories were stamped by continental differences in domesticable plants

and animals, germs, times of settlement, orientation of continental axes, and

ecological barriers.

Finally, the history of sub-Saharan Africa (Chapter 19) offers striking

similarities as well as contrasts with New World history. The same factors that

molded Europeans’ encounters with Africans molded their encounters with

Native Americans as well. But Africa also differed from the Americas in all

these factors. As a result, European conquest did not create widespread or

lasting European settlement of sub-Saharan Africa, except in the far south. Of

more lasting significance was a large-scale population shift within Africa

itself, the Bantu expansion. It proves to have been triggered by many of the

same causes that played themselves out at Cajamarca, in East Asia, on Pacific

islands, and in Australia and New Guinea.

I harbor no illusions that these chapters have succeeded in explaining the

histories of all the continents for the past 13,000 years. Obviously, that would

be impossible to accomplish in a single book even if we did understand all the

answers, which we don’t. At best, this book identifies several constellations

of environmental factors that I believe provide a large part of the answer to

Yali’s question. Recognition of those factors emphasizes the unexplained

residue, whose understanding will be a task for the future.

The Epilogue, entitled “The Future of Human History as a Science,” lays

out some pieces of the residue, including the problem of the differences

between different parts of Eurasia, the role of cultural factors unrelated to

environment, and the role of individuals. Perhaps the biggest of these

unsolved problems is to establish human history as a historical science, on a

par with recognized historical sciences such as evolutionary biology, geology,

and climatology. The study of human history does pose real difficulties, but

those recognized historical sciences encounter some of the same challenges.

Hence the methods developed in some of these other fields may also prove

useful in the field of human history.

Already, though, I hope to have convinced you, the reader, that history is

not “just one damn fact after another,” as a cynic put it. There really are broad

patterns to history, and the search for their explanation is as productive as it is

fascinating.





PART ONE

FROM EDEN TO CAJAMARCA





CHAPTER 1

UP TO THE STARTING LINE

A SUITABLE STARTING POINT FROM WHICH TO COMPARE historical developments

on the different continents is around 11,000

*

B.C. This date corresponds

approximately to the beginnings of village life in a few parts of the world, the

first undisputed peopling of the Americas, the end of the Pleistocene Era and

last Ice Age, and the start of what geologists term the Recent Era. Plant and

animal domestication began in at least one part of the world within a few

thousand years of that date. As of then, did the people of some continents

already have a head start or a clear advantage over peoples of other

continents?

If so, perhaps that head start, amplified over the last 13,000 years,

provides the answer to Yali’s question. Hence this chapter will offer a

whirlwind tour of human history on all the continents, for millions of years,

from our origins as a species until 13,000 years ago. All that will now be

summarized in less than 20 pages. Naturally, I shall gloss over details and

mention only what seem to me the trends most relevant to this book.

Our closest living relatives are three surviving species of great ape: the

gorilla, the common chimpanzee, and the pygmy chimpanzee (also known as

bonobo). Their confinement to Africa, along with abundant fossil evidence,

indicates that the earliest stages of human evolution were also played out in

Africa. Human history, as something separate from the history of animals,

began there about 7 million years ago (estimates range from 5 to 9 million

years ago). Around that time, a population of African apes broke up into

several populations, of which one proceeded to evolve into modern gorillas, a

second into the two modern chimps, and the third into humans. The gorilla

line apparently split off slightly before the split between the chimp and the

human lines.

Fossils indicate that the evolutionary line leading to us had achieved a

substantially upright posture by around 4 million years ago, then began to

increase in body size and in relative brain size around 2.5 million years ago.

Those protohumans are generally known as Australopithecus africanus,

Homo habilis, and Homo erectus, which apparently evolved into each other in

that sequence. Although Homo erectus, the stage reached around 1.7 million

years ago, was close to us modern humans in body size, its brain size was still

barely half of ours. Stone tools became common around 2.5 million years ago,

but they were merely the crudest of flaked or battered stones. In zoological

significance and distinctiveness, Homo erectus was more than an ape, but still

much less than a modern human.

All of that human history, for the first 5 or 6 million years after our

origins about 7 million years ago, remained confined to Africa. The first

human ancestor to spread beyond Africa was Homo erectus, as is attested by

fossils discovered on the Southeast Asian island of Java and conventionally

known as Java man (see Figure 1.1). The oldest Java “man” fossils—of

course, they may actually have belonged to a Java woman—have usually

been assumed to date from about a million years ago. However, it has recently

been argued that they actually date from 1.8 million years ago. (Strictly

speaking, the name Homo erectus belongs to these Javan fossils, and the

African fossils classified as Homo erectus may warrant a different name.) At

present, the earliest unquestioned evidence for humans in Europe stems from

around half a million years ago, but there are claims of an earlier presence.

One would certainly assume that the colonization of Asia also permitted the

simultaneous colonization of Europe, since Eurasia is a single landmass not

bisected by major barriers.

That illustrates an issue that will recur throughout this book. Whenever

some scientist claims to have discovered “the earliest X”—whether X is the

earliest human fossil in Europe, the earliest evidence of domesticated corn in

Mexico, or the earliest anything anywhere—that announcement challenges

other scientists to beat the claim by finding something still earlier. In reality,

there must be some truly “earliest X,” with all claims of earlier X’s being

false. However, as we shall see, for virtually any X, every year brings forth

new discoveries and claims of a purported still earlier X, along with

refutations of some or all of previous years’ claims of earlier X. It often takes

decades of searching before archaeologists reach a consensus on such

questions.

By about half a million years ago, human fossils had diverged from older

Homo erectus skeletons in their enlarged, rounder, and less angular skulls.

African and European skulls of half a million years ago were sufficiently

similar to skulls of us moderns that they are classified in our species, Homo

sapiens, instead of in Homo erectus. This distinction is arbitrary, since Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens. However, these early Homo sapiens still

differed from us in skeletal details, had brains significantly smaller than ours,

and were grossly different from us in their artifacts and behavior. Modern

stone-tool-making peoples, such as Yali’s great-grandparents, would have

scorned the stone tools of half a million years ago as very crude. The only

other significant addition to our ancestors’ cultural repertoire that can be

documented with confidence around that time was the use of fire.

No art, bone tool, or anything else has come down to us from early Homo

sapiens except for their skeletal remains, plus those crude stone tools. There

were still no humans in Australia, for the obvious reason that it would have

taken boats to get there from Southeast Asia. There were also no humans

anywhere in the Americas, because that would have required the occupation

of the nearest part of the Eurasian continent (Siberia), and possibly boat-

building skills as well. (The present, shallow Bering Strait, separating Siberia

from Alaska, alternated between a strait and a broad intercontinental bridge of

dry land, as sea level repeatedly rose and fell during the Ice Ages.) However,

boat building and survival in cold Siberia were both still far beyond the

capabilities of early Homo sapiens.

After half a million years ago, the human populations of Africa and

western Eurasia proceeded to diverge from each other and from East Asian

populations in skeletal details. The population of Europe and western Asia

between 130,000 and 40,000 years ago is represented by especially many

skeletons, known as Neanderthals and sometimes classified as a separate

species, Homo neanderthalensis. Despite being depicted in innumerable

cartoons as apelike brutes living in caves, Neanderthals had brains slightly

larger than our own. They were also the first humans to leave behind strong

evidence of burying their dead and caring for their sick. Yet their stone tools

were still crude by comparison with modern New Guineans’ polished stone

axes and were usually not yet made in standardized diverse shapes, each with

a clearly recognizable function.

The few preserved African skeletal fragments contemporary with the

Neanderthals are more similar to our modern skeletons than to Neanderthal

skeletons. Even fewer preserved East Asian skeletal fragments are known, but

they appear different again from both Africans and Neanderthals. As for the

lifestyle at that time, the best-preserved evidence comes from stone artifacts

and prey bones accumulated at southern African sites. Although those

Africans of 100,000 years ago had more modern skeletons than did their

Neanderthal contemporaries, they made essentially the same crude stone tools

as Neanderthals, still lacking standardized shapes. They had no preserved art.

To judge from the bone evidence of the animal species on which they preyed,

their hunting skills were unimpressive and mainly directed at easy-to-kill, not-

at-all-dangerous animals. They were not yet in the business of slaughtering

buffalo, pigs, and other dangerous prey. They couldn’t even catch fish: their

sites immediately on the seacoast lack fish bones and fishhooks. They and

their Neanderthal contemporaries still rank as less than fully human.

Human history at last took off around 50,000 years ago, at the time of

what I have termed our Great Leap Forward. The earliest definite signs of that

leap come from East African sites with standardized stone tools and the first

preserved jewelry (ostrich-shell beads). Similar developments soon appear in

the Near East and in southeastern Europe, then (some 40,000 years ago) in

southwestern Europe, where abundant artifacts are associated with fully

modern skeletons of people termed Cro-Magnons. Thereafter, the garbage

preserved at archaeological sites rapidly becomes more and more interesting

and leaves no doubt that we are dealing with biologically and behaviorally

modern humans.

Cro-Magnon garbage heaps yield not only stone tools but also tools of

bone, whose suitability for shaping (for instance, into fishhooks) had

apparently gone unrecognized by previous humans. Tools were produced in

diverse and distinctive shapes so modern that their functions as needles, awls,

engraving tools, and so on are obvious to us. Instead of only single-piece tools

such as hand-held scrapers, multipiece tools made their appearance.

Recognizable multipiece weapons at Cro-Magnon sites include harpoons,

spear-throwers, and eventually bows and arrows, the precursors of rifles and

other multipiece modern weapons. Those efficient means of killing at a safe

distance permitted the hunting of such dangerous prey as rhinos and

elephants, while the invention of rope for nets, lines, and snares allowed the

addition of fish and birds to our diet. Remains of houses and sewn clothing

testify to a greatly improved ability to survive in cold climates, and remains

of jewelry and carefully buried skeletons indicate revolutionary aesthetic and

spiritual developments.

Of the Cro-Magnons’ products that have been preserved, the best known

are their artworks: their magnificent cave paintings, statues, and musical

instruments, which we still appreciate as art today. Anyone who has

experienced firsthand the overwhelming power of the life-sized painted bulls

and horses in the Lascaux Cave of southwestern France will understand at

once that their creators must have been as modern in their minds as they were

in their skeletons.

Obviously, some momentous change took place in our ancestors’

capabilities between about 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. That Great Leap

Forward poses two major unresolved questions, regarding its triggering cause

and its geographic location. As for its cause, I argued in my book The Third

Chimpanzee for the perfection of the voice box and hence for the anatomical

basis of modern language, on which the exercise of human creativity is so

dependent. Others have suggested instead that a change in brain organization

around that time, without a change in brain size, made modern language

possible.

As for the site of the Great Leap Forward, did it take place primarily in

one geographic area, in one group of humans, who were thereby enabled to

expand and replace the former human populations of other parts of the world?

Or did it occur in parallel in different regions, in each of which the human

populations living there today would be descendants of the populations living

there before the leap? The rather modern-looking human skulls from Africa

around 100,000 years ago have been taken to support the former view, with

the leap occurring specifically in Africa. Molecular studies (of so-called

mitochondrial DNA) were initially also interpreted in terms of an African

origin of modern humans, though the meaning of those molecular findings is

currently in doubt. On the other hand, skulls of humans living in China and

Indonesia hundreds of thousands of years ago are considered by some

physical anthropologists to exhibit features still found in modern Chinese and

in Aboriginal Australians, respectively. If true, that finding would suggest

parallel evolution and multiregional origins of modern humans, rather than

origins in a single Garden of Eden. The issue remains unresolved.

The evidence for a localized origin of modern humans, followed by their

spread and then their replacement of other types of humans elsewhere, seems

strongest for Europe. Some 40,000 years ago, into Europe came the Cro-

Magnons, with their modern skeletons, superior weapons, and other advanced

cultural traits. Within a few thousand years there were no more Neanderthals,

who had been evolving as the sole occupants of Europe for hundreds of

thousands of years. That sequence strongly suggests that the modern Cro-

Magnons somehow used their far superior technology, and their language

skills or brains, to infect, kill, or displace the Neanderthals, leaving behind

little or no evidence of hybridization between Neanderthals and Cro-

Magnons.



THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD coincides with the first proven major extension of

human geographic range since our ancestors’ colonization of Eurasia. That

extension consisted of the occupation of Australia and New Guinea, joined at

that time into a single continent. Many radiocarbon-dated sites attest to

human presence in Australia / New Guinea between 40,000 and 30,000 years

ago (plus the inevitable somewhat older claims of contested validity). Within

a short time of that initial peopling, humans had expanded over the whole

continent and adapted to its diverse habitats, from the tropical rain forests and

high mountains of New Guinea to the dry interior and wet southeastern corner

of Australia.

During the Ice Ages, so much of the oceans’ water was locked up in

glaciers that worldwide sea levels dropped hundreds of feet below their

present stand. As a result, what are now the shallow seas between Asia and

the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Borneo, Java, and Bali became dry land.

(So did other shallow straits, such as the Bering Strait and the English

Channel.) The edge of the Southeast Asian mainland then lay 700 miles east

of its present location. Nevertheless, central Indonesian islands between Bali

and Australia remained surrounded and separated by deepwater channels. To

reach Australia / New Guinea from the Asian mainland at that time still

required crossing a minimum of eight channels, the broadest of which was at

least 50 miles wide. Most of those channels divided islands visible from each

other, but Australia itself was always invisible from even the nearest

Indonesian islands, Timor and Tanimbar. Thus, the occupation of Australia /

New Guinea is momentous in that it demanded watercraft and provides by far

the earliest evidence of their use in history. Not until about 30,000 years later

(13,000 years ago) is there strong evidence of watercraft anywhere else in the

world, from the Mediterranean.

Initially, archaeologists considered the possibility that the colonization of

Australia / New Guinea was achieved accidentally by just a few people swept

to sea while fishing on a raft near an Indonesian island. In an extreme

scenario the first settlers are pictured as having consisted of a single pregnant

young woman carrying a male fetus. But believers in the fluke-colonization

theory have been surprised by recent discoveries that still other islands, lying

to the east of New Guinea, were colonized soon after New Guinea itself, by

around 35,000 years ago. Those islands were New Britain and New Ireland, in

the Bismarck Archipelago, and Buka, in the Solomon Archipelago. Buka lies

out of sight of the closest island to the west and could have been reached only

by crossing a water gap of about 100 miles. Thus, early Australians and New

Guineans were probably capable of intentionally traveling over water to

visible islands, and were using watercraft sufficiently often that the

colonization of even invisible distant islands was repeatedly achieved

unintentionally.

The settlement of Australia / New Guinea was perhaps associated with

still another big first, besides humans’ first use of watercraft and first range

extension since reaching Eurasia: the first mass extermination of large animal

species by humans. Today, we regard Africa as the continent of big mammals.

Modern Eurasia also has many species of big mammals (though not in the

manifest abundance of Africa’s Serengeti Plains), such as Asia’s rhinos and

elephants and tigers, and Europe’s moose and bears and (until classical times)

lions. Australia / New Guinea today has no equally large mammals, in fact no

mammal larger than 100-pound kangaroos. But Australia / New Guinea

formerly had its own suite of diverse big mammals, including giant

kangaroos, rhinolike marsupials called diprotodonts and reaching the size of a

cow, and a marsupial “leopard.” It also formerly had a 400-pound ostrichlike

flightless bird, plus some impressively big reptiles, including a one-ton lizard,

a giant python, and land-dwelling crocodiles.

All of those Australian / New Guinean giants (the so-called megafauna)

disappeared after the arrival of humans. While there has been controversy

about the exact timing of their demise, several Australian archaeological sites,

with dates extending over tens of thousands of years, and with prodigiously

abundant deposits of animal bones, have been carefully excavated and found

to contain not a trace of the now extinct giants over the last 35,000 years.

Hence the megafauna probably became extinct soon after humans reached

Australia.

The near-simultaneous disappearance of so many large species raises an

obvious question: what caused it? An obvious possible answer is that they

were killed off or else eliminated indirectly by the first arriving humans.

Recall that Australian / New Guinean animals had evolved for millions of

years in the absence of human hunters. We know that Galápagos and

Antarctic birds and mammals, which similarly evolved in the absence of

humans and did not see humans until modern times, are still incurably tame

today. They would have been exterminated if conservationists had not

imposed protective measures quickly. On other recently discovered islands

where protective measures did not go into effect quickly, exterminations did

indeed result: one such victim, the dodo of Mauritius, has become virtually a

symbol for extinction. We also know now that, on every one of the well-

studied oceanic islands colonized in the prehistoric era, human colonization

led to an extinction spasm whose victims included the moas of New Zealand,

the giant lemurs of Madagascar, and the big flightless geese of Hawaii. Just as

modern humans walked up to unafraid dodos and island seals and killed them,

prehistoric humans presumably walked up to unafraid moas and giant lemurs

and killed them too.

Hence one hypothesis for the demise of Australia’s and New Guinea’s

giants is that they met the same fate around 40,000 years ago. In contrast,

most big mammals of Africa and Eurasia survived into modern times, because

they had coevolved with protohumans for hundreds of thousands or millions

of years. They thereby enjoyed ample time to evolve a fear of humans, as our

ancestors’ initially poor hunting skills slowly improved. The dodo, moas, and

perhaps the giants of Australia / New Guinea had the misfortune suddenly to

be confronted, without any evolutionary preparation, by invading modern

humans possessing fully developed hunting skills.

However, the overkill hypothesis, as it is termed, has not gone

unchallenged for Australia / New Guinea. Critics emphasize that, as yet, no

one has documented the bones of an extinct Australian / New Guinean giant

with compelling evidence of its having been killed by humans, or even of its

having lived in association with humans. Defenders of the overkill hypothesis

reply: you would hardly expect to find kill sites if the extermination was

completed very quickly and long ago, such as within a few millennia some

40,000 years ago. The critics respond with a countertheory: perhaps the giants

succumbed instead to a change in climate, such as a severe drought on the

already chronically dry Australian continent. The debate goes on.

Personally, I can’t fathom why Australia’s giants should have survived

innumerable droughts in their tens of millions of years of Australian history,

and then have chosen to drop dead almost simultaneously (at least on a time

scale of millions of years) precisely and just coincidentally when the first

humans arrived. The giants became extinct not only in dry central Australia

but also in drenching wet New Guinea and southeastern Australia. They

became extinct in every habitat without exception, from deserts to cold rain

forest and tropical rain forest. Hence it seems to me most likely that the giants

were indeed exterminated by humans, both directly (by being killed for food)

and indirectly (as the result of fires and habitat modification caused by

humans). But regardless of whether the overkill hypothesis or the climate

hypothesis proves correct, the disappearance of all of the big animals of

Australia / New Guinea had, as we shall see, heavy consequences for

subsequent human history. Those extinctions eliminated all the large wild

animals that might otherwise have been candidates for domestication, and left

native Australians and New Guineans with not a single native domestic

animal.



THUS, THE COLONIZATION of Australia/New Guinea was not achieved until

around the time of the Great Leap Forward. Another extension of human

range that soon followed was the one into the coldest parts of Eurasia. While

Neanderthals lived in glacial times and were adapted to the cold, they

penetrated no farther north than northern Germany and Kiev. That’s not

surprising, since Neanderthals apparently lacked needles, sewn clothing,

warm houses, and other technology essential to survival in the coldest

climates. Anatomically modern peoples who did possess such technology had

expanded into Siberia by around 20,000 years ago (there are the usual much

older disputed claims). That expansion may have been responsible for the

extinction of Eurasia’s woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros.

With the settlement of Australia / New Guinea, humans now occupied

three of the five habitable continents. (Throughout this book, I count Eurasia

as a single continent, and I omit Antarctica because it was not reached by

humans until the 19th century and has never had any self-supporting human

population.) That left only two continents, North America and South

America. They were surely the last ones settled, for the obvious reason that

reaching the Americas from the Old World required either boats (for which

there is no evidence even in Indonesia until 40,000 years ago and none in

Europe until much later) in order to cross by sea, or else it required the

occupation of Siberia (unoccupied until about 20,000 years ago) in order to

cross the Bering land bridge.

However, it is uncertain when, between about 14,000 and 35,000 years

ago, the Americas were first colonized. The oldest unquestioned human

remains in the Americas are at sites in Alaska dated around 12,000 B.C.,

followed by a profusion of sites in the United States south of the Canadian

border and in Mexico in the centuries just before 11,000 B.C. The latter sites

are called Clovis sites, named after the type site near the town of Clovis, New

Mexico, where their characteristic large stone spearpoints were first

recognized. Hundreds of Clovis sites are now known, blanketing all 48 of the

lower U.S. states south into Mexico. Unquestioned evidence of human

presence appears soon thereafter in Amazonia and in Patagonia. These facts

suggest the interpretation that Clovis sites document the Americas’ first

colonization by people, who quickly multiplied, expanded, and filled the two

continents.

One might at first be surprised that Clovis descendants could reach

Patagonia, lying 8,000 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border, in less than a

thousand years. However, that translates into an average expansion of only 8

miles per year, a trivial feat for a hunter-gatherer likely to cover that distance

even within a single day’s normal foraging.

One might also at first be surprised that the Americas evidently filled up

with humans so quickly that people were motivated to keep spreading south

toward Patagonia. That population growth also proves unsurprising when one

stops to consider the actual numbers. If the Americas eventually came to hold

hunter-gatherers at an average population density of somewhat under one

person per square mile (a high value for modern hunter-gatherers), then the

whole area of the Americas would eventually have held about 10 million

hunter-gatherers. But even if the initial colonists had consisted of only 100

people and their numbers had increased at a rate of only 1.1 percent per year,

the colonists’ descendants would have reached that population ceiling of 10

million people within a thousand years. A population growth rate of 1.1

percent per year is again trivial: rates as high as 3.4 percent per year have

been observed in modern times when people colonized virgin lands, such as

when the HMS Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian wives colonized Pitcairn

Island.

The profusion of Clovis hunters’ sites within the first few centuries after

their arrival resembles the site profusion documented archaeologically for the

more recent discovery of New Zealand by ancestral Maori. A profusion of

early sites is also documented for the much older colonization of Europe by

anatomically modern humans, and for the occupation of Australia / New

Guinea. That is, everything about the Clovis phenomenon and its spread

through the Americas corresponds to findings for other, unquestioned virgin-

land colonizations in history.

What might be the significance of Clovis sites’ bursting forth in the

centuries just before 11,000 B.C., rather than in those before 16,000 or 21,000

B.C.? Recall that Siberia has always been cold, and that a continuous ice sheet

stretched as an impassable barrier across the whole width of Canada during

much of the Pleistocene Ice Ages. We have already seen that the technology

required for coping with extreme cold did not emerge until after anatomically

modern humans invaded Europe around 40,000 years ago, and that people did

not colonize Siberia until 20,000 years later. Eventually, those early Siberians

crossed to Alaska, either by sea across the Bering Strait (only 50 miles wide

even today) or else on foot at glacial times when Bering Strait was dry land.

The Bering land bridge, during its millennia of intermittent existence, would

have been up to a thousand miles wide, covered by open tundra, and easily

traversable by people adapted to cold conditions. The land bridge was flooded

and became a strait again most recently when sea level rose after around

14,000 B.C. Whether those early Siberians walked or paddled to Alaska, the

earliest secure evidence of human presence in Alaska dates from around

12,000 B.C.

Soon thereafter, a north–south ice-free corridor opened in the Canadian

ice sheet, permitting the first Alaskans to pass through and come out into the

Great Plains around the site of the modern Canadian city of Edmonton. That

removed the last serious barrier between Alaska and Patagonia for modern

humans. The Edmonton pioneers would have found the Great Plains teeming

with game. They would have thrived, increased in numbers, and gradually

spread south to occupy the whole hemisphere.

One other feature of the Clovis phenomenon fits our expectations for the

first human presence south of the Canadian ice sheet. Like Australia / New

Guinea, the Americas had originally been full of big mammals. About 15,000

years ago, the American West looked much as Africa’s Serengeti Plains do

today, with herds of elephants and horses pursued by lions and cheetahs, and

joined by members of such exotic species as camels and giant ground sloths.

Just as in Australia / New Guinea, in the Americas most of those large

mammals became extinct. Whereas the extinctions took place probably before

30,000 years ago in Australia, they occurred around 17,000 to 12,000 years

ago in the Americas. For those extinct American mammals whose bones are

available in greatest abundance and have been dated especially accurately,

one can pinpoint the extinctions as having occurred around 11,000 B.C.

Perhaps the two most accurately dated extinctions are those of the Shasta

ground sloth and Harrington’s mountain goat in the Grand Canyon area; both

of those populations disappeared within a century or two of 11,100 B.C.

Whether coincidentally or not, that date is identical, within experimental

error, to the date of Clovis hunters’ arrival in the Grand Canyon area.

The discovery of numerous skeletons of mammoths with Clovis

spearpoints between their ribs suggests that this agreement of dates is not a

coincidence. Hunters expanding southward through the Americas,

encountering big animals that had never seen humans before, may have found

those American animals easy to kill and may have exterminated them. A

countertheory is that America’s big mammals instead became extinct because

of climate changes at the end of the last Ice Age, which (to confuse the

interpretation for modern paleontologists) also happened around 11,000 B.C.

Personally, I have the same problem with a climatic theory of megafaunal

extinction in the Americas as with such a theory in Australia / New Guinea.

The Americas’ big animals had already survived the ends of 22 previous Ice

Ages. Why did most of them pick the 23rd to expire in concert, in the

presence of all those supposedly harmless humans? Why did they disappear in

all habitats, not only in habitats that contracted but also in ones that greatly

expanded at the end of the last Ice Age? Hence I suspect that Clovis hunters

did it, but the debate remains unresolved. Whichever theory proves correct,

most large wild mammal species that might otherwise have later been

domesticated by Native Americans were thereby removed.

Also unresolved is the question whether Clovis hunters really were the

first Americans. As always happens whenever anyone claims the first

anything, claims of discoveries of pre-Clovis human sites in the Americas are

constantly being advanced. Every year, a few of those new claims really do

appear convincing and exciting when initially announced. Then the inevitable

problems of interpretation arise. Were the reported tools at the site really tools

made by humans, or just natural rock shapes? Are the reported radiocarbon

dates really correct, and not invalidated by any of the numerous difficulties

that can plague radiocarbon dating? If the dates are correct, are they really

associated with human products, rather than just being a 15,000-year-old

lump of charcoal lying next to a stone tool actually made 9,000 years ago?

To illustrate these problems, consider the following typical example of an

often quoted pre-Clovis claim. At a Brazilian rock shelter named Pedra

Furada, archaeologists found cave paintings undoubtedly made by humans.

They also discovered, among the piles of stones at the base of a cliff, some

stones whose shapes suggested the possibility of their being crude tools. In

addition, they came upon supposed hearths, whose burnt charcoal yielded

radiocarbon dates of around 35,000 years ago. Articles on Pedra Furada were

accepted for publication in the prestigious and highly selective international

scientific journal Nature.

But none of those rocks at the base of the cliff is an obviously

humanmade tool, as are Clovis points and Cro-Magnon tools. If hundreds of

thousands of rocks fall from a high cliff over the course of tens of thousands

of years, many of them will become chipped and broken when they hit the

rocks below, and some will come to resemble crude tools chipped and broken

by humans. In western Europe and elsewhere in Amazonia, archaeologists

have radiocarbon-dated the actual pigments used in cave paintings, but that

was not done at Pedra Furada. Forest fires occur frequently in the vicinity and

produce charcoal that is regularly swept into caves by wind and streams. No

evidence links the 35,000-year-old charcoal to the undoubted cave paintings

at Pedra Furada. Although the original excavators remain convinced, a team

of archaeologists who were not involved in the excavation but receptive to

pre-Clovis claims recently visited the site and came away unconvinced.

The North American site that currently enjoys the strongest credentials as

a possible pre-Clovis site is Meadowcroft rock shelter, in Pennsylvania,

yielding reported human-associated radiocarbon dates of about 16,000 years

ago. At Meadowcroft no archaeologist denies that many human artifacts do

occur in many carefully excavated layers. But the oldest radiocarbon dates

don’t make sense, because the plant and animal species associated with them

are species living in Pennsylvania in recent times of mild climates, rather than

species expected for the glacial times of 16,000 years ago. Hence one has to

suspect that the charcoal samples dated from the oldest human occupation

levels consist of post-Clovis charcoal infiltrated with older carbon. The

strongest pre-Clovis candidate in South America is the Monte Verde site, in

southern Chile, dated to at least 15,000 years ago. It too now seems

convincing to many archaeologists, but caution is warranted in view of all the

previous disillusionments.

If there really were pre-Clovis people in the Americas, why is it still so

hard to prove that they existed? Archaeologists have excavated hundreds of

American sites unequivocally dating to between 2000 and 11,000 B.C.,

including dozens of Clovis sites in the North American West, rock shelters in

the Appalachians, and sites in coastal California. Below all the archaeological

layers with undoubted human presence, at many of those same sites, deeper

older layers have been excavated and still yield undoubted remains of animals

—but with no further evidence of humans. The weaknesses in pre-Clovis

evidence in the Americas contrast with the strength of the evidence in Europe,

where hundreds of sites attest to the presence of modern humans long before

Clovis hunters appeared in the Americas around 11,000 B.C. Even more

striking is the evidence from Australia / New Guinea, where there are barely

one-tenth as many archaeologists as in the United States alone, but where

those few archaeologists have nevertheless discovered over a hundred

unequivocal pre-Clovis sites scattered over the whole continent.

Early humans certainly didn’t fly by helicopter from Alaska to

Meadowcroft and Monte Verde, skipping all the landscape in between.

Advocates of pre-Clovis settlement suggest that, for thousands or even tens of

thousands of years, pre-Clovis humans remained at low population densities

or poorly visible archaeologically, for unknown reasons unprecedented

elsewhere in the world. I find that suggestion infinitely more implausible than

the suggestion that Monte Verde and Meadowcroft will eventually be

reinterpreted, as have other claimed pre-Clovis sites. My feeling is that, if

there really had been pre-Clovis settlement in the Americas, it would have

become obvious at many locations by now, and we would not still be arguing.

However, archaeologists remain divided on these questions.

The consequences for our understanding of later American prehistory

remain the same, whichever interpretation proves correct. Either: the

Americas were first settled around 11,000 B.C. and quickly filled up with

people. Or else: the first settlement occurred somewhat earlier (most

advocates of pre-Clovis settlement would suggest by 15,000 or 20,000 years

ago, possibly 30,000 years ago, and few would seriously claim earlier); but

those pre-Clovis settlers remained few in numbers, or inconspicuous, or had

little impact, until around 11,000 B.C. In either case, of the five habitable

continents, North America and South America are the ones with the shortest

human prehistories.



WITH THE OCCUPATION of the Americas, most habitable areas of the

continents and continental islands, plus oceanic islands from Indonesia to east

of New Guinea, supported humans. The settlement of the world’s remaining

islands was not completed until modern times: Mediterranean islands such as

Crete, Cyprus, Corsica, and Sardinia between about 8500 and 4000 B.C.;

Caribbean islands beginning around 4000 B.C.; Polynesian and Micronesian

islands between 1200 B.C. and A.D. 1000; Madagascar sometime between A.D.

300 and 800; and Iceland in the ninth century A.D. Native Americans, possibly

ancestral to the modern Inuit, spread throughout the High Arctic around 2000

B.C. That left, as the sole uninhabited areas awaiting European explorers over

the last 700 years, only the most remote islands of the Atlantic and Indian

Oceans (such as the Azores and Seychelles), plus Antarctica.

What significance, if any, do the continents’ differing dates of settlement

have for subsequent history? Suppose that a time machine could have

transported an archaeologist back in time, for a world tour at around 11,000

B.C. Given the state of the world then, could the archaeologist have predicted

the sequence in which human societies on the various continents would

develop guns, germs, and steel, and thus predicted the state of the world

today?

Our archaeologist might have considered the possible advantages of a

head start. If that counted for anything, then Africa enjoyed an enormous

advantage: at least 5 million more years of separate protohuman existence

than on any other continent. In addition, if it is true that modern humans arose

in Africa around 100,000 years ago and spread to other continents, that would

have wiped out any advantages accumulated elsewhere in the meantime and

given Africans a new head start. Furthermore, human genetic diversity is

highest in Africa; perhaps more-diverse humans would collectively produce

more-diverse inventions.

But our archaeologist might then reflect: what, really, does a “head start”

mean for the purposes of this book? We cannot take the metaphor of a

footrace literally. If by head start you mean the time required to populate a

continent after the arrival of the first few pioneering colonists, that time is

relatively brief: for example, less than 1,000 years to fill up even the whole

New World. If by head start you instead mean the time required to adapt to

local conditions, I grant that some extreme environments did take time: for

instance, 9,000 years to occupy the High Arctic after the occupation of the

rest of North America. But people would have explored and adapted to most

other areas quickly, once modern human inventiveness had developed. For

example, after the ancestors of the Maori reached New Zealand, it apparently

took them barely a century to discover all worthwhile stone sources; only a

few more centuries to kill every last moa in some of the world’s most rugged

terrain; and only a few centuries to differentiate into a range of diverse

societies, from that of coastal hunter-gatherers to that of farmers practicing

new types of food storage.

Our archaeologist might therefore look at the Americas and conclude that

Africans, despite their apparently enormous head start, would have been

overtaken by the earliest Americans within at most a millennium. Thereafter,

the Americas’ greater area (50 percent greater than Africa’s) and much greater

environmental diversity would have given the advantage to Native Americans

over Africans.

The archaeologist might then turn to Eurasia and reason as follows.

Eurasia is the world’s largest continent. It has been occupied for longer than

any other continent except Africa. Africa’s long occupation before the

colonization of Eurasia a million years ago might have counted for nothing

anyway, because protohumans were at such a primitive stage then. Our

archaeologist might look at the Upper Paleolithic flowering of southwestern

Europe between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago, with all those famous artworks

and complex tools, and wonder whether Eurasia was already getting a head

start then, at least locally.

Finally, the archaeologist would turn to Australia / New Guinea, noting

first its small area (it’s the smallest continent), the large fraction of it covered

by desert capable of supporting few humans, the continent’s isolation, and its

later occupation than that of Africa and Eurasia. All that might lead the

archaeologist to predict slow development in Australia / New Guinea.

But remember that Australians and New Guineans had by far the earliest

watercraft in the world. They were creating cave paintings apparently at least

as early as the Cro-Magnons in Europe. Jonathan Kingdon and Tim Flannery

have noted that the colonization of Australia / New Guinea from the islands of

the Asian continental shelf required humans to learn to deal with the new

environments they encountered on the islands of central Indonesia—a maze

of coastlines offering the richest marine resources, coral reefs, and mangroves

in the world. As the colonists crossed the straits separating each Indonesian

island from the next one to the east, they adapted anew, filled up that next

island, and went on to colonize the next island again. It was a hitherto

unprecedented golden age of successive human population explosions.

Perhaps those cycles of colonization, adaptation, and population explosion

were what selected for the Great Leap Forward, which then diffused back

westward to Eurasia and Africa. If this scenario is correct, then Australia /

New Guinea gained a massive head start that might have continued to propel

human development there long after the Great Leap Forward.

Thus, an observer transported back in time to 11,000 B.C. could not have

predicted on which continent human societies would develop most quickly,

but could have made a strong case for any of the continents. With hindsight,

of course, we know that Eurasia was the one. But it turns out that the actual

reasons behind the more rapid development of Eurasian societies were not at

all the straightforward ones that our imaginary archaeologist of 11,000 B.C.

guessed. The remainder of this book consists of a quest to discover those real

reasons.





CHAPTER 2

A NATURAL EXPERIMENT OF HISTORY

ON THE CHATHAM ISLANDS, 500 MILES EAST OF NEW ZEALAND, centuries of

independence came to a brutal end for the Moriori people in December 1835.

On November 19 of that year, a ship carrying 500 Maori armed with guns,

clubs, and axes arrived, followed on December 5 by a shipload of 400 more

Maori. Groups of Maori began to walk through Moriori settlements,

announcing that the Moriori were now their slaves, and killing those who

objected. An organized resistance by the Moriori could still then have

defeated the Maori, who were outnumbered two to one. However, the Moriori

had a tradition of resolving disputes peacefully. They decided in a council

meeting not to fight back but to offer peace, friendship, and a division of

resources.

Before the Moriori could deliver that offer, the Maori attacked en masse.

Over the course of the next few days, they killed hundreds of Moriori, cooked

and ate many of the bodies, and enslaved all the others, killing most of them

too over the next few years as it suited their whim. A Moriori survivor

recalled, “[The Maori] commenced to kill us like sheep…. [We] were

terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in

any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and

killed—men, women, and children indiscriminately.” A Maori conqueror

explained, “We took possession…in accordance with our customs and we

caught all the people. Not one escaped. Some ran away from us, these we

killed, and others we killed—but what of that? It was in accordance with our

custom.”

The brutal outcome of this collision between the Moriori and the Maori

could have been easily predicted. The Moriori were a small, isolated

population of hunter-gatherers, equipped with only the simplest technology

and weapons, entirely inexperienced at war, and lacking strong leadership or

organization. The Maori invaders (from New Zealand’s North Island) came

from a dense population of farmers chronically engaged in ferocious wars,

equipped with more-advanced technology and weapons, and operating under

strong leadership. Of course, when the two groups finally came into contact, it

was the Maori who slaughtered the Moriori, not vice versa.

The tragedy of the Moriori resembles many other such tragedies in both

the modern and the ancient world, pitting numerous well-equipped people

against few ill-equipped opponents. What makes the Maori-Moriori collision

grimly illuminating is that both groups had diverged from a common origin

less than a millennium earlier. Both were Polynesian peoples. The modern

Maori are descendants of Polynesian farmers who colonized New Zealand

around A.D. 1000. Soon thereafter, a group of those Maori in turn colonized

the Chatham Islands and became the Moriori. In the centuries after the two

groups separated, they evolved in opposite directions, the North Island Maori

developing more-complex and the Moriori less-complex technology and

political organization. The Moriori reverted to being hunter-gatherers, while

the North Island Maori turned to more intensive farming.

Those opposite evolutionary courses sealed the outcome of their eventual

collision. If we could understand the reasons for the disparate development of

those two island societies, we might have a model for understanding the

broader question of differing developments on the continents.



MORIORI AND MAORI history constitutes a brief, small-scale natural

experiment that tests how environments affect human societies. Before you

read a whole book examining environmental effects on a very large scale—

effects on human societies around the world for the last 13,000 years—you

might reasonably want assurance, from smaller tests, that such effects really

are significant. If you were a laboratory scientist studying rats, you might

perform such a test by taking one rat colony, distributing groups of those

ancestral rats among many cages with differing environments, and coming

back many rat generations later to see what had happened. Of course, such

purposeful experiments cannot be carried out on human societies. Instead,

scientists must look for “natural experiments,” in which something similar

befell humans in the past.

Such an experiment unfolded during the settlement of Polynesia.

Scattered over the Pacific Ocean beyond New Guinea and Melanesia are

thousands of islands differing greatly in area, isolation, elevation, climate,

productivity, and geological and biological resources (Figure 2.1). For most of

human history those islands lay far beyond the reach of watercraft. Around

1200 B.C. a group of farming, fishing, seafaring people from the Bismarck

Archipelago north of New Guinea finally succeeded in reaching some of

those islands. Over the following centuries their descendants colonized

virtually every habitable scrap of land in the Pacific. The process was mostly

complete by A.D. 500, with the last few islands settled around or soon after

A.D. 1000.

Thus, within a modest time span, enormously diverse island environments

were settled by colonists all of whom stemmed from the same founding

population. The ultimate ancestors of all modern Polynesian populations

shared essentially the same culture, language, technology, and set of

domesticated plants and animals. Hence Polynesian history constitutes a

natural experiment allowing us to study human adaptation, devoid of the

usual complications of multiple waves of disparate colonists that often

frustrate our attempts to understand adaptation elsewhere in the world.

Within that medium-sized test, the fate of the Moriori forms a smaller test.

It is easy to trace how the differing environments of the Chatham Islands and

of New Zealand molded the Moriori and the Maori differently. While those

ancestral Maori who first colonized the Chathams may have been farmers,

Maori tropical crops could not grow in the Chathams’ cold climate, and the

colonists had no alternative except to revert to being hunter-gatherers. Since

as hunter-gatherers they did not produce crop surpluses available for

redistribution or storage, they could not support and feed nonhunting craft

specialists, armies, bureaucrats, and chiefs. Their prey were seals, shellfish,

nesting seabirds, and fish that could be captured by hand or with clubs and

required no more elaborate technology. In addition, the Chathams are

relatively small and remote islands, capable of supporting a total population

of only about 2,000 hunter-gatherers. With no other accessible islands to

colonize, the Moriori had to remain in the Chathams, and to learn how to get

along with each other. They did so by renouncing war, and they reduced

potential conflicts from overpopulation by castrating some male infants. The

result was a small, unwarlike population with simple technology and

weapons, and without strong leadership or organization.

In contrast, the northern (warmer) part of New Zealand, by far the largest

island group in Polynesia, was suitable for Polynesian agriculture. Those

Maori who remained in New Zealand increased in numbers until there were

more than 100,000 of them. They developed locally dense populations

chronically engaged in ferocious wars with neighboring populations. With the

crop surpluses that they could grow and store, they fed craft specialists,

chiefs, and part-time soldiers. They needed and developed varied tools for

growing their crops, fighting, and making art. They erected elaborate

ceremonial buildings and prodigious numbers of forts.

Thus, Moriori and Maori societies developed from the same ancestral

society, but along very different lines. The resulting two societies lost

awareness even of each other’s existence and did not come into contact again

for many centuries, perhaps for as long as 500 years. Finally, an Australian

seal-hunting ship visiting the Chathams en route to New Zealand brought the

news to New Zealand of islands where “there is an abundance of sea and

shellfish; the lakes swarm with eels; and it is a land of the karaka berry….

The inhabitants are very numerous, but they do not understand how to fight,

and have no weapons.” That news was enough to induce 900 Maori to sail to

the Chathams. The outcome clearly illustrates how environments can affect

economy, technology, political organization, and fighting skills within a short

time.



AS I ALREADY mentioned, the Maori-Moriori collision represents a small test

within a medium-sized test. What can we learn from all of Polynesia about

environmental influences on human societies? What differences among

societies on different Polynesian islands need to be explained?

Polynesia as a whole presented a much wider range of environmental

conditions than did just New Zealand and the Chathams, although the latter

define one extreme (the simple end) of Polynesian organization. In their

subsistence modes, Polynesians ranged from the hunter-gatherers of the

Chathams, through slash-and-burn farmers, to practitioners of intensive food

production living at some of the highest population densities of any human

societies. Polynesian food producers variously intensified production of pigs,

dogs, and chickens. They organized work forces to construct large irrigation

systems for agriculture and to enclose large ponds for fish production. The

economic basis of Polynesian societies consisted of more or less self-

sufficient households, but some islands also supported guilds of hereditary

part-time craft specialists. In social organization, Polynesian societies ran the

gamut from fairly egalitarian village societies to some of the most stratified

societies in the world, with many hierarchically ranked lineages and with

chief and commoner classes whose members married within their own class.

In political organization, Polynesian islands ranged from landscapes divided

into independent tribal or village units, up to multi-island proto-empires that

devoted standing military establishments to invasions of other islands and

wars of conquest. Finally, Polynesian material culture varied from the

production of no more than personal utensils to the construction of

monumental stone architecture. How can all that variation be explained?

Contributing to these differences among Polynesian societies were at least

six sets of environmental variables among Polynesian islands: island climate,

geological type, marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation, and isolation.

Let’s examine the ranges of these factors, before considering their specific

consequences for Polynesian societies.

The climate in Polynesia varies from warm tropical or subtropical on

most islands, which lie near the equator, to temperate on most of New

Zealand, and cold subantarctic on the Chathams and the southern part of New

Zealand’s South Island. Hawaii’s Big Island, though lying well within the

Tropic of Cancer, has mountains high enough to support alpine habitats and

receive occasional snowfalls. Rainfall varies from the highest recorded on

Earth (in New Zealand’s Fjordland and Hawaii’s Alakai Swamp on Kauai) to

only one-tenth as much on islands so dry that they are marginal for

agriculture.

Island geological types include coral atolls, raised limestone, volcanic

islands, pieces of continents, and mixtures of those types. At one extreme,

innumerable islets, such as those of the Tuamotu Archipelago, are flat, low

atolls barely rising above sea level. Other former atolls, such as Henderson

and Rennell, have been lifted far above sea level to constitute raised limestone

islands. Both of those atoll types present problems to human settlers, because

they consist entirely of limestone without other stones, have only very thin

soil, and lack permanent fresh water. At the opposite extreme, the largest

Polynesian island, New Zealand, is an old, geologically diverse, continental

fragment of Gondwanaland, offering a range of mineral resources, including

commercially exploitable iron, coal, gold, and jade. Most other large

Polynesian islands are volcanoes that rose from the sea, have never formed

parts of a continent, and may or may not include areas of raised limestone.

While lacking New Zealand’s geological richness, the oceanic volcanic

islands at least are an improvement over atolls (from the Polynesians’

perspective) in that they offer diverse types of volcanic stones, some of which

are highly suitable for making stone tools.

The volcanic islands differ among themselves. The elevations of the

higher ones generate rain in the mountains, so the islands are heavily

weathered and have deep soils and permanent streams. That is true, for

instance, of the Societies, Samoa, the Marquesas, and especially Hawaii, the

Polynesian archipelago with the highest mountains. Among the lower islands,

Tonga and (to a lesser extent) Easter also have rich soil because of volcanic

ashfalls, but they lack Hawaii’s large streams.

As for marine resources, most Polynesian islands are surrounded by

shallow water and reefs, and many also encompass lagoons. Those

environments teem with fish and shellfish. However, the rocky coasts of

Easter, Pitcairn, and the Marquesas, and the steeply dropping ocean bottom

and absence of coral reefs around those islands, are much less productive of

seafood.

Area is another obvious variable, ranging from the 100 acres of Anuta, the

smallest permanently inhabited isolated Polynesian island, up to the 103,000

square miles of the minicontinent of New Zealand. The habitable terrain of

some islands, notably the Marquesas, is fragmented into steep-walled valleys

by ridges, while other islands, such as Tonga and Easter, consist of gently

rolling terrain presenting no obstacles to travel and communication.

The last environmental variable to consider is isolation. Easter Island and

the Chathams are small and so remote from other islands that, once they were

initially colonized, the societies thus founded developed in total isolation

from the rest of the world. New Zealand, Hawaii, and the Marquesas are also

very remote, but at least the latter two apparently did have some further

contact with other archipelagoes after the first colonization, and all three

consist of many islands close enough to each other for regular contact

between islands of the same archipelago. Most other Polynesian islands were

in more or less regular contact with other islands. In particular, the Tongan

Archipelago lies close enough to the Fijian, Samoan, and Wallis

Archipelagoes to have permitted regular voyaging between archipelagoes, and

eventually to permit Tongans to undertake the conquest of Fiji.



AFTER THAT BRIEF look at Polynesia’s varying environments, let’s now see

how that variation influenced Polynesian societies. Subsistence is a

convenient facet of society with which to start, since it in turn affected other

facets.

Polynesian subsistence depended on varying mixes of fishing, gathering

wild plants and marine shellfish and Crustacea, hunting terrestrial birds and

breeding seabirds, and food production. Most Polynesian islands originally

supported big flightless birds that had evolved in the absence of predators,

New Zealand’s moas and Hawaii’s flightless geese being the best-known

examples. While those birds were important food sources for the initial

colonists, especially on New Zealand’s South Island, most of them were soon

exterminated on all islands, because they were easy to hunt down. Breeding

seabirds were also quickly reduced in number but continued to be important

food sources on some islands. Marine resources were significant on most

islands but least so on Easter, Pitcairn, and the Marquesas, where people as a

result were especially dependent on food that they themselves produced.

Ancestral Polynesians brought with them three domesticated animals (the

pig, chicken, and dog) and domesticated no other animals within Polynesia.

Many islands retained all three of those species, but the more isolated

Polynesian islands lacked one or more of them, either because livestock

brought in canoes failed to survive the colonists’ long overwater journey or

because livestock that died out could not be readily obtained again from the

outside. For instance, isolated New Zealand ended up with only dogs; Easter

and Tikopia, with only chickens. Without access to coral reefs or productive

shallow waters, and with their terrestrial birds quickly exterminated, Easter

Islanders turned to constructing chicken houses for intensive poultry farming.

At best, however, these three domesticated animal species provided only

occasional meals. Polynesian food production depended mainly on

agriculture, which was impossible at subantarctic latitudes because all

Polynesian crops were tropical ones initially domesticated outside Polynesia

and brought in by colonists. The settlers of the Chathams and the cold

southern part of New Zealand’s South Island were thus forced to abandon the

farming legacy developed by their ancestors over the previous thousands of

years, and to become hunter-gatherers again.

People on the remaining Polynesian islands did practice agriculture based

on dryland crops (especially taro, yams, and sweet potatoes), irrigated crops

(mainly taro), and tree crops (such as breadfruit, bananas, and coconuts). The

productivity and relative importance of those crop types varied considerably

on different islands, depending on their environments. Human population

densities were lowest on Henderson, Rennell, and the atolls because of their

poor soil and limited fresh water. Densities were also low on temperate New

Zealand, which was too cool for some Polynesian crops. Polynesians on these

and some other islands practiced a nonintensive type of shifting, slash-and-

burn agriculture.

Other islands had rich soils but were not high enough to have large

permanent streams and hence irrigation. Inhabitants of those islands

developed intensive dryland agriculture requiring a heavy input of labor to

build terraces, carry out mulching, rotate crops, reduce or eliminate fallow

periods, and maintain tree plantations. Dryland agriculture became especially

productive on Easter, tiny Anuta, and flat and low Tonga, where Polynesians

devoted most of the land area to the growing of food.

The most productive Polynesian agriculture was taro cultivation in

irrigated fields. Among the more populous tropical islands, that option was

ruled out for Tonga by its low elevation and hence its lack of rivers. Irrigation

agriculture reached its peak on the westernmost Hawaiian islands of Kauai,

Oahu, and Molokai, which were big and wet enough to support not only large

permanent streams but also large human populations available for

construction projects. Hawaiian labor corvées built elaborate irrigation

systems for taro fields yielding up to 24 tons per acre, the highest crop yields

in all of Polynesia. Those yields in turn supported intensive pig production.

Hawaii was also unique within Polynesia in using mass labor for aquaculture,

by constructing large fishponds in which milkfish and mullet were grown.



AS A RESULT of all this environmentally related variation in subsistence,

human population densities (measured in people per square mile of arable

land) varied greatly over Polynesia. At the lower end were the hunter-

gatherers of the Chathams (only 5 people per square mile) and of New

Zealand’s South Island, and the farmers of the rest of New Zealand (28 people

per square mile). In contrast, many islands with intensive agriculture attained

population densities exceeding 120 per square mile. Tonga, Samoa, and the

Societies achieved 210–250 people per square mile and Hawaii 300. The

upper extreme of 1,100 people per square mile was reached on the high island

of Anuta, whose population converted essentially all the land to intensive

food production, thereby crammed 160 people into the island’s 100 acres, and

joined the ranks of the densest self-sufficient populations in the world.

Anuta’s population density exceeded that of modern Holland and even rivaled

that of Bangladesh.

Population size is the product of population density (people per square

mile) and area (square miles). The relevant area is not the area of an island

but that of a political unit, which could be either larger or smaller than a

single island. On the one hand, islands near one another might become

combined into a single political unit. On the other hand, single large rugged

islands were divided into many independent political units. Hence the area of

the political unit varied not only with an island’s area but also with its

fragmentation and isolation.

For small isolated islands without strong barriers to internal

communication, the entire island constituted the political unit—as in the case

of Anuta, with its 160 people. Many larger islands never did become unified

politically, whether because the population consisted of dispersed bands of

only a few dozen hunter-gatherers each (the Chathams and New Zealand’s

southern South Island), or of farmers scattered over large distances (the rest of

New Zealand), or of farmers living in dense populations but in rugged terrain

precluding political unification. For example, people in neighboring steep-

sided valleys of the Marquesas communicated with each other mainly by sea;

each valley formed an independent political entity of a few thousand

inhabitants, and most individual large Marquesan islands remained divided

into many such entities.

The terrains of the Tongan, Samoan, Society, and Hawaiian islands did

permit political unification within islands, yielding political units of 10,000

people or more (over 30,000 on the large Hawaiian islands). The distances

between islands of the Tongan archipelago, as well as the distances between

Tonga and neighboring archipelagoes, were sufficiently modest that a multi-

island empire encompassing 40,000 people was eventually established. Thus,

Polynesian political units ranged in size from a few dozen to 40,000 people.

A political unit’s population size interacted with its population density to

influence Polynesian technology and economic, social, and political

organization. In general, the larger the size and the higher the density, the

more complex and specialized were the technology and organization, for

reasons that we shall examine in detail in later chapters. Briefly, at high

population densities only a portion of the people came to be farmers, but they

were mobilized to devote themselves to intensive food production, thereby

yielding surpluses to feed nonproducers. The nonproducers mobilizing them

included chiefs, priests, bureaucrats, and warriors. The biggest political units

could assemble large labor forces to construct irrigation systems and

fishponds that intensified food production even further. These developments

were especially apparent on Tonga, Samoa, and the Societies, all of which

were fertile, densely populated, and moderately large by Polynesian

standards. The trends reached their zenith on the Hawaiian Archipelago,

consisting of the largest tropical Polynesian islands, where high population

densities and large land areas meant that very large labor forces were

potentially available to individual chiefs.

The variations among Polynesian societies associated with different

population densities and sizes were as follows. Economies remained simplest

on islands with low population densities (such as the hunter-gatherers of the

Chathams), low population numbers (small atolls), or both low densities and

low numbers. In those societies each household made what it needed; there

was little or no economic specialization. Specialization increased on larger,

more densely populated islands, reaching a peak on Samoa, the Societies, and

especially Tonga and Hawaii. The latter two islands supported hereditary part-

time craft specialists, including canoe builders, navigators, stone masons, bird

catchers, and tattooers.

Social complexity was similarly varied. Again, the Chathams and the

atolls had the simplest, most egalitarian societies. While those islands retained

the original Polynesian tradition of having chiefs, their chiefs wore little or no

visible signs of distinction, lived in ordinary huts like those of commoners,

and grew or caught their food like everyone else. Social distinctions and

chiefly powers increased on high-density islands with large political units,

being especially marked on Tonga and the Societies.

Social complexity again reached its peak in the Hawaiian Archipelago,

where people of chiefly descent were divided into eight hierarchically ranked

lineages. Members of those chiefly lineages did not intermarry with

commoners but only with each other, sometimes even with siblings or half-

siblings. Commoners had to prostrate themselves before high-ranking chiefs.

All the members of chiefly lineages, bureaucrats, and some craft specialists

were freed from the work of food production.

Political organization followed the same trends. On the Chathams and

atolls, the chiefs had few resources to command, decisions were reached by

general discussion, and landownership rested with the community as a whole

rather than with the chiefs. Larger, more densely populated political units

concentrated more authority with the chiefs. Political complexity was greatest

on Tonga and Hawaii, where the powers of hereditary chiefs approximated

those of kings elsewhere in the world, and where land was controlled by the

chiefs, not by the commoners. Using appointed bureaucrats as agents, chiefs

requisitioned food from the commoners and also conscripted them to work on

large construction projects, whose form varied from island to island: irrigation

projects and fishponds on Hawaii, dance and feast centers on the Marquesas,

chiefs’ tombs on Tonga, and temples on Hawaii, the Societies, and Easter.

At the time of Europeans’ arrival in the 18th century, the Tongan

chiefdom or state had already become an inter-archipelagal empire. Because

the Tongan Archipelago itself was geographically close-knit and included

several large islands with unfragmented terrain, each island became unified

under a single chief; then the hereditary chiefs of the largest Tongan island

(Tongatapu) united the whole archipelago, and eventually they conquered

islands outside the archipelago up to 500 miles distant. They engaged in

regular long-distance trade with Fiji and Samoa, established Tongan

settlements in Fiji, and began to raid and conquer parts of Fiji. The conquest

and administration of this maritime proto-empire were achieved by navies of

large canoes, each holding up to 150 men.

Like Tonga, Hawaii became a political entity encompassing several

populous islands, but one confined to a single archipelago because of its

extreme isolation. At the time of Hawaii’s “discovery” by Europeans in 1778,

political unification had already taken place within each Hawaiian island, and

some political fusion between islands had begun. The four largest islands—

Big Island (Hawaii in the narrow sense), Maui, Oahu, and Kauai—remained

independent, controlling (or jockeying with each other for control of) the

smaller islands (Lanai, Molokai, Kahoolawe, and Niihau). After the arrival of

Europeans, the Big Island’s King Kamehameha I rapidly proceeded with the

consolidation of the largest islands by purchasing European guns and ships to

invade and conquer first Maui and then Oahu. Kamehameha thereupon

prepared invasions of the last independent Hawaiian island, Kauai, whose

chief finally reached a negotiated settlement with him, completing the

archipelago’s unification.

The remaining type of variation among Polynesian societies to be

considered involves tools and other aspects of material culture. The differing

availability of raw materials imposed an obvious constraint on material

culture. At the one extreme was Henderson Island, an old coral reef raised

above sea level and devoid of stone other than limestone. Its inhabitants were

reduced to fabricating adzes out of giant clamshells. At the opposite extreme,

the Maori on the minicontinent of New Zealand had access to a wide range of

raw materials and became especially noted for their use of jade. Between

those two extremes fell Polynesia’s oceanic volcanic islands, which lacked

granite, flint, and other continental rocks but did at least have volcanic rocks,

which Polynesians worked into ground or polished stone adzes used to clear

land for farming.

As for the types of artifacts made, the Chatham Islanders required little

more than hand-held clubs and sticks to kill seals, birds, and lobsters. Most

other islanders produced a diverse array of fishhooks, adzes, jewelry, and

other objects. On the atolls, as on the Chathams, those artifacts were small,

relatively simple, and individually produced and owned, while architecture

consisted of nothing more than simple huts. Large and densely populated

islands supported craft specialists who produced a wide range of prestige

goods for chiefs—such as the feather capes reserved for Hawaiian chiefs and

made of tens of thousands of bird feathers.

The largest products of Polynesia were the immense stone structures of a

few islands—the famous giant statues of Easter Island, the tombs of Tongan

chiefs, the ceremonial platforms of the Marquesas, and the temples of Hawaii

and the Societies. This monumental Polynesian architecture was obviously

evolving in the same direction as the pyramids of Egypt, Mesopotamia,

Mexico, and Peru. Naturally, Polynesia’s structures are not on the scale of

those pyramids, but that merely reflects the fact that Egyptian pharaohs could

draw conscript labor from a much larger human population than could the

chief of any Polynesian island. Even so, the Easter Islanders managed to erect

30-ton stone statues—no mean feat for an island with only 7,000 people, who

had no power source other than their own muscles.



THUS, POLYNESIAN ISLAND societies differed greatly in their economic

specialization, social complexity, political organization, and material

products, related to differences in population size and density, related in turn

to differences in island area, fragmentation, and isolation and in opportunities

for subsistence and for intensifying food production. All those differences

among Polynesian societies developed, within a relatively short time and

modest fraction of the Earth’s surface, as environmentally related variations

on a single ancestral society. Those categories of cultural differences within

Polynesia are essentially the same categories that emerged everywhere else in

the world.

Of course, the range of variation over the rest of the globe is much greater

than that within Polynesia. While modern continental peoples included ones

dependent on stone tools, as were Polynesians, South America also spawned

societies expert in using precious metals, and Eurasians and Africans went on

to utilize iron. Those developments were precluded in Polynesia, because no

Polynesian island except New Zealand had significant metal deposits. Eurasia

had full-fledged empires before Polynesia was even settled, and South

America and Mesoamerica developed empires later, whereas Polynesia

produced just two proto-empires, one of which (Hawaii) coalesced only after

the arrival of Europeans. Eurasia and Mesoamerica developed indigenous

writing, which failed to emerge in Polynesia, except perhaps on Easter Island,

whose mysterious script may however have postdated the islanders’ contact

with Europeans.

That is, Polynesia offers us a small slice, not the full spectrum, of the

world’s human social diversity. That shouldn’t surprise us, since Polynesia

provides only a small slice of the world’s geographic diversity. In addition,

since Polynesia was colonized so late in human history, even the oldest

Polynesian societies had only 3,200 years in which to develop, as opposed to

at least 13,000 years for societies on even the last-colonized continents (the

Americas). Given a few more millennia, perhaps Tonga and Hawaii would

have reached the level of full-fledged empires battling each other for control

of the Pacific, with indigenously developed writing to administer those

empires, while New Zealand’s Maori might have added copper and iron tools

to their repertoire of jade and other materials.

In short, Polynesia furnishes us with a convincing example of

environmentally related diversification of human societies in operation. But

we thereby learn only that it can happen, because it happened in Polynesia.

Did it also happen on the continents? If so, what were the environmental

differences responsible for diversification on the continents, and what were

their consequences?





CHAPTER 3

COLLISION AT CAJAMARCA

THE BIGGEST POPULATION SHIFT OF MODERN TIMES HAS been the colonization of

the New World by Europeans, and the resulting conquest, numerical

reduction, or complete disappearance of most groups of Native Americans

(American Indians). As I explained in Chapter 1, the New World was initially

colonized around or before 11,000 B.C. by way of Alaska, the Bering Strait,

and Siberia. Complex agricultural societies gradually arose in the Americas

far to the south of that entry route, developing in complete isolation from the

emerging complex societies of the Old World. After that initial colonization

from Asia, the sole well-attested further contacts between the New World and

Asia involved only hunter-gatherers living on opposite sides of the Bering

Strait, plus an inferred transpacific voyage that introduced the sweet potato

from South America to Polynesia.

As for contacts of New World peoples with Europe, the sole early ones

involved the Norse who occupied Greenland in very small numbers between

A.D. 986 and about 1500. But those Norse visits had no discernible impact on

Native American societies. Instead, for practical purposes the collision of

advanced Old World and New World societies began abruptly in A.D. 1492,

with Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of Caribbean islands densely

populated by Native Americans.

The most dramatic moment in subsequent European–Native American

relations was the first encounter between the Inca emperor Atahuallpa and the

Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro at the Peruvian highland town of

Cajamarca on November 16, 1532. Atahuallpa was absolute monarch of the

largest and most advanced state in the New World, while Pizarro represented

the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (also known as King Charles I of Spain),

monarch of the most powerful state in Europe. Pizarro, leading a ragtag group

of 168 Spanish soldiers, was in unfamiliar terrain, ignorant of the local

inhabitants, completely out of touch with the nearest Spaniards (1,000 miles

to the north in Panama) and far beyond the reach of timely reinforcements.

Atahuallpa was in the middle of his own empire of millions of subjects and

immediately surrounded by his army of 80,000 soldiers, recently victorious in

a war with other Indians. Nevertheless, Pizarro captured Atahuallpa within a

few minutes after the two leaders first set eyes on each other. Pizarro

proceeded to hold his prisoner for eight months, while extracting history’s

largest ransom in return for a promise to free him. After the ransom—enough

gold to fill a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide to a height of over 8 feet—

was delivered, Pizarro reneged on his promise and executed Atahuallpa.

Atahuallpa’s capture was decisive for the European conquest of the Inca

Empire. Although the Spaniards’ superior weapons would have assured an

ultimate Spanish victory in any case, the capture made the conquest quicker

and infinitely easier. Atahuallpa was revered by the Incas as a sun-god and

exercised absolute authority over his subjects, who obeyed even the orders he

issued from captivity. The months until his death gave Pizarro time to

dispatch exploring parties unmolested to other parts of the Inca Empire, and

to send for reinforcements from Panama. When fighting between Spaniards

and Incas finally did commence after Atahuallpa’s execution, the Spanish

forces were more formidable.

Thus, Atahuallpa’s capture interests us specifically as marking the

decisive moment in the greatest collision of modern history. But it is also of

more general interest, because the factors that resulted in Pizarro’s seizing

Atahuallpa were essentially the same ones that determined the outcome of

many similar collisions between colonizers and native peoples elsewhere in

the modern world. Hence Atahuallpa’s capture offers us a broad window onto

world history.



WHAT UNFOLDED THAT day at Cajamarca is well known, because it was

recorded in writing by many of the Spanish participants. To get a flavor of

those events, let us relive them by weaving together excerpts from eyewitness

accounts by six of Pizarro’s companions, including his brothers Hernando and

Pedro:

“The prudence, fortitude, military discipline, labors, perilous navigations,

and battles of the Spaniards—vassals of the most invincible Emperor of the

Roman Catholic Empire, our natural King and Lord—will cause joy to the

faithful and terror to the infidels. For this reason, and for the glory of God our

Lord and for the service of the Catholic Imperial Majesty, it has seemed good

to me to write this narrative, and to send it to Your Majesty, that all may have

a knowledge of what is here related. It will be to the glory of God, because

they have conquered and brought to our holy Catholic Faith so vast a number

of heathens, aided by His holy guidance. It will be to the honor of our

Emperor because, by reason of his great power and good fortune, such events

happened in his time. It will give joy to the faithful that such battles have

been won, such provinces discovered and conquered, such riches brought

home for the King and for themselves; and that such terror has been spread

among the infidels, such admiration excited in all mankind.

“For when, either in ancient or modern times, have such great exploits

been achieved by so few against so many, over so many climes, across so

many seas, over such distances by land, to subdue the unseen and unknown?

Whose deeds can be compared with those of Spain? Our Spaniards, being few

in number, never having more than 200 or 300 men together, and sometimes

only 100 and even fewer, have, in our times, conquered more territory than

has ever been known before, or than all the faithful and infidel princes

possess. I will only write, at present, of what befell in the conquest, and I will

not write much, in order to avoid prolixity.

“Governor Pizarro wished to obtain intelligence from some Indians who

had come from Cajamarca, so he had them tortured. They confessed that they

had heard that Atahuallpa was waiting for the Governor at Cajamarca. The

Governor then ordered us to advance. On reaching the entrance to Cajamarca,

we saw the camp of Atahuallpa at a distance of a league, in the skirts of the

mountains. The Indians’ camp looked like a very beautiful city. They had so

many tents that we were all filled with great apprehension. Until then, we had

never seen anything like this in the Indies. It filled all our Spaniards with fear

and confusion. But we could not show any fear or turn back, for if the Indians

had sensed any weakness in us, even the Indians that we were bringing with

us as guides would have killed us. So we made a show of good spirits, and

after carefully observing the town and the tents, we descended into the valley

and entered Cajamarca.

“We talked a lot among ourselves about what to do. All of us were full of

fear, because we were so few in number and we had penetrated so far into a

land where we could not hope to receive reinforcements. We all met with the

Governor to debate what we should undertake the next day. Few of us slept

that night, and we kept watch in the square of Cajamarca, looking at the

campfires of the Indian army. It was a frightening sight. Most of the campfires

were on a hillside and so close to each other that it looked like the sky

brightly studded with stars. There was no distinction that night between the

mighty and the lowly, or between foot soldiers and horsemen. Everyone

carried out sentry duty fully armed. So too did the good old Governor, who

went about encouraging his men. The Governor’s brother Hernando Pizarro

estimated the number of Indian soldiers there at 40,000, but he was telling a

lie just to encourage us, for there were actually more than 80,000 Indians.

“On the next morning a messenger from Atahuallpa arrived, and the

Governor said to him, ‘Tell your lord to come when and how he pleases, and

that, in what way soever he may come I will receive him as a friend and

brother. I pray that he may come quickly, for I desire to see him. No harm or

insult will befall him.’

“The Governor concealed his troops around the square at Cajamarca,

dividing the cavalry into two portions of which he gave the command of one

to his brother Hernando Pizarro and the command of the other to Hernando de

Soto. In like manner he divided the infantry, he himself taking one part and

giving the other to his brother Juan Pizarro. At the same time, he ordered

Pedro de Candia with two or three infantrymen to go with trumpets to a small

fort in the plaza and to station themselves there with a small piece of artillery.

When all the Indians, and Atahuallpa with them, had entered the Plaza, the

Governor would give a signal to Candia and his men, after which they should

start firing the gun, and the trumpets should sound, and at the sound of the

trumpets the cavalry should dash out of the large court where they were

waiting hidden in readiness.

“At noon Atahuallpa began to draw up his men and to approach. Soon we

saw the entire plain full of Indians, halting periodically to wait for more

Indians who kept filing out of the camp behind them. They kept filling out in

separate detachments into the afternoon. The front detachments were now

close to our camp, and still more troops kept issuing from the camp of the

Indians. In front of Atahuallpa went 2,000 Indians who swept the road ahead

of him, and these were followed by the warriors, half of whom were marching

in the fields on one side of him and half on the other side.

“First came a squadron of Indians dressed in clothes of different colors,

like a chessboard. They advanced, removing the straws from the ground and

sweeping the road. Next came three squadrons in different dresses, dancing

and singing. Then came a number of men with armor, large metal plates, and

crowns of gold and silver. So great was the amount of furniture of gold and

silver which they bore, that it was a marvel to observe how the sun glinted

upon it. Among them came the figure of Atahuallpa in a very fine litter with

the ends of its timbers covered in silver. Eighty lords carried him on their

shoulders, all wearing a very rich blue livery. Atahuallpa himself was very

richly dressed, with his crown on his head and a collar of large emeralds

around his neck. He sat on a small stool with a rich saddle cushion resting on

his litter. The litter was lined with parrot feathers of many colors and

decorated with plates of gold and silver.

“Behind Atahuallpa came two other litters and two hammocks, in which

were some high chiefs, then several squadrons of Indians with crowns of gold

and silver. These Indian squadrons began to enter the plaza to the

accompaniment of great songs, and thus entering they occupied every part of

the plaza. In the meantime all of us Spaniards were waiting ready, hidden in a

courtyard, full of fear. Many of us urinated without noticing it, out of sheer

terror. On reaching the center of the plaza, Atahuallpa remained in his litter on

high, while his troops continued to file in behind him.

“Governor Pizarro now sent Friar Vicente de Valverde to go speak to

Atahuallpa, and to require Atahuallpa in the name of God and of the King of

Spain that Atahuallpa subject himself to the law of our Lord Jesus Christ and

to the service of His Majesty the King of Spain. Advancing with a cross in

one hand and the Bible in the other hand, and going among the Indian troops

up to the place where Atahuallpa was, the Friar thus addressed him: ‘I am a

Priest of God, and I teach Christians the things of God, and in like manner I

come to teach you. What I teach is that which God says to us in this Book.

Therefore, on the part of God and of the Christians, I beseech you to be their

friend, for such is God’s will, and it will be for your good.’

“Atahuallpa asked for the Book, that he might look at it, and the Friar

gave it to him closed. Atahuallpa did not know how to open the Book, and the

Friar was extending his arm to do so, when Atahuallpa, in great anger, gave

him a blow on the arm, not wishing that it should be opened. Then he opened

it himself, and, without any astonishment at the letters and paper he threw it

away from him five or six paces, his face a deep crimson.

“The Friar returned to Pizarro, shouting, ‘Come out! Come out,

Christians! Come at these enemy dogs who reject the things of God. That

tyrant has thrown my book of holy law to the ground! Did you not see what

happened? Why remain polite and servile toward this over-proud dog when

the plains are full of Indians? March out against him, for I absolve you!’

“The governor then gave the signal to Candia, who began to fire off the

guns. At the same time the trumpets were sounded, and the armored Spanish

troops, both cavalry and infantry, sallied forth out of their hiding places

straight into the mass of unarmed Indians crowding the square, giving the

Spanish battle cry, ‘Santiago!’ We had placed rattles on the horses to terrify

the Indians. The booming of the guns, the blowing of the trumpets, and the

rattles on the horses threw the Indians into panicked confusion. The Spaniards

fell upon them and began to cut them to pieces. The Indians were so filled

with fear that they climbed on top of one another, formed mounds, and

suffocated each other. Since they were unarmed, they were attacked without

danger to any Christian. The cavalry rode them down, killing and wounding,

and following in pursuit. The infantry made so good an assault on those that

remained that in a short time most of them were put to the sword.

“The Governor himself took his sword and dagger, entered the thick of

the Indians with the Spaniards who were with him, and with great bravery

reached Atahuallpa’s litter. He fearlessly grabbed Atahuallpa’s left arm and

shouted ‘Santiago!,’ but he could not pull Atahuallpa out of his litter because

it was held up high. Although we killed the Indians who held the litter, others

at once took their places and held it aloft, and in this manner we spent a long

time in overcoming and killing Indians. Finally seven or eight Spaniards on

horseback spurred on their horses, rushed upon the litter from one side, and

with great effort they heaved it over on its side. In that way Atahuallpa was

captured, and the Governor took Atahuallpa to his lodging. The Indians

carrying the litter, and those escorting Atahuallpa, never abandoned him: all

died around him.

“The panic-stricken Indians remaining in the square, terrified at the firing

of the guns and at the horses—something they had never seen—tried to flee

from the square by knocking down a stretch of wall and running out onto the

plain outside. Our cavalry jumped the broken wall and charged into the plain,

shouting, ‘Chase those with the fancy clothes! Don’t let any escape! Spear

them!’ All of the other Indian soldiers whom Atahuallpa had brought were a

mile from Cajamarca ready for battle, but not one made a move, and during

all this not one Indian raised a weapon against a Spaniard. When the

squadrons of Indians who had remained in the plain outside the town saw the

other Indians fleeing and shouting, most of them too panicked and fled. It was

an astonishing sight, for the whole valley for 15 or 20 miles was completely

filled with Indians. Night had already fallen, and our cavalry were continuing

to spear Indians in the fields, when we heard a trumpet calling for us to

reassemble at camp.

“If night had not come on, few out of the more than 40,000 Indian troops

would have been left alive. Six or seven thousand Indians lay dead, and many

more had their arms cut off and other wounds. Atahuallpa himself admitted

that we had killed 7,000 of his men in that battle. The man killed in one of the

litters was his minister, the lord of Chincha, of whom he was very fond. All

those Indians who bore Atahuallpa’s litter appeared to be high chiefs and

councillors. They were all killed, as well as those Indians who were carried in

the other litters and hammocks. The lord of Cajamarca was also killed, and

others, but their numbers were so great that they could not be counted, for all

who came in attendance on Atahuallpa were great lords. It was extraordinary

to see so powerful a ruler captured in so short a time, when he had come with

such a mighty army. Truly, it was not accomplished by our own forces, for

there were so few of us. It was by the grace of God, which is great.

“Atahuallpa’s robes had been torn off when the Spaniards pulled him out

of his litter. The Governor ordered clothes to be brought to him, and when

Atahuallpa was dressed, the Governor ordered Atahuallpa to sit near him and

soothed his rage and agitation at finding himself so quickly fallen from his

high estate. The Governor said to Atahuallpa, ‘Do not take it as an insult that

you have been defeated and taken prisoner, for with the Christians who come

with me, though so few in number, I have conquered greater kingdoms than

yours, and have defeated other more powerful lords than you, imposing upon

them the dominion of the Emperor, whose vassal I am, and who is King of

Spain and of the universal world. We come to conquer this land by his

command, that all may come to a knowledge of God and of His Holy Catholic

Faith; and by reason of our good mission, God, the Creator of heaven and

earth and of all things in them, permits this, in order that you may know Him

and come out from the bestial and diabolical life that you lead. It is for this

reason that we, being so few in number, subjugate that vast host. When you

have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we

have done you by coming to your land by order of his Majesty the King of

Spain. Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no

Indian should be able to offend a Christian.’”



LET US NOW trace the chain of causation in this extraordinary confrontation,

beginning with the immediate events. When Pizarro and Atahuallpa met at

Cajamarca, why did Pizarro capture Atahuallpa and kill so many of his

followers, instead of Atahuallpa’s vastly more numerous forces capturing and

killing Pizarro? After all, Pizarro had only 62 soldiers mounted on horses,

along with 106 foot soldiers, while Atahuallpa commanded an army of about

80,000. As for the antecedents of those events, how did Atahuallpa come to

be at Cajamarca at all? How did Pizarro come to be there to capture him,

instead of Atahuallpa’s coming to Spain to capture King Charles I? Why did

Atahuallpa walk into what seems to us, with the gift of hindsight, to have

been such a transparent trap? Did the factors acting in the encounter of

Atahuallpa and Pizarro also play a broader role in encounters between Old

World and New World peoples and between other peoples?

Why did Pizarro capture Atahuallpa? Pizarro’s military advantages lay in

the Spaniards’ steel swords and other weapons, steel armor, guns, and horses.

To those weapons, Atahuallpa’s troops, without animals on which to ride into

battle, could oppose only stone, bronze, or wooden clubs, maces, and hand

axes, plus slingshots and quilted armor. Such imbalances of equipment were

decisive in innumerable other confrontations of Europeans with Native

Americans and other peoples.

The sole Native Americans able to resist European conquest for many

centuries were those tribes that reduced the military disparity by acquiring

and mastering both horses and guns. To the average white American, the

word “Indian” conjures up an image of a mounted Plains Indian brandishing a

rifle, like the Sioux warriors who annihilated General George Custer’s U.S.

Army battalion at the famous battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. We easily

forget that horses and rifles were originally unknown to Native Americans.

They were brought by Europeans and proceeded to transform the societies of

Indian tribes that acquired them. Thanks to their mastery of horses and rifles,

the Plains Indians of North America, the Araucanian Indians of southern

Chile, and the Pampas Indians of Argentina fought off invading whites longer

than did any other Native Americans, succumbing only to massive army

operations by white governments in the 1870s and 1880s.

Today, it is hard for us to grasp the enormous numerical odds against

which the Spaniards’ military equipment prevailed. At the battle of Cajamarca

recounted above, 168 Spaniards crushed a Native American army 500 times

more numerous, killing thousands of natives while not losing a single

Spaniard. Time and again, accounts of Pizarro’s subsequent battles with the

Incas, Cortés’s conquest of the Aztecs, and other early European campaigns

against Native Americans describe encounters in which a few dozen

European horsemen routed thousands of Indians with great slaughter. During

Pizarro’s march from Cajamarca to the Inca capital of Cuzco after

Atahuallpa’s death, there were four such battles: at Jauja, Vilcashuaman,

Vilcaconga, and Cuzco. Those four battles involved a mere 80, 30, 110, and

40 Spanish horsemen, respectively, in each case ranged against thousands or

tens of thousands of Indians.

These Spanish victories cannot be written off as due merely to the help of

Native American allies, to the psychological novelty of Spanish weapons and

horses, or (as is often claimed) to the Incas’ mistaking Spaniards for their

returning god Viracocha. The initial successes of both Pizarro and Cortés did

attract native allies. However, many of them would not have become allies if

they had not already been persuaded, by earlier devastating successes of

unassisted Spaniards, that resistance was futile and that they should side with

the likely winners. The novelty of horses, steel weapons, and guns

undoubtedly paralyzed the Incas at Cajamarca, but the battles after Cajamarca

were fought against determined resistance by Inca armies that had already

seen Spanish weapons and horses. Within half a dozen years of the initial

conquest, Incas mounted two desperate, large-scale, well-prepared rebellions

against the Spaniards. All those efforts failed because of the Spaniards’ far

superior armament.

By the 1700s, guns had replaced swords as the main weapon favoring

European invaders over Native Americans and other native peoples. For

example, in 1808 a British sailor named Charlie Savage equipped with

muskets and excellent aim arrived in the Fiji Islands. The aptly named Savage

proceeded single-handedly to upset Fiji’s balance of power. Among his many

exploits, he paddled his canoe up a river to the Fijian village of Kasavu,

halted less than a pistol shot’s length from the village fence, and fired away at

the undefended inhabitants. His victims were so numerous that surviving

villagers piled up the bodies to take shelter behind them, and the stream

beside the village was red with blood. Such examples of the power of guns

against native peoples lacking guns could be multiplied indefinitely.

In the Spanish conquest of the Incas, guns played only a minor role. The

guns of those times (so-called harquebuses) were difficult to load and fire,

and Pizarro had only a dozen of them. They did produce a big psychological

effect on those occasions when they managed to fire. Far more important

were the Spaniards’ steel swords, lances, and daggers, strong sharp weapons

that slaughtered thinly armored Indians. In contrast, Indian blunt clubs, while

capable of battering and wounding Spaniards and their horses, rarely

succeeded in killing them. The Spaniards’ steel or chain mail armor and,

above all, their steel helmets usually provided an effective defense against

club blows, while the Indians’ quilted armor offered no protection against

steel weapons.

The tremendous advantage that the Spaniards gained from their horses

leaps out of the eyewitness accounts. Horsemen could easily outride Indian

sentries before the sentries had time to warn Indian troops behind them, and

could ride down and kill Indians on foot. The shock of a horse’s charge, its

maneuverability, the speed of attack that it permitted, and the raised and

protected fighting platform that it provided left foot soldiers nearly helpless in

the open. Nor was the effect of horses due only to the terror that they inspired

in soldiers fighting against them for the first time. By the time of the great

Inca rebellion of 1536, the Incas had learned how best to defend themselves

against cavalry, by ambushing and annihilating Spanish horsemen in narrow

passes. But the Incas, like all other foot soldiers, were never able to defeat

cavalry in the open. When Quizo Yupanqui, the best general of the Inca

emperor Manco, who succeeded Atahuallpa, besieged the Spaniards in Lima

in 1536 and tried to storm the city, two squadrons of Spanish cavalry charged

a much larger Indian force on flat ground, killed Quizo and all of his

commanders in the first charge, and routed his army. A similar cavalry charge

of 26 horsemen routed the best troops of Emperor Manco himself, as he was

besieging the Spaniards in Cuzco.

The transformation of warfare by horses began with their domestication

around 4000 B.C., in the steppes north of the Black Sea. Horses permitted

people possessing them to cover far greater distances than was possible on

foot, to attack by surprise, and to flee before a superior defending force could

be gathered. Their role at Cajamarca thus exemplifies a military weapon that

remained potent for 6,000 years, until the early 20th century, and that was

eventually applied on all the continents. Not until the First World War did the

military dominance of cavalry finally end. When we consider the advantages

that Spaniards derived from horses, steel weapons, and armor against foot

soldiers without metal, it should no longer surprise us that Spaniards

consistently won battles against enormous odds.

How did Atahuallpa come to be at Cajamarca? Atahuallpa and his army

came to be at Cajamarca because they had just won decisive battles in a civil

war that left the Incas divided and vulnerable. Pizarro quickly appreciated

those divisions and exploited them. The reason for the civil war was that an

epidemic of smallpox, spreading overland among South American Indians

after its arrival with Spanish settlers in Panama and Colombia, had killed the

Inca emperor Huayna Capac and most of his court around 1526, and then

immediately killed his designated heir, Ninan Cuyuchi. Those deaths

precipitated a contest for the throne between Atahuallpa and his half brother

Huascar. If it had not been for the epidemic, the Spaniards would have faced a

united empire.

Atahuallpa’s presence at Cajamarca thus highlights one of the key factors

in world history: diseases transmitted to peoples lacking immunity by

invading peoples with considerable immunity. Smallpox, measles, influenza,

typhus, bubonic plague, and other infectious diseases endemic in Europe

played a decisive role in European conquests, by decimating many peoples on

other continents. For example, a smallpox epidemic devastated the Aztecs

after the failure of the first Spanish attack in 1520 and killed Cuitláhuac, the

Aztec emperor who briefly succeeded Montezuma. Throughout the Americas,

diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance

of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-

Columbian Native American population. The most populous and highly

organized native societies of North America, the Mississippian chiefdoms,

disappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600s, even before

Europeans themselves made their first settlement on the Mississippi River. A

smallpox epidemic in 1713 was the biggest single step in the destruction of

South Africa’s native San people by European settlers. Soon after the British

settlement of Sydney in 1788, the first of the epidemics that decimated

Aboriginal Australians began. A well-documented example from Pacific

islands is the epidemic that swept over Fiji in 1806, brought by a few

European sailors who struggled ashore from the wreck of the ship Argo.

Similar epidemics marked the histories of Tonga, Hawaii, and other Pacific

islands.

I do not mean to imply, however, that the role of disease in history was

confined to paving the way for European expansion. Malaria, yellow fever,

and other diseases of tropical Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and New Guinea

furnished the most important obstacle to European colonization of those

tropical areas.

How did Pizarro come to be at Cajamarca? Why didn’t Atahuallpa

instead try to conquer Spain? Pizarro came to Cajamarca by means of

European maritime technology, which built the ships that took him across the

Atlantic from Spain to Panama, and then in the Pacific from Panama to Peru.

Lacking such technology, Atahuallpa did not expand overseas out of South

America.

In addition to the ships themselves, Pizarro’s presence depended on the

centralized political organization that enabled Spain to finance, build, staff,

and equip the ships. The Inca Empire also had a centralized political

organization, but that actually worked to its disadvantage, because Pizarro

seized the Inca chain of command intact by capturing Atahuallpa. Since the

Inca bureaucracy was so strongly identified with its godlike absolute

monarch, it disintegrated after Atahuallpa’s death. Maritime technology

coupled with political organization was similarly essential for European

expansions to other continents, as well as for expansions of many other

peoples.

A related factor bringing Spaniards to Peru was the existence of writing.

Spain possessed it, while the Inca Empire did not. Information could be

spread far more widely, more accurately, and in more detail by writing than it

could be transmitted by mouth. That information, coming back to Spain from

Columbus’s voyages and from Cortés’s conquest of Mexico, sent Spaniards

pouring into the New World. Letters and pamphlets supplied both the

motivation and the necessary detailed sailing directions. The first published

report of Pizarro’s exploits, by his companion Captain Cristóbal de Mena, was

printed in Seville in April 1534, a mere nine months after Atahuallpa’s

execution. It became a best-seller, was rapidly translated into other European

languages, and sent a further stream of Spanish colonists to tighten Pizarro’s

grip on Peru.

Why did Atahuallpa walk into the trap? In hindsight, we find it

astonishing that Atahuallpa marched into Pizarro’s obvious trap at Cajamarca.

The Spaniards who captured him were equally surprised at their success. The

consequences of literacy are prominent in the ultimate explanation.

The immediate explanation is that Atahuallpa had very little information

about the Spaniards, their military power, and their intent. He derived that

scant information by word of mouth, mainly from an envoy who had visited

Pizarro’s force for two days while it was en route inland from the coast. That

envoy saw the Spaniards at their most disorganized, told Atahuallpa that they

were not fighting men, and that he could tie them all up if given 200 Indians.

Understandably, it never occurred to Atahuallpa that the Spaniards were

formidable and would attack him without provocation.

In the New World the ability to write was confined to small elites among

some peoples of modern Mexico and neighboring areas far to the north of the

Inca Empire. Although the Spanish conquest of Panama, a mere 600 miles

from the Incas’ northern boundary, began already in 1510, no knowledge even

of the Spaniards’ existence appears to have reached the Incas until Pizarro’s

first landing on the Peruvian coast in 1527. Atahuallpa remained entirely

ignorant about Spain’s conquests of Central America’s most powerful and

populous Indian societies.

As surprising to us today as Atahuallpa’s behavior leading to his capture

is his behavior thereafter. He offered his famous ransom in the naive belief

that, once paid off, the Spaniards would release him and depart. He had no

way of understanding that Pizarro’s men formed the spearhead of a force bent

on permanent conquest, rather than an isolated raid.

Atahuallpa was not alone in these fatal miscalculations. Even after

Atahuallpa had been captured, Francisco Pizarro’s brother Hernando Pizarro

deceived Atahuallpa’s leading general, Chalcuchima, commanding a large

army, into delivering himself to the Spaniards. Chalcuchima’s miscalculation

marked a turning point in the collapse of Inca resistance, a moment almost as

significant as the capture of Atahuallpa himself. The Aztec emperor

Montezuma miscalculated even more grossly when he took Cortés for a

returning god and admitted him and his tiny army into the Aztec capital of

Tenochtitlán. The result was that Cortés captured Montezuma, then went on to

conquer Tenochtitlán and the Aztec Empire.

On a mundane level, the miscalculations by Atahuallpa, Chalcuchima,

Montezuma, and countless other Native American leaders deceived by

Europeans were due to the fact that no living inhabitants of the New World

had been to the Old World, so of course they could have had no specific

information about the Spaniards. Even so, we find it hard to avoid the

conclusion that Atahuallpa “should” have been more suspicious, if only his

society had experienced a broader range of human behavior. Pizarro too

arrived at Cajamarca with no information about the Incas other than what he

had learned by interrogating the Inca subjects he encountered in 1527 and

1531. However, while Pizarro himself happened to be illiterate, he belonged

to a literate tradition. From books, the Spaniards knew of many contemporary

civilizations remote from Europe, and about several thousand years of

European history. Pizarro explicitly modeled his ambush of Atahuallpa on the

successful strategy of Cortés.

In short, literacy made the Spaniards heirs to a huge body of knowledge

about human behavior and history. By contrast, not only did Atahuallpa have

no conception of the Spaniards themselves, and no personal experience of any

other invaders from overseas, but he also had not even heard (or read) of

similar threats to anyone else, anywhere else, anytime previously in history.

That gulf of experience encouraged Pizarro to set his trap and Atahuallpa to

walk into it.



THUS, PIZARRO’S CAPTURE of Atahuallpa illustrates the set of proximate

factors that resulted in Europeans’ colonizing the New World instead of

Native Americans’ colonizing Europe. Immediate reasons for Pizarro’s

success included military technology based on guns, steel weapons, and

horses; infectious diseases endemic in Eurasia; European maritime

technology; the centralized political organization of European states; and

writing. The title of this book will serve as shorthand for those proximate

factors, which also enabled modern Europeans to conquer peoples of other

continents. Long before anyone began manufacturing guns and steel, others of

those same factors had led to the expansions of some non-European peoples,

as we shall see in later chapters.

But we are still left with the fundamental question why all those

immediate advantages came to lie more with Europe than with the New

World. Why weren’t the Incas the ones to invent guns and steel swords, to be

mounted on animals as fearsome as horses, to bear diseases to which

Europeans lacked resistance, to develop oceangoing ships and advanced

political organization, and to be able to draw on the experience of thousands

of years of written history? Those are no longer the questions of proximate

causation that this chapter has been discussing, but questions of ultimate

causation that will take up the next two parts of this book.





PART TWO

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF FOOD

PRODUCTION





CHAPTER 4

FARMER POWER

AS A TEENAGER, I SPENT THE SUMMER OF 1956 IN MONTANA, working for an

elderly farmer named Fred Hirschy. Born in Switzerland, Fred had come to

southwestern Montana as a teenager in the 1890s and proceeded to develop

one of the first farms in the area. At the time of his arrival, much of the

original Native American population of hunter-gatherers was still living there.

My fellow farmhands were, for the most part, tough whites whose normal

speech featured strings of curses, and who spent their weekdays working so

that they could devote their weekends to squandering their week’s wages in

the local saloon. Among the farmhands, though, was a member of the

Blackfoot Indian tribe named Levi, who behaved very differently from the

coarse miners—being polite, gentle, responsible, sober, and well spoken. He

was the first Indian with whom I had spent much time, and I came to admire

him.

It was therefore a shocking disappointment to me when, one Sunday

morning, Levi too staggered in drunk and cursing after a Saturday-night

binge. Among his curses, one has stood out in my memory: “Damn you, Fred

Hirschy, and damn the ship that brought you from Switzerland!” It poignantly

brought home to me the Indians’ perspective on what I, like other white

schoolchildren, had been taught to view as the heroic conquest of the

American West. Fred Hirschy’s family was proud of him, as a pioneer farmer

who had succeeded under difficult conditions. But Levi’s tribe of hunters and

famous warriors had been robbed of its lands by the immigrant white farmers.

How did the farmers win out over the famous warriors?

For most of the time since the ancestors of modern humans diverged from

the ancestors of the living great apes, around 7 million years ago, all humans

on Earth fed themselves exclusively by hunting wild animals and gathering

wild plants, as the Blackfeet still did in the 19th century. It was only within

the last 11,000 years that some peoples turned to what is termed food

production: that is, domesticating wild animals and plants and eating the

resulting livestock and crops. Today, most people on Earth consume food that

they produced themselves or that someone else produced for them. At current

rates of change, within the next decade the few remaining bands of hunter-

gatherers will abandon their ways, disintegrate, or die out, thereby ending our

millions of years of commitment to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Different peoples acquired food production at different times in

prehistory. Some, such as Aboriginal Australians, never acquired it at all. Of

those who did, some (for example, the ancient Chinese) developed it

independently by themselves, while others (including ancient Egyptians)

acquired it from neighbors. But, as we’ll see, food production was indirectly a

prerequisite for the development of guns, germs, and steel. Hence geographic

variation in whether, or when, the peoples of different continents became

farmers and herders explains to a large extent their subsequent contrasting

fates. Before we devote the next six chapters to understanding how

geographic differences in food production arose, this chapter will trace the

main connections through which food production led to all the advantages

that enabled Pizarro to capture Atahuallpa, and Fred Hirschy’s people to

dispossess Levi’s (Figure 4.1).

The first connection is the most direct one: availability of more

consumable calories means more people. Among wild plant and animal

species, only a small minority are edible to humans or worth hunting or

gathering. Most species are useless to us as food, for one or more of the

following reasons: they are indigestible (like bark), poisonous (monarch

butterflies and death-cap mushrooms), low in nutritional value (jellyfish),

tedious to prepare (very small nuts), difficult to gather (larvae of most

insects), or dangerous to hunt (rhinoceroses). Most biomass (living biological

matter) on land is in the form of wood and leaves, most of which we cannot

digest.

By selecting and growing those few species of plants and animals that we

can eat, so that they constitute 90 percent rather than 0.1 percent of the

biomass on an acre of land, we obtain far more edible calories per acre. As a

result, one acre can feed many more herders and farmers—typically, 10 to

100 times more—than hunter-gatherers. That strength of brute numbers was

the first of many military advantages that food-producing tribes gained over

hunter-gatherer tribes.

In human societies possessing domestic animals, livestock fed more

people in four distinct ways: by furnishing meat, milk, and fertilizer and by

pulling plows. First and most directly, domestic animals became the societies’

major source of animal protein, replacing wild game. Today, for instance,

Americans tend to get most of their animal protein from cows, pigs, sheep,

and chickens, with game such as venison just a rare delicacy. In addition,

some big domestic mammals served as sources of milk and of milk products

such as butter, cheese, and yogurt. Milked mammals include the cow, sheep,

goat, horse, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, and Arabian and Bactrian camels.

Those mammals thereby yield several times more calories over their lifetime

than if they were just slaughtered and consumed as meat.

Big domestic mammals also interacted with domestic plants in two ways

to increase crop production. First, as any modern gardener or farmer still

knows by experience, crop yields can be greatly increased by manure applied

as fertilizer. Even with the modern availability of synthetic fertilizers

produced by chemical factories, the major source of crop fertilizer today in

most societies is still animal manure—especially of cows, but also of yaks

and sheep. Manure has been valuable, too, as a source of fuel for fires in

traditional societies.

In addition, the largest domestic mammals interacted with domestic plants

to increase food production by pulling plows and thereby making it possible

for people to till land that had previously been uneconomical for farming.

Those plow animals were the cow, horse, water buffalo, Bali cattle, and yak /

cow hybrids. Here is one example of their value: the first prehistoric farmers

of central Europe, the so-called Linearbandkeramik culture that arose slightly

before 5000 B.C., were initially confined to soils light enough to be tilled by

means of hand-held digging sticks. Only over a thousand years later, with the

introduction of the ox-drawn plow, were those farmers able to extend

cultivation to a much wider range of heavy soils and tough sods. Similarly,

Native American farmers of the North American Great Plains grew crops in

the river valleys, but farming of the tough sods on the extensive uplands had

to await 19th-century Europeans and their animal-drawn plows.

All those are direct ways in which plant and animal domestication led to

denser human populations by yielding more food than did the hunter-gatherer

lifestyle. A more indirect way involved the consequences of the sedentary

lifestyle enforced by food production. People of many hunter-gatherer

societies move frequently in search of wild foods, but farmers must remain

near their fields and orchards. The resulting fixed abode contributes to denser

human populations by permitting a shortened birth interval. A hunter-gatherer

mother who is shifting camp can carry only one child, along with her few

possessions. She cannot afford to bear her next child until the previous toddler

can walk fast enough to keep up with the tribe and not hold it back. In

practice, nomadic hunter-gatherers space their children about four years apart

by means of lactational amenorrhea, sexual abstinence, infanticide, and

abortion. By contrast, sedentary people, unconstrained by problems of

carrying young children on treks, can bear and raise as many children as they

can feed. The birth interval for many farm peoples is around two years, half

that of hunter-gatherers. That higher birthrate of food producers, together with

their ability to feed more people per acre, lets them achieve much higher

population densities than hunter-gatherers.

A separate consequence of a settled existence is that it permits one to

store food surpluses, since storage would be pointless if one didn’t remain

nearby to guard the stored food. While some nomadic hunter-gatherers may

occasionally bag more food than they can consume in a few days, such a

bonanza is of little use to them because they cannot protect it. But stored food

is essential for feeding non-food-producing specialists, and certainly for

supporting whole towns of them. Hence nomadic hunter-gatherer societies

have few or no such full-time specialists, who instead first appear in sedentary

societies.

Two types of such specialists are kings and bureaucrats. Hunter-gatherer

societies tend to be relatively egalitarian, to lack full-time bureaucrats and

hereditary chiefs, and to have small-scale political organization at the level of

the band or tribe. That’s because all able-bodied hunter-gatherers are obliged

to devote much of their time to acquiring food. In contrast, once food can be

stockpiled, a political elite can gain control of food produced by others, assert

the right of taxation, escape the need to feed itself, and engage full-time in

political activities. Hence moderate-sized agricultural societies are often

organized in chiefdoms, and kingdoms are confined to large agricultural

societies. Those complex political units are much better able to mount a

sustained war of conquest than is an egalitarian band of hunters. Some hunter-

gatherers in especially rich environments, such as the Pacific Northwest coast

of North America and the coast of Ecuador, also developed sedentary

societies, food storage, and nascent chiefdoms, but they did not go farther on

the road to kingdoms.

A stored food surplus built up by taxation can support other full-time

specialists besides kings and bureaucrats. Of most direct relevance to wars of

conquest, it can be used to feed professional soldiers. That was the decisive

factor in the British Empire’s eventual defeat of New Zealand’s well-armed

indigenous Maori population. While the Maori achieved some stunning

temporary victories, they could not maintain an army constantly in the field

and were in the end worn down by 18,000 full-time British troops. Stored

food can also feed priests, who provide religious justification for wars of

conquest; artisans such as metalworkers, who develop swords, guns, and other

technologies; and scribes, who preserve far more information than can be

remembered accurately.

So far, I’ve emphasized direct and indirect values of crops and livestock

as food. However, they have other uses, such as keeping us warm and

providing us with valuable materials. Crops and livestock yield natural fibers

for making clothing, blankets, nets, and rope. Most of the major centers of

plant domestication evolved not only food crops but also fiber crops—notably

cotton, flax (the source of linen), and hemp. Several domestic animals yielded

animal fibers—especially wool from sheep, goats, llamas, and alpacas, and

silk from silkworms. Bones of domestic animals were important raw materials

for artifacts of Neolithic peoples before the development of metallurgy. Cow

hides were used to make leather. One of the earliest cultivated plants in many

parts of the Americas was grown for nonfood purposes: the bottle gourd, used

as a container.

Big domestic mammals further revolutionized human society by

becoming our main means of land transport until the development of railroads

in the 19th century. Before animal domestication, the sole means of

transporting goods and people by land was on the backs of humans. Large

mammals changed that: for the first time in human history, it became possible

to move heavy goods in large quantities, as well as people, rapidly overland

for long distances. The domestic animals that were ridden were the horse,

donkey, yak, reindeer, and Arabian and Bactrian camels. Animals of those

same five species, as well as the llama, were used to bear packs. Cows and

horses were hitched to wagons, while reindeer and dogs pulled sleds in the

Arctic. The horse became the chief means of long-distance transport over

most of Eurasia. The three domestic camel species (Arabian camel, Bactrian

camel, and llama) played a similar role in areas of North Africa and Arabia,

Central Asia, and the Andes, respectively.

The most direct contribution of plant and animal domestication to wars of

conquest was from Eurasia’s horses, whose military role made them the jeeps

and Sherman tanks of ancient warfare on that continent. As I mentioned in

Chapter 3, they enabled Cortés and Pizarro, leading only small bands of

adventurers, to overthrow the Aztec and Inca Empires. Even much earlier

(around 4000 B.C.), at a time when horses were still ridden bareback, they may

have been the essential military ingredient behind the westward expansion of

speakers of Indo-European languages from the Ukraine. Those languages

eventually replaced all earlier western European languages except Basque.

When horses later were yoked to wagons and other vehicles, horse-drawn

battle chariots (invented around 1800 B.C.) proceeded to revolutionize warfare

in the Near East, the Mediterranean region, and China. For example, in 1674

B.C., horses even enabled a foreign people, the Hyksos, to conquer then

horseless Egypt and to establish themselves temporarily as pharaohs.

Still later, after the invention of saddles and stirrups, horses allowed the

Huns and successive waves of other peoples from the Asian steppes to

terrorize the Roman Empire and its successor states, culminating in the

Mongol conquests of much of Asia and Russia in the 13th and 14th centuries

A.D. Only with the introduction of trucks and tanks in World War I did horses

finally become supplanted as the main assault vehicle and means of fast

transport in war. Arabian and Bactrian camels played a similar military role

within their geographic range. In all these examples, peoples with domestic

horses (or camels), or with improved means of using them, enjoyed an

enormous military advantage over those without them.

Of equal importance in wars of conquest were the germs that evolved in

human societies with domestic animals. Infectious diseases like smallpox,

measles, and flu arose as specialized germs of humans, derived by mutations

of very similar ancestral germs that had infected animals (Chapter 11). The

humans who domesticated animals were the first to fall victim to the newly

evolved germs, but those humans then evolved substantial resistance to the

new diseases. When such partly immune people came into contact with others

who had had no previous exposure to the germs, epidemics resulted in which

up to 99 percent of the previously unexposed population was killed. Germs

thus acquired ultimately from domestic animals played decisive roles in the

European conquests of Native Americans, Australians, South Africans, and

Pacific islanders.

In short, plant and animal domestication meant much more food and

hence much denser human populations. The resulting food surpluses, and (in

some areas) the animal-based means of transporting those surpluses, were a

prerequisite for the development of settled, politically centralized, socially

stratified, economically complex, technologically innovative societies. Hence

the availability of domestic plants and animals ultimately explains why

empires, literacy, and steel weapons developed earliest in Eurasia and later, or

not at all, on other continents. The military uses of horses and camels, and the

killing power of animal-derived germs, complete the list of major links

between food production and conquest that we shall be exploring.





CHAPTER 5

HISTORY’S HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS

MUCH OF HUMAN HISTORY HAS CONSISTED OF UNEQUAL conflicts between the

haves and the have-nots: between peoples with farmer power and those

without it, or between those who acquired it at different times. It should come

as no surprise that food production never arose in large areas of the globe, for

ecological reasons that still make it difficult or impossible there today. For

instance, neither farming nor herding developed in prehistoric times in North

America’s Arctic, while the sole element of food production to arise in

Eurasia’s Arctic was reindeer herding. Nor could food production spring up

spontaneously in deserts remote from sources of water for irrigation, such as

central Australia and parts of the western United States.

Instead, what cries out for explanation is the failure of food production to

appear, until modern times, in some ecologically very suitable areas that are

among the world’s richest centers of agriculture and herding today. Foremost

among these puzzling areas, where indigenous peoples were still hunter-

gatherers when European colonists arrived, were California and the other

Pacific states of the United States, the Argentine pampas, southwestern and

southeastern Australia, and much of the Cape region of South Africa. Had we

surveyed the world in 4000 B.C., thousands of years after the rise of food

production in its oldest sites of origin, we would have been surprised too at

several other modern breadbaskets that were still then without it—including

all the rest of the United States, England and much of France, Indonesia, and

all of subequatorial Africa. When we trace food production back to its

beginnings, the earliest sites provide another surprise. Far from being modern

breadbaskets, they include areas ranking today as somewhat dry or

ecologically degraded: Iraq and Iran, Mexico, the Andes, parts of China, and

Africa’s Sahel zone. Why did food production develop first in these

seemingly rather marginal lands, and only later in today’s most fertile

farmlands and pastures?

Geographic differences in the means by which food production arose are

also puzzling. In a few places it developed independently, as a result of local

people domesticating local plants and animals. In most other places it was

instead imported, in the form of crops and livestock that had been

domesticated elsewhere. Since those areas of nonindependent origins were

suitable for prehistoric food production as soon as domesticates had arrived,

why did the peoples of those areas not become farmers and herders without

outside assistance, by domesticating local plants and animals?

Among those regions where food production did spring up independently,

why did the times at which it appeared vary so greatly—for example,

thousands of years earlier in eastern Asia than in the eastern United States and

never in eastern Australia? Among those regions into which it was imported

in the prehistoric era, why did the date of arrival also vary so greatly—for

example, thousands of years earlier in southwestern Europe than in the

southwestern United States? Again among those regions where it was

imported, why in some areas (such as the southwestern United States) did

local hunter-gatherers themselves adopt crops and livestock from neighbors

and survive as farmers, while in other areas (such as Indonesia and much of

subequatorial Africa) the importation of food production involved a

cataclysmic replacement of the region’s original hunter-gatherers by invading

food producers? All these questions involve developments that determined

which peoples became history’s have-nots, and which became its haves.



BEFORE WE CAN hope to answer these questions, we need to figure out how

to identify areas where food production originated, when it arose there, and

where and when a given crop or animal was first domesticated. The most

unequivocal evidence comes from identification of plant and animal remains

at archaeological sites. Most domesticated plant and animal species differ

morphologically from their wild ancestors: for example, in the smaller size of

domestic cattle and sheep, the larger size of domestic chickens and apples, the

thinner and smoother seed coats of domestic peas, and the corkscrew-twisted

rather than scimitar-shaped horns of domestic goats. Hence remains of

domesticated plants and animals at a dated archaeological site can be

recognized and provide strong evidence of food production at that place and

time, whereas finding the remains only of wild species at a site fails to

provide evidence of food production and is compatible with hunting-

gathering. Naturally, food producers, especially early ones, continued to

gather some wild plants and hunt wild animals, so the food remains at their

sites often include wild species as well as domesticated ones.

Archaeologists date food production by radiocarbon dating of carbon-

containing materials at the site. This method is based on the slow decay of

radioactive carbon 14, a very minor component of carbon, the ubiquitous

building block of life, into the nonradioactive isotope nitrogen 14. Carbon 14

is continually being generated in the atmosphere by cosmic rays. Plants take

up atmospheric carbon, which has a known and approximately constant ratio

of carbon 14 to the prevalent isotope carbon 12 (a ratio of about one to a

million). That plant carbon goes on to form the body of the herbivorous

animals that eat the plants, and of the carnivorous animals that eat those

herbivorous animals. Once the plant or animal dies, though, half of its carbon

14 content decays into nitrogen 14 every 5,700 years, until after about 40,000

years the carbon 14 content is very low and difficult to measure or to

distinguish from contamination with small amounts of modern materials

containing carbon 14. Hence the age of material from an archaeological site

can be calculated from the material’s carbon 14 / carbon 12 ratio.

Radiocarbon is plagued by numerous technical problems, of which two

deserve mention here. One is that radiocarbon dating until the 1980s required

relatively large amounts of carbon (a few grams), much more than the amount

in small seeds or bones. Hence scientists instead often had to resort to dating

material recovered nearby at the same site and believed to be “associated

with” the food remains—that is, to have been deposited simultaneously by the

people who left the food. A typical choice of “associated” material is charcoal

from fires.

But archaeological sites are not always neatly sealed time capsules of

materials all deposited on the same day. Materials deposited at different times

can get mixed together, as worms and rodents and other agents churn up the

ground. Charcoal residues from a fire can thereby end up close to the remains

of a plant or animal that died and was eaten thousands of years earlier or later.

Increasingly today, archaeologists are circumventing this problem by a new

technique termed accelerator mass spectrometry, which permits radiocarbon

dating of tiny samples and thus lets one directly date a single small seed,

small bone, or other food residue. In some cases big differences have been

found between recent radiocarbon dates based on the direct new methods

(which have their own problems) and those based on the indirect older ones.

Among the resulting controversies remaining unresolved, perhaps the most

important for the purposes of this book concerns the date when food

production originated in the Americas: indirect methods of the 1960s and

1970s yielded dates as early as 7000 B.C., but more recent direct dating has

been yielding dates no earlier than 3500 B.C.

A second problem in radiocarbon dating is that the carbon 14 / carbon 12

ratio of the atmosphere is in fact not rigidly constant but fluctuates slightly

with time, so calculations of radiocarbon dates based on the assumption of a

constant ratio are subject to small systematic errors. The magnitude of this

error for each past date can in principle be determined with the help of long-

lived trees laying down annual growth rings, since the rings can be counted

up to obtain an absolute calendar date in the past for each ring, and a carbon

sample of wood dated in this manner can then be analyzed for its carbon 14 /

carbon 12 ratio. In this way, measured radiocarbon dates can be “calibrated”

to take account of fluctuations in the atmospheric carbon ratio. The effect of

this correction is that, for materials with apparent (that is, uncalibrated) dates

between about 1000 and 6000 B.C., the true (calibrated) date is between a few

centuries and a thousand years earlier. Somewhat older samples have more

recently begun to be calibrated by an alternative method based on another

radioactive decay process and yielding the conclusion that samples apparently

dating to about 9000 B.C. actually date to around 11,000 B.C.

Archaeologists often distinguish calibrated from uncalibrated dates by

writing the former in upper-case letters and the latter in lower-case letters (for

example, 3000 B.C. vs. 3000 B.C., respectively). However, the archaeological

literature can be confusing in this respect, because many books and papers

report un calibrated dates as B.C. and fail to mention that they are actually

uncalibrated. The dates that I report in this book for events within the last

15,000 years are calibrated dates. That accounts for some of the discrepancies

that readers may note between this book’s dates and those quoted in some

standard reference books on early food production.

Once one has recognized and dated ancient remains of domestic plants or

animals, how does one decide whether the plant or animal was actually

domesticated in the vicinity of that site itself, rather than domesticated

elsewhere and then spread to the site? One method is to examine a map of the

geographic distribution of the crop’s or animal’s wild ancestor, and to reason

that domestication must have taken place in the area where the wild ancestor

occurs. For example, chickpeas are widely grown by traditional farmers from

the Mediterranean and Ethiopia east to India, with the latter country

accounting for 80 percent of the world’s chickpea production today. One

might therefore have been deceived into supposing that chickpeas were

domesticated in India. But it turns out that ancestral wild chickpeas occur

only in southeastern Turkey. The interpretation that chickpeas were actually

domesticated there is supported by the fact that the oldest finds of possibly

domesticated chickpeas in Neolithic archaeological sites come from

southeastern Turkey and nearby northern Syria that date to around 8000 B.C.;

not until over 5,000 years later does archaeological evidence of chickpeas

appear on the Indian subcontinent.

A second method for identifying a crop’s or animal’s site of domestication

is to plot on a map the dates of the domesticated form’s first appearance at

each locality. The site where it appeared earliest may be its site of initial

domestication—especially if the wild ancestor also occurred there, and if the

dates of first appearance at other sites become progressively later with

increasing distance from the putative site of initial domestication, suggesting

spread to those other sites. For instance, the earliest known cultivated emmer

wheat comes from the Fertile Crescent around 8500 B.C. Soon thereafter, the

crop appears progressively farther west, reaching Greece around 6500 B.C. and

Germany around 5000 B.C. Those dates suggest domestication of emmer

wheat in the Fertile Crescent, a conclusion supported by the fact that ancestral

wild emmer wheat is confined to the area extending from Israel to western

Iran and Turkey.

However, as we shall see, complications arise in many cases where the

same plant or animal was domesticated independently at several different

sites. Such cases can often be detected by analyzing the resulting

morphological, genetic, or chromosomal differences between specimens of

the same crop or domestic animal in different areas. For instance, India’s zebu

breeds of domestic cattle possess humps lacking in western Eurasian cattle

breeds, and genetic analyses show that the ancestors of modern Indian and

western Eurasian cattle breeds diverged from each other hundreds of

thousands of years ago, long before any animals were domesticated

anywhere. That is, cattle were domesticated independently in India and

western Eurasia, within the last 10,000 years, starting with wild Indian and

western Eurasian cattle subspecies that had diverged hundreds of thousands of

years earlier.



LET’S NOW RETURN to our earlier questions about the rise of food production.

Where, when, and how did food production develop in different parts of the

globe?

At one extreme are areas in which food production arose altogether

independently, with the domestication of many indigenous crops (and, in

some cases, animals) before the arrival of any crops or animals from other

areas. There are only five such areas for which the evidence is at present

detailed and compelling: Southwest Asia, also known as the Near East or

Fertile Crescent; China; Mesoamerica (the term applied to central and

southern Mexico and adjacent areas of Central America); the Andes of South

America, and possibly the adjacent Amazon Basin as well; and the eastern

United States (Figure 5.1). Some or all of these centers may actually comprise

several nearby centers where food production arose more or less

independently, such as North China’s Yellow River valley and South China’s

Yangtze River valley.

In addition to these five areas where food production definitely arose de

novo, four others—Africa’s Sahel zone, tropical West Africa, Ethiopia, and

New Guinea—are candidates for that distinction. However, there is some

uncertainty in each case. Although indigenous wild plants were undoubtedly

domesticated in Africa’s Sahel zone just south of the Sahara, cattle herding

may have preceded agriculture there, and it is not yet certain whether those

were independently domesticated Sahel cattle or, instead, domestic cattle of

Fertile Crescent origin whose arrival triggered local plant domestication. It

remains similarly uncertain whether the arrival of those Sahel crops then

triggered the undoubted local domestication of indigenous wild plants in

tropical West Africa, and whether the arrival of Southwest Asian crops is

what triggered the local domestication of indigenous wild plants in Ethiopia.

As for New Guinea, archaeological studies there have provided evidence of

early agriculture well before food production in any adjacent areas, but the

crops grown have not been definitely identified.

Table 5.1 summarizes, for these and other areas of local domestication,

some of the best-known crops and animals and the earliest known dates of

domestication. Among these nine candidate areas for the independent

evolution of food production, Southwest Asia has the earliest definite dates

for both plant domestication (around 8500 B.C.) and animal domestication

(around 8000 B.C.); it also has by far the largest number of accurate

radiocarbon dates for early food production. Dates for China are nearly as

early, while dates for the eastern United States are clearly about 6,000 years

later. For the other six candidate areas, the earliest well-established dates do

not rival those for Southwest Asia, but too few early sites have been securely

dated in those six other areas for us to be certain that they really lagged

behind Southwest Asia and (if so) by how much.

The next group of areas consists of ones that did domesticate at least a

couple of local plants or animals, but where food production depended mainly

on crops and animals that were domesticated elsewhere. Those imported

domesticates may be thought of as “founder” crops and animals, because they

founded local food production. The arrival of founder domesticates enabled

local people to become sedentary, and thereby increased the likelihood of

local crops’ evolving from wild plants that were gathered, brought home and

planted accidentally, and later planted intentionally.

TABLE 5.1 Examples of Species Domesticated in Each Area

Area

Domesticated

Earliest Attested Date of

Domestication

Plants

Animals

Independent Origins of Domestication

1. Southwest Asia

wheat, pea, olive

sheep, goat

8500 B.C.

2. China

rice, millet

pig, silkworm

by 7500 B.C.

3. Mesoamerica

corn, beans, squash

turkey

by 3500 B.C.

4. Andes and

llama, guinea

potato, manioc

by 3500 B.C.

Amazonia

pig

5. Eastern United

sunflower, goosefoot none

2500 B.C.

States

? 6. Sahel

sorghum, African rice guinea fowl

by 5000 B.C.

? 7. Tropical West

African yams, oil

none

by 3000 B.C.

Africa

palm

? 8. Ethiopia

coffee, teff

none

?

? 9. New Guinea

sugar cane, banana

none

7000 B.C.?

Local Domestication Following Arrival of Founder Crops from Elsewhere

10. Western Europe

poppy, oat

none

6000–3500 B.C.

11. Indus Valley

sesame, eggplant

humped cattle

7000 B.C.

12. Egypt

sycamore fig, chufa

donkey, cat

6000 B.C.

In three or four such areas, the arriving founder package came from

Southwest Asia. One of them is western and central Europe, where food

production arose with the arrival of Southwest Asian crops and animals

between 6000 and 3500 B.C., but at least one plant (the poppy, and probably

oats and some others) was then domesticated locally. Wild poppies are

confined to coastal areas of the western Mediterranean. Poppy seeds are

absent from excavated sites of the earliest farming communities in eastern

Europe and Southwest Asia; they first appear in early farming sites in western

Europe. In contrast, the wild ancestors of most Southwest Asian crops and

animals were absent from western Europe. Thus, it seems clear that food

production did not evolve independently in western Europe. Instead, it was

triggered there by the arrival of Southwest Asian domesticates. The resulting

western European farming societies domesticated the poppy, which

subsequently spread eastward as a crop.

Another area where local domestication appears to have followed the

arrival of Southwest Asian founder crops is the Indus Valley region of the

Indian subcontinent. The earliest farming communities there in the seventh

millennium B.C. utilized wheat, barley, and other crops that had been

previously domesticated in the Fertile Crescent and that evidently spread to

the Indus Valley through Iran. Only later did domesticates derived from

indigenous species of the Indian subcontinent, such as humped cattle and

sesame, appear in Indus Valley farming communities. In Egypt as well, food

production began in the sixth millennium B.C. with the arrival of Southwest

Asian crops. Egyptians then domesticated the sycamore fig and a local

vegetable called chufa.

The same pattern perhaps applies to Ethiopia, where wheat, barley, and

other Southwest Asian crops have been cultivated for a long time. Ethiopians

also domesticated many locally available wild species to obtain crops most of

which are still confined to Ethiopia, but one of them (the coffee bean) has

now spread around the world. However, it is not yet known whether

Ethiopians were cultivating these local plants before or only after the arrival

of the Southwest Asian package.

In these and other areas where food production depended on the arrival of

founder crops from elsewhere, did local hunter-gatherers themselves adopt

those founder crops from neighboring farming peoples and thereby become

farmers themselves? Or was the founder package instead brought by invading

farmers, who were thereby enabled to outbreed the local hunters and to kill,

displace, or outnumber them?

In Egypt it seems likely that the former happened: local hunter-gatherers

simply added Southwest Asian domesticates and farming and herding

techniques to their own diet of wild plants and animals, then gradually phased

out the wild foods. That is, what arrived to launch food production in Egypt

was foreign crops and animals, not foreign peoples. The same may have been

true on the Atlantic coast of Europe, where local hunter-gatherers apparently

adopted Southwest Asian sheep and cereals over the course of many

centuries. In the Cape of South Africa the local Khoi hunter-gatherers became

herders (but not farmers) by acquiring sheep and cows from farther north in

Africa (and ultimately from Southwest Asia). Similarly, Native American

hunter-gatherers of the U.S. Southwest gradually became farmers by

acquiring Mexican crops. In these four areas the onset of food production

provides little or no evidence for the domestication of local plant or animal

species, but also little or no evidence for the replacement of human

population.

At the opposite extreme are regions in which food production certainly

began with an abrupt arrival of foreign people as well as of foreign crops and

animals. The reason why we can be certain is that the arrivals took place in

modern times and involved literate Europeans, who described in innumerable

books what happened. Those areas include California, the Pacific Northwest

of North America, the Argentine pampas, Australia, and Siberia. Until recent

centuries, these areas were still occupied by hunter-gatherers—Native

Americans in the first three cases and Aboriginal Australians or Native

Siberians in the last two. Those hunter-gatherers were killed, infected, driven

out, or largely replaced by arriving European farmers and herders who

brought their own crops and did not domesticate any local wild species after

their arrival (except for macadamia nuts in Australia). In the Cape of South

Africa the arriving Europeans found not only Khoi hunter-gatherers but also

Khoi herders who already possessed only domestic animals, not crops. The

result was again the start of farming dependent on crops from elsewhere, a

failure to domesticate local species, and a massive modern replacement of

human population.

Finally, the same pattern of an abrupt start of food production dependent

on domesticates from elsewhere, and an abrupt and massive population

replacement, seems to have repeated itself in many areas in the prehistoric

era. In the absence of written records, the evidence of those prehistoric

replacements must be sought in the archaeological record or inferred from

linguistic evidence. The best-attested cases are ones in which there can be no

doubt about population replacement because the newly arriving food

producers differed markedly in their skeletons from the hunter-gatherers

whom they replaced, and because the food producers introduced not only

crops and animals but also pottery. Later chapters will describe the two

clearest such examples: the Austronesian expansion from South China into

the Philippines and Indonesia (Chapter 17), and the Bantu expansion over

subequatorial Africa (Chapter 19).

Southeastern Europe and central Europe present a similar picture of an

abrupt onset of food production (dependent on Southwest Asian crops and

animals) and of pottery making. This onset too probably involved

replacement of old Greeks and Germans by new Greeks and Germans, just as

old gave way to new in the Philippines, Indonesia, and subequatorial Africa.

However, the skeletal differences between the earlier hunter-gatherers and the

farmers who replaced them are less marked in Europe than in the Philippines,

Indonesia, and subequatorial Africa. Hence the case for population

replacement in Europe is less strong or less direct.



IN SHORT, ONLY a few areas of the world developed food production

independently, and they did so at widely differing times. From those nuclear

areas, hunter-gatherers of some neighboring areas learned food production,

and peoples of other neighboring areas were replaced by invading food

producers from the nuclear areas—again at widely differing times. Finally,

peoples of some areas ecologically suitable for food production neither

evolved nor acquired agriculture in prehistoric times at all; they persisted as

hunter-gatherers until the modern world finally swept upon them. The peoples

of areas with a head start on food production thereby gained a head start on

the path leading toward guns, germs, and steel. The result was a long series of

collisions between the haves and the have-nots of history.

How can we explain these geographic differences in the times and modes

of onset of food production? That question, one of the most important

problems of prehistory, will be the subject of the next five chapters.





CHAPTER 6

TO FARM OR NOT TO FARM

FORMERLY, ALL PEOPLE ON EARTH WERE HUNTER-GATHERERS. Why did any of

them adopt food production at all? Given that they must have had some

reason, why did they do so around 8500 B.C. in Mediterranean habitats of the

Fertile Crescent, only 3,000 years later in the climatically and structurally

similar Mediterranean habitats of southwestern Europe, and never

indigenously in the similar Mediterranean habitats of California, southwestern

Australia, and the Cape of South Africa? Why did people of the Fertile

Crescent wait until 8500 B.C., instead of becoming food producers around

18,500 or 28,500 B.C.?

From our modern perspective, all these questions at first seem silly,

because the drawbacks of being a hunter-gatherer appear so obvious.

Scientists used to quote a phrase of Thomas Hobbes’s in order to characterize

the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers as “nasty, brutish, and short.” They seemed to

have to work hard, to be driven by the daily quest for food, often to be close

to starvation, to lack such elementary material comforts as soft beds and

adequate clothing, and to die young.

In reality, only for today’s affluent First World citizens, who don’t

actually do the work of raising food themselves, does food production (by

remote agribusinesses) mean less physical work, more comfort, freedom from

starvation, and a longer expected lifetime. Most peasant farmers and herders,

who constitute the great majority of the world’s actual food producers, aren’t

necessarily better off than hunter-gatherers. Time budget studies show that

they may spend more rather than fewer hours per day at work than hunter-

gatherers do. Archaeologists have demonstrated that the first farmers in many

areas were smaller and less well nourished, suffered from more serious

diseases, and died on the average at a younger age than the hunter-gatherers

they replaced. If those first farmers could have foreseen the consequences of

adopting food production, they might not have opted to do so. Why, unable to

foresee the result, did they nevertheless make that choice?

There exist many actual cases of hunter-gatherers who did see food

production practiced by their neighbors, and who nevertheless refused to

accept its supposed blessings and instead remained hunter-gatherers. For

instance, Aboriginal hunter-gatherers of northeastern Australia traded for

thousands of years with farmers of the Torres Strait Islands, between

Australia and New Guinea. California Native American hunter-gatherers

traded with Native American farmers in the Colorado River valley. In

addition, Khoi herders west of the Fish River of South Africa traded with

Bantu farmers east of the Fish River, and continued to dispense with farming

themselves. Why?

Still other hunter-gatherers in contact with farmers did eventually become

farmers, but only after what may seem to us like an inordinately long delay.

For example, the coastal peoples of northern Germany did not adopt food

production until 1,300 years after peoples of the Linearbandkeramik culture

introduced it to inland parts of Germany only 125 miles to the south. Why did

those coastal Germans wait so long, and what led them finally to change their

minds?



BEFORE WE CAN answer these questions, we must dispel some

misconceptions about the origins of food production and then reformulate the

question. What actually happened was not a discovery of food production, nor

an invention, as we might first assume. There was often not even a conscious

choice between food production and hunting-gathering. Specifically, in each

area of the globe the first people who adopted food production could

obviously not have been making a conscious choice or consciously striving

toward farming as a goal, because they had never seen farming and had no

way of knowing what it would be like. Instead, as we shall see, food

production evolved as a by-product of decisions made without awareness of

their consequences. Hence the question that we have to ask is why food

production did evolve, why it evolved in some places but not others, why at

different times in different places, and why not instead at some earlier or later

date.

Another misconception is that there is necessarily a sharp divide between

nomadic hunter-gatherers and sedentary food producers. In reality, although

we frequently draw such a contrast, hunter-gatherers in some productive

areas, including North America’s Pacific Northwest coast and possibly

southeastern Australia, became sedentary but never became food producers.

Other hunter-gatherers, in Palestine, coastal Peru, and Japan, became

sedentary first and adopted food production much later. Sedentary groups

probably made up a much higher fraction of hunter-gatherers 15,000 years

ago, when all inhabited parts of the world (including the most productive

areas) were still occupied by hunter-gatherers, than they do today, when the

few remaining hunter-gatherers survive only in unproductive areas where

nomadism is the sole option.

Conversely, there are mobile groups of food producers. Some modern

nomads of New Guinea’s Lakes Plains make clearings in the jungle, plant

bananas and papayas, go off for a few months to live again as hunter-

gatherers, return to check on their crops, weed the garden if they find the

crops growing, set off again to hunt, return months later to check again, and

settle down for a while to harvest and eat if their garden has produced.

Apache Indians of the southwestern United States settled down to farm in the

summer at higher elevations and toward the north, then withdrew to the south

and to lower elevations to wander in search of wild foods during the winter.

Many herding peoples of Africa and Asia shift camp along regular seasonal

routes to take advantage of predictable seasonal changes in pasturage. Thus,

the shift from hunting-gathering to food production did not always coincide

with a shift from nomadism to sedentary living.

Another supposed dichotomy that becomes blurred in reality is a

distinction between food producers as active managers of their land and

hunter-gatherers as mere collectors of the land’s wild produce. In reality,

some hunter-gatherers intensively manage their land. For example, New

Guinea peoples who never domesticated sago palms or mountain pandanus

nevertheless increase production of these wild edible plants by clearing away

encroaching competing trees, keeping channels in sago swamps clear, and

promoting growth of new sago shoots by cutting down mature sago trees.

Aboriginal Australians who never reached the stage of farming yams and seed

plants nonetheless anticipated several elements of farming. They managed the

landscape by burning it, to encourage the growth of edible seed plants that

sprout after fires. In gathering wild yams, they cut off most of the edible tuber

but replaced the stems and tops of the tubers in the ground so that the tubers

would regrow. Their digging to extract the tuber loosened and aerated the soil

and fostered regrowth. All that they would have had to do to meet the

definition of farmers was to carry the stems and remaining attached tubers

home and similarly replace them in soil at their camp.



FROM THOSE PRECURSORS of food production already practiced by hunter-

gatherers, it developed stepwise. Not all the necessary techniques were

developed within a short time, and not all the wild plants and animals that

were eventually domesticated in a given area were domesticated

simultaneously. Even in the cases of the most rapid independent development

of food production from a hunting-gathering lifestyle, it took thousands of

years to shift from complete dependence on wild foods to a diet with very few

wild foods. In early stages of food production, people simultaneously

collected wild foods and raised cultivated ones, and diverse types of

collecting activities diminished in importance at different times as reliance on

crops increased.

The underlying reason why this transition was piecemeal is that food

production systems evolved as a result of the accumulation of many separate

decisions about allocating time and effort. Foraging humans, like foraging

animals, have only finite time and energy, which they can spend in various

ways. We can picture an incipient farmer waking up and asking: Shall I spend

today hoeing my garden (predictably yielding a lot of vegetables several

months from now), gathering shellfish (predictably yielding a little meat

today), or hunting deer (yielding possibly a lot of meat today, but more likely

nothing)? Human and animal foragers are constantly prioritizing and making

effort-allocation decisions, even if only unconsciously. They concentrate first

on favorite foods, or ones that yield the highest payoff. If these are

unavailable, they shift to less and less preferred foods.

Many considerations enter into these decisions. People seek food in order

to satisfy their hunger and fill their bellies. They also crave specific foods,

such as protein-rich foods, fat, salt, sweet fruits, and foods that simply taste

good. All other things being equal, people seek to maximize their return of

calories, protein, or other specific food categories by foraging in a way that

yields the most return with the greatest certainty in the least time for the least

effort. Simultaneously, they seek to minimize their risk of starving: moderate

but reliable returns are preferable to a fluctuating lifestyle with a high time-

averaged rate of return but a substantial likelihood of starving to death. One

suggested function of the first gardens of nearly 11,000 years ago was to

provide a reliable reserve larder as insurance in case wild food supplies failed.

Conversely, men hunters tend to guide themselves by considerations of

prestige: for example, they might rather go giraffe hunting every day, bag a

giraffe once a month, and thereby gain the status of great hunter, than bring

home twice a giraffe’s weight of food in a month by humbling themselves and

reliably gathering nuts every day. People are also guided by seemingly

arbitrary cultural preferences, such as considering fish either delicacies or

taboo. Finally, their priorities are heavily influenced by the relative values

they attach to different lifestyles—just as we can see today. For instance, in

the 19th-century U.S. West, the cattlemen, sheepmen, and farmers all

despised each other. Similarly, throughout human history farmers have tended

to despise hunter-gatherers as primitive, hunter-gatherers have despised

farmers as ignorant, and herders have despised both. All these elements come

into play in people’s separate decisions about how to obtain their food.



AS WE ALREADY noted, the first farmers on each continent could not have

chosen farming consciously, because there were no other nearby farmers for

them to observe. However, once food production had arisen in one part of a

continent, neighboring hunter-gatherers could see the result and make

conscious decisions. In some cases the hunter-gatherers adopted the

neighboring system of food production virtually as a complete package; in

others they chose only certain elements of it; and in still others they rejected

food production entirely and remained hunter-gatherers.

For example, hunter-gatherers in parts of southeastern Europe had quickly

adopted Southwest Asian cereal crops, pulse crops, and livestock

simultaneously as a complete package by around 6000 B.C. All three of these

elements also spread rapidly through central Europe in the centuries before

5000 B.C. Adoption of food production may have been rapid and wholesale in

southeastern and central Europe because the hunter-gatherer lifestyle there

was less productive and less competitive. In contrast, food production was

adopted piecemeal in southwestern Europe (southern France, Spain, and

Italy), where sheep arrived first and cereals later. The adoption of intensive

food production from the Asian mainland was also very slow and piecemeal

in Japan, probably because the hunter-gatherer lifestyle based on seafood and

local plants was so productive there.

Just as a hunting-gathering lifestyle can be traded piecemeal for a food-

producing lifestyle, one system of food production can also be traded

piecemeal for another. For example, Indians of the eastern United States were

domesticating local plants by about 2500 B.C. but had trade connections with

Mexican Indians who developed a more productive crop system based on the

trinity of corn, squash, and beans. Eastern U.S. Indians adopted Mexican

crops, and many of them discarded many of their local domesticates,

piecemeal; squash was domesticated independently, corn arrived from Mexico

around A.D. 200 but remained a minor crop until around A.D. 900, and beans

arrived a century or two later. It even happened that food-production systems

were abandoned in favor of hunting-gathering. For instance, around 3000 B.C.

the hunter-gatherers of southern Sweden adopted farming based on Southwest

Asian crops, but abandoned it around 2700 B.C. and reverted to hunting-

gathering for 400 years before resuming farming.



ALL THESE CONSIDERATIONS make it clear that we should not suppose that the

decision to adopt farming was made in a vacuum, as if the people had

previously had no means to feed themselves. Instead, we must consider food

production and hunting-gathering as alternative strategies competing with

each other. Mixed economies that added certain crops or livestock to hunting-

gathering also competed against both types of “pure” economies, and against

mixed economies with higher or lower proportions of food production.

Nevertheless, over the last 10,000 years, the predominant result has been a

shift from hunting-gathering to food production. Hence we must ask: What

were the factors that tipped the competitive advantage away from the former

and toward the latter?

That question continues to be debated by archaeologists and

anthropologists. One reason for its remaining unsettled is that different factors

may have been decisive in different parts of the world. Another has been the

problem of disentangling cause and effect in the rise of food production.

However, five main contributing factors can still be identified; the

controversies revolve mainly around their relative importance.

One factor is the decline in the availability of wild foods. The lifestyle of

hunter-gatherers has become increasingly less rewarding over the past 13,000

years, as resources on which they depended (especially animal resources)

have become less abundant or even disappeared. As we saw in Chapter 1,

most large mammal species became extinct in North and South America at the

end of the Pleistocene, and some became extinct in Eurasia and Africa, either

because of climate changes or because of the rise in skill and numbers of

human hunters. While the role of animal extinctions in eventually (after a

long lag) nudging ancient Native Americans, Eurasians, and Africans toward

food production can be debated, there are numerous incontrovertible cases on

islands in more recent times. Only after the first Polynesian settlers had

exterminated moas and decimated seal populations on New Zealand, and

exterminated or decimated seabirds and land birds on other Polynesian

islands, did they intensify their food production. For instance, although the

Polynesians who colonized Easter Island around A.D. 500 brought chickens

with them, chicken did not become a major food until wild birds and

porpoises were no longer readily available as food. Similarly, a suggested

contributing factor to the rise of animal domestication in the Fertile Crescent

was the decline in abundance of the wild gazelles that had previously been a

major source of meat for hunter-gatherers in that area.

A second factor is that, just as the depletion of wild game tended to make

hunting-gathering less rewarding, an increased availability of domesticable

wild plants made steps leading to plant domestication more rewarding. For

instance, climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene in the Fertile Crescent

greatly expanded the area of habitats with wild cereals, of which huge crops

could be harvested in a short time. Those wild cereal harvests were precursors

to the domestication of the earliest crops, the cereals wheat and barley, in the

Fertile Crescent.

Still another factor tipping the balance away from hunting-gathering was

the cumulative development of technologies on which food production would

eventually depend—technologies for collecting, processing, and storing wild

foods. What use can would-be farmers make of a ton of wheat grains on the

stalk, if they have not first figured out how to harvest, husk, and store them?

The necessary methods, implements, and facilities appeared rapidly in the

Fertile Crescent after 11,000 B.C., having been invented for dealing with the

newly available abundance of wild cereals.

Those inventions included sickles of flint blades cemented into wooden or

bone handles, for harvesting wild grains; baskets in which to carry the grains

home from the hillsides where they grew; mortars and pestles, or grinding

slabs, to remove the husks; the technique of roasting grains so that they could

be stored without sprouting; and underground storage pits, some of them

plastered to make them waterproof. Evidence for all of these techniques

becomes abundant at sites of hunter-gatherers in the Fertile Crescent after

11,000 B.C. All these techniques, though developed for the exploitation of wild

cereals, were prerequisites to the planting of cereals as crops. These

cumulative developments constituted the unconscious first steps of plant

domestication.

A fourth factor was the two-way link between the rise in human

population density and the rise in food production. In all parts of the world

where adequate evidence is available, archaeologists find evidence of rising

densities associated with the appearance of food production. Which was the

cause and which the result? This is a long-debated chicken-or-egg problem:

did a rise in human population density force people to turn to food

production, or did food production permit a rise in human population density?

In principle, one expects the chain of causation to operate in both

directions. As I’ve already discussed, food production tends to lead to

increased population densities because it yields more edible calories per acre

than does hunting-gathering. On the other hand, human population densities

were gradually rising throughout the late Pleistocene anyway, thanks to

improvements in human technology for collecting and processing wild foods.

As population densities rose, food production became increasingly favored

because it provided the increased food outputs needed to feed all those

people.

That is, the adoption of food production exemplifies what is termed an

autocatalytic process—one that catalyzes itself in a positive feedback cycle,

going faster and faster once it has started. A gradual rise in population

densities impelled people to obtain more food, by rewarding those who

unconsciously took steps toward producing it. Once people began to produce

food and become sedentary, they could shorten the birth spacing and produce

still more people, requiring still more food. This bidirectional link between

food production and population density explains the paradox that food

production, while increasing the quantity of edible calories per acre, left the

food producers less well nourished than the hunter-gatherers whom they

succeeded. That paradox developed because human population densities rose

slightly more steeply than did the availability of food.

Taken together, these four factors help us understand why the transition to

food production in the Fertile Crescent began around 8500 B.C., not around

18,500 or 28,500 B.C. At the latter two dates hunting-gathering was still much

more rewarding than incipient food production, because wild mammals were

still abundant; wild cereals were not yet abundant; people had not yet

developed the inventions necessary for collecting, processing, and storing

cereals efficiently; and human population densities were not yet high enough

for a large premium to be placed on extracting more calories per acre.

A final factor in the transition became decisive at geographic boundaries

between hunter-gatherers and food producers. The much denser populations

of food producers enabled them to displace or kill hunter-gatherers by their

sheer numbers, not to mention the other advantages associated with food

production (including technology, germs, and professional soldiers). In areas

where there were only hunter-gatherers to begin with, those groups of hunter-

gatherers who adopted food production outbred those who didn’t.

As a result, in most areas of the globe suitable for food production,

hunter-gatherers met one of two fates: either they were displaced by

neighboring food producers, or else they survived only by adopting food

production themselves. In places where they were already numerous or where

geography retarded immigration by food producers, local hunter-gatherers did

have time to adopt farming in prehistoric times and thus to survive as farmers.

This may have happened in the U.S. Southwest, in the western Mediterranean,

on the Atlantic coast of Europe, and in parts of Japan. However, in Indonesia,

tropical Southeast Asia, most of subequatorial Africa, and probably in parts of

Europe, the hunter-gatherers were replaced by farmers in the prehistoric era,

whereas a similar replacement took place in modern times in Australia and

much of the western United States.

Only where especially potent geographic or ecological barriers made

immigration of food producers or diffusion of locally appropriate food-

producing techniques very difficult were hunter-gatherers able to persist until

modern times in areas suitable for food production. The three outstanding

examples are the persistence of Native American hunter-gatherers in

California, separated by deserts from the Native American farmers of

Arizona; that of Khoisan hunter-gatherers at the Cape of South Africa, in a

Mediterranean climate zone unsuitable for the equatorial crops of nearby

Bantu farmers; and that of hunter-gatherers throughout the Australian

continent, separated by narrow seas from the food producers of Indonesia and

New Guinea. Those few peoples who remained hunter-gatherers into the 20th

century escaped replacement by food producers because they were confined

to areas not fit for food production, especially deserts and Arctic regions.

Within the present decade, even they will have been seduced by the

attractions of civilization, settled down under pressure from bureaucrats or

missionaries, or succumbed to germs.





CHAPTER 7

HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND

IF YOU’RE A HIKER WHOSE APPETITE IS JADED BY FARM-grown foods, it’s fun to

try eating wild foods. You know that some wild plants, such as wild

strawberries and blueberries, are both tasty and safe to eat. They’re

sufficiently similar to familiar crops that you can easily recognize the wild

berries, even though they’re much smaller than those we grow. Adventurous

hikers cautiously eat mushrooms, aware that many species can kill us. But not

even ardent nut lovers eat wild almonds, of which a few dozen contain

enough cyanide (the poison used in Nazi gas chambers) to kill us. The forest

is full of many other plants deemed inedible.

Yet all crops arose from wild plant species. How did certain wild plants

get turned into crops? That question is especially puzzling in regard to the

many crops (like almonds) whose wild progenitors are lethal or bad-tasting,

and to other crops (like corn) that look drastically different from their wild

ancestors. What cavewoman or caveman ever got the idea of “domesticating”

a plant, and how was it accomplished?

Plant domestication may be defined as growing a plant and thereby,

consciously or unconsciously, causing it to change genetically from its wild

ancestor in ways making it more useful to human consumers. Crop

development is today a conscious, highly specialized effort carried out by

professional scientists. They already know about the hundreds of existing

crops and set out to develop yet another one. To achieve that goal, they plant

many different seeds or roots, select the best progeny and plant their seeds,

apply knowledge of genetics to develop good varieties that breed true, and

perhaps even use the latest techniques of genetic engineering to transfer

specific useful genes. At the Davis campus of the University of California, an

entire department (the Department of Pomology) is devoted to apples and

another (the Department of Viticulture and Enology) to grapes and wine.

But plant domestication goes back over 10,000 years. Early farmers

surely didn’t use molecular genetic techniques to arrive at their results. The

first farmers didn’t even have any existing crop as a model to inspire them to

develop new ones. Hence they couldn’t have known that, whatever they were

doing, they would enjoy a tasty treat as a result.

How, then, did early farmers domesticate plants unwittingly? For

example, how did they turn poisonous almonds into safe ones without

knowing what they were doing? What changes did they actually make in wild

plants, besides rendering some of them bigger or less poisonous? Even for

valuable crops, the times of domestication vary greatly: for instance, peas

were domesticated by 8000 B.C., olives around 4000 B.C., strawberries not

until the Middle Ages, and pecans not until 1846. Many valuable wild plants

yielding food prized by millions of people, such as oaks sought for their

edible acorns in many parts of the world, remain untamed even today. What

made some plants so much easier or more inviting to domesticate than others?

Why did olive trees yield to Stone Age farmers, whereas oak trees continue to

defeat our brightest agronomists?



LET’S BEGIN BY looking at domestication from the plant’s point of view. As

far as plants are concerned, we’re just one of thousands of animal species that

unconsciously “domesticate” plants.

Like all animal species (including humans), plants must spread their

offspring to areas where they can thrive and pass on their parents’ genes.

Young animals disperse by walking or flying, but plants don’t have that

option, so they must somehow hitchhike. While some plant species have

seeds adapted for being carried by the wind or for floating on water, many

others trick an animal into carrying their seeds, by wrapping the seed in a

tasty fruit and advertising the fruit’s ripeness by its color or smell. The hungry

animal plucks and swallows the fruit, walks or flies off, and then spits out or

defecates the seed somewhere far from its parent tree. Seeds can in this

manner be carried for thousands of miles.

It may come as a surprise to learn that plant seeds can resist digestion by

your gut and nonetheless germinate out of your feces. But any adventurous

readers who are not too squeamish can make the test and prove it for

themselves. The seeds of many wild plant species actually must pass through

an animal’s gut before they can germinate. For instance, one African melon

species is so well adapted to being eaten by a hyena-like animal called the

aardvark that most melons of that species grow on the latrine sites of

aardvarks.

As an example of how would-be plant hitchhikers attract animals,

consider wild strawberries. When strawberry seeds are still young and not yet

ready to be planted, the surrounding fruit is green, sour, and hard. When the

seeds finally mature, the berries turn red, sweet, and tender. The change in the

berries’ color serves as a signal attracting birds like thrushes to pluck the

berries and fly off, eventually to spit out or defecate the seeds.

Naturally, strawberry plants didn’t set out with a conscious intent of

attracting birds when, and only when, their seeds were ready to be dispersed.

Neither did thrushes set out with the intent of domesticating strawberries.

Instead, strawberry plants evolved through natural selection. The greener and

more sour the young strawberry, the fewer the birds that destroyed the seeds

by eating berries before the seeds were ready; the sweeter and redder the final

strawberry, the more numerous the birds that dispersed its ripe seeds.

Countless other plants have fruits adapted to being eaten and dispersed by

particular species of animals. Just as strawberries are adapted to birds, so

acorns are adapted to squirrels, mangos to bats, and some sedges to ants. That

fulfills part of our definition of plant domestication, as the genetic

modification of an ancestral plant in ways that make it more useful to

consumers. But no one would seriously describe this evolutionary process as

domestication, because birds and bats and other animal consumers don’t

fulfill the other part of the definition: they don’t consciously grow plants. In

the same way, the early unconscious stages of crop evolution from wild plants

consisted of plants evolving in ways that attracted humans to eat and disperse

their fruit without yet intentionally growing them. Human latrines, like those

of aardvarks, may have been a testing ground of the first unconscious crop

breeders.



LATRINES ARE MERELY one of the many places where we accidentally sow the

seeds of wild plants that we eat. When we gather edible wild plants and bring

them home, some spill en route or at our houses. Some fruit rots while still

containing perfectly good seeds, and gets thrown out uneaten into the

garbage. As parts of the fruit that we actually take into our mouths, strawberry

seeds are tiny and inevitably swallowed and defecated, but other seeds are

large enough to be spat out. Thus, our spittoons and garbage dumps joined our

latrines to form the first agricultural research laboratories.

At whichever such “lab” the seeds ended up, they tended to come from

only certain individuals of edible plants—namely, those that we preferred to

eat for one reason or another. From your berry-picking days, you know that

you select particular berries or berry bushes. Eventually, when the first

farmers began to sow seeds deliberately, they would inevitably sow those

from the plants they had chosen to gather, even though they didn’t understand

the genetic principle that big berries have seeds likely to grow into bushes

yielding more big berries.

So, when you wade into a thorny thicket amid the mosquitoes on a hot,

humid day, you don’t do it for just any strawberry bush. Even if

unconsciously, you decide which bush looks most promising, and whether it’s

worth it at all. What are your unconscious criteria?

One criterion, of course, is size. You prefer large berries, because it’s not

worth your while to get sunburned and mosquito bitten for some lousy little

berries. That provides part of the explanation why many crop plants have

much bigger fruits than their wild ancestors do. It’s especially familiar to us

that supermarket strawberries and blueberries are gigantic compared with

wild ones; those differences arose only in recent centuries.

Such size differences in other plants go back to the very beginnings of

agriculture, when cultivated peas evolved through human selection to be 10

times heavier than wild peas. The little wild peas had been collected by

hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, just as we collect little wild

blueberries today, before the preferential harvesting and planting of the most

appealing largest wild peas—that is, what we call farming—began

automatically to contribute to increases in average pea size from generation to

generation. Similarly, supermarket apples are typically around three inches in

diameter, wild apples only one inch. The oldest corn cobs are barely more

than half an inch long, but Mexican Indian farmers of A.D. 1500 already had

developed six-inch cobs, and some modern cobs are one and a half feet long.

Another obvious difference between seeds that we grow and many of their

wild ancestors is in bitterness. Many wild seeds evolved to be bitter, bad-

tasting, or actually poisonous, in order to deter animals from eating them.

Thus, natural selection acts oppositely on seeds and on fruits. Plants whose

fruits are tasty get their seeds dispersed by animals, but the seed itself within

the fruit has to be bad-tasting. Otherwise, the animal would also chew up the

seed, and it couldn’t sprout.

Almonds provide a striking example of bitter seeds and their change

under domestication. Most wild almond seeds contain an intensely bitter

chemical called amygdalin, which (as was already mentioned) breaks down to

yield the poison cyanide. A snack of wild almonds can kill a person foolish

enough to ignore the warning of the bitter taste. Since the first stage in

unconscious domestication involves gathering seeds to eat, how on earth did

domestication of wild almonds ever reach that first stage?

The explanation is that occasional individual almond trees have a

mutation in a single gene that prevents them from synthesizing the bitter-

tasting amygdalin. Such trees die out in the wild without leaving any progeny,

because birds discover and eat all their seeds. But curious or hungry children

of early farmers, nibbling wild plants around them, would eventually have

sampled and noticed those nonbitter almond trees. (In the same way,

European peasants today still recognize and appreciate occasional individual

oak trees whose acorns are sweet rather than bitter.) Those nonbitter almond

seeds are the only ones that ancient farmers would have planted, at first

unintentionally in their garbage heaps and later intentionally in their orchards.

Already by 8000 B.C. wild almonds show up in excavated archaeological

sites in Greece. By 3000 B.C. they were being domesticated in lands of the

eastern Mediterranean. When the Egyptian king Tutankhamen died, around

1325 B.C., almonds were one of the foods left in his famous tomb to nourish

him in the afterlife. Lima beans, watermelons, potatoes, eggplants, and

cabbages are among the many other familiar crops whose wild ancestors were

bitter or poisonous, and of which occasional sweet individuals must have

sprouted around the latrines of ancient hikers.

While size and tastiness are the most obvious criteria by which human

hunter-gatherers select wild plants, other criteria include fleshy or seedless

fruits, oily seeds, and long fibers. Wild squashes and pumpkins have little or

no fruit around their seeds, but the preferences of early farmers selected for

squashes and pumpkins consisting of far more flesh than seeds. Cultivated

bananas were selected long ago to be all flesh and no seed, thereby inspiring

modern agricultural scientists to develop seedless oranges, grapes, and

watermelons as well. Seedlessness provides a good example of how human

selection can completely reverse the original evolved function of a wild fruit,

which in nature serves as a vehicle for dispersing seeds.

In ancient times many plants were similarly selected for oily fruits or

seeds. Among the earliest fruit trees domesticated in the Mediterranean world

were olives, cultivated since around 4000 B.C. for their oil. Crop olives are not

only bigger but also oilier than wild ones. Ancient farmers selected sesame,

mustard, poppies, and flax as well for oily seeds, while modern plant

scientists have done the same for sunflower, safflower, and cotton.

Before that recent development of cotton for oil, it was of course selected

for its fibers, used to weave textiles. The fibers (termed lint) are hairs on the

cotton seeds, and early farmers of both the Americas and the Old World

independently selected different species of cotton for long lint. In flax and

hemp, two other plants grown to supply the textiles of antiquity, the fibers

come instead from the stem, and plants were selected for long, straight stems.

While we think of most crops as being grown for food, flax is one of our

oldest crops (domesticated by around 7000 B.C.). It furnished linen, which

remained the chief textile of Europe until it became supplanted by cotton and

synthetics after the Industrial Revolution.



SO FAR, ALL the changes that I’ve described in the evolution of wild plants

into crops involve characters that early farmers could actually notice—such as

fruit size, bitterness, fleshiness, and oiliness, and fiber length. By harvesting

those individual wild plants possessing these desirable qualities to an

exceptional degree, ancient peoples unconsciously dispersed the plants and

set them on the road to domestication.

In addition, though, there were at least four other major types of change

that did not involve berry pickers making visible choices. In these cases the

berry pickers caused changes either by harvesting available plants while other

plants remained unavailable for invisible reasons, or by changing the selective

conditions acting on plants.

The first such change affected wild mechanisms for the dispersal of seeds.

Many plants have specialized mechanisms that scatter seeds (and thereby

prevent humans from gathering them efficiently). Only mutant seeds lacking

those mechanisms would have been harvested and would thus have become

the progenitors of crops.

A clear example involves peas, whose seeds (the peas we eat) come

enclosed in a pod. Wild peas have to get out of the pod if they are to

germinate. To achieve that result, pea plants evolved a gene that makes the

pod explode, shooting out the peas onto the ground. Pods of occasional

mutant peas don’t explode. In the wild the mutant peas would die entombed

in their pod on their parent plants, and only the popping pods would pass on

their genes. But, conversely, the only pods available to humans to harvest

would be the nonpopping ones left on the plant. Thus, once humans began

bringing wild peas home to eat, there was immediate selection for that single-

gene mutant. Similar nonpopping mutants were selected in lentils, flax, and

poppies.

Instead of being enclosed in a poppable pod, wild wheat and barley seeds

grow at the top of a stalk that spontaneously shatters, dropping the seeds to

the ground where they can germinate. A single-gene mutation prevents the

stalks from shattering. In the wild that mutation would be lethal to the plant,

since the seeds would remain suspended in the air, unable to germinate and

take root. But those mutant seeds would have been the ones waiting

conveniently on the stalk to be harvested and brought home by humans. When

humans then planted those harvested mutant seeds, any mutant seeds among

the progeny again became available to the farmers to harvest and sow, while

normal seeds among the progeny fell to the ground and became unavailable.

Thus, human farmers reversed the direction of natural selection by 180

degrees: the formerly successful gene suddenly became lethal, and the lethal

mutant became successful. Over 10,000 years ago, that unconscious selection

for nonshattering wheat and barley stalks was apparently the first major

human “improvement” in any plant. That change marked the beginning of

agriculture in the Fertile Crescent.

The second type of change was even less visible to ancient hikers. For

annual plants growing in an area with a very unpredictable climate, it could

be lethal if all the seeds sprouted quickly and simultaneously. Were that to

happen, the seedlings might all be killed by a single drought or frost, leaving

no seeds to propagate the species. Hence many annual plants have evolved to

hedge their bets by means of germination inhibitors, which make seeds

initially dormant and spread out their germination over several years. In that

way, even if most seedlings are killed by a bout of bad weather, some seeds

will be left to germinate later.

A common bet-hedging adaptation by which wild plants achieve that

result is to enclose their seeds in a thick coat or armor. The many wild plants

with such adaptations include wheat, barley, peas, flax, and sunflowers. While

such late-sprouting seeds still have the opportunity to germinate in the wild,

consider what must have happened as farming developed. Early farmers

would have discovered by trial and error that they could obtain higher yields

by tilling and watering the soil and then sowing seeds. When that happened,

seeds that immediately sprouted grew into plants whose seeds were harvested

and planted in the next year. But many of the wild seeds did not immediately

sprout, and they yielded no harvest.

Occasional mutant individuals among wild plants lacked thick seed coats

or other inhibitors of germination. All such mutants promptly sprouted and

yielded harvested mutant seeds. Early farmers wouldn’t have noticed the

difference, in the way that they did notice and selectively harvest big berries.

But the cycle of sow / grow / harvest / sow would have selected immediately

and unconsciously for the mutants. Like the changes in seed dispersal, these

changes in germination inhibition characterize wheat, barley, peas, and many

other crops compared with their wild ancestors.

The remaining major type of change invisible to early farmers involved

plant reproduction. A general problem in crop development is that occasional

mutant plant individuals are more useful to humans (for example, because of

bigger or less bitter seeds) than are normal individuals. If those desirable

mutants proceeded to interbreed with normal plants, the mutation would

immediately be diluted or lost. Under what circumstances would it remain

preserved for early farmers?

For plants that reproduce themselves, the mutant would automatically be

preserved. That’s true of plants that reproduce vegetatively (from a tuber or

root of the parent plant), or that are hermaphrodites capable of fertilizing

themselves. But the vast majority of wild plants don’t reproduce that way.

They’re either hermaphrodites incapable of fertilizing themselves and forced

to interbreed with other hermaphrodite individuals (my male part fertilizes

your female part, your male part fertilizes my female part), or else they occur

as separate male and female individuals, like all normal mammals. The

former plants are termed self-incompatible hermaphrodites; the latter,

dioecious species. Both were bad news for ancient farmers, who would

thereby have promptly lost any favorable mutants without understanding why.

The solution involved another type of invisible change. Numerous plant

mutations affect the reproductive system itself. Some mutant individuals

developed fruit without even having to be pollinated, resulting in our seedless

bananas, grapes, oranges, and pineapples. Some mutant hermaphrodites lost

their self-incompatibility and became able to fertilize themselves—a process

exemplified by many fruit trees such as plums, peaches, apples, apricots, and

cherries. Some mutant grapes that normally would have had separate male

and female individuals also became self-fertilizing hermaphrodites. By all

these means, ancient farmers, who didn’t understand plant reproductive

biology, still ended up with useful crops that bred true and were worth

replanting, instead of initially promising mutants whose worthless progeny

were consigned to oblivion.

Thus, farmers selected from among individual plants on the basis not only

of perceptible qualities like size and taste, but also of invisible features like

seed dispersal mechanisms, germination inhibition, and reproductive biology.

As a result, different plants became selected for quite different or even

opposite features. Some plants (like sunflowers) were selected for much

bigger seeds, while others (like bananas) were selected for tiny or even

nonexistent seeds. Lettuce was selected for luxuriant leaves at the expense of

seeds or fruit; wheat and sunflowers, for seeds at the expense of leaves; and

squash, for fruit at the expense of leaves. Especially instructive are cases in

which a single wild plant species was variously selected for different purposes

and thereby gave rise to quite different-looking crops. Beets, grown already in

Babylonian times for their leaves (like the modern beet varieties called

chards), were then developed for their edible roots and finally (in the 18th

century) for their sugar content (sugar beets). Ancestral cabbage plants,

possibly grown originally for their oily seeds, underwent even greater

diversification as they became variously selected for leaves (modern cabbage

and kale), stems (kohlrabi), buds (brussels sprouts), or flower shoots

(cauliflower and broccoli).

So far, we have been discussing transformations of wild plants into crops

as a result of selection by farmers, consciously or unconsciously. That is,

farmers initially selected seeds of certain wild plant individuals to bring into

their gardens and then chose certain progeny seeds each year to grow in the

next year’s garden. But much of the transformation was also effected as a

result of plants’ selecting themselves. Darwin’s phrase “natural selection”

refers to certain individuals of a species surviving better, and / or reproducing

more successfully, than competing individuals of the same species under

natural conditions. In effect, the natural processes of differential survival and

reproduction do the selecting. If the conditions change, different types of

individuals may now survive or reproduce better and become “naturally

selected,” with the result that the population undergoes evolutionary change.

A classic example is the development of industrial melanism in British moths:

darker moth individuals became relatively commoner than paler individuals

as the environment became dirtier during the 19th century, because dark

moths resting on a dark, dirty tree were more likely than contrasting pale

moths to escape the attention of predators.

Much as the Industrial Revolution changed the environment for moths,

farming changed the environment for plants. A tilled, fertilized, watered,

weeded garden provides growing conditions very different from those on a

dry, unfertilized hillside. Many changes of plants under domestication

resulted from such changes in conditions and hence in the favored types of

individuals. For example, when a farmer sows seeds densely in a garden,

there is intense competition among the seeds. Big seeds that can take

advantage of the good conditions to grow quickly will now be favored over

small seeds that were previously favored on dry, unfertilized hillsides where

seeds were sparser and competition less intense. Such increased competition

among plants themselves made a major contribution to larger seed size and to

many other changes developing during the transformation of wild plants into

ancient crops.



WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR the great differences among plants in ease of

domestication, such that some species were domesticated long ago and others

not until the Middle Ages, whereas still other wild plants have proved

immune to all our activities? We can deduce many of the answers by

examining the well-established sequence in which various crops developed in

Southwest Asia’s Fertile Crescent.

It turns out that the earliest Fertile Crescent crops, such as the wheat and

barley and peas domesticated around 10,000 years ago, arose from wild

ancestors offering many advantages. They were already edible and gave high

yields in the wild. They were easily grown, merely by being sown or planted.

They grew quickly and could be harvested within a few months of sowing, a

big advantage for incipient farmers still on the borderline between nomadic

hunters and settled villagers. They could be readily stored, unlike many later

crops such as strawberries and lettuce. They were mostly self-pollinating: that

is, the crop varieties could pollinate themselves and pass on their own

desirable genes unchanged, instead of having to hybridize with other varieties

less useful to humans. Finally, their wild ancestors required very little genetic

change to be converted into crops—for instance, in wheat, just the mutations

for nonshattering stalks and uniform quick germination.

A next stage of crop development included the first fruit and nut trees,

domesticated around 4000 B.C. They comprised olives, figs, dates,

pomegranates, and grapes. Compared with cereals and legumes, they had the

drawback of not starting to yield food until at least three years after planting,

and not reaching full production until after as much as a decade. Thus,

growing these crops was possible only for people already fully committed to

the settled village life. However, these early fruit and nut trees were still the

easiest such crops to cultivate. Unlike later tree domesticates, they could be

grown directly by being planted as cuttings or even seeds. Cuttings have the

advantage that, once ancient farmers had found or developed a productive

tree, they could be sure that all its descendants would remain identical to it.

A third stage involved fruit trees that proved much harder to cultivate,

including apples, pears, plums, and cherries. These trees cannot be grown

from cuttings. It’s also a waste of effort to grow them from seed, since the

offspring even of an outstanding individual tree of those species are highly

variable and mostly yield worthless fruit. Instead, those trees must be grown

by the difficult technique of grafting, developed in China long after the

beginnings of agriculture. Not only is grafting hard work even once you know

the principle, but the principle itself could have been discovered only through

conscious experimentation. The invention of grafting was hardly just a matter

of some nomad relieving herself at a latrine and returning later to be

pleasantly surprised by the resulting crop of fine fruit.

Many of these late-stage fruit trees posed a further problem in that their

wild progenitors were the opposite of self-pollinating. They had to be cross-

pollinated by another plant belonging to a genetically different variety of their

species. Hence early farmers either had to find mutant trees not requiring

cross-pollination, or had consciously to plant genetically different varieties or

else male and female individuals nearby in the same orchard. All those

problems delayed the domestication of apples, pears, plums, and cherries until

around classical times. At about the same time, though, another group of late

domesticates arose with much less effort, as wild plants that established

themselves initially as weeds in fields of intentionally cultivated crops. Crops

starting out as weeds included rye and oats, turnips and radishes, beets and

leeks, and lettuce.



ALTHOUGH THE DETAILED sequence that I’ve just described applies to the

Fertile Crescent, partly similar sequences also appeared elsewhere in the

world. In particular, the Fertile Crescent’s wheat and barley exemplify the

class of crops termed cereals or grains (members of the grass family), while

Fertile Crescent peas and lentils exemplify pulses (members of the legume

family, which includes beans). Cereal crops have the virtues of being fast

growing, high in carbohydrates, and yielding up to a ton of edible food per

hectare cultivated. As a result, cereals today account for over half of all

calories consumed by humans and include five of the modern world’s 12

leading crops (wheat, corn, rice, barley, and sorghum). Many cereal crops are

low in protein, but that deficit is made up by pulses, which are often 25

percent protein (38 percent in the case of soybeans). Cereals and pulses

together thus provide many of the ingredients of a balanced diet.

As Table 7.1 summarizes, the domestication of local cereal / pulse

combinations launched food production in many areas. The most familiar

examples are the combination of wheat and barley with peas and lentils in the

Fertile Crescent, the combination of corn with several bean species in

Mesoamerica, and the combination of rice and millets with soybeans and

other beans in China. Less well known are Africa’s combination of sorghum,

African rice, and pearl millet with cowpeas and groundnuts, and the Andes’

combination of the noncereal grain quinoa with several bean species.

Table 7.1 also shows that the Fertile Crescent’s early domestication of

flax for fiber was paralleled elsewhere. Hemp, four cotton species, yucca, and

agave variously furnished fiber for rope and woven clothing in China,

Mesoamerica, India, Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa, and South America,

supplemented in several of those areas by wool from domestic animals. Of the

centers of early food production, only the eastern United States and New

Guinea remained without a fiber crop.

TABLE 7.1 Examples of Early Major Crop Types around the Ancient

World

Crop Type

Area

Cereals, Other

Pulses

Fiber

Roots, Tubers Melons

Grasses

Fertile

emmer wheat,

pea, lentil, chickpea flax

—

muskmelon

Crescent

einkorn wheat,

barley

China

foxtail millet,

soybean, adzuki

hemp

—

[muskmelon]

broomcorn millet,

bean, mung bean

rice

Mesoamerica corn

common bean,

cotton (G.

jicama

squashes (C.

tepary bean, scarlet

hirsutum),

pepo, etc.)

runner bean

yucca, agave

Andes,

quinoa, [corn]

lima bean, common

cotton (G.

manioc, sweet squashes (C.

Amazonia

bean, peanut

barbadense)

potato,

maxima,

potato, oca

etc.)

West Africa sorghum, pearl

cowpea, groundnut

cotton (G.

African yams

watermelon,

and Sahel

millet, African

herbaceum)

bottle gourd

rice

India

[wheat, barley, rice, hyacinth bean, black cotton (G

—

cucumber

sorghum, millets]

gram, green gram

arboreum),

flax

Ethiopia

teff, finger millet,

[pea, lentil]

[flax]

—

—

[wheat, barley]

Eastern

maygrass, little

—

—

Jerusalem

squash (C.

United

barley, knotweed,

artichoke

pepo)

States

goosefoot

New Guinea sugar cane

—

—

yams, taro

—

The table gives major crops, of five crop classes, from early agricultural

sites in various parts of the world. Square brackets enclose names of crops

first domesticated elsewhere; names not enclosed in brackets refer to local

domesticates. Omitted are crops that arrived or became important only later,

such as bananas in Africa, corn and beans in the eastern United States, and

sweet potato in New Guinea. Cottons are four species of the genus

Gossypium, each species being native to a particular part of the world;

squashes are five species of the genus Cucurbita. Note that cereals, pulses,

and fiber crops launched agriculture in most areas, but that root and tuber

crops and melons were of early importance in only some areas.

Alongside these parallels, there were also some major differences in food

production systems around the world. One is that agriculture in much of the

Old World came to involve broadcast seeding and monoculture fields, and

eventually plowing. That is, seeds were sown by being thrown in handfuls,

resulting in a whole field devoted to a single crop. Once cows, horses, and

other large mammals were domesticated, they were hitched to plows, and

fields were tilled by animal power. In the New World, however, no animal

was ever domesticated that could be hitched to a plow. Instead, fields were

always tilled by hand-held sticks or hoes, and seeds were planted individually

by hand and not scattered as whole handfuls. Most New World fields thus

came to be mixed gardens of many crops planted together, rather than

monoculture.

Another major difference among agricultural systems involved the main

sources of calories and carbohydrates. As we have seen, these were cereals in

many areas. In other areas, though, that role of cereals was taken over or

shared by roots and tubers, which were of negligible importance in the ancient

Fertile Crescent and China. Manioc (alias cassava) and sweet potato became

staples in tropical South America, potato and oca in the Andes, African yams

in Africa, and Indo-Pacific yams and taro in Southeast Asia and New Guinea.

Tree crops, notably bananas and breadfruit, also furnished carbohydrate-rich

staples in Southeast Asia and New Guinea.



THUS, BY ROMAN times, almost all of today’s leading crops were being

cultivated somewhere in the world. Just as we shall see for domestic animals

too (Chapter 9), ancient hunter-gatherers were intimately familiar with local

wild plants, and ancient farmers evidently discovered and domesticated

almost all of those worth domesticating. Of course, medieval monks did begin

to cultivate strawberries and raspberries, and modern plant breeders are still

improving ancient crops and have added new minor crops, notably some

berries (like blueberries, cranberries, and kiwifruit) and nuts (macadamias,

pecans, and cashews). But these few modern additions have remained of

modest importance compared with ancient staples like wheat, corn, and rice.

Still, our list of triumphs lacks many wild plants that, despite their value

as food, we never succeeded in domesticating. Notable among these failures

of ours are oak trees, whose acorns were a staple food of Native Americans in

California and the eastern United States as well as a fallback food for

European peasants in famine times of crop failure. Acorns are nutritionally

valuable, being rich in starch and oil. Like many otherwise edible wild foods,

most acorns do contain bitter tannins, but acorn lovers learned to deal with

tannins in the same way that they dealt with bitter chemicals in almonds and

other wild plants: either by grinding and leaching the acorns to remove the

tannins, or by harvesting acorns from the occasional mutant individual oak

tree low in tannins.

Why have we failed to domesticate such a prized food source as acorns?

Why did we take so long to domesticate strawberries and raspberries? What is

it about those plants that kept their domestication beyond the reach of ancient

farmers capable of mastering such difficult techniques as grafting?

It turns out that oak trees have three strikes against them. First, their slow

growth would exhaust the patience of most farmers. Sown wheat yields a crop

within a few months; a planted almond grows into a nut-bearing tree in three

or four years; but a planted acorn may not become productive for a decade or

more. Second, oak trees evolved to make nuts of a size and taste suitable for

squirrels, which we’ve all seen burying, digging up, and eating acorns. Oaks

grow from the occasional acorn that a squirrel forgets to dig up. With billions

of squirrels each spreading hundreds of acorns every year to virtually any spot

suitable for oak trees to grow, we humans didn’t stand a chance of selecting

oaks for the acorns that we wanted. Those same problems of slow growth and

fast squirrels probably also explain why beech and hickory trees, heavily

exploited as wild trees for their nuts by Europeans and Native Americans,

respectively, were also not domesticated.

Finally, perhaps the most important difference between almonds and

acorns is that bitterness is controlled by a single dominant gene in almonds

but appears to be controlled by many genes in oaks. If ancient farmers planted

almonds or acorns from the occasional nonbitter mutant tree, the laws of

genetics dictate that half of the nuts from the resulting tree growing up would

also be nonbitter in the case of almonds, but almost all would still be bitter in

the case of oaks. That alone would kill the enthusiasm of any would-be acorn

farmer who had defeated the squirrels and remained patient.

As for strawberries and raspberries, we had similar trouble competing

with thrushes and other berry-loving birds. Yes, the Romans did tend wild

strawberries in their gardens. But with billions of European thrushes

defecating wild strawberry seeds in every possible place (including Roman

gardens), strawberries remained the little berries that thrushes wanted, not the

big berries that humans wanted. Only with the recent development of

protective nets and greenhouses were we finally able to defeat the thrushes,

and to redesign strawberries and raspberries according to our own standards.



WE’VE THUS SEEN that the difference between gigantic supermarket

strawberries and tiny wild ones is just one example of the various features

distinguishing cultivated plants from their wild ancestors. Those differences

arose initially from natural variation among the wild plants themselves. Some

of it, such as the variation in berry size or in nut bitterness, would have been

readily noticed by ancient farmers. Other variation, such as that in seed

dispersal mechanisms or seed dormancy, would have gone unrecognized by

humans before the rise of modern botany. But whether or not the selection of

wild edible plants by ancient hikers relied on conscious or unconscious

criteria, the resulting evolution of wild plants into crops was at first an

unconscious process. It followed inevitably from our selecting among wild

plant individuals, and from competition among plant individuals in gardens

favoring individuals different from those favored in the wild.

That’s why Darwin, in his great book On the Origin of Species, didn’t

start with an account of natural selection. His first chapter is instead a lengthy

account of how our domesticated plants and animals arose through artificial

selection by humans. Rather than discussing the Galápagos Island birds that

we usually associate with him, Darwin began by discussing—how farmers

develop varieties of gooseberries! He wrote, “I have seen great surprise

expressed in horticultural works at the wonderful skill of gardeners, in having

produced such splendid results from such poor materials; but the art has been

simple, and as far as the final result is concerned, has been followed almost

unconsciously. It has consisted in always cultivating the best-known variety,

sowing its seeds, and, when a slightly better variety chanced to appear,

selecting it, and so onwards.” Those principles of crop development by

artificial selection still serve as our most understandable model of the origin

of species by natural selection.





CHAPTER 8

APPLES OR INDIANS

WE HAVE JUST SEEN HOW PEOPLES OF SOME REGIONS began to cultivate wild

plant species, a step with momentous unforeseen consequences for their

lifestyle and their descendants’ place in history. Let us now return to our

questions: Why did agriculture never arise independently in some fertile and

highly suitable areas, such as California, Europe, temperate Australia, and

subequatorial Africa? Why, among the areas where agriculture did arise

independently, did it develop much earlier in some than in others?

Two contrasting explanations suggest themselves: problems with the local

people, or problems with the locally available wild plants. On the one hand,

perhaps almost any well-watered temperate or tropical area of the globe offers

enough species of wild plants suitable for domestication. In that case, the

explanation for agriculture’s failure to develop in some of those areas would

lie with cultural characteristics of their peoples. On the other hand, perhaps at

least some humans in any large area of the globe would have been receptive

to the experimentation that led to domestication. Only the lack of suitable

wild plants might then explain why food production did not evolve in some

areas.

As we shall see in the next chapter, the corresponding problem for

domestication of big wild mammals proves easier to solve, because there are

many fewer species of them than of plants. The world holds only about 148

species of large wild mammalian terrestrial herbivores or omnivores, the large

mammals that could be considered candidates for domestication. Only a

modest number of factors determines whether a mammal is suitable for

domestication. It’s thus straightforward to review a region’s big mammals and

to test whether the lack of mammal domestication in some regions was due to

the unavailability of suitable wild species, rather than to local peoples.

That approach would be much more difficult to apply to plants because of

the sheer number—200,000—of species of wild flowering plants, the plants

that dominate vegetation on the land and that have furnished almost all of our

crops. We can’t possibly hope to examine all the wild plant species of even a

circumscribed area like California, and to assess how many of them would

have been domesticable. But we shall now see how to get around that

problem.



WHEN ONE HEARS that there are so many species of flowering plants, one’s

first reaction might be as follows: surely, with all those wild plant species on

Earth, any area with a sufficiently benign climate must have had more than

enough species to provide plenty of candidates for crop development.

But then reflect that the vast majority of wild plants are unsuitable for

obvious reasons: they are woody, they produce no edible fruit, and their

leaves and roots are also inedible. Of the 200,000 wild plant species, only a

few thousand are eaten by humans, and just a few hundred of these have been

more or less domesticated. Even of these several hundred crops, most provide

minor supplements to our diet and would not by themselves have sufficed to

support the rise of civilizations. A mere dozen species account for over 80

percent of the modern world’s annual tonnage of all crops. Those dozen

blockbusters are the cereals wheat, corn, rice, barley, and sorghum; the pulse

soybean; the roots or tubers potato, manioc, and sweet potato; the sugar

sources sugarcane and sugar beet; and the fruit banana. Cereal crops alone

now account for more than half of the calories consumed by the world’s

human populations. With so few major crops in the world, all of them

domesticated thousands of years ago, it’s less surprising that many areas of

the world had no wild native plants at all of outstanding potential. Our failure

to domesticate even a single major new food plant in modern times suggests

that ancient peoples really may have explored virtually all useful wild plants

and domesticated all the ones worth domesticating.

Yet some of the world’s failures to domesticate wild plants remain hard to

explain. The most flagrant cases concern plants that were domesticated in one

area but not in another. We can thus be sure that it was indeed possible to

develop the wild plant into a useful crop, and we have to ask why that wild

species was not domesticated in certain areas.

A typical puzzling example comes from Africa. The important cereal

sorghum was domesticated in Africa’s Sahel zone, just south of the Sahara. It

also occurs as a wild plant as far south as southern Africa, yet neither it nor

any other plant was cultivated in southern Africa until the arrival of the whole

crop package that Bantu farmers brought from Africa north of the equator

2,000 years ago. Why did the native peoples of southern Africa not

domesticate sorghum for themselves?

Equally puzzling is the failure of people to domesticate flax in its wild

range in western Europe and North Africa, or einkorn wheat in its wild range

in the southern Balkans. Since these two plants were among the first eight

crops of the Fertile Crescent, they were presumably among the most readily

domesticated of all wild plants. They were adopted for cultivation in those

areas of their wild range outside the Fertile Crescent as soon as they arrived

with the whole package of food production from the Fertile Crescent. Why,

then, had peoples of those outlying areas not already begun to grow them of

their own accord?

Similarly, the four earliest domesticated fruits of the Fertile Crescent all

had wild ranges stretching far beyond the eastern Mediterranean, where they

appear to have been first domesticated: the olive, grape, and fig occurred west

to Italy and Spain and Northwest Africa, while the date palm extended to all

of North Africa and Arabia. These four were evidently among the easiest to

domesticate of all wild fruits. Why did peoples outside the Fertile Crescent

fail to domesticate them, and begin to grow them only when they had already

been domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean and arrived thence as crops?

Other striking examples involve wild species that were not domesticated

in areas where food production never arose spontaneously, even though those

wild species had close relatives domesticated elsewhere. For example, the

olive Olea europea was domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean. There are

about 40 other species of olives in tropical and southern Africa, southern

Asia, and eastern Australia, some of them closely related to Olea europea, but

none of them was ever domesticated. Similarly, while a wild apple species

and a wild grape species were domesticated in Eurasia, there are many related

wild apple and grape species in North America, some of which have in

modern times been hybridized with the crops derived from their wild Eurasian

counterparts in order to improve those crops. Why, then, didn’t Native

Americans domesticate those apparently useful apples and grapes

themselves?

One can go on and on with such examples. But there is a fatal flaw in this

reasoning: plant domestication is not a matter of hunter-gatherers’

domesticating a single plant and otherwise carrying on unchanged with their

nomadic lifestyle. Suppose that North American wild apples really would

have evolved into a terrific crop if only Indian hunter-gatherers had settled

down and cultivated them. But nomadic hunter-gatherers would not throw

over their traditional way of life, settle in villages, and start tending apple

orchards unless many other domesticable wild plants and animals were

available to make a sedentary food-producing existence competitive with a

hunting-gathering existence.

How, in short, do we assess the potential of an entire local flora for

domestication? For those Native Americans who failed to domesticate North

American apples, did the problem really lie with the Indians or with the

apples?

In order to answer this question, we shall now compare three regions that

lie at opposite extremes among centers of independent domestication. As we

have seen, one of them, the Fertile Crescent, was perhaps the earliest center of

food production in the world, and the site of origin of several of the modern

world’s major crops and almost all of its major domesticated animals. The

other two regions, New Guinea and the eastern United States, did domesticate

local crops, but these crops were very few in variety, only one of them gained

worldwide importance, and the resulting food package failed to support

extensive development of human technology and political organization as in

the Fertile Crescent. In the light of this comparison, we shall ask: Did the

flora and environment of the Fertile Crescent have clear advantages over

those of New Guinea and the eastern United States?



ONE OF THE central facts of human history is the early importance of the part

of Southwest Asia known as the Fertile Crescent (because of the crescent-like

shape of its uplands on a map: see Figure 8.1). That area appears to have been

the earliest site for a whole string of developments, including cities, writing,

empires, and what we term (for better or worse) civilization. All those

developments sprang, in turn, from the dense human populations, stored food

surpluses, and feeding of nonfarming specialists made possible by the rise of

food production in the form of crop cultivation and animal husbandry. Food

production was the first of those major innovations to appear in the Fertile

Crescent. Hence any attempt to understand the origins of the modern world

must come to grips with the question why the Fertile Crescent’s domesticated

plants and animals gave it such a potent head start.

Fortunately, the Fertile Crescent is by far the most intensively studied and

best understood part of the globe as regards the rise of agriculture. For most

crops domesticated in or near the Fertile Crescent, the wild plant ancestor has

been identified; its close relationship to the crop has been proven by genetic

and chromosomal studies; its wild geographic range is known; its changes

under domestication have been identified and are often understood at the level

of single genes; those changes can be observed in successive layers of the

archaeological record; and the approximate place and time of domestication

are known. I don’t deny that other areas, notably China, also had advantages

as early sites of domestication, but those advantages and the resulting

development of crops can be specified in much more detail for the Fertile

Crescent.

One advantage of the Fertile Crescent is that it lies within a zone of so-

called Mediterranean climate, a climate characterized by mild, wet winters

and long, hot, dry summers. That climate selects for plant species able to

survive the long dry season and to resume growth rapidly upon the return of

the rains. Many Fertile Crescent plants, especially species of cereals and

pulses, have adapted in a way that renders them useful to humans: they are

annuals, meaning that the plant itself dries up and dies in the dry season.

Within their mere one year of life, annual plants inevitably remain small

herbs. Many of them instead put much of their energy into producing big

seeds, which remain dormant during the dry season and are then ready to

sprout when the rains come. Annual plants therefore waste little energy on

making inedible wood or fibrous stems, like the body of trees and bushes. But

many of the big seeds, notably those of the annual cereals and pulses, are

edible by humans. They constitute 6 of the modern world’s 12 major crops. In

contrast, if you live near a forest and look out your window, the plant species

that you see will tend to be trees and shrubs, most of whose body you cannot

eat and which put much less of their energy into edible seeds. Of course,

some forest trees in areas of wet climate do produce big edible seeds, but

these seeds are not adapted to surviving a long dry season and hence to long

storage by humans.

A second advantage of the Fertile Crescent flora is that the wild ancestors

of many Fertile Crescent crops were already abundant and highly productive,

occurring in large stands whose value must have been obvious to hunter-

gatherers. Experimental studies in which botanists have collected seeds from

such natural stands of wild cereals, much as hunter-gatherers must have been

doing over 10,000 years ago, show that annual harvests of up to nearly a ton

of seeds per hectare can be obtained, yielding 50 kilocalories of food energy

for only one kilocalorie of work expended. By collecting huge quantities of

wild cereals in a short time when the seeds were ripe, and storing them for use

as food through the rest of the year, some hunting-gathering peoples of the

Fertile Crescent had already settled down in permanent villages even before

they began to cultivate plants.

Since Fertile Crescent cereals were so productive in the wild, few

additional changes had to be made in them under cultivation. As we discussed

in the preceding chapter, the principal changes—the breakdown of the natural

systems of seed dispersal and of germination inhibition—evolved

automatically and quickly as soon as humans began to cultivate the seeds in

fields. The wild ancestors of our wheat and barley crops look so similar to the

crops themselves that the identity of the ancestor has never been in doubt.

Because of this ease of domestication, big-seeded annuals were the first, or

among the first, crops developed not only in the Fertile Crescent but also in

China and the Sahel.

Contrast this quick evolution of wheat and barley with the story of corn,

the leading cereal crop of the New World. Corn’s probable ancestor, a wild

plant known as teosinte, looks so different from corn in its seed and flower

structures that even its role as ancestor has been hotly debated by botanists for

a long time. Teosinte’s value as food would not have impressed hunter-

gatherers: it was less productive in the wild than wild wheat, it produced

much less seed than did the corn eventually developed from it, and it enclosed

its seeds in inedible hard coverings. For teosinte to become a useful crop, it

had to undergo drastic changes in its reproductive biology, to increase greatly

its investment in seeds, and to lose those rock-like coverings of its seeds.

Archaeologists are still vigorously debating how many centuries or millennia

of crop development in the Americas were required for ancient corn cobs to

progress from a tiny size up to the size of a human thumb, but it seems clear

that several thousand more years were then required for them to reach modern

sizes. That contrast between the immediate virtues of wheat and barley and

the difficulties posed by teosinte may have been a significant factor in the

differing developments of New World and Eurasian human societies.

A third advantage of the Fertile Crescent flora is that it includes a high

percentage of hermaphroditic “selfers”—that is, plants that usually pollinate

themselves but that are occasionally cross-pollinated. Recall that most wild

plants either are regularly cross-pollinated hermaphrodites or consist of

separate male and female individuals that inevitably depend on another

individual for pollination. Those facts of reproductive biology vexed early

farmers, because, as soon as they had located a productive mutant plant, its

offspring would cross-breed with other plant individuals and thereby lose

their inherited advantage. As a result, most crops belong to the small

percentage of wild plants that either are hermaphrodites usually pollinating

themselves or else reproduce without sex by propagating vegetatively (for

example, by a root that genetically duplicates the parent plant). Thus, the high

percentage of hermaphroditic selfers in the Fertile Crescent flora aided early

farmers, because it meant that a high percentage of the wild flora had a

reproductive biology convenient for humans.

Selfers were also convenient for early farmers in that they occasionally

did become cross-pollinated, thereby generating new varieties among which

to select. That occasional cross-pollination occurred not only between

individuals of the same species, but also between related species to produce

interspecific hybrids. One such hybrid among Fertile Crescent selfers, bread

wheat, became the most valuable crop in the modern world.

Of the first eight significant crops to have been domesticated in the Fertile

Crescent, all were selfers. Of the three selfer cereals among them—einkorn

wheat, emmer wheat, and barley—the wheats offered the additional

advantage of a high protein content, 8–14 percent. In contrast, the most

important cereal crops of eastern Asia and of the New World—rice and corn,

respectively—had a lower protein content that posed significant nutritional

problems.



THOSE WERE SOME of the advantages that the Fertile Crescent’s flora

afforded the first farmers: it included an unusually high percentage of wild

plants suitable for domestication. However, the Mediterranean climate zone

of the Fertile Crescent extends westward through much of southern Europe

and northwestern Africa. There are also zones of similar Mediterranean

climates in four other parts of the world: California, Chile, southwestern

Australia, and South Africa (Figure 8.2). Yet those other Mediterranean zones

not only failed to rival the Fertile Crescent as early sites of food production;

they never gave rise to indigenous agriculture at all. What advantage did that

particular Mediterranean zone of western Eurasia enjoy?

It turns out that it, and especially its Fertile Crescent portion, possessed at

least five advantages over other Mediterranean zones. First, western Eurasia

has by far the world’s largest zone of Mediterranean climate. As a result, it

has a high diversity of wild plant and animal species, higher than in the

comparatively tiny Mediterranean zones of southwestern Australia and Chile.

Second, among Mediterranean zones, western Eurasia’s experiences the

greatest climatic variation from season to season and year to year. That

variation favored the evolution, among the flora, of an especially high

percentage of annual plants. The combination of these two factors—a high

diversity of species and a high percentage of annuals—means that western

Eurasia’s Mediterranean zone is the one with by far the highest diversity of

annuals.

The significance of that botanical wealth for humans is illustrated by the

geographer Mark Blumler’s studies of wild grass distributions. Among the

world’s thousands of wild grass species, Blumler tabulated the 56 with the

largest seeds, the cream of nature’s crop: the grass species with seeds at least

10 times heavier than the median grass species (see Table 8.1). Virtually all of

them are native to Mediterranean zones or other seasonally dry environments.

Furthermore, they are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Fertile Crescent or

other parts of western Eurasia’s Mediterranean zone, which offered a huge

selection to incipient farmers: about 32 of the world’s 56 prize wild grasses!

Specifically, barley and emmer wheat, the two earliest important crops of the

Fertile Crescent, rank respectively 3rd and 13th in seed size among those top

56. In contrast, the Mediterranean zone of Chile offered only two of those

species, California and southern Africa just one each, and southwestern

Australia none at all. That fact alone goes a long way toward explaining the

course of human history.

A third advantage of the Fertile Crescent’s Mediterranean zone is that it

provides a wide range of altitudes and topographies within a short distance.

Its range of elevations, from the lowest spot on Earth (the Dead Sea) to

mountains of 18,000 feet (near Teheran), ensures a corresponding variety of

environments, hence a high diversity of the wild plants serving as potential

ancestors of crops. Those mountains are in proximity to gentle lowlands with

rivers, flood plains, and deserts suitable for irrigation agriculture. In contrast,

the Mediterranean zones of southwestern Australia and, to a lesser degree, of

South Africa and western Europe offer a narrower range of altitudes, habitats,

and topographies.

TABLE 8.1 World Distribution of Large-Seeded Grass Species

Area

Number of Species

West Asia, Europe, North Africa

33

Mediterranean zone

32

England

1

East Asia

6

Sub-Saharan Africa

4

Americas

11

North America

4

Mesoamerica

5

South America

2

Northern Australia

2

Total:

56

Table 12.1 of Mark Blumler’s Ph.D. dissertation, “Seed Weight and

Environment in Mediterranean-type Grasslands in California and Israel”

(University of California, Berkeley, 1992), listed the world’s 56 heaviest-

seeded wild grass species (excluding bamboos) for which data were available.

Grain weight in those species ranged from 10 milligrams to over 40

milligrams, about 10 times greater than the median value for all of the world’s

grass species. Those 56 species make up less than 1 percent of the world’s

grass species. This table shows that these prize grasses are overwhelmingly

concentrated in the Mediterranean zone of western Eurasia.

The range of altitudes in the Fertile Crescent meant staggered harvest

seasons: plants at higher elevations produced seeds somewhat later than

plants at lower elevations. As a result, hunter-gatherers could move up a

mountainside harvesting grain seeds as they matured, instead of being

overwhelmed by a concentrated harvest season at a single altitude, where all

grains matured simultaneously. When cultivation began, it was a simple

matter for the first farmers to take the seeds of wild cereals growing on

hillsides and dependent on unpredictable rains, and to plant those seeds in the

damp valley bottoms, where they would grow reliably and be less dependent

on rain.

The Fertile Crescent’s biological diversity over small distances

contributed to a fourth advantage—its wealth in ancestors not only of

valuable crops but also of domesticated big mammals. As we shall see, there

were few or no wild mammal species suitable for domestication in the other

Mediterranean zones of California, Chile, southwestern Australia, and South

Africa. In contrast, four species of big mammals—the goat, sheep, pig, and

cow—were domesticated very early in the Fertile Crescent, possibly earlier

than any other animal except the dog anywhere else in the world. Those

species remain today four of the world’s five most important domesticated

mammals (Chapter 9). But their wild ancestors were commonest in slightly

different parts of the Fertile Crescent, with the result that the four species

were domesticated in different places: sheep possibly in the central part, goats

either in the eastern part at higher elevations (the Zagros Mountains of Iran)

or in the southwestern part (the Levant), pigs in the north-central part, and

cows in the western part, including Anatolia. Nevertheless, even though the

areas of abundance of these four wild progenitors thus differed, all four lived

in sufficiently close proximity that they were readily transferred after

domestication from one part of the Fertile Crescent to another, and the whole

region ended up with all four species.

Agriculture was launched in the Fertile Crescent by the early

domestication of eight crops, termed “founder crops” (because they founded

agriculture in the region and possibly in the world). Those eight founders

were the cereals emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley; the pulses lentil,

pea, chickpea, and bitter vetch; and the fiber crop flax. Of these eight, only

two, flax and barley, range in the wild at all widely outside the Fertile

Crescent and Anatolia. Two of the founders had very small ranges in the wild,

chickpea being confined to southeastern Turkey and emmer wheat to the

Fertile Crescent itself. Thus, agriculture could arise in the Fertile Crescent

from domestication of locally available wild plants, without having to wait for

the arrival of crops derived from wild plants domesticated elsewhere.

Conversely, two of the eight founder crops could not have been domesticated

anywhere in the world except in the Fertile Crescent, since they did not occur

wild elsewhere.

Thanks to this availability of suitable wild mammals and plants, early

peoples of the Fertile Crescent could quickly assemble a potent and balanced

biological package for intensive food production. That package comprised

three cereals, as the main carbohydrate sources; four pulses, with 20–25

percent protein, and four domestic animals, as the main protein sources,

supplemented by the generous protein content of wheat; and flax as a source

of fiber and oil (termed linseed oil: flax seeds are about 40 percent oil).

Eventually, thousands of years after the beginnings of animal domestication

and food production, the animals also began to be used for milk, wool,

plowing, and transport. Thus, the crops and animals of the Fertile Crescent’s

first farmers came to meet humanity’s basic economic needs: carbohydrate,

protein, fat, clothing, traction, and transport.

A final advantage of early food production in the Fertile Crescent is that it

may have faced less competition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle than that in

some other areas, including the western Mediterranean. Southwest Asia has

few large rivers and only a short coastline, providing relatively meager

aquatic resources (in the form of river and coastal fish and shellfish). One of

the important mammal species hunted for meat, the gazelle, originally lived in

huge herds but was overexploited by the growing human population and

reduced to low numbers. Thus, the food production package quickly became

superior to the hunter-gatherer package. Sedentary villages based on cereals

were already in existence before the rise of food production and predisposed

those hunter-gatherers to agriculture and herding. In the Fertile Crescent the

transition from hunting-gathering to food production took place relatively

fast: as late as 9000 B.C. people still had no crops and domestic animals and

were entirely dependent on wild foods, but by 6000 B.C. some societies were

almost completely dependent on crops and domestic animals.

The situation in Mesoamerica contrasts strongly: that area provided only

two domesticable animals (the turkey and the dog), whose meat yield was far

lower than that of cows, sheep, goats, and pigs; and corn, Mesoamerica’s

staple grain, was, as I’ve already explained, difficult to domesticate and

perhaps slow to develop. As a result, domestication may not have begun in

Mesoamerica until around 3500 B.C. (the date remains very uncertain); those

first developments were undertaken by people who were still nomadic hunter-

gatherers; and settled villages did not arise there until around 1500 B.C.



IN ALL THIS discussion of the Fertile Crescent’s advantages for the early rise

of food production, we have not had to invoke any supposed advantages of

Fertile Crescent peoples themselves. Indeed, I am unaware of anyone’s even

seriously suggesting any supposed distinctive biological features of the

region’s peoples that might have contributed to the potency of its food

production package. Instead, we have seen that the many distinctive features

of the Fertile Crescent’s climate, environment, wild plants, and animals

together provide a convincing explanation.

Since the food production packages arising indigenously in New Guinea

and in the eastern United States were considerably less potent, might the

explanation there lie with the peoples of those areas? Before turning to those

regions, however, we must consider two related questions arising in regard to

any area of the world where food production never developed independently

or else resulted in a less potent package. First, do hunter-gatherers and

incipient farmers really know well all locally available wild species and their

uses, or might they have overlooked potential ancestors of valuable crops?

Second, if they do know their local plants and animals, do they exploit that

knowledge to domesticate the most useful available species, or do cultural

factors keep them from doing so?

As regards the first question, an entire field of science, termed

ethnobiology, studies peoples’ knowledge of the wild plants and animals in

their environment. Such studies have concentrated especially on the world’s

few surviving hunting-gathering peoples, and on farming peoples who still

depend heavily on wild foods and natural products. The studies generally

show that such peoples are walking encyclopedias of natural history, with

individual names (in their local language) for as many as a thousand or more

plant and animal species, and with detailed knowledge of those species’

biological characteristics, distribution, and potential uses. As people become

increasingly dependent on domesticated plants and animals, this traditional

knowledge gradually loses its value and becomes lost, until one arrives at

modern supermarket shoppers who could not distinguish a wild grass from a

wild pulse.

Here’s a typical example. For the last 33 years, while conducting

biological exploration in New Guinea, I have been spending my field time

there constantly in the company of New Guineans who still use wild plants

and animals extensively. One day, when my companions of the Foré tribe and

I were starving in the jungle because another tribe was blocking our return to

our supply base, a Foré man returned to camp with a large rucksack full of

mushrooms he had found, and started to roast them. Dinner at last! But then I

had an unsettling thought: what if the mushrooms were poisonous?

I patiently explained to my Foré companions that I had read about some

mushrooms’ being poisonous, that I had heard of even expert American

mushroom collectors’ dying because of the difficulty of distinguishing safe

from dangerous mushrooms, and that although we were all hungry, it just

wasn’t worth the risk. At that point my companions got angry and told me to

shut up and listen while they explained some things to me. After I had been

quizzing them for years about names of hundreds of trees and birds, how

could I insult them by assuming they didn’t have names for different

mushrooms? Only Americans could be so stupid as to confuse poisonous

mushrooms with safe ones. They went on to lecture me about 29 types of

edible mushroom species, each species’ name in the Foré language, and where

in the forest one should look for it. This one, the tánti, grew on trees, and it

was delicious and perfectly edible.

Whenever I have taken New Guineans with me to other parts of their

island, they regularly talk about local plants and animals with other New

Guineans whom they meet, and they gather potentially useful plants and bring

them back to their home villages to try planting them. My experiences with

New Guineans are paralleled by those of ethnobiologists studying traditional

peoples elsewhere. However, all such peoples either practice at least some

food production or are the partly acculturated last remnants of the world’s

former hunter-gatherer societies. Knowledge of wild species was presumably

even more detailed before the rise of food production, when everyone on

Earth still depended entirely on wild species for food. The first farmers were

heirs to that knowledge, accumulated through tens of thousands of years of

nature observation by biologically modern humans living in intimate

dependence on the natural world. It therefore seems extremely unlikely that

wild species of potential value would have escaped the notice of the first

farmers.

The other, related question is whether ancient hunter-gatherers and

farmers similarly put their ethnobiological knowledge to good use in selecting

wild plants to gather and eventually to cultivate. One test comes from an

archaeological site at the edge of the Euphrates Valley in Syria, called Tell

Abu Hureyra. Between 10,000 and 9000 B.C. the people living there may

already have been residing year-round in villages, but they were still hunter-

gatherers; crop cultivation began only in the succeeding millennium. The

archaeologists Gordon Hillman, Susan Colledge, and David Harris retrieved

large quantities of charred plant remains from the site, probably representing

discarded garbage of wild plants gathered elsewhere and brought to the site

by its residents. The scientists analyzed over 700 samples, each containing an

average of over 500 identifiable seeds belonging to over 70 plant species. It

turned out that the villagers were collecting a prodigious variety (157

species!) of plants identified by their charred seeds, not to mention other

plants that cannot now be identified.

Were those naive villagers collecting every type of seed plant that they

found, bringing it home, poisoning themselves on most of the species, and

nourishing themselves from only a few species? No, they were not so silly.

While 157 species sounds like indiscriminate collecting, many more species

growing wild in the vicinity were absent from the charred remains. The 157

selected species fall into three categories. Many of them have seeds that are

nonpoisonous and immediately edible. Others, such as pulses and members of

the mustard family, have toxic seeds, but the toxins are easily removed,

leaving the seeds edible. A few seeds belong to species traditionally used as

sources of dyes or medicine. The many wild species not represented among

the 157 selected are ones that would have been useless or harmful to people,

including all of the most toxic weed species in the environment.

Thus, the hunter-gatherers of Tell Abu Hureyra were not wasting time and

endangering themselves by collecting wild plants indiscriminately. Instead,

they evidently knew the local wild plants as intimately as do modern New

Guineans, and they used that knowledge to select and bring home only the

most useful available seed plants. But those gathered seeds would have

constituted the material for the unconscious first steps of plant domestication.

My other example of how ancient peoples apparently used their

ethnobiological knowledge to good effect comes from the Jordan Valley in the

ninth millennium B.C., the period of the earliest crop cultivation there. The

valley’s first domesticated cereals were barley and emmer wheat, which are

still among the world’s most productive crops today. But, as at Tell Abu

Hureyra, hundreds of other seed-bearing wild plant species must have grown

in the vicinity, and a hundred or more of them would have been edible and

gathered before the rise of plant domestication. What was it about barley and

emmer wheat that caused them to be the first crops? Were those first Jordan

Valley farmers botanical ignoramuses who didn’t know what they were

doing? Or were barley and emmer wheat actually the best of the local wild

cereals that they could have selected?

Two Israeli scientists, Ofer Bar-Yosef and Mordechai Kislev, tackled this

question by examining the wild grass species still growing wild in the valley

today. Leaving aside species with small or unpalatable seeds, they picked out

23 of the most palatable and largest-seeded wild grasses. Not surprisingly,

barley and emmer wheat were on that list.

But it wasn’t true that the 21 other candidates would have been equally

useful. Among those 23, barley and emmer wheat proved to be the best by

many criteria. Emmer wheat has the biggest seeds and barley the second

biggest. In the wild, barley is one of the 4 most abundant of the 23 species,

while emmer wheat is of medium abundance. Barley has the further

advantage that its genetics and morphology permit it to evolve quickly the

useful changes in seed dispersal and germination inhibition that we discussed

in the preceding chapter. Emmer wheat, however, has compensating virtues: it

can be gathered more efficiently than barley, and it is unusual among cereals

in that its seeds do not adhere to husks. As for the other 21 species, their

drawbacks include smaller seeds, in many cases lower abundance, and in

some cases their being perennial rather than annual plants, with the

consequence that they would have evolved only slowly under domestication.

Thus, the first farmers in the Jordan Valley selected the 2 very best of the

23 best wild grass species available to them. Of course, the evolutionary

changes (following cultivation) in seed dispersal and germination inhibition

would have been unforeseen consequences of what those first farmers were

doing. But their initial selection of barley and emmer wheat rather than other

cereals to collect, bring home, and cultivate would have been conscious and

based on the easily detected criteria of seed size, palatability, and abundance.

This example from the Jordan Valley, like that from Tell Abu Hureyra,

illustrates that the first farmers used their detailed knowledge of local species

to their own benefit. Knowing far more about local plants than all but a

handful of modern professional botanists, they would hardly have failed to

cultivate any useful wild plant species that was comparably suitable for

domestication.



WE CAN NOW examine what local farmers, in two parts of the world (New

Guinea and the eastern United States) with indigenous but apparently

deficient food production systems compared to that of the Fertile Crescent,

actually did when more-productive crops arrived from elsewhere. If it turned

out that such crops did not become adopted for cultural or other reasons, we

would be left with a nagging doubt. Despite all our reasoning so far, we

would still have to suspect that the local wild flora harbored some ancestor of

a potential valuable crop that local farmers failed to exploit because of similar

cultural factors. These two examples will also demonstrate in detail a fact

critical to history: that indigenous crops from different parts of the globe were

not equally productive.

New Guinea, the largest island in the world after Greenland, lies just

north of Australia and near the equator. Because of its tropical location and

great diversity in topography and habitats, New Guinea is rich in both plant

and animal species, though less so than continental tropical areas because it is

an island. People have been living in New Guinea for at least 40,000 years—

much longer than in the Americas, and slightly longer than anatomically

modern peoples have been living in western Europe. Thus, New Guineans

have had ample opportunity to get to know their local flora and fauna. Were

they motivated to apply this knowledge to developing food production?

I mentioned already that the adoption of food production involved a

competition between the food producing and the hunting-gathering lifestyles.

Hunting-gathering is not so rewarding in New Guinea as to remove the

motivation to develop food production. In particular, modern New Guinea

hunters suffer from the crippling disadvantage of a dearth of wild game: there

is no native land animal larger than a 100-pound flightless bird (the

cassowary) and a 50-pound kangaroo. Lowland New Guineans on the coast

do obtain much fish and shellfish, and some lowlanders in the interior still

live today as hunter-gatherers, subsisting especially on wild sago palms. But

no peoples still live as hunter-gatherers in the New Guinea highlands; all

modern highlanders are instead farmers who use wild foods only to

supplement their diets. When highlanders go into the forest on hunting trips,

they take along garden-grown vegetables to feed themselves. If they have the

misfortune to run out of those provisions, even they starve to death despite

their detailed knowledge of locally available wild foods. Since the hunting-

gathering lifestyle is thus nonviable in much of modern New Guinea, it comes

as no surprise that all New Guinea highlanders and most lowlanders today are

settled farmers with sophisticated systems of food production. Extensive,

formerly forested areas of the highlands were converted by traditional New

Guinea farmers to fenced, drained, intensively managed field systems

supporting dense human populations.

Archaeological evidence shows that the origins of New Guinea

agriculture are ancient, dating to around 7000 B.C. At those early dates all the

landmasses surrounding New Guinea were still occupied exclusively by

hunter-gatherers, so this ancient agriculture must have developed

independently in New Guinea. While unequivocal remains of crops have not

been recovered from those early fields, they are likely to have included some

of the same crops that were being grown in New Guinea at the time of

European colonization and that are now known to have been domesticated

locally from wild New Guinea ancestors. Foremost among these local

domesticates is the modern world’s leading crop, sugarcane, of which the

annual tonnage produced today nearly equals that of the number two and

number three crops combined (wheat and corn). Other crops of undoubted

New Guinea origin are a group of bananas known as Australimusa bananas,

the nut tree Canarium indicum, and giant swamp taro, as well as various

edible grass stems, roots, and green vegetables. The breadfruit tree and the

root crops yams and (ordinary) taro may also be New Guinean domesticates,

although that conclusion remains uncertain because their wild ancestors are

not confined to New Guinea but are distributed from New Guinea to

Southeast Asia. At present we lack evidence that could resolve the question

whether they were domesticated in Southeast Asia, as traditionally assumed,

or independently or even only in New Guinea.

However, it turns out that New Guinea’s biota suffered from three severe

limitations. First, no cereal crops were domesticated in New Guinea, whereas

several vitally important ones were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent,

Sahel, and China. In its emphasis instead on root and tree crops, New Guinea

carries to an extreme a trend seen in agricultural systems in other wet tropical

areas (the Amazon, tropical West Africa, and Southeast Asia), whose farmers

also emphasized root crops but did manage to come up with at least two

cereals (Asian rice and a giant-seeded Asian cereal called Job’s tears). A

likely reason for the failure of cereal agriculture to arise in New Guinea is a

glaring deficiency of the wild starting material: not one of the world’s 56

largest-seeded wild grasses is native there.

Second, the New Guinea fauna included no domesticable large mammal

species whatsoever. The sole domestic animals of modern New Guinea, the

pig and chicken and dog, arrived from Southeast Asia by way of Indonesia

within the last several thousand years. As a result, while New Guinea

lowlanders obtain protein from the fish they catch, New Guinea highland

farmer populations suffer from severe protein limitation, because the staple

crops that provide most of their calories (taro and sweet potato) are low in

protein. Taro, for example, consists of barely 1 percent protein, much worse

than even white rice, and far below the levels of the Fertile Crescent’s wheats

and pulses (8–14 percent and 20–25 percent protein, respectively).

Children in the New Guinea highlands have the swollen bellies

characteristic of a high-bulk but protein-deficient diet. New Guineans old and

young routinely eat mice, spiders, frogs, and other small animals that peoples

elsewhere with access to large domestic mammals or large wild game species

do not bother to eat. Protein starvation is probably also the ultimate reason

why cannibalism was widespread in traditional New Guinea highland

societies.

Finally, in former times New Guinea’s available root crops were limiting

for calories as well as for protein, because they do not grow well at the high

elevations where many New Guineans live today. Many centuries ago,

however, a new root crop of ultimately South American origin, the sweet

potato, reached New Guinea, probably by way of the Philippines, where it had

been introduced by Spaniards. Compared with taro and other presumably

older New Guinea root crops, the sweet potato can be grown up to higher

elevations, grows more quickly, and gives higher yields per acre cultivated

and per hour of labor. The result of the sweet potato’s arrival was a highland

population explosion. That is, even though people had been farming in the

New Guinea highlands for many thousands of years before sweet potatoes

were introduced, the available local crops had limited them in the population

densities they could attain, and in the elevations they could occupy.

In short, New Guinea offers an instructive contrast to the Fertile Crescent.

Like hunter-gatherers of the Fertile Crescent, those of New Guinea did evolve

food production independently. However, their indigenous food production

was restricted by the local absence of domesticable cereals, pulses, and

animals, by the resulting protein deficiency in the highlands, and by

limitations of the locally available root crops at high elevations. Yet New

Guineans themselves know as much about the wild plants and animals

available to them as any peoples on Earth today. They can be expected to

have discovered and tested any wild plant species worth domesticating. They

are perfectly capable of recognizing useful additions to their crop larder, as is

shown by their exuberant adoption of the sweet potato when it arrived. That

same lesson is being driven home again in New Guinea today, as those tribes

with preferential access to introduced new crops and livestock (or with the

cultural willingness to adopt them) expand at the expense of tribes without

that access or willingness. Thus, the limits on indigenous food production in

New Guinea had nothing to do with New Guinea peoples, and everything

with the New Guinea biota and environment.



OUR OTHER EXAMPLE of indigenous agriculture apparently constrained by

the local flora comes from the eastern United States. Like New Guinea, that

area supported independent domestication of local wild plants. However,

early developments are much better understood for the eastern United States

than for New Guinea: the crops grown by the earliest farmers have been

identified, and the dates and crop sequences of local domestication are

known. Well before other crops began to arrive from elsewhere, Native

Americans settled in eastern U.S. river valleys and developed intensified food

production based on local crops. Hence they were in a position to take

advantage of the most promising wild plants. Which ones did they actually

cultivate, and how did the resulting local crop package compare with the

Fertile Crescent’s founder package?

It turns out that the eastern U.S. founder crops were four plants

domesticated in the period 2500–1500 B.C., a full 6,000 years after wheat and

barley domestication in the Fertile Crescent. A local species of squash

provided small containers, as well as yielding edible seeds. The remaining

three founders were grown solely for their edible seeds (sunflower, a daisy

relative called sumpweed, and a distant relative of spinach called goosefoot).

But four seed crops and a container fall far short of a complete food

production package. For 2,000 years those founder crops served only as minor

dietary supplements while eastern U.S. Native Americans continued to

depend mainly on wild foods, especially wild mammals and waterbirds, fish,

shellfish, and nuts. Farming did not supply a major part of their diet until the

period 500–200 B.C., after three more seed crops (knotweed, maygrass, and

little barley) had been brought into cultivation.

A modern nutritionist would have applauded those seven eastern

U.S.crops. All of them were high in protein—17–32 percent, compared with

8–14 percent for wheat, 9 percent for corn, and even lower for barley and

white rice. Two of them, sunflower and sumpweed, were also high in oil (45–

47 percent). Sumpweed, in particular, would have been a nutritionist’s

ultimate dream, being 32 percent protein and 45 percent oil. Why aren’t we

still eating those dream foods today?

Alas, despite their nutritional advantage, most of these eastern U.S. crops

suffered from serious disadvantages in other respects. Goosefoot, knotweed,

little barley, and maygrass had tiny seeds, with volumes only one-tenth that of

wheat and barley seeds. Worse yet, sumpweed is a wind-pollinated relative of

ragweed, the notorious hayfever-causing plant. Like ragweed’s, sumpweed’s

pollen can cause hayfever where the plant occurs in abundant stands. If that

doesn’t kill your enthusiasm for becoming a sumpweed farmer, be aware that

it has a strong odor objectionable to some people and that handling it can

cause skin irritation.

Mexican crops finally began to reach the eastern United States by trade

routes after A.D. 1. Corn arrived around A.D. 200, but its role remained very

minor for many centuries. Finally, around A.D. 900 a new variety of corn

adapted to North America’s short summers appeared, and the arrival of beans

around A.D. 1100 completed Mexico’s crop trinity of corn, beans, and squash.

Eastern U.S. farming became greatly intensified, and densely populated

chiefdoms developed along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. In some

areas the original local domesticates were retained alongside the far more

productive Mexican trinity, but in other areas the trinity replaced them

completely. No European ever saw sumpweed growing in Indian gardens,

because it had disappeared as a crop by the time that European colonization of

the Americas began, in A.D. 1492. Among all those ancient eastern U.S. crop

specialties, only two (sunflower and eastern squash) have been able to

compete with crops domesticated elsewhere and are still grown today. Our

modern acorn squashes and summer squashes are derived from those

American squashes domesticated thousands of years ago.

Thus, like the case of New Guinea, that of the eastern United States is

instructive. A priori, the region might have seemed a likely one to support

productive indigenous agriculture. It has rich soils, reliable moderate rainfall,

and a suitable climate that sustains bountiful agriculture today. The flora is a

species-rich one that includes productive wild nut trees (oak and hickory).

Local Native Americans did develop an agriculture based on local

domesticates, did thereby support themselves in villages, and even developed

a cultural florescence (the Hopewell culture centered on what is today Ohio)

around 200 B.C.–A.D. 400. They were thus in a position for several thousand

years to exploit as potential crops the most useful available wild plants,

whatever those should be.

Nevertheless, the Hopewell florescence sprang up nearly 9,000 years after

the rise of village living in the Fertile Crescent. Still, it was not until after A.D.

900 that the assembly of the Mexican crop trinity triggered a larger population

boom, the so-called Mississippian florescence, which produced the largest

towns and most complex societies achieved by Native Americans north of

Mexico. But that boom came much too late to prepare Native Americans of

the United States for the impending disaster of European colonization. Food

production based on eastern U.S. crops alone had been insufficient to trigger

the boom, for reasons that are easy to specify. The area’s available wild

cereals were not nearly as useful as wheat and barley. Native Americans of

the eastern United States domesticated no locally available wild pulse, no

fiber crop, no fruit or nut tree. They had no domesticated animals at all except

for dogs, which were probably domesticated elsewhere in the Americas.

It’s also clear that Native Americans of the eastern United States were not

overlooking potential major crops among the wild species around them. Even

20th-century plant breeders, armed with all the power of modern science,

have had little success in exploiting North American wild plants. Yes, we

have now domesticated pecans as a nut tree and blueberries as a fruit, and we

have improved some Eurasian fruit crops (apples, plums, grapes, raspberries,

blackberries, strawberries) by hybridizing them with North American wild

relatives. However, those few successes have changed our food habits far less

than Mexican corn changed food habits of Native Americans in the eastern

United States after A.D. 900.

The farmers most knowledgeable about eastern U.S. domesticates, the

region’s Native Americans themselves, passed judgment on them by

discarding or deemphasizing them when the Mexican trinity arrived. That

outcome also demonstrates that Native Americans were not constrained by

cultural conservativism and were quite able to appreciate a good plant when

they saw it. Thus, as in New Guinea, the limitations on indigenous food

production in the eastern United States were not due to Native American

peoples themselves, but instead depended entirely on the American biota and

environment.



WE HAVE NOW considered examples of three contrasting areas, in all of

which food production did arise indigenously. The Fertile Crescent lies at one

extreme; New Guinea and the eastern United States lie at the opposite

extreme. Peoples of the Fertile Crescent domesticated local plants much

earlier. They domesticated far more species, domesticated far more productive

or valuable species, domesticated a much wider range of types of crops,

developed intensified food production and dense human populations more

rapidly, and as a result entered the modern world with more advanced

technology, more complex political organization, and more epidemic diseases

with which to infect other peoples.

We found that these differences between the Fertile Crescent, New

Guinea, and the eastern United States followed straightforwardly from the

differing suites of wild plant and animal species available for domestication,

not from limitations of the peoples themselves. When more-productive crops

arrived from elsewhere (the sweet potato in New Guinea, the Mexican trinity

in the eastern United States), local peoples promptly took advantage of them,

intensified food production, and increased greatly in population. By

extension, I suggest that areas of the globe where food production never

developed indigenously at all—California, Australia, the Argentine pampas,

western Europe, and so on—may have offered even less in the way of wild

plants and animals suitable for domestication than did New Guinea and the

eastern United States, where at least a limited food production did arise.

Indeed, Mark Blumler’s worldwide survey of locally available large-seeded

wild grasses mentioned in this chapter, and the worldwide survey of locally

available big mammals to be presented in the next chapter, agree in showing

that all those areas of nonexistent or limited indigenous food production were

deficient in wild ancestors of domesticable livestock and cereals.

Recall that the rise of food production involved a competition between

food production and hunting-gathering. One might therefore wonder whether

all these cases of slow or nonexistent rise of food production might instead

have been due to an exceptional local richness of resources to be hunted and

gathered, rather than to an exceptional availability of species suitable for

domestication. In fact, most areas where indigenous food production arose

late or not at all offered exceptionally poor rather than rich resources to

hunter-gatherers, because most large mammals of Australia and the Americas

(but not of Eurasia and Africa) had become extinct toward the end of the Ice

Ages. Food production would have faced even less competition from hunting-

gathering in these areas than it did in the Fertile Crescent. Hence these local

failures or limitations of food production cannot be attributed to competition

from bountiful hunting opportunities.



LEST THESE CONCLUSIONS be misinterpreted, we should end this chapter with

caveats against exaggerating two points: peoples’ readiness to accept better

crops and livestock, and the constraints imposed by locally available wild

plants and animals. Neither that readiness nor those constraints are absolute.

We’ve already discussed many examples of local peoples’ adopting more-

productive crops domesticated elsewhere. Our broad conclusion is that people

can recognize useful plants, would therefore have probably recognized better

local ones suitable for domestication if any had existed, and aren’t barred

from doing so by cultural conservatism or taboos. But a big qualifier must be

added to this sentence: “in the long run and over large areas.” Anyone

knowledgeable about human societies can cite innumerable examples of

societies that refused crops, livestock, and other innovations that would have

been productive.

Naturally, I don’t subscribe to the obvious fallacy that every society

promptly adopts every innovation that would be useful for it. The fact is that,

over entire continents and other large areas containing hundreds of competing

societies, some societies will be more open to innovation, and some will be

more resistant. The ones that do adopt new crops, livestock, or technology

may thereby be enabled to nourish themselves better and to outbreed,

displace, conquer, or kill off societies resisting innovation. That’s an

important phenomenon whose manifestations extend far beyond the adoption

of new crops, and to which we shall return in Chapter 13.

Our other caveat concerns the limits that locally available wild species set

on the rise of food production. I’m not saying that food production could

never, in any amount of time, have arisen in all those areas where it actually

had not arisen indigenously by modern times. Europeans today who note that

Aboriginal Australians entered the modern world as Stone Age hunter-

gatherers often assume that the Aborigines would have gone on that way

forever.

To appreciate the fallacy, consider a visitor from Outer Space who

dropped in on Earth in the year 3000 B.C. The spaceling would have observed

no food production in the eastern United States, because food production did

not begin there until around 2500 B.C. Had the visitor of 3000 B.C. drawn the

conclusion that limitations posed by the wild plants and animals of the eastern

United States foreclosed food production there forever, events of the

subsequent millennium would have proved the visitor wrong. Even a visitor

to the Fertile Crescent in 9500 B.C. rather than in 8500 B.C. could have been

misled into supposing the Fertile Crescent permanently unsuitable for food

production.

That is, my thesis is not that California, Australia, western Europe, and all

the other areas without indigenous food production were devoid of

domesticable species and would have continued to be occupied just by hunter-

gatherers indefinitely if foreign domesticates or peoples had not arrived.

Instead, I note that regions differed greatly in their available pool of

domesticable species, that they varied correspondingly in the date when local

food production arose, and that food production had not yet arisen

independently in some fertile regions as of modern times.

Australia, supposedly the most “backward” continent, illustrates this point

well. In southeastern Australia, the well-watered part of the continent most

suitable for food production, Aboriginal societies in recent millennia appear

to have been evolving on a trajectory that would eventually have led to

indigenous food production. They had already built winter villages. They had

begun to manage their environment intensively for fish production by

building fish traps, nets, and even long canals. Had Europeans not colonized

Australia in 1788 and aborted that independent trajectory, Aboriginal

Australians might within a few thousand years have become food producers,

tending ponds of domesticated fish and growing domesticated Australian

yams and small-seeded grasses.

In that light, we can now answer the question implicit in the title of this

chapter. I asked whether the reason for the failure of North American Indians

to domesticate North American apples lay with the Indians or with the apples.

I’m not thereby implying that apples could never have been domesticated

in North America. Recall that apples were historically among the most

difficult fruit trees to cultivate and among the last major ones to be

domesticated in Eurasia, because their propagation requires the difficult

technique of grafting. There is no evidence for large-scale cultivation of

apples even in the Fertile Crescent and in Europe until classical Greek times,

8,000 years after the rise of Eurasian food production began. If Native

Americans had proceeded at the same rate in inventing or acquiring grafting

techniques, they too would eventually have domesticated apples—around the

year A.D. 5500, some 8,000 years after the rise of domestication in North

America around 2500 B.C.

Thus, the reason for the failure of Native Americans to domesticate North

American apples by the time Europeans arrived lay neither with the people

nor with the apples. As far as biological prerequisites for apple domestication

were concerned, North American Indian farmers were like Eurasian farmers,

and North American wild apples were like Eurasian wild apples. Indeed,

some of the supermarket apple varieties now being munched by readers of

this chapter have been developed recently by crossing Eurasian apples with

wild North American apples. Instead, the reason Native Americans did not

domesticate apples lay with the entire suite of wild plant and animal species

available to Native Americans. That suite’s modest potential for

domestication was responsible for the late start of food production in North

America.





CHAPTER 9

ZEBRAS, UNHAPPY MARRIAGES, AND THE ANNA KARENINA

PRINCIPLE

DOMESTICABLE ANIMALS ARE ALL ALIKE; EVERY UNDOMESTICABLE animal is

undomesticable in its own way.

If you think you’ve already read something like that before, you’re right.

Just make a few changes, and you have the famous first sentence of Tolstoy’s

great novel Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy

family is unhappy in its own way.” By that sentence, Tolstoy meant that, in

order to be happy, a marriage must succeed in many different respects: sexual

attraction, agreement about money, child discipline, religion, in-laws, and

other vital issues. Failure in any one of those essential respects can doom a

marriage even if it has all the other ingredients needed for happiness.

This principle can be extended to understanding much else about life

besides marriage. We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success.

For most important things, though, success actually requires avoiding many

separate possible causes of failure. The Anna Karenina principle explains a

feature of animal domestication that had heavy consequences for human

history—namely, that so many seemingly suitable big wild mammal species,

such as zebras and peccaries, have never been domesticated and that the

successful domesticates were almost exclusively Eurasian. Having in the

preceding two chapters discussed why so many wild plant species seemingly

suitable for domestication were never domesticated, we shall now tackle the

corresponding question for domestic mammals. Our former question about

apples or Indians becomes a question of zebras or Africans.



IN CHAPTER 4 we reminded ourselves of the many ways in which big

domestic mammals were crucial to those human societies possessing them.

Most notably, they provided meat, milk products, fertilizer, land transport,

leather, military assault vehicles, plow traction, and wool, as well as germs

that killed previously unexposed peoples.

In addition, of course, small domestic mammals and domestic birds and

insects have also been useful to humans. Many birds were domesticated for

meat, eggs, and feathers: the chicken in China, various duck and goose

species in parts of Eurasia, turkeys in Mesoamerica, guinea fowl in Africa,

and the Muscovy duck in South America. Wolves were domesticated in

Eurasia and North America to become our dogs used as hunting companions,

sentinels, pets, and, in some societies, food. Rodents and other small

mammals domesticated for food included the rabbit in Europe, the guinea pig

in the Andes, a giant rat in West Africa, and possibly a rodent called the hutia

on Caribbean islands. Ferrets were domesticated in Europe to hunt rabbits,

and cats were domesticated in North Africa and Southwest Asia to hunt

rodent pests. Small mammals domesticated as recently as the 19th and 20th

centuries include foxes, mink, and chinchillas grown for fur and hamsters

kept as pets. Even some insects have been domesticated, notably Eurasia’s

honeybee and China’s silkworm moth, kept for honey and silk, respectively.

Many of these small animals thus yielded food, clothing, or warmth. But

none of them pulled plows or wagons, none bore riders, none except dogs

pulled sleds or became war machines, and none of them have been as

important for food as have big domestic mammals. Hence the rest of this

chapter will confine itself to the big mammals.



THE IMPORTANCE OF domesticated mammals rests on surprisingly few species

of big terrestrial herbivores. (Only terrestrial mammals have been

domesticated, for the obvious reason that aquatic mammals were difficult to

maintain and breed until the development of modern Sea World facilities.) If

one defines “big” as “weighing over 100 pounds,” then only 14 such species

were domesticated before the twentieth century (see Table 9.1 for a list). Of

those Ancient Fourteen, 9 (the “Minor Nine” of Table 9.1) became important

livestock for people in only limited areas of the globe: the Arabian camel,

Bactrian camel, llama / alpaca (distinct breeds of the same ancestral species),

donkey, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, banteng, and gaur. Only 5 species

became widespread and important around the world. Those Major Five of

mammal domestication are the cow, sheep, goat, pig, and horse.

This list may at first seem to have glaring omissions. What about the

African elephants with which Hannibal’s armies crossed the Alps? What

about the Asian elephants still used as work animals in Southeast Asia today?

No, I didn’t forget them, and that raises an important distinction. Elephants

have been tamed, but never domesticated. Hannibal’s elephants were, and

Asian work elephants are, just wild elephants that were captured and tamed;

they were not bred in captivity. In contrast, a domesticated animal is defined

as an animal selectively bred in captivity and thereby modified from its wild

ancestors, for use by humans who control the animal’s breeding and food

supply.

That is, domestication involves wild animals’ being transformed into

something more useful to humans. Truly domesticated animals differ in

various ways from their wild ancestors. These differences result from two

processes: human selection of those individual animals more useful to

humans than other individuals of the same species, and automatic

evolutionary responses of animals to the altered forces of natural selection

operating in human environments as compared with wild environments. We

already saw in Chapter 7 that all of these statements also apply to plant

domestication.

The ways in which domesticated animals have diverged from their wild

ancestors include the following. Many species changed in size: cows, pigs,

and sheep became smaller under domestication, while guinea pigs became

larger. Sheep and alpacas were selected for retention of wool and reduction or

loss of hair, while cows have been selected for high milk yields. Several

species of domestic animals have smaller brains and less developed sense

organs than their wild ancestors, because they no longer need the bigger

brains and more developed sense organs on which their ancestors depended to

escape from wild predators.

TABLE 9.1 The Ancient Fourteen Species of Big Herbivorous Domestic

Mammals

The Major Five

1. Sheep. Wild ancestor: the Asiatic mouflon sheep of West and

Central Asia. Now worldwide.

2. Goat. Wild ancestor: the bezoar goat of West Asia. Now

worldwide.

3. Cow, alias ox or cattle. Wild ancestor: the now extinct aurochs,

formerly distributed over Eurasia and North Africa. Now worldwide.

4. Pig. Wild ancestor: the wild boar, distributed over Eurasia and

North Africa. Now worldwide. Actually an omnivore (regularly eats

both animal and plant food), whereas the other 13 of the Ancient

Fourteen are more strictly herbivores.

5. Horse. Wild ancestor: now extinct wild horses of southern

Russia; a different subspecies of the same species survived in the wild

to modern times as Przewalski’s horse of Mongolia. Now worldwide.

The Minor Nine

6. Arabian (one-humped) camel. Wild ancestor: now extinct,

formerly lived in Arabia and adjacent areas. Still largely restricted to

Arabia and northern Africa, though feral in Australia.

7. Bactrian (two-humped) camel: Wild ancestor: now extinct,

lived in Central Asia. Still largely confined to Central Asia.

8. Llama and alpaca. These appear to be well-differentiated

breeds of the same species, rather than different species. Wild

ancestor: the guanaco of the Andes. Still largely confined to the

Andes, although some are bred as pack animals in North America.

9. Donkey. Wild ancestor: the African wild ass of North Africa and

formerly perhaps the adjacent area of Southwest Asia. Originally

confined as a domestic animal to North Africa and western Eurasia,

more recently also used elsewhere.

10. Reindeer. Wild ancestor: the reindeer of northern Eurasia. Still

largely confined as a domestic animal to that area, though now some

are also used in Alaska.

11. Water buffalo. Wild ancestor lives in Southeast Asia. Still used

as a domestic animal mainly in that area, though many are also used

in Brazil and others have escaped to the wild in Australia and other

places.

12. Yak. Wild ancestor: the wild yak of the Himalayas and Tibetan

plateau. Still confined as a domestic animal to that area.

13. Bali cattle. Wild ancestor: the banteng (a relative of the

aurochs) of Southeast Asia. Still confined as a domestic animal to that

area.

14. Mithan. Wild ancestor: the gaur (another relative of the

aurochs) of India and Burma. Still confined as a domestic animal to

that area.

To appreciate the changes that developed under domestication, just

compare wolves, the wild ancestors of domestic dogs, with the many breeds

of dogs. Some dogs are much bigger than wolves (Great Danes), while others

are much smaller (Pekingese). Some are slimmer and built for racing

(greyhounds), while others are short-legged and useless for racing

(dachshunds). They vary enormously in hair form and color, and some are

even hairless. Polynesians and Aztecs developed dog breeds specifically

raised for food. Comparing a dachshund with a wolf, you wouldn’t even

suspect that the former had been derived from the latter if you didn’t already

know it.



THE WILD ANCESTORS of the Ancient Fourteen were spread unevenly over the

globe. South America had only one such ancestor, which gave rise to the

llama and alpaca. North America, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa had none

at all. The lack of domestic mammals indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa is

especially astonishing, since a main reason why tourists visit Africa today is

to see its abundant and diverse wild mammals. In contrast, the wild ancestors

of 13 of the Ancient Fourteen (including all of the Major Five) were confined

to Eurasia. (As elsewhere in this book, my use of the term “Eurasia” includes

in several cases North Africa, which biogeographically and in many aspects

of human culture is more closely related to Eurasia than to sub-Saharan

Africa.)

Of course, not all 13 of these wild ancestral species occurred together

throughout Eurasia. No area had all 13, and some of the wild ancestors were

quite local, such as the yak, confined in the wild to Tibet and adjacent

highland areas. However, many parts of Eurasia did have quite a few of these

13 species living together in the same area: for example, seven of the wild

ancestors occurred in Southwest Asia.

This very unequal distribution of wild ancestral species among the

continents became an important reason why Eurasians, rather than peoples of

other continents, were the ones to end up with guns, germs, and steel. How

can we explain the concentration of the Ancient Fourteen in Eurasia?

TABLE 9.2 Mammalian Candidates for Domestication

Continent

Eurasia Sub-Saharan Africa The Americas Australia

Candidates

72

51

24

1

Domesticated species

13

0

1

0

Percentage of Candidates domesticated

18%

0%

4%

0%

A “candidate” is defined as a species of terrestrial, herbivorous or omnivorous, wild mammal

weighing on the average over 100 pounds.

One reason is simple. Eurasia has the largest number of big terrestrial

wild mammal species, whether or not ancestral to a domesticated species.

Let’s define a “candidate for domestication” as any terrestrial herbivorous or

omnivorous mammal species (one not predominantly a carnivore) weighing

on the average over 100 pounds (45 kilograms). Table 9.2 shows that Eurasia

has the most candidates, 72 species, just as it has the most species in many

other plant and animal groups. That’s because Eurasia is the world’s largest

landmass, and it’s also very diverse ecologically, with habitats ranging from

extensive tropical rain forests, through temperate forests, deserts, and

marshes, to equally extensive tundras. Sub-Saharan Africa has fewer

candidates, 51 species, just as it has fewer species in most other plant and

animal groups—because it’s smaller and ecologically less diverse than

Eurasia. Africa has smaller areas of tropical rain forest than does Southeast

Asia, and no temperate habitats at all beyond latitude 37 degrees. As I

discussed in Chapter 1, the Americas may formerly have had almost as many

candidates as Africa, but most of America’s big wild mammals (including its

horses, most of its camels, and other species likely to have been domesticated

had they survived) became extinct about 13,000 years ago. Australia, the

smallest and most isolated continent, has always had far fewer species of big

wild mammals than has Eurasia, Africa, or the Americas. Just as in the

Americas, in Australia all of those few candidates except the red kangaroo

became extinct around the time of the continent’s first colonization by

humans.

Thus, part of the explanation for Eurasia’s having been the main site of

big mammal domestication is that it was the continent with the most

candidate species of wild mammals to start out with, and lost the fewest

candidates to extinction in the last 40,000 years. But the numbers in Table 9.2

warn us that that’s not the whole explanation. It’s also true that the percentage

of candidates actually domesticated is highest in Eurasia (18 percent), and is

especially low in sub-Saharan Africa (no species domesticated out of 51

candidates!). Particularly surprising is the large number of species of African

and American mammals that were never domesticated, despite their having

Eurasian close relatives or counterparts that were domesticated. Why were

Eurasia’s horses domesticated, but not Africa’s zebras? Why Eurasia’s pigs,

but not American peccaries or Africa’s three species of true wild pigs? Why

Eurasia’s five species of wild cattle (aurochs, water buffalo, yak, gaur,

banteng), but not the African buffalo or American bison? Why the Asian

mouflon sheep (ancestor of our domestic sheep), but not North American

bighorn sheep?



DID ALL THOSE peoples of Africa, the Americas, and Australia, despite their

enormous diversity, nonetheless share some cultural obstacles to

domestication not shared with Eurasian peoples? For example, did Africa’s

abundance of big wild mammals, available to kill by hunting, make it

superfluous for Africans to go to the trouble of tending domestic stock?

The answer to that question is unequivocal: No! The interpretation is

refuted by five types of evidence: rapid acceptance of Eurasian domesticates

by non-Eurasian peoples, the universal human penchant for keeping pets, the

rapid domestication of the Ancient Fourteen, the repeated independent

domestications of some of them, and the limited successes of modern efforts

at further domestications.

First, when Eurasia’s Major Five domestic mammals reached sub-Saharan

Africa, they were adopted by the most diverse African peoples wherever

conditions permitted. Those African herders thereby achieved a huge

advantage over African hunter-gatherers and quickly displaced them. In

particular, Bantu farmers who acquired cows and sheep spread out of their

homeland in West Africa and within a short time overran the former hunter-

gatherers in most of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. Even without acquiring

crops, Khoisan peoples who acquired cows and sheep around 2,000 years ago

displaced Khoisan hunter-gatherers over much of southern Africa. The arrival

of the domestic horse in West Africa transformed warfare there and turned the

area into a set of kingdoms dependent on cavalry. The only factor that

prevented horses from spreading beyond West Africa was trypanosome

diseases borne by tsetse flies.

The same pattern repeated itself elsewhere in the world, whenever peoples

lacking native wild mammal species suitable for domestication finally had the

opportunity to acquire Eurasian domestic animals. European horses were

eagerly adopted by Native Americans in both North and South America,

within a generation of the escape of horses from European settlements. For

example, by the 19th century North America’s Great Plains Indians were

famous as expert horse-mounted warriors and bison hunters, but they did not

even obtain horses until the late 17th century. Sheep acquired from Spaniards

similarly transformed Navajo Indian society and led to, among other things,

the weaving of the beautiful woolen blankets for which the Navajo have

become renowned. Within a decade of Tasmania’s settlement by Europeans

with dogs, Aboriginal Tasmanians, who had never before seen dogs, began to

breed them in large numbers for use in hunting. Thus, among the thousands of

culturally diverse native peoples of Australia, the Americas, and Africa, no

universal cultural taboo stood in the way of animal domestication.

Surely, if some local wild mammal species of those continents had been

domesticable, some Australian, American, and African peoples would have

domesticated them and gained great advantage from them, just as they

benefited from the Eurasian domestic animals that they immediately adopted

when those became available. For instance, consider all the peoples of sub-

Saharan Africa living within the range of wild zebras and buffalo. Why

wasn’t there at least one African hunter-gatherer tribe that domesticated those

zebras and buffalo and that thereby gained sway over other Africans, without

having to await the arrival of Eurasian horses and cattle? All these facts

indicate that the explanation for the lack of native mammal domestication

outside Eurasia lay with the locally available wild mammals themselves, not

with the local peoples.



A SECOND TYPE of evidence for the same interpretation comes from pets.

Keeping wild animals as pets, and taming them, constitute an initial stage in

domestication. But pets have been reported from virtually all traditional

human societies on all continents. The variety of wild animals thus tamed is

far greater than the variety eventually domesticated, and includes some

species that we would scarcely have imagined as pets.

For example, in the New Guinea villages where I work, I often see people

with pet kangaroos, possums, and birds ranging from flycatchers to ospreys.

Most of these captives are eventually eaten, though some are kept just as pets.

New Guineans even regularly capture chicks of wild cassowaries (an ostrich-

like large, flightless bird) and raise them to eat as a delicacy—even though

captive adult cassowaries are extremely dangerous and now and then

disembowel village people. Some Asian peoples tame eagles for use in

hunting, although those powerful pets have also been known on occasion to

kill their human handlers. Ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, and modern

Indians, tamed cheetahs for use in hunting. Paintings made by ancient

Egyptians show that they further tamed (not surprisingly) hoofed mammals

such as gazelles and hartebeests, birds such as cranes, more surprisingly

giraffes (which can be dangerous), and most astonishingly hyenas. African

elephants were tamed in Roman times despite the obvious danger, and Asian

elephants are still being tamed today. Perhaps the most unlikely pet is the

European brown bear (the same species as the American grizzly bear), which

the Ainu people of Japan regularly captured as young animals, tamed, and

reared to kill and eat in a ritual ceremony.

Thus, many wild animal species reached the first stage in the sequence of

animal-human relations leading to domestication, but only a few emerged at

the other end of that sequence as domestic animals. Over a century ago, the

British scientist Francis Galton summarized this discrepancy succinctly: “It

would appear that every wild animal has had its chance of being

domesticated, that [a] few…were domesticated long ago, but that the large

remainder, who failed sometimes in only one small particular, are destined to

perpetual wildness.”



DATES OF DOMESTICATION provide a third line of evidence confirming

Galton’s view that early herding peoples quickly domesticated all big

mammal species suitable for being domesticated. All species for whose dates

of domestication we have archaeological evidence were domesticated

between about 8000 and 2500 B.C.—that is, within the first few thousand

years of the sedentary farming-herding societies that arose after the end of the

last Ice Age. As summarized in Table 9.3, the era of big mammal

domestication began with the sheep, goat, and pig and ended with camels.

Since 2500 B.C. there have been no significant additions.

It’s true, of course, that some small mammals were first domesticated

long after 2500 B.C. For example, rabbits were not domesticated for food until

the Middle Ages, mice and rats for laboratory research not until the 20th

century, and hamsters for pets not until the 1930s. The continuing

development of domesticated small mammals isn’t surprising, because there

are literally thousands of wild species as candidates, and because they were of

too little value to traditional societies to warrant the effort of raising them. But

big mammal domestication virtually ended 4,500 years ago. By then, all of

the world’s 148 candidate big species must have been tested innumerable

times, with the result that only a few passed the test and no other suitable ones

remained.



STILL A FOURTH line of evidence that some mammal species are much more

suitable than others is provided by the repeated independent domestications of

the same species. Genetic evidence based on the portions of our genetic

material known as mitochondrial DNA recently confirmed, as had long been

suspected, that humped cattle of India and humpless European cattle were

derived from two separate populations of wild ancestral cattle that had

diverged hundreds of thousands of years ago. That is, Indian peoples

domesticated the local Indian subspecies of wild aurochs, Southwest Asians

independently domesticated their own Southwest Asian subspecies of

aurochs, and North Africans may have independently domesticated the North

African aurochs.

Similarly, wolves were independently domesticated to become dogs in the

Americas and probably in several different parts of Eurasia, including China

and Southwest Asia. Modern pigs are derived from independent sequences of

domestication in China, western Eurasia, and possibly other areas as well.

These examples reemphasize that the same few suitable wild species attracted

the attention of many different human societies.



THE FAILURES OF modern efforts provide a final type of evidence that past

failures to domesticate the large residue of wild candidate species arose from

shortcomings of those species, rather than from shortcomings of ancient

humans. Europeans today are heirs to one of the longest traditions of animal

domestication on Earth—that which began in Southwest Asia around 10,000

years ago. Since the fifteenth century, Europeans have spread around the

globe and encountered wild mammal species not found in Europe. European

settlers, such as those that I encounter in New Guinea with pet kangaroos and

possums, have tamed or made pets of many local mammals, just as have

indigenous peoples. European herders and farmers emigrating to other

continents have also made serious efforts to domesticate some local species.

TABLE 9.3 Approximate Dates of First Attested Evidence for

Domestication of Large Mammal Species

Species

Date (B.C.)

Place

Dog

10,000

Southwest Asia, China, North America

Sheep

8,000

Southwest Asia

Goat

8,000

Southwest Asia

Pig

8,000

China, Southwest Asia

Cow

6,000

Southwest Asia, India, (?)North Africa

Horse

4,000

Ukraine

Donkey

4,000

Egypt

Water buffalo

4,000

China?

Llama / alpaca

3,500

Andes

Bactrian camel

2,500

Central Asia

Arabian camel

2,500

Arabia

For the other four domesticated large mammal species—reindeer, yak, gaur, and banteng—there

is as yet little evidence concerning the date of domestication. Dates and places shown are merely the earliest ones attested to date; domestication may actually have begun earlier and at a different location.

In the 19th and 20th centuries at least six large mammals—the eland, elk,

moose, musk ox, zebra, and American bison—have been the subjects of

especially well-organized projects aimed at domestication, carried out by

modern scientific animal breeders and geneticists. For example, eland, the

largest African antelope, have been undergoing selection for meat quality and

milk quantity in the Askaniya-Nova Zoological Park in the Ukraine, as well

as in England, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa; an experimental farm for

elk (red deer, in British terminology) has been operated by the Rowett

Research Institute at Aberdeen, Scotland; and an experimental farm for moose

has operated in the Pechero-Ilych National Park in Russia. Yet these modern

efforts have achieved only very limited successes. While bison meat

occasionally appears in some U.S. supermarkets, and while moose have been

ridden, milked, and used to pull sleds in Sweden and Russia, none of these

efforts has yielded a result of sufficient economic value to attract many

ranchers. It is especially striking that recent attempts to domesticate eland

within Africa itself, where its disease resistance and climate tolerance would

give it a big advantage over introduced Eurasian wild stock susceptible to

African diseases, have not caught on.

Thus, neither indigenous herders with access to candidate species over

thousands of years, nor modern geneticists, have succeeded in making useful

domesticates of large mammals beyond the Ancient Fourteen, which were

domesticated by at least 4,500 years ago. Yet scientists today could

undoubtedly, if they wished, fulfill for many species that part of the definition

of domestication that specifies the control of breeding and food supply. For

example, the San Diego and Los Angeles zoos are now subjecting the last

surviving California condors to a more draconian control of breeding than that

imposed upon any domesticated species. All individual condors have been

genetically identified, and a computer program determines which male shall

mate with which female in order to achieve human goals (in this case, to

maximize genetic diversity and thereby preserve this endangered bird). Zoos

are conducting similar breeding programs for many other threatened species,

including gorillas and rhinos. But the zoos’ rigorous selection of California

condors shows no prospects of yielding an economically useful product. Nor

do zoos’ efforts with rhinos, although rhinos offer up to over three tons of

meat on the hoof. As we shall now see, rhinos (and most other big mammals)

present insuperable obstacles to domestication.



IN ALL, OF the world’s 148 big wild terrestrial herbivorous mammals—the

candidates for domestication—only 14 passed the test. Why did the other 134

species fail? To which conditions was Francis Galton referring, when he

spoke of those other species as “destined to perpetual wildness”?

The answer follows from the Anna Karenina principle. To be

domesticated, a candidate wild species must possess many different

characteristics. Lack of any single required characteristic dooms efforts at

domestication, just as it dooms efforts at building a happy marriage. Playing

marriage counselor to the zebra / human couple and other ill-sorted pairs, we

can recognize at least six groups of reasons for failed domestication.

Diet. Every time that an animal eats a plant or another animal, the

conversion of food biomass into the consumer’s biomass involves an

efficiency of much less than 100 percent: typically around 10 percent. That is,

it takes around 10,000 pounds of corn to grow a 1,000-pound cow. If instead

you want to grow 1,000 pounds of carnivore, you have to feed it 10,000

pounds of herbivore grown on 100,000 pounds of corn. Even among

herbivores and omnivores, many species, like koalas, are too finicky in their

plant preferences to recommend themselves as farm animals.

As a result of this fundamental inefficiency, no mammalian carnivore has

ever been domesticated for food. (No, it’s not because its meat would be

tough or tasteless: we eat carnivorous wild fish all the time, and I can

personally attest to the delicious flavor of lion burger.) The nearest thing to an

exception is the dog, originally domesticated as a sentinel and hunting

companion, but breeds of dogs were developed and raised for food in Aztec

Mexico, Polynesia, and ancient China. However, regular dog eating has been

a last resort of meat-deprived human societies: the Aztecs had no other

domestic mammal, and the Polynesians and ancient Chinese had only pigs

and dogs. Human societies blessed with domestic herbivorous mammals have

not bothered to eat dogs, except as an uncommon delicacy (as in parts of

Southeast Asia today). In addition, dogs are not strict carnivores but

omnivores: if you are so naive as to think that your beloved pet dog is really a

meat eater, just read the list of ingredients on your bag of dog food. The dogs

that the Aztecs and Polynesians reared for food were efficiently fattened on

vegetables and garbage.

Growth Rate. To be worth keeping, domesticates must also grow quickly.

That eliminates gorillas and elephants, even though they are vegetarians with

admirably nonfinicky food preferences and represent a lot of meat. What

would-be gorilla or elephant rancher would wait 15 years for his herd to reach

adult size? Modern Asians who want work elephants find it much cheaper to

capture them in the wild and tame them.

Problems of Captive Breeding. We humans don’t like to have sex under

the watchful eyes of others; some potentially valuable animal species don’t

like to, either. That’s what derailed attempts to domesticate cheetahs, the

swiftest of all land animals, despite our strong motivation to do so for

thousands of years.

As I already mentioned, tame cheetahs were prized by ancient Egyptians

and Assyrians and modern Indians as hunting animals infinitely superior to

dogs. One Mogul emperor of India kept a stable of a thousand cheetahs. But

despite those large investments that many wealthy princes made, all of their

cheetahs were tamed ones caught in the wild. The princes’ efforts to breed

cheetahs in captivity failed, and not until 1960 did even biologists in modern

zoos achieve their first successful cheetah birth. In the wild, several cheetah

brothers chase a female for several days, and that rough courtship over large

distances seems to be required to get the female to ovulate or to become

sexually receptive. Cheetahs usually refuse to carry out that elaborate

courtship ritual inside a cage.

A similar problem has frustrated schemes to breed the vicuña, an Andean

wild camel whose wool is prized as the finest and lightest of any animal’s.

The ancient Incas obtained vicuña wool by driving wild vicuñas into corrals,

shearing them, and then releasing them alive. Modern merchants wanting this

luxury wool have had to resort either to this same method or simply to killing

wild vicuñas. Despite strong incentives of money and prestige, all attempts to

breed vicuñas for wool production in captivity have failed, for reasons that

include vicuñas’ long and elaborate courtship ritual before mating, a ritual

inhibited in captivity; male vicuñas’ fierce intolerance of each other; and their

requirement for both a year-round feeding territory and a separate year-round

sleeping territory.

Nasty Disposition. Naturally, almost any mammal species that is

sufficiently large is capable of killing a human. People have been killed by

pigs, horses, camels, and cattle. Nevertheless, some large animals have much

nastier dispositions and are more incurably dangerous than are others.

Tendencies to kill humans have disqualified many otherwise seemingly ideal

candidates for domestication.

One obvious example is the grizzly bear. Bear meat is an expensive

delicacy, grizzlies weigh up to 1,700 pounds, they are mainly vegetarians

(though also formidable hunters), their vegetable diet is very broad, they

thrive on human garbage (thereby creating big problems in Yellowstone and

Glacier National Parks), and they grow relatively fast. If they would behave

themselves in captivity, grizzlies would be a fabulous meat production

animal. The Ainu people of Japan made the experiment by routinely rearing

grizzly cubs as part of a ritual. For understandable reasons, though, the Ainu

found it prudent to kill and eat the cubs at the age of one year. Keeping

grizzly bears for longer would be suicidal; I am not aware of any adult that

has been tamed.

Another otherwise suitable candidate that disqualifies itself for equally

obvious reasons is the African buffalo. It grows quickly up to a weight of a

ton and lives in herds that have a well-developed dominance hierarchy, a trait

whose virtues will be discussed below. But the African buffalo is considered

the most dangerous and unpredictable large mammal of Africa. Anyone

insane enough to try to domesticate it either died in the effort or was forced to

kill the buffalo before it got too big and nasty. Similarly, hippos, as four-ton

vegetarians, would be great barnyard animals if they weren’t so dangerous.

They kill more people each year than do any other African mammals,

including even lions.

Few people would be surprised at the disqualification of those notoriously

ferocious candidates. But there are other candidates whose dangers are not so

well known. For instance, the eight species of wild equids (horses and their

relatives) vary greatly in disposition, even though all eight are genetically so

close to each other that they will interbreed and produce healthy (though

usually sterile) offspring. Two of them, the horse and the North African ass

(ancestor of the donkey), were successfully domesticated. Closely related to

the North African ass is the Asiatic ass, also known as the onager. Since its

homeland includes the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of Western civilization and

animal domestication, ancient peoples must have experimented extensively

with onagers. We know from Sumerian and later depictions that onagers were

regularly hunted, as well as captured and hybridized with donkeys and horses.

Some ancient depictions of horselike animals used for riding or for pulling

carts may refer to onagers. However, all writers about them, from Romans to

modern zookeepers, decry their irascible temper and their nasty habit of biting

people. As a result, although similar in other respects to ancestral donkeys,

onagers have never been domesticated.

Africa’s four species of zebras are even worse. Efforts at domestication

went as far as hitching them to carts: they were tried out as draft animals in

19th-century South Africa, and the eccentric Lord Walter Rothschild drove

through the streets of London in a carriage pulled by zebras. Alas, zebras

become impossibly dangerous as they grow older. (That’s not to deny that

many individual horses are also nasty, but zebras and onagers are much more

uniformly so.) Zebras have the unpleasant habit of biting a person and not

letting go. They thereby injure even more American zookeepers each year

than do tigers! Zebras are also virtually impossible to lasso with a rope—even

for cowboys who win rodeo championships by lassoing horses—because of

their unfailing ability to watch the rope noose fly toward them and then to

duck their head out of the way.

Hence it has rarely (if ever) been possible to saddle or ride a zebra, and

South Africans’ enthusiasm for their domestication waned. Unpredictably

aggressive behavior on the part of a large and potentially dangerous mammal

is also part of the reason why the initially so promising modern experiments

in domesticating elk and eland have not been more successful.

Tendency to Panic. Big mammalian herbivore species react to danger

from predators or humans in different ways. Some species are nervous, fast,

and programmed for instant flight when they perceive a threat. Other species

are slower, less nervous, seek protection in herds, stand their ground when

threatened, and don’t run until necessary. Most species of deer and antelope

(with the conspicuous exception of reindeer) are of the former type, while

sheep and goats are of the latter.

Naturally, the nervous species are difficult to keep in captivity. If put into

an enclosure, they are likely to panic, and either die of shock or batter

themselves to death against the fence in their attempts to escape. That’s true,

for example, of gazelles, which for thousands of years were the most

frequently hunted game species in some parts of the Fertile Crescent. There is

no mammal species that the first settled peoples of that area had more

opportunity to domesticate than gazelles. But no gazelle species has ever been

domesticated. Just imagine trying to herd an animal that bolts, blindly bashes

itself against walls, can leap up to nearly 30 feet, and can run at a speed of 50

miles per hour!

Social Structure. Almost all species of domesticated large mammals prove

to be ones whose wild ancestors share three social characteristics: they live in

herds; they maintain a well-developed dominance hierarchy among herd

members; and the herds occupy overlapping home ranges rather than

mutually exclusive territories. For example, herds of wild horses consist of

one stallion, up to half a dozen mares, and their foals. Mare A is dominant

over mares B, C, D, and E; mare B is submissive to A but dominant over C,

D, and E; C is submissive to B and A but dominant over D and E; and so on.

When the herd is on the move, its members maintain a stereotyped order: in

the rear, the stallion; in the front, the top-ranking female, followed by her

foals in order of age, with the youngest first; and behind her, the other mares

in order of rank, each followed by her foals in order of age. In that way, many

adults can coexist in the herd without constant fighting and with each

knowing its rank.

That social structure is ideal for domestication, because humans in effect

take over the dominance hierarchy. Domestic horses of a pack line follow the

human leader as they would normally follow the top-ranking female. Herds or

packs of sheep, goats, cows, and ancestral dogs (wolves) have a similar

hierarchy. As young animals grow up in such a herd, they imprint on the

animals that they regularly see nearby. Under wild conditions those are

members of their own species, but captive young herd animals also see

humans nearby and imprint on humans as well.

Such social animals lend themselves to herding. Since they are tolerant of

each other, they can be bunched up. Since they instinctively follow a

dominant leader and will imprint on humans as that leader, they can readily be

driven by a shepherd or sheepdog. Herd animals do well when penned in

crowded conditions, because they are accustomed to living in densely packed

groups in the wild.

In contrast, members of most solitary territorial animal species cannot be

herded. They do not tolerate each other, they do not imprint on humans, and

they are not instinctively submissive. Who ever saw a line of cats (solitary

and territorial in the wild) following a human or allowing themselves to be

herded by a human? Every cat lover knows that cats are not submissive to

humans in the way dogs instinctively are. Cats and ferrets are the sole

territorial mammal species that were domesticated, because our motive for

doing so was not to herd them in large groups raised for food but to keep

them as solitary hunters or pets.

While most solitary territorial species thus haven’t been domesticated, it’s

not conversely the case that most herd species can be domesticated. Most

can’t, for one of several additional reasons.

First, herds of many species don’t have overlapping home ranges but

instead maintain exclusive territories against other herds. It’s no more

possible to pen two such herds together than to pen two males of a solitary

species.

Second, many species that live in herds for part of the year are territorial

in the breeding season, when they fight and do not tolerate each other’s

presence. That’s true of most deer and antelope species (again with the

exception of reindeer), and it’s one of the main factors that has disqualified all

the social antelope species for which Africa is famous from being

domesticated. While one’s first association to African antelope is “vast dense

herds spreading across the horizon,” in fact the males of those herds space

themselves into territories and fight fiercely with each other when breeding.

Hence those antelope cannot be maintained in crowded enclosures in

captivity, as can sheep or goats or cattle. Territorial behavior similarly

combines with a fierce disposition and a slow growth rate to banish rhinos

from the farmyard.

Finally, many herd species, including again most deer and antelope, do

not have a well-defined dominance hierarchy and are not instinctively

prepared to become imprinted on a dominant leader (hence to become

misimprinted on humans). As a result, though many deer and antelope species

have been tamed (think of all those true Bambi stories), one never sees such

tame deer and antelope driven in herds like sheep. That problem also derailed

domestication of North American bighorn sheep, which belong to the same

genus as Asiatic mouflon sheep, ancestor of our domestic sheep. Bighorn

sheep are suitable to us and similar to mouflons in most respects except a

crucial one: they lack the mouflon’s stereotypical behavior whereby some

individuals behave submissively toward other individuals whose dominance

they acknowledge.



LET’S NOW RETURN to the problem I posed at the outset of this chapter.

Initially, one of the most puzzling features of animal domestication is the

seeming arbitrariness with which some species have been domesticated while

their close relatives have not. It turns out that all but a few candidates for

domestication have been eliminated by the Anna Karenina principle. Humans

and most animal species make an unhappy marriage, for one or more of many

possible reasons: the animal’s diet, growth rate, mating habits, disposition,

tendency to panic, and several distinct features of social organization. Only a

small percentage of wild mammal species ended up in happy marriages with

humans, by virtue of compatibility on all those separate counts.

Eurasian peoples happened to inherit many more species of domesticable

large wild mammalian herbivores than did peoples of the other continents.

That outcome, with all of its momentous advantages for Eurasian societies,

stemmed from three basic facts of mammalian geography, history, and

biology. First, Eurasia, befitting its large area and ecological diversity, started

out with the most candidates. Second, Australia and the Americas, but not

Eurasia or Africa, lost most of their candidates in a massive wave of late-

Pleistocene extinctions—possibly because the mammals of the former

continents had the misfortune to be first exposed to humans suddenly and late

in our evolutionary history, when our hunting skills were already highly

developed. Finally, a higher percentage of the surviving candidates proved

suitable for domestication on Eurasia than on the other continents. An

examination of the candidates that were never domesticated, such as Africa’s

big herd-forming mammals, reveals particular reasons that disqualified each

of them. Thus, Tolstoy would have approved of the insight offered in another

context by an earlier author, Saint Matthew: “Many are called, but few are

chosen.”





CHAPTER 10

SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES

ON THE MAP OF THE WORLD ON CHAPTER 10 (FIGURE 10.1), compare the shapes

and orientations of the continents. You’ll be struck by an obvious difference.

The Americas span a much greater distance north–south (9,000 miles) than

east–west: only 3,000 miles at the widest, narrowing to a mere 40 miles at the

Isthmus of Panama. That is, the major axis of the Americas is north–south.

The same is also true, though to a less extreme degree, for Africa. In contrast,

the major axis of Eurasia is east–west. What effect, if any, did those

differences in the orientation of the continents’ axes have on human history?

This chapter will be about what I see as their enormous, sometimes tragic,

consequences. Axis orientations affected the rate of spread of crops and

livestock, and possibly also of writing, wheels, and other inventions. That

basic feature of geography thereby contributed heavily to the very different

experiences of Native Americans, Africans, and Eurasians in the last 500

years.



FOOD PRODUCTION’S SPREAD proves as crucial to understanding geographic

differences in the rise of guns, germs, and steel as did its origins, which we

considered in the preceding chapters. That’s because, as we saw in Chapter 5,

there were no more than nine areas of the globe, perhaps as few as five, where

food production arose independently. Yet, already in prehistoric times, food

production became established in many other regions besides those few areas

of origins. All those other areas became food producing as a result of the

spread of crops, livestock, and knowledge of how to grow them and, in some

cases, as a result of migrations of farmers and herders themselves.

The main such spreads of food production were from Southwest Asia to

Europe, Egypt and North Africa, Ethiopia, Central Asia, and the Indus Valley;

from the Sahel and West Africa to East and South Africa; from China to

tropical Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, and Japan; and

from Mesoamerica to North America. Moreover, food production even in its

areas of origin became enriched by the addition of crops, livestock, and

techniques from other areas of origin.

Just as some regions proved much more suitable than others for the

origins of food production, the ease of its spread also varied greatly around

the world. Some areas that are ecologically very suitable for food production

never acquired it in prehistoric times at all, even though areas of prehistoric

food production existed nearby. The most conspicuous such examples are the

failure of both farming and herding to reach Native American California from

the U.S. Southwest or to reach Australia from New Guinea and Indonesia, and

the failure of farming to spread from South Africa’s Natal Province to South

Africa’s Cape. Even among all those areas where food production did spread

in the prehistoric era, the rates and dates of spread varied considerably. At the

one extreme was its rapid spread along east–west axes: from Southwest Asia

both west to Europe and Egypt and east to the Indus Valley (at an average rate

of about 0.7 miles per year); and from the Philippines east to Polynesia (at 3.2

miles per year). At the opposite extreme was its slow spread along north–

south axes: at less than 0.5 miles per year, from Mexico northward to the U.S.

Southwest; at less than 0.3 miles per year, for corn and beans from Mexico

northward to become productive in the eastern United States around A.D. 900;

and at 0.2 miles per year, for the llama from Peru north to Ecuador. These

differences could be even greater if corn was not domesticated in Mexico as

late as 3500 B.C., as I assumed conservatively for these calculations, and as

some archaeologists now assume, but if it was instead domesticated

considerably earlier, as most archaeologists used to assume (and many still

do).

There were also great differences in the completeness with which suites of

crops and livestock spread, again implying stronger or weaker barriers to their

spreading. For instance, while most of Southwest Asia’s founder crops and

livestock did spread west to Europe and east to the Indus Valley, neither of the

Andes’ domestic mammals (the llama / alpaca and the guinea pig) ever

reached Mesoamerica in pre-Columbian times. That astonishing failure cries

out for explanation. After all, Mesoamerica did develop dense farming

populations and complex societies, so there can be no doubt that Andean

domestic animals (if they had been available) would have been valuable for

food, transport, and wool. Except for dogs, Mesoamerica was utterly without

indigenous mammals to fill those needs. Some South American crops

nevertheless did succeed in reaching Mesoamerica, such as manioc, sweet

potatoes, and peanuts. What selective barrier let those crops through but

screened out llamas and guinea pigs?

A subtler expression of this geographically varying ease of spread is the

phenomenon termed preemptive domestication. Most of the wild plant species

from which our crops were derived vary genetically from area to area,

because alternative mutations had become established among the wild

ancestral populations of different areas. Similarly, the changes required to

transform wild plants into crops can in principle be brought about by

alternative new mutations or alternative courses of selection to yield

equivalent results. In this light, one can examine a crop widespread in

prehistoric times and ask whether all of its varieties show the same wild

mutation or same transforming mutation. The purpose of this examination is

to try to figure out whether the crop was developed in just one area or else

independently in several areas.

If one carries out such a genetic analysis for major ancient New World

crops, many of them prove to include two or more of those alternative wild

variants, or two or more of those alternative transforming mutations. This

suggests that the crop was domesticated independently in at least two

different areas, and that some varieties of the crop inherited the particular

mutation of one area while other varieties of the same crop inherited the

mutation of another area. On this basis, botanists conclude that lima beans

( Phaseolus lunatus), common beans ( Phaseolus vulgaris), and chili peppers

of the Capsicum annuum / chinense group were all domesticated on at least

two separate occasions, once in Mesoamerica and once in South America; and

that the squash Cucurbita pepo and the seed plant goosefoot were also

domesticated independently at least twice, once in Mesoamerica and once in

the eastern United States. In contrast, most ancient Southwest Asian crops

exhibit just one of the alternative wild variants or alternative transforming

mutations, suggesting that all modern varieties of that particular crop stem

from only a single domestication.

What does it imply if the same crop has been repeatedly and

independently domesticated in several different parts of its wild range, and

not just once and in a single area? We have already seen that plant

domestication involves the modification of wild plants so that they become

more useful to humans by virtue of larger seeds, a less bitter taste, or other

qualities. Hence if a productive crop is already available, incipient farmers

will surely proceed to grow it rather than start all over again by gathering its

not yet so useful wild relative and redomesticating it. Evidence for just a

single domestication thus suggests that, once a wild plant had been

domesticated, the crop spread quickly to other areas throughout the wild

plant’s range, preempting the need for other independent domestications of

the same plant. However, when we find evidence that the same wild ancestor

was domesticated independently in different areas, we infer that the crop

spread too slowly to preempt its domestication elsewhere. The evidence for

predominantly single domestications in Southwest Asia, but frequent multiple

domestications in the Americas, might thus provide more subtle evidence that

crops spread more easily out of Southwest Asia than in the Americas.

Rapid spread of a crop may preempt domestication not only of the same

wild ancestral species somewhere else but also of related wild species. If

you’re already growing good peas, it’s of course pointless to start from

scratch to domesticate the same wild ancestral pea again, but it’s also

pointless to domesticate closely related wild pea species that for farmers are

virtually equivalent to the already domesticated pea species. All of Southwest

Asia’s founder crops preempted domestication of any of their close relatives

throughout the whole expanse of western Eurasia. In contrast, the New World

presents many cases of equivalent and closely related, but nevertheless

distinct, species having been domesticated in Mesoamerica and South

America. For instance, 95 percent of the cotton grown in the world today

belongs to the cotton species Gossypium hirsutum, which was domesticated in

prehistoric times in Mesoamerica. However, prehistoric South American

farmers instead grew the related cotton Gossypium barbadense. Evidently,

Mesoamerican cotton had such difficulty reaching South America that it

failed in the prehistoric era to preempt the domestication of a different cotton

species there (and vice versa). Chili peppers, squashes, amaranths, and

chenopods are other crops of which different but related species were

domesticated in Mesoamerica and South America, since no species was able

to spread fast enough to preempt the others.

We thus have many different phenomena converging on the same

conclusion: that food production spread more readily out of Southwest Asia

than in the Americas, and possibly also than in sub-Saharan Africa. Those

phenomena include food production’s complete failure to reach some

ecologically suitable areas; the differences in its rate and selectivity of spread;

and the differences in whether the earliest domesticated crops preempted

redomestications of the same species or domestications of close relatives.

What was it about the Americas and Africa that made the spread of food

production more difficult there than in Eurasia?



TO ANSWER THIS question, let’s begin by examining the rapid spread of food

production out of Southwest Asia (the Fertile Crescent). Soon after food

production arose there, somewhat before 8000 B.C., a centrifugal wave of it

appeared in other parts of western Eurasia and North Africa farther and

farther removed from the Fertile Crescent, to the west and east. On this page I

have redrawn the striking map (Figure 10.2) assembled by the geneticist

Daniel Zohary and botanist Maria Hopf, in which they illustrate how the wave

had reached Greece and Cyprus and the Indian subcontinent by 6500 B.C.,

Egypt soon after 6000 B.C., central Europe by 5400 B.C., southern Spain by

5200 B.C., and Britain around 3500 B.C. In each of those areas, food production

was initiated by some of the same suite of domestic plants and animals that

launched it in the Fertile Crescent. In addition, the Fertile Crescent package

penetrated Africa southward to Ethiopia at some still-uncertain date.

However, Ethiopia also developed many indigenous crops, and we do not yet

know whether it was these crops or the arriving Fertile Crescent crops that

launched Ethiopian food production.

Of course, not all pieces of the package spread to all those outlying areas:

for example, Egypt was too warm for einkorn wheat to become established. In

some outlying areas, elements of the package arrived at different times: for

instance, sheep preceded cereals in southwestern Europe. Some outlying areas

went on to domesticate a few local crops of their own, such as poppies in

western Europe and watermelons possibly in Egypt. But most food production

in outlying areas depended initially on Fertile Crescent domesticates. Their

spread was soon followed by that of other innovations originating in or near

the Fertile Crescent, including the wheel, writing, metalworking techniques,

milking, fruit trees, and beer and wine production.

Why did the same plant package launch food production throughout

western Eurasia? Was it because the same set of plants occurred in the wild in

many areas, were found useful there just as in the Fertile Crescent, and were

independently domesticated? No, that’s not the reason. First, many of the

Fertile Crescent’s founder crops don’t even occur in the wild outside

Southwest Asia. For instance, none of the eight main founder crops except

barley grows wild in Egypt. Egypt’s Nile Valley provides an environment

similar to the Fertile Crescent’s Tigris and Euphrates Valleys. Hence the

package that worked well in the latter valleys also worked well enough in the

Nile Valley to trigger the spectacular rise of indigenous Egyptian civilization.

But the foods to fuel that spectacular rise were originally absent in Egypt. The

sphinx and pyramids were built by people fed on crops originally native to the

Fertile Crescent, not to Egypt.

Second, even for those crops whose wild ancestor does occur outside of

Southwest Asia, we can be confident that the crops of Europe and India were

mostly obtained from Southwest Asia and were not local domesticates. For

example, wild flax occurs west to Britain and Algeria and east to the Caspian

Sea, while wild barley occurs east even to Tibet. However, for most of the

Fertile Crescent’s founding crops, all cultivated varieties in the world today

share only one arrangement of chromosomes out of the multiple arrangements

found in the wild ancestor; or else they share only a single mutation (out of

many possible mutations) by which the cultivated varieties differ from the

wild ancestor in characteristics desirable to humans. For instance, all

cultivated peas share the same recessive gene that prevents ripe pods of

cultivated peas from spontaneously popping open and spilling their peas, as

wild pea pods do.

Evidently, most of the Fertile Crescent’s founder crops were never

domesticated again elsewhere after their initial domestication in the Fertile

Crescent. Had they been repeatedly domesticated independently, they would

exhibit legacies of those multiple origins in the form of varied chromosomal

arrangements or varied mutations. Hence these are typical examples of the

phenomenon of preemptive domestication that we discussed above. The quick

spread of the Fertile Crescent package preempted any possible other attempts,

within the Fertile Crescent or elsewhere, to domesticate the same wild

ancestors. Once the crop had become available, there was no further need to

gather it from the wild and thereby set it on the path to domestication again.

The ancestors of most of the founder crops have wild relatives, in the

Fertile Crescent and elsewhere, that would also have been suitable for

domestication. For example, peas belong to the genus Pisum, which consists

of two wild species: Pisum sativum, the one that became domesticated to

yield our garden peas, and Pisum fulvum, which was never domesticated. Yet

wild peas of Pisum fulvum taste good, either fresh or dried, and are common

in the wild. Similarly, wheats, barley, lentil, chickpea, beans, and flax all have

numerous wild relatives besides the ones that became domesticated. Some of

those related beans and barleys were indeed domesticated independently in

the Americas or China, far from the early site of domestication in the Fertile

Crescent. But in western Eurasia only one of several potentially useful wild

species was domesticated—probably because that one spread so quickly that

people soon stopped gathering the other wild relatives and ate only the crop.

Again as we discussed above, the crop’s rapid spread preempted any possible

further attempts to domesticate its relatives, as well as to redomesticate its

ancestor.



WHY WAS THE spread of crops from the Fertile Crescent so rapid? The

answer depends partly on that east–west axis of Eurasia with which I opened

this chapter. Localities distributed east and west of each other at the same

latitude share exactly the same day length and its seasonal variations. To a

lesser degree, they also tend to share similar diseases, regimes of temperature

and rainfall, and habitats or biomes (types of vegetation). For example,

Portugal, northern Iran, and Japan, all located at about the same latitude but

lying successively 4,000 miles east or west of each other, are more similar to

each other in climate than each is to a location lying even a mere 1,000 miles

due south. On all the continents the habitat type known as tropical rain forest

is confined to within about 10 degrees latitude of the equator, while

Mediterranean scrub habitats (such as California’s chaparral and Europe’s

maquis) lie between about 30 and 40 degrees of latitude.

But the germination, growth, and disease resistance of plants are adapted

to precisely those features of climate. Seasonal changes of day length,

temperature, and rainfall constitute signals that stimulate seeds to germinate,

seedlings to grow, and mature plants to develop flowers, seeds, and fruit.

Each plant population becomes genetically programmed, through natural

selection, to respond appropriately to signals of the seasonal regime under

which it has evolved. Those regimes vary greatly with latitude. For example,

day length is constant throughout the year at the equator, but at temperate

latitudes it increases as the months advance from the winter solstice to the

summer solstice, and it then declines again through the next half of the year.

The growing season—that is, the months with temperatures and day lengths

suitable for plant growth—is shortest at high latitudes and longest toward the

equator. Plants are also adapted to the diseases prevalent at their latitude.

Woe betide the plant whose genetic program is mismatched to the latitude

of the field in which it is planted! Imagine a Canadian farmer foolish enough

to plant a race of corn adapted to growing farther south, in Mexico. The

unfortunate corn plant, following its Mexico-adapted genetic program, would

prepare to thrust up its shoots in March, only to find itself still buried under

10 feet of snow. Should the plant become genetically reprogrammed so as to

germinate at a time more appropriate to Canada—say, late June—the plant

would still be in trouble for other reasons. Its genes would be telling it to

grow at a leisurely rate, sufficient only to bring it to maturity in five months.

That’s a perfectly safe strategy in Mexico’s mild climate, but in Canada a

disastrous one that would guarantee the plant’s being killed by autumn frosts

before it had produced any mature corn cobs. The plant would also lack genes

for resistance to diseases of northern climates, while uselessly carrying genes

for resistance to diseases of southern climates. All those features make low-

latitude plants poorly adapted to high-latitude conditions, and vice versa. As a

consequence, most Fertile Crescent crops grow well in France and Japan but

poorly at the equator.

Animals too are adapted to latitude-related features of climate. In that

respect we are typical animals, as we know by introspection. Some of us can’t

stand cold northern winters with their short days and characteristic germs,

while others of us can’t stand hot tropical climates with their own

characteristic diseases. In recent centuries overseas colonists from cool

northern Europe have preferred to emigrate to the similarly cool climates of

North America, Australia, and South Africa, and to settle in the cool

highlands within equatorial Kenya and New Guinea. Northern Europeans who

were sent out to hot tropical lowland areas used to die in droves of diseases

such as malaria, to which tropical peoples had evolved some genetic

resistance.

That’s part of the reason why Fertile Crescent domesticates spread west

and east so rapidly: they were already well adapted to the climates of the

regions to which they were spreading. For instance, once farming crossed

from the plains of Hungary into central Europe around 5400 B.C., it spread so

quickly that the sites of the first farmers in the vast area from Poland west to

Holland (marked by their characteristic pottery with linear decorations) were

nearly contemporaneous. By the time of Christ, cereals of Fertile Crescent

origin were growing over the 8,000-mile expanse from the Atlantic coast of

Ireland to the Pacific coast of Japan. That west–east expanse of Eurasia is the

largest land distance on Earth.

Thus, Eurasia’s west–east axis allowed Fertile Crescent crops quickly to

launch agriculture over the band of temperate latitudes from Ireland to the

Indus Valley, and to enrich the agriculture that arose independently in eastern

Asia. Conversely, Eurasian crops that were first domesticated far from the

Fertile Crescent but at the same latitudes were able to diffuse back to the

Fertile Crescent. Today, when seeds are transported over the whole globe by

ship and plane, we take it for granted that our meals are a geographic

mishmash. A typical American fast-food restaurant meal would include

chicken (first domesticated in China) and potatoes (from the Andes) or corn

(from Mexico), seasoned with black pepper (from India) and washed down

with a cup of coffee (of Ethiopian origin). Already, though, by 2,000 years

ago, Romans were also nourishing themselves with their own hodgepodge of

foods that mostly originated elsewhere. Of Roman crops, only oats and

poppies were native to Italy. Roman staples were the Fertile Crescent founder

package, supplemented by quince (originating in the Caucasus); millet and

cumin (domesticated in Central Asia); cucumber, sesame, and citrus fruit

(from India); and chicken, rice, apricots, peaches, and foxtail millet

(originally from China). Even though Rome’s apples were at least native to

western Eurasia, they were grown by means of grafting techniques that had

developed in China and spread westward from there.

While Eurasia provides the world’s widest band of land at the same

latitude, and hence the most dramatic example of rapid spread of

domesticates, there are other examples as well. Rivaling in speed the spread

of the Fertile Crescent package was the eastward spread of a subtropical

package that was initially assembled in South China and that received

additions on reaching tropical Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and

New Guinea. Within 1,600 years that resulting package of crops (including

bananas, taro, and yams) and domestic animals (chickens, pigs, and dogs) had

spread more than 5,000 miles eastward into the tropical Pacific to reach the

islands of Polynesia. A further likely example is the east–west spread of crops

within Africa’s wide Sahel zone, but paleobotanists have yet to work out the

details.



CONTRAST THE EASE of east–west diffusion in Eurasia with the difficulties of

diffusion along Africa’s north–south axis. Most of the Fertile Crescent

founder crops reached Egypt very quickly and then spread as far south as the

cool highlands of Ethiopia, beyond which they didn’t spread. South Africa’s

Mediterranean climate would have been ideal for them, but the 2,000 miles of

tropical conditions between Ethiopia and South Africa posed an insuperable

barrier. Instead, African agriculture south of the Sahara was launched by the

domestication of wild plants (such as sorghum and African yams) indigenous

to the Sahel zone and to tropical West Africa, and adapted to the warm

temperatures, summer rains, and relatively constant day lengths of those low

latitudes.

Similarly, the spread southward of Fertile Crescent domestic animals

through Africa was stopped or slowed by climate and disease, especially by

trypanosome diseases carried by tsetse flies. The horse never became

established farther south than West Africa’s kingdoms north of the equator.

The advance of cattle, sheep, and goats halted for 2,000 years at the northern

edge of the Serengeti Plains, while new types of human economies and

livestock breeds were being developed. Not until the period A.D. 1–200, some

8,000 years after livestock were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, did

cattle, sheep, and goats finally reach South Africa. Tropical African crops had

their own difficulties spreading south in Africa, arriving in South Africa with

black African farmers (the Bantu) just after those Fertile Crescent livestock

did. However, those tropical African crops could never be transmitted across

South Africa’s Fish River, beyond which they were stopped by Mediterranean

conditions to which they were not adapted.

The result was the all-too-familiar course of the last two millennia of

South African history. Some of South Africa’s indigenous Khoisan peoples

(otherwise known as Hottentots and Bushmen) acquired livestock but

remained without agriculture. They became outnumbered and were replaced

northeast of the Fish River by black African farmers, whose southward spread

halted at that river. Only when European settlers arrived by sea in 1652,

bringing with them their Fertile Crescent crop package, could agriculture

thrive in South Africa’s Mediterranean zone. The collisions of all those

peoples produced the tragedies of modern South Africa: the quick decimation

of the Khoisan by European germs and guns; a century of wars between

Europeans and blacks; another century of racial oppression; and now, efforts

by Europeans and blacks to seek a new mode of coexistence in the former

Khoisan lands.



CONTRAST ALSO THE ease of diffusion in Eurasia with its difficulties along

the Americas’ north–south axis. The distance between Mesoamerica and

South America—say, between Mexico’s highlands and Ecuador’s—is only

1,200 miles, approximately the same as the distance in Eurasia separating the

Balkans from Mesopotamia. The Balkans provided ideal growing conditions

for most Mesopotamian crops and livestock, and received those domesticates

as a package within 2,000 years of its assembly in the Fertile Crescent. That

rapid spread preempted opportunities for domesticating those and related

species in the Balkans. Highland Mexico and the Andes would similarly have

been suitable for many of each other’s crops and domestic animals. A few

crops, notably Mexican corn, did indeed spread to the other region in the pre-

Columbian era.

But other crops and domestic animals failed to spread between

Mesoamerica and South America. The cool highlands of Mexico would have

provided ideal conditions for raising llamas, guinea pigs, and potatoes, all

domesticated in the cool highlands of the South American Andes. Yet the

northward spread of those Andean specialties was stopped completely by the

hot intervening lowlands of Central America. Five thousand years after llamas

had been domesticated in the Andes, the Olmecs, Maya, Aztecs, and all other

native societies of Mexico remained without pack animals and without any

edible domestic mammals except for dogs.

Conversely, domestic turkeys of Mexico and domestic sunflowers of the

eastern United States might have thrived in the Andes, but their southward

spread was stopped by the intervening tropical climates. The mere 700 miles

of north–south distance prevented Mexican corn, squash, and beans from

reaching the U.S. Southwest for several thousand years after their

domestication in Mexico, and Mexican chili peppers and chenopods never did

reach it in prehistoric times. For thousands of years after corn was

domesticated in Mexico, it failed to spread northward into eastern North

America, because of the cooler climates and shorter growing season

prevailing there. At some time between A.D. 1 and A.D. 200, corn finally

appeared in the eastern United States but only as a very minor crop. Not until

around A.D. 900, after hardy varieties of corn adapted to northern climates had

been developed, could corn-based agriculture contribute to the flowering of

the most complex Native American society of North America, the

Mississippian culture—a brief flowering ended by European-introduced

germs arriving with and after Columbus.

Recall that most Fertile Crescent crops prove, upon genetic study, to

derive from only a single domestication process, whose resulting crop spread

so quickly that it preempted any other incipient domestications of the same or

related species. In contrast, many apparently widespread Native American

crops prove to consist of related species or even of genetically distinct

varieties of the same species, independently domesticated in Mesoamerica,

South America, and the eastern United States. Closely related species replace

each other geographically among the amaranths, beans, chenopods, chili

peppers, cottons, squashes, and tobaccos. Different varieties of the same

species replace each other among the kidney beans, lima beans, the chili

pepper Capsicum annuum / chinense, and the squash Cucurbita pepo. Those

legacies of multiple independent domestications may provide further

testimony to the slow diffusion of crops along the Americas’ north–south axis.

Africa and the Americas are thus the two largest landmasses with a

predominantly north–south axis and resulting slow diffusion. In certain other

parts of the world, slow north–south diffusion was important on a smaller

scale. These other examples include the snail’s pace of crop exchange

between Pakistan’s Indus Valley and South India, the slow spread of South

Chinese food production into Peninsular Malaysia, and the failure of tropical

Indonesian and New Guinean food production to arrive in prehistoric times in

the modern farmlands of southwestern and southeastern Australia,

respectively. Those two corners of Australia are now the continent’s

breadbaskets, but they lie more than 2,000 miles south of the equator.

Farming there had to await the arrival from faraway Europe, on European

ships, of crops adapted to Europe’s cool climate and short growing season.



I HAVE BEEN dwelling on latitude, readily assessed by a glance at a map,

because it is a major determinant of climate, growing conditions, and ease of

spread of food production. However, latitude is of course not the only such

determinant, and it is not always true that adjacent places at the same latitude

have the same climate (though they do necessarily have the same day length).

Topographic and ecological barriers, much more pronounced on some

continents than on others, were locally important obstacles to diffusion.

For instance, crop diffusion between the U.S. Southeast and Southwest

was very slow and selective although these two regions are at the same

latitude. That’s because much of the intervening area of Texas and the

southern Great Plains was dry and unsuitable for agriculture. A corresponding

example within Eurasia involved the eastern limit of Fertile Crescent crops,

which spread rapidly westward to the Atlantic Ocean and eastward to the

Indus Valley without encountering a major barrier. However, farther eastward

in India the shift from predominantly winter rainfall to predominantly

summer rainfall contributed to a much more delayed extension of agriculture,

involving different crops and farming techniques, into the Ganges plain of

northeastern India. Still farther east, temperate areas of China were isolated

from western Eurasian areas with similar climates by the combination of the

Central Asian desert, Tibetan plateau, and Himalayas. The initial development

of food production in China was therefore independent of that at the same

latitude in the Fertile Crescent, and gave rise to entirely different crops.

However, even those barriers between China and western Eurasia were at

least partly overcome during the second millennium B.C., when West Asian

wheat, barley, and horses reached China.

By the same token, the potency of a 2,000-mile north–south shift as a

barrier also varies with local conditions. Fertile Crescent food production

spread southward over that distance to Ethiopia, and Bantu food production

spread quickly from Africa’s Great Lakes region south to Natal, because in

both cases the intervening areas had similar rainfall regimes and were suitable

for agriculture. In contrast, crop diffusion from Indonesia south to

southwestern Australia was completely impossible, and diffusion over the

much shorter distance from Mexico to the U.S. Southwest and Southeast was

slow, because the intervening areas were deserts hostile to agriculture. The

lack of a high-elevation plateau in Mesoamerica south of Guatemala, and

Mesoamerica’s extreme narrowness south of Mexico and especially in

Panama, were at least as important as the latitudinal gradient in throttling crop

and livestock exchanges between the highlands of Mexico and the Andes.

Continental differences in axis orientation affected the diffusion not only

of food production but also of other technologies and inventions. For

example, around 3,000 B.C. the invention of the wheel in or near Southwest

Asia spread rapidly west and east across much of Eurasia within a few

centuries, whereas the wheels invented independently in prehistoric Mexico

never spread south to the Andes. Similarly, the principle of alphabetic writing,

developed in the western part of the Fertile Crescent by 1500 B.C., spread west

to Carthage and east to the Indian subcontinent within about a thousand years,

but the Mesoamerican writing systems that flourished in prehistoric times for

at least 2,000 years never reached the Andes.

Naturally, wheels and writing aren’t directly linked to latitude and day

length in the way crops are. Instead, the links are indirect, especially via food

production systems and their consequences. The earliest wheels were parts of

ox-drawn carts used to transport agricultural produce. Early writing was

restricted to elites supported by food-producing peasants, and it served

purposes of economically and socially complex food-producing societies

(such as royal propaganda, goods inventories, and bureaucratic record

keeping). In general, societies that engaged in intense exchanges of crops,

livestock, and technologies related to food production were more likely to

become involved in other exchanges as well.

America’s patriotic song “America the Beautiful” invokes our spacious

skies, our amber waves of grain, from sea to shining sea. Actually, that song

reverses geographic realities. As in Africa, in the Americas the spread of

native crops and domestic animals was slowed by constricted skies and

environmental barriers. No waves of native grain ever stretched from the

Atlantic to the Pacific coast of North America, from Canada to Patagonia, or

from Egypt to South Africa, while amber waves of wheat and barley came to

stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the spacious skies of Eurasia.

That faster spread of Eurasian agriculture, compared with that of Native

American and sub-Saharan African agriculture, played a role (as the next part

of this book will show) in the more rapid diffusion of Eurasian writing,

metallurgy, technology, and empires.

To bring up all those differences isn’t to claim that widely distributed

crops are admirable, or that they testify to the superior ingenuity of early

Eurasian farmers. They reflect, instead, the orientation of Eurasia’s axis

compared with that of the Americas or Africa. Around those axes turned the

fortunes of history.





PART THREE

FROM FOOD TO GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL





CHAPTER 11

LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK

WE HAVE NOW TRACED HOW FOOD PRODUCTION AROSE in a few centers, and

how it spread at unequal rates from there to other areas. Those geographic

differences constitute important ultimate answers to Yali’s question about why

different peoples ended up with disparate degrees of power and affluence.

However, food production itself is not a proximate cause. In a one-on-one

fight, a naked farmer would have no advantage over a naked hunter-gatherer.

Instead, one part of the explanation for farmer power lies in the much

denser populations that food production could support: ten naked farmers

certainly would have an advantage over one naked hunter-gatherer in a fight.

The other part is that neither farmers nor hunter-gatherers are naked, at least

not figuratively. Farmers tend to breathe out nastier germs, to own better

weapons and armor, to own more-powerful technology in general, and to live

under centralized governments with literate elites better able to wage wars of

conquest. Hence the next four chapters will explore how the ultimate cause of

food production led to the proximate causes of germs, literacy, technology,

and centralized government.

The links connecting livestock and crops to germs were unforgettably

illustrated for me by a hospital case about which I learned through a physician

friend. When my friend was an inexperienced young doctor, he was called

into a hospital room to deal with a married couple stressed-out by a

mysterious illness. It did not help that the couple was also having difficulty

communicating with each other, and with my friend. The husband was a

small, timid man, sick with pneumonia caused by an unidentified microbe,

and with only limited command of the English language. Acting as translator

was his beautiful wife, worried about her husband’s condition and frightened

by the unfamiliar hospital environment. My friend was also stressed-out from

a long week of hospital work, and from trying to figure out what unusual risk

factors might have brought on the strange illness. The stress caused my friend

to forget everything he had been taught about patient confidentiality: he

committed the awful blunder of requesting the woman to ask her husband

whether he’d had any sexual experiences that could have caused the infection.

As the doctor watched, the husband turned red, pulled himself together so

that he seemed even smaller, tried to disappear under his bedsheets, and

stammered out words in a barely audible voice. His wife suddenly screamed

in rage and drew herself up to tower over him. Before the doctor could stop

her, she grabbed a heavy metal bottle, slammed it with full force onto her

husband’s head, and stormed out of the room. It took a while for the doctor to

revive her husband and even longer to elicit, through the man’s broken

English, what he’d said that so enraged his wife. The answer slowly emerged:

he had confessed to repeated intercourse with sheep on a recent visit to the

family farm; perhaps that was how he had contracted the mysterious microbe.

This incident sounds bizarrely one-of-a-kind and of no possible broader

significance. In fact, it illustrates an enormous subject of great importance:

human diseases of animal origins. Very few of us love sheep in the carnal

sense that this patient did. But most of us platonically love our pet animals,

such as our dogs and cats. As a society, we certainly appear to have an

inordinate fondness for sheep and other livestock, to judge from the vast

numbers of them that we keep. For example, at the time of a recent census,

Australia’s 17,085,400 people thought so highly of sheep that they kept

161,600,000 of them.

Some of us adults, and even more of our children, pick up infectious

diseases from our pets. Usually they remain no more than a nuisance, but a

few have evolved into something far more serious. The major killers of

humanity throughout our recent history—smallpox, flu, tuberculosis, malaria,

plague, measles, and cholera—are infectious diseases that evolved from

diseases of animals, even though most of the microbes responsible for our

own epidemic illnesses are paradoxically now almost confined to humans.

Because diseases have been the biggest killers of people, they have also been

decisive shapers of history. Until World War II, more victims of war died of

war-borne microbes than of battle wounds. All those military histories

glorifying great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of

past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons, but

were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their

enemies.

The grimmest examples of germs’ role in history come from the European

conquest of the Americas that began with Columbus’s voyage of 1492.

Numerous as were the Native American victims of the murderous Spanish

conquistadores, they were far outnumbered by the victims of murderous

Spanish microbes. Why was the exchange of nasty germs between the

Americas and Europe so unequal? Why didn’t Native American diseases

instead decimate the Spanish invaders, spread back to Europe, and wipe out

95 percent of Europe’s population? Similar questions arise for the decimation

of many other native peoples by Eurasian germs, as well as for the decimation

of would-be European conquistadores in the tropics of Africa and Asia.

Thus, questions of the animal origins of human disease lie behind the

broadest pattern of human history, and behind some of the most important

issues in human health today. (Think of AIDS, an explosively spreading

human disease that appears to have evolved from a virus resident in wild

African monkeys.) This chapter will begin by considering what a “disease” is,

and why some microbes have evolved so as to “make us sick,” whereas most

other species of living things don’t make us sick. We’ll examine why many of

our most familiar infectious diseases run in epidemics, such as our current

AIDS epidemic and the Black Death (bubonic plague) epidemics of the

Middle Ages. We’ll then consider how the ancestors of microbes now

confined to us transferred themselves from their original animal hosts.

Finally, we’ll see how insight into the animal origins of our infectious

diseases helps explain the momentous, almost one-way exchange of germs

between Europeans and Native Americans.



NATURALLY, WE’RE DISPOSED to think about diseases just from our own point

of view: what can we do to save ourselves and to kill the microbes? Let’s

stamp out the scoundrels, and never mind what their motives are! In life in

general, though, one has to understand the enemy in order to beat him, and

that’s especially true in medicine.

Hence let’s begin by temporarily setting aside our human bias and

considering disease from the microbes’ point of view. After all, microbes are

as much a product of natural selection as we are. What evolutionary benefit

does a microbe derive from making us sick in bizarre ways, like giving us

genital sores or diarrhea? And why should microbes evolve so as to kill us?

That seems especially puzzling and self-defeating, since a microbe that kills

its host kills itself.

Basically, microbes evolve like other species. Evolution selects for those

individuals most effective at producing babies and at helping them spread to

suitable places to live. For a microbe, spread may be defined mathematically

as the number of new victims infected per each original patient. That number

depends on how long each victim remains capable of infecting new victims,

and how efficiently the microbe is transferred from one victim to the next.

Microbes have evolved diverse ways of spreading from one person to

another, and from animals to people. The germ that spreads better leaves more

babies and ends up favored by natural selection. Many of our “symptoms” of

disease actually represent ways in which some damned clever microbe

modifies our bodies or our behavior such that we become enlisted to spread

microbes.

The most effortless way a germ could spread is by just waiting to be

transmitted passively to the next victim. That’s the strategy practiced by

microbes that wait for one host to be eaten by the next host: for instance,

salmonella bacteria, which we contract by eating already infected eggs or

meat; the worm responsible for trichinosis, which gets from pigs to us by

waiting for us to kill the pig and eat it without proper cooking; and the worm

causing anisakiasis, with which sushi-loving Japanese and Americans

occasionally infect themselves by consuming raw fish. Those parasites pass to

a person from an eaten animal, but the virus causing laughing sickness (kuru)

in the New Guinea highlands used to pass to a person from another person

who was eaten. It was transmitted by cannibalism, when highland babies

made the fatal mistake of licking their fingers after playing with raw brains

that their mothers had just cut out of dead kuru victims awaiting cooking.

Some microbes don’t wait for the old host to die and get eaten, but instead

hitchhike in the saliva of an insect that bites the old host and flies off to find a

new host. The free ride may be provided by mosquitoes, fleas, lice, or tsetse

flies that spread malaria, plague, typhus, or sleeping sickness, respectively.

The dirtiest of all tricks for passive carriage is perpetrated by microbes that

pass from a woman to her fetus and thereby infect babies already at birth. By

playing that trick, the microbes responsible for syphilis, rubella, and now

AIDS pose ethical dilemmas with which believers in a fundamentally just

universe have had to struggle desperately.

Other germs take matters into their own hands, figuratively speaking.

They modify the anatomy or habits of their host in such a way as to accelerate

their transmission. From our perspective, the open genital sores caused by

venereal diseases like syphilis are a vile indignity. From the microbes’ point

of view, however, they’re just a useful device to enlist a host’s help in

inoculating microbes into a body cavity of a new host. The skin lesions

caused by smallpox similarly spread microbes by direct or indirect body

contact (occasionally very indirect, as when U.S. whites bent on wiping out

“belligerent” Native Americans sent them gifts of blankets previously used by

smallpox patients).

More vigorous yet is the strategy practiced by the influenza, common

cold, and pertussis (whooping cough) microbes, which induce the victim to

cough or sneeze, thereby launching a cloud of microbes toward prospective

new hosts. Similarly, the cholera bacterium induces in its victim a massive

diarrhea that delivers bacteria into the water supplies of potential new victims,

while the virus responsible for Korean hemorrhagic fever broadcasts itself in

the urine of mice. For modification of a host’s behavior, nothing matches

rabies virus, which not only gets into the saliva of an infected dog but drives

the dog into a frenzy of biting and thus infecting many new victims. But for

physical effort on the bug’s own part, the prize still goes to worms such as

hookworms and schistosomes, which actively burrow through a host’s skin

from the water or soil into which their larvae had been excreted in a previous

victim’s feces.

Thus, from our point of view, genital sores, diarrhea, and coughing are

“symptoms of disease.” From a germ’s point of view, they’re clever

evolutionary strategies to broadcast the germ. That’s why it’s in the germ’s

interests to “make us sick.” But why should a germ evolve the apparently

self-defeating strategy of killing its host?

From the germ’s perspective, that’s just an unintended by-product (fat

consolation to us!) of host symptoms promoting efficient transmission of

microbes. Yes, an untreated cholera patient may eventually die from

producing diarrheal fluid at a rate of several gallons per day. At least for a

while, though, as long as the patient is still alive, the cholera bacterium profits

from being massively broadcast into the water supplies of its next victims.

Provided that each victim thereby infects on the average more than one new

victim, the bacterium will spread, even though the first host happens to die.



SO MUCH FOR our dispassionate examination of the germ’s interests. Now

let’s get back to considering our own selfish interests: to stay alive and

healthy, best done by killing the damned germs. One common response of

ours to infection is to develop a fever. Again, we’re used to considering fever

as a “symptom of disease,” as if it developed inevitably without serving any

function. But regulation of body temperature is under our genetic control and

doesn’t just happen by accident. A few microbes are more sensitive to heat

than our own bodies are. By raising our body temperature, we in effect try to

bake the germs to death before we get baked ourselves.

Another common response of ours is to mobilize our immune system.

White blood cells and other cells of ours actively seek out and kill foreign

microbes. The specific antibodies that we gradually build up against a

particular microbe infecting us make us less likely to get reinfected once we

become cured. As we all know from experience, there are some illnesses,

such as flu and the common cold, to which our resistance is only temporary;

we can eventually contract the illness again. Against other illnesses, though—

including measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, and the now defeated smallpox

—our antibodies stimulated by one infection confer lifelong immunity. That’s

the principle of vaccination: to stimulate our antibody production without our

having to go through the actual experience of the disease, by inoculating us

with a dead or weakened strain of microbe.

Alas, some clever microbes don’t just cave in to our immune defenses.

Some have learned to trick us by changing those molecular pieces of the

microbe (its so-called antigens) that our antibodies recognize. The constant

evolution or recycling of new strains of flu, with differing antigens, explains

why your having gotten flu two years ago didn’t protect you against the

different strain that arrived this year. Malaria and sleeping sickness are even

more slippery customers in their ability rapidly to change their antigens.

Among the slipperiest of all is AIDS, which evolves new antigens even as it

sits within an individual patient, thereby eventually overwhelming his or her

immune system.

Our slowest defensive response is through natural selection, which

changes our gene frequencies from generation to generation. For almost any

disease, some people prove to be genetically more resistant than are others. In

an epidemic those people with genes for resistance to that particular microbe

are more likely to survive than are people lacking such genes. As a result,

over the course of history, human populations repeatedly exposed to a

particular pathogen have come to consist of a higher proportion of individuals

with those genes for resistance—just because unfortunate individuals without

the genes were less likely to survive to pass their genes on to babies.

Fat consolation, you may be thinking again. This evolutionary response is

not one that does the genetically susceptible dying individual any good. It

does mean, though, that a human population as a whole becomes better

protected against the pathogen. Examples of those genetic defenses include

the protections (at a price) that the sickle-cell gene, Tay-Sachs gene, and

cystic fibrosis gene may confer on African blacks, Ashkenazi Jews, and

northern Europeans against malaria, tuberculosis, and bacterial diarrheas,

respectively.

In short, our interaction with most species, as exemplified by

hummingbirds, doesn’t make us or the hummingbird “sick.” Neither we nor

hummingbirds have had to evolve defenses against each other. That peaceful

relationship was able to persist because hummingbirds don’t count on us to

spread their babies or to offer our bodies for food. Hummingbirds evolved

instead to feed on nectar and insects, which they find by using their own

wings.

But microbes evolved to feed on the nutrients within our own bodies, and

they don’t have wings to let them reach a new victim’s body once the original

victim is dead or resistant. Hence many germs have had to evolve tricks to let

them spread between potential victims, and many of those tricks are what we

experience as “symptoms of disease.” We’ve evolved countertricks of our

own, to which the germs have responded by evolving counter-countertricks.

We and our pathogens are now locked in an escalating evolutionary contest,

with the death of one contestant the price of defeat, and with natural selection

playing the role of umpire. Now let’s consider the form of the contest:

blitzkrieg or guerrilla war?



SUPPOSE THAT ONE counts the number of cases of some particular infectious

disease in some geographic area, and watches how the numbers change with

time. The resulting patterns differ greatly among diseases. For certain

diseases, like malaria or hookworm, new cases appear any month of any year

in an affected area. So-called epidemic diseases, though, produce no cases for

a long time, then a whole wave of cases, then no more cases again for a while.

Among such epidemic diseases, influenza is one personally familiar to

most Americans, certain years being particularly bad years for us (but great

years for the influenza virus). Cholera epidemics come at longer intervals, the

1991 Peruvian epidemic being the first one to reach the New World during the

20th century. Although today’s influenza and cholera epidemics make front-

page stories, epidemics used to be far more terrifying before the rise of

modern medicine. The greatest single epidemic in human history was the one

of influenza that killed 21 million people at the end of the First World War.

The Black Death (bubonic plague) killed one-quarter of Europe’s population

between 1346 and 1352, with death tolls ranging up to 70 percent in some

cities. When the Canadian Pacific Railroad was being built through

Saskatchewan in the early 1880s, that province’s Native Americans, who had

previously had little exposure to whites and their germs, died of tuberculosis

at the incredible rate of 9 percent per year.

The infectious diseases that visit us as epidemics, rather than as a steady

trickle of cases, share several characteristics. First, they spread quickly and

efficiently from an infected person to nearby healthy people, with the result

that the whole population gets exposed within a short time. Second, they’re

“acute” illnesses: within a short time, you either die or recover completely.

Third, the fortunate ones of us who do recover develop antibodies that leave

us immune against a recurrence of the disease for a long time, possibly for the

rest of our life. Finally, these diseases tend to be restricted to humans; the

microbes causing them tend not to live in the soil or in other animals. All four

of these traits apply to what Americans think of as the familiar acute epidemic

diseases of childhood, including measles, rubella, mumps, pertussis, and

smallpox.

The reason why the combination of those four traits tends to make a

disease run in epidemics is easy to understand. In simplified form, here’s what

happens. The rapid spread of microbes, and the rapid course of symptoms,

mean that everybody in a local human population is quickly infected and soon

thereafter is either dead or else recovered and immune. No one is left alive

who could still be infected. But since the microbe can’t survive except in the

bodies of living people, the disease dies out, until a new crop of babies

reaches the susceptible age—and until an infectious person arrives from the

outside to start a new epidemic.

A classic illustration of how such diseases occur as epidemics is the

history of measles on the isolated Atlantic islands called the Faeroes. A severe

epidemic of measles reached the Faeroes in 1781 and then died out, leaving

the islands measles free until an infected carpenter arrived on a ship from

Denmark in 1846. Within three months, almost the whole Faeroes population

(7,782 people) had gotten measles and then either died or recovered, leaving

the measles virus to disappear once again until the next epidemic. Studies

show that measles is likely to die out in any human population numbering

fewer than half a million people. Only in larger populations can the disease

shift from one local area to another, thereby persisting until enough babies

have been born in the originally infected area that measles can return there.

What’s true for measles in the Faeroes is true of our other familiar acute

infectious diseases throughout the world. To sustain themselves, they need a

human population that is sufficiently numerous, and sufficiently densely

packed, that a numerous new crop of susceptible children is available for

infection by the time the disease would otherwise be waning. Hence measles

and similar diseases are also known as crowd diseases.



OBVIOUSLY, CROWD DISEASES could not sustain themselves in small bands of

hunter-gatherers and slash-and-burn farmers. As tragic modern experience

with Amazonian Indians and Pacific Islanders confirms, almost an entire

tribelet may be wiped out by an epidemic brought by an outside visitor—

because no one in the tribelet had any antibodies against the microbe. For

example, in the winter of 1902 a dysentery epidemic brought by a sailor on

the whaling ship Active killed 51 out of the 56 Sadlermiut Eskimos, a very

isolated band of people living on Southampton Island in the Canadian Arctic.

In addition, measles and some of our other “childhood” diseases are more

likely to kill infected adults than children, and all adults in the tribelet are

susceptible. (In contrast, modern Americans rarely contract measles as adults,

because most of them get either measles or the vaccine against it as children.)

Having killed most of the tribelet, the epidemic then disappears. The small

population size of tribelets explains not only why they can’t sustain epidemics

introduced from the outside, but also why they never could evolve epidemic

diseases of their own to give back to visitors.

That’s not to say, though, that small human populations are free from all

infectious diseases. They do have infections, but only of certain types. Some

are caused by microbes capable of maintaining themselves in animals or in

the soil, with the result that the disease doesn’t die out but remains constantly

available to infect people. For example, the yellow fever virus is carried by

African wild monkeys, whence it can always infect rural human populations

of Africa, whence it was carried by the transatlantic slave trade to infect New

World monkeys and people.

Still other infections of small human populations are chronic diseases

such as leprosy and yaws. Since the disease may take a very long time to kill

its victim, the victim remains alive as a reservoir of microbes to infect other

members of the tribelet. For instance, the Karimui Basin of the New Guinea

highlands, where I worked in the 1960s, was occupied by an isolated

population of a few thousand people, suffering from the world’s highest

incidence of leprosy—about 40 percent! Finally, small human populations are

also susceptible to nonfatal infections against which we don’t develop

immunity, with the result that the same person can become reinfected after

recovering. That happens with hookworm and many other parasites.

All these types of diseases, characteristic of small isolated populations,

must be the oldest diseases of humanity. They were the ones we could evolve

and sustain through the early millions of years of our evolutionary history,

when the total human population was tiny and fragmented. These diseases are

also shared with, or similar to the diseases of, our closest wild relatives, the

African great apes. In contrast, the crowd diseases, which we discussed

earlier, could have arisen only with the buildup of large, dense human

populations. That buildup began with the rise of agriculture starting about

10,000 years ago and then accelerated with the rise of cities starting several

thousand years ago. In fact, the first attested dates for many familiar

infectious diseases are surprisingly recent: around 1600 B.C. for smallpox (as

deduced from pockmarks on an Egyptian mummy), 400 B.C. for mumps, 200

B.C. for leprosy, A.D. 1840 for epidemic polio, and 1959 for AIDS.



WHY DID THE rise of agriculture launch the evolution of our crowd

infectious diseases? One reason just mentioned is that agriculture sustains

much higher human population densities than does the hunting-gathering

lifestyle—on the average, 10 to 100 times higher. In addition, hunter-

gatherers frequently shift camp and leave behind their own piles of feces with

accumulated microbes and worm larvae. But farmers are sedentary and live

amid their own sewage, thus providing microbes with a short path from one

person’s body into another’s drinking water.

Some farming populations make it even easier for their own fecal bacteria

and worms to infect new victims, by gathering their feces and urine and

spreading them as fertilizer on the fields where people work. Irrigation

agriculture and fish farming provide ideal living conditions for the snails

carrying schistosomiasis and for flukes that burrow through our skin as we

wade through the feces-laden water. Sedentary farmers become surrounded

not only by their feces but also by disease transmitting rodents, attracted by

the farmers’ stored food. The forest clearings made by African farmers also

provide ideal breeding habitats for malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.

If the rise of farming was thus a bonanza for our microbes, the rise of

cities was a greater one, as still more densely packed human populations

festered under even worse sanitation conditions. Not until the beginning of

the 20th century did Europe’s urban populations finally become self-

sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the

countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers

from crowd diseases. Another bonanza was the development of world trade

routes, which by Roman times effectively joined the populations of Europe,

Asia, and North Africa into one giant breeding ground for microbes. That’s

when smallpox finally reached Rome, as the Plague of Antoninus, which

killed millions of Roman citizens between A.D. 165 and 180.

Similarly, bubonic plague first appeared in Europe as the Plague of

Justinian (A.D. 542–43). But plague didn’t begin to hit Europe with full force

as the Black Death epidemics until A.D. 1346, when a new route for overland

trade with China provided rapid transit, along Eurasia’s east-west axis, for

flea-infested furs from plague-ridden areas of Central Asia to Europe. Today,

our jet planes have made even the longest intercontinental flights briefer than

the duration of any human infectious disease. That’s how an Aerolineas

Argentinas airplane, stopping in Lima (Peru) in 1991, managed to deliver

dozens of cholera-infected people that same day to my city of Los Angeles,

over 3,000 miles from Lima. The explosive increase in world travel by

Americans, and in immigration to the United States, is turning us into another

melting pot—this time, of microbes that we previously dismissed as just

causing exotic diseases in far-off countries.



THUS, WHEN THE human population became sufficiently large and

concentrated, we reached the stage in our history at which we could at last

evolve and sustain crowd diseases confined to our own species. But that

conclusion presents a paradox: such diseases could never have existed before

then! Instead, they had to evolve as new diseases. Where did those new

diseases come from?

Evidence has recently been emerging from molecular studies of the

disease-causing microbes themselves. For many of the microbes responsible

for our unique diseases, molecular biologists can now identify the microbe’s

closest relatives. These also prove to be agents of crowd infectious diseases—

but ones confined to various species of our domestic animals and pets!

Among animals, too, epidemic diseases require large, dense populations and

don’t afflict just any animal: they’re confined mainly to social animals

providing the necessary large populations. Hence when we domesticated

social animals, such as cows and pigs, they were already afflicted by epidemic

diseases just waiting to be transferred to us.

For example, measles virus is most closely related to the virus causing

rinderpest. That nasty epidemic disease affects cattle and many wild cud-

chewing mammals, but not humans. Measles in turn doesn’t afflict cattle. The

close similarity of the measles virus to the rinderpest virus suggests that the

latter transferred from cattle to humans and then evolved into the measles

virus by changing its properties to adapt to us. That transfer is not at all

surprising, considering that many peasant farmers live and sleep close to cows

and their feces, urine, breath, sores, and blood. Our intimacy with cattle has

been going on for the 9,000 years since we domesticated them—ample time

for the rinderpest virus to discover us nearby. As Table 11.1 illustrates, others

of our familiar infectious diseases can similarly be traced back to diseases of

our animal friends.



GIVEN OUR PROXIMITY to the animals we love, we must be getting constantly

bombarded by their microbes. Those invaders get winnowed by natural

selection, and only a few of them succeed in establishing themselves as

human diseases. A quick survey of current diseases lets us trace out four

stages in the evolution of a specialized human disease from an animal

precursor.

The first stage is illustrated by dozens of diseases that we now and then

pick up directly from our pets and domestic animals. They include cat-scratch

fever from our cats, leptospirosis from our dogs, psittacosis from our chickens

and parrots, and brucellosis from our cattle. We’re similarly liable to pick up

diseases from wild animals, such as the tularemia that hunters can get from

skinning wild rabbits. All those microbes are still at an early stage in their

evolution into specialized human pathogens. They still don’t get transmitted

directly from one person to another, and even their transfer to us from animals

remains uncommon.

TABLE 11.1 Deadly Gifts from Our Animal Friends

Human Disease

Animal with Most Closely Related Pathogen

Measles

cattle (rinderpest)

Tuberculosis

cattle

Smallpox

cattle (cowpox) or other livestock with related pox viruses

Flu

pigs and ducks

Pertussis

pigs, dogs

Falciparum malaria birds (chickens and ducks?)

In the second stage a former animal pathogen evolves to the point where

it does get transmitted directly between people and causes epidemics.

However, the epidemic dies out for any of several reasons, such as being

cured by modern medicine, or being stopped when everybody around has

already been infected and either becomes immune or dies. For example, a

previously unknown fever termed O’nyong-nyong fever appeared in East

Africa in 1959 and proceeded to infect several million Africans. It probably

arose from a virus of monkeys and was transmitted to humans by mosquitoes.

The fact that patients recovered quickly and became immune to further attack

helped the new disease die out quickly. Closer to home for Americans, Fort

Bragg fever was the name applied to a new leptospiral disease that broke out

in the United States in the summer of 1942 and soon disappeared.

A fatal disease vanishing for another reason was New Guinea’s laughing

sickness, transmitted by cannibalism and caused by a slow-acting virus from

which no one has ever recovered. Kuru was on its way to exterminating New

Guinea’s Foré tribe of 20,000 people, until the establishment of Australian

government control around 1959 ended cannibalism and thereby the

transmission of kuru. The annals of medicine are full of accounts of diseases

that sound like no disease known today, but that once caused terrifying

epidemics and then disappeared as mysteriously as they had come. The

“English sweating sickness,” which swept and terrified Europe between 1485

and 1552, and the “Picardy sweats” of 18th- and 19th-century France, are just

two of the many epidemic illnesses that vanished long before modern

medicine had devised methods for identifying the responsible microbes.

A third stage in the evolution of our major diseases is represented by

former animal pathogens that did establish themselves in humans, that have

not (not yet?) died out, and that may or may not still become major killers of

humanity. The future remains very uncertain for Lassa fever, caused by a

virus derived probably from rodents. Lassa fever was first observed in 1969 in

Nigeria, where it causes a fatal illness so contagious that Nigerian hospitals

have been closed down if even a single case appears. Better established is

Lyme disease, caused by a spirochete that we get from the bite of ticks carried

by mice and deer. Although the first known human cases in the United States

appeared only as recently as 1962, Lyme disease is already reaching epidemic

proportions in many parts of our country. The future of AIDS, derived from

monkey viruses and first documented in humans around 1959, is even more

secure (from the virus’s perspective).

The final stage of this evolution is represented by the major, long-

established epidemic diseases confined to humans. These diseases must have

been the evolutionary survivors of far more pathogens that tried to make the

jump to us from animals—and mostly failed.

What is actually going on in those stages, as an exclusive disease of

animals transforms itself into an exclusive disease of humans? One

transformation involves a change of intermediate vector: when a microbe

relying on some arthropod vector for transmission switches to a new host, the

microbe may be forced to find a new arthropod as well. For example, typhus

was initially transmitted between rats by rat fleas, which sufficed for a while

to transfer typhus from rats to humans. Eventually, typhus microbes

discovered that human body lice offered a much more efficient method of

traveling directly between humans. Now that Americans have mostly

deloused themselves, typhus has discovered a new route into us: by infecting

eastern North American flying squirrels and then transferring to people whose

attics harbor flying squirrels.

In short, diseases represent evolution in progress, and microbes adapt by

natural selection to new hosts and vectors. But compared with cows’ bodies,

ours offer different immune defenses, lice, feces, and chemistries. In that new

environment, a microbe must evolve new ways to live and to propagate itself.

In several instructive cases doctors or veterinarians have actually been able to

observe microbes evolving those new ways.

The best-studied case involves what happened when myxomatosis hit

Australian rabbits. The myxo virus, native to a wild species of Brazilian

rabbit, had been observed to cause a lethal epidemic in European domestic

rabbits, which are a different species. Hence the virus was intentionally

introduced to Australia in 1950 in the hopes of ridding the continent of its

plague of European rabbits, foolishly introduced in the nineteenth century. In

the first year, myxo produced a gratifying (to Australian farmers) 99.8 percent

mortality rate in infected rabbits. Unfortunately for the farmers, the death rate

then dropped in the second year to 90 percent and eventually to 25 percent,

frustrating hopes of eradicating rabbits completely from Australia. The

problem was that the myxo virus evolved to serve its own interests, which

differed from ours as well as from those of the rabbits. The virus changed so

as to kill fewer rabbits and to permit lethally infected ones to live longer

before dying. As a result, a less lethal myxo virus spreads baby viruses to

more rabbits than did the original, highly virulent myxo.

For a similar example in humans, we have only to consider the surprising

evolution of syphilis. Today, our two immediate associations to syphilis are

genital sores and a very slowly developing disease, leading to the death of

many untreated victims only after many years. However, when syphilis was

first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustules often covered the body

from the head to the knees, caused flesh to fall off people’s faces, and led to

death within a few months. By 1546, syphilis had evolved into the disease

with the symptoms so well known to us today. Apparently, just as with

myxomatosis, those syphilis spirochetes that evolved so as to keep their

victims alive for longer were thereby able to transmit their spirochete

offspring into more victims.



THE IMPORTANCE OF lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated by

Europeans’ conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native

Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from

European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by

killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors’ morale.

For instance, in 1519 Cortés landed on the coast of Mexico with 600

Spaniards, to conquer the fiercely militaristic Aztec Empire with a population

of many millions. That Cortés reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán,

escaped with the loss of “only” two-thirds of his force, and managed to fight

his way back to the coast demonstrates both Spanish military advantages and

the initial naïveté of the Aztecs. But when Cortés’s next onslaught came, the

Aztecs were no longer naive and fought street by street with the utmost

tenacity. What gave the Spaniards a decisive advantage was smallpox, which

reached Mexico in 1520 with one infected slave arriving from Spanish Cuba.

The resulting epidemic proceeded to kill nearly half of the Aztecs, including

Emperor Cuitláhuac. Aztec survivors were demoralized by the mysterious

illness that killed Indians and spared Spaniards, as if advertising the

Spaniards’ invincibility. By 1618, Mexico’s initial population of about 20

million had plummeted to about 1.6 million.

Pizarro had similarly grim luck when he landed on the coast of Peru in

1531 with 168 men to conquer the Inca Empire of millions. Fortunately for

Pizarro and unfortunately for the Incas, smallpox had arrived overland around

1526, killing much of the Inca population, including both the emperor Huayna

Capac and his designated successor. As we saw in Chapter 3, the result of the

throne’s being left vacant was that two other sons of Huayna Capac,

Atahuallpa and Huascar, became embroiled in a civil war that Pizarro

exploited to conquer the divided Incas.

When we in the United States think of the most populous New World

societies existing in 1492, only those of the Aztecs and the Incas tend to come

to our minds. We forget that North America also supported populous Indian

societies in the most logical place, the Mississippi Valley, which contains

some of our best farmland today. In that case, however, conquistadores

contributed nothing directly to the societies’ destruction; Eurasian germs,

spreading in advance, did everything. When Hernando de Soto became the

first European conquistador to march through the southeastern United States,

in 1540, he came across Indian town sites abandoned two years earlier

because the inhabitants had died in epidemics. These epidemics had been

transmitted from coastal Indians infected by Spaniards visiting the coast. The

Spaniards’ microbes spread to the interior in advance of the Spaniards

themselves.

De Soto was still able to see some of the densely populated Indian towns

lining the lower Mississippi. After the end of his expedition, it was a long

time before Europeans again reached the Mississippi Valley, but Eurasian

microbes were now established in North America and kept spreading. By the

time of the next appearance of Europeans on the lower Mississippi, that of

French settlers in the late 1600s, almost all of those big Indian towns had

vanished. Their relics are the great mound sites of the Mississippi Valley.

Only recently have we come to realize that many of the mound-building

societies were still largely intact when Columbus reached the New World, and

that they collapsed (probably as a result of disease) between 1492 and the

systematic European exploration of the Mississippi.

When I was young, American schoolchildren were taught that North

America had originally been occupied by only about one million Indians.

That low number was useful in justifying the white conquest of what could be

viewed as an almost empty continent. However, archaeological excavations,

and scrutiny of descriptions left by the very first European explorers on our

coasts, now suggest an initial number of around 20 million Indians. For the

New World as a whole, the Indian population decline in the century or two

following Columbus’s arrival is estimated to have been as large as 95 percent.

The main killers were Old World germs to which Indians had never been

exposed, and against which they therefore had neither immune nor genetic

resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus competed for top rank

among the killers. As if these had not been enough, diphtheria, malaria,

mumps, pertussis, plague, tuberculosis, and yellow fever came up close

behind. In countless cases, whites were actually there to witness the

destruction occurring when the germs arrived. For example, in 1837 the

Mandan Indian tribe, with one of the most elaborate cultures in our Great

Plains, contracted smallpox from a steamboat traveling up the Missouri River

from St. Louis. The population of one Mandan village plummeted from 2,000

to fewer than 40 within a few weeks.



WHILE OVER A dozen major infectious diseases of Old World origins

became established in the New World, perhaps not a single major killer

reached Europe from the Americas. The sole possible exception is syphilis,

whose area of origin remains controversial. The one-sidedness of that

exchange of germs becomes even more striking when we recall that large,

dense human populations are a prerequisite for the evolution of our crowd

infectious diseases. If recent reappraisals of the pre-Columbian New World

population are correct, it was not far below the contemporary population of

Eurasia. Some New World cities like Tenochtitlán were among the world’s

most populous cities at the time. Why didn’t Tenochtitlán have awful germs

waiting for the Spaniards?

One possible contributing factor is that the rise of dense human

populations began somewhat later in the New World than in the Old World.

Another is that the three most densely populated American centers—the

Andes, Mesoamerica, and the Mississippi Valley—never became connected

by regular fast trade into one huge breeding ground for microbes, in the way

that Europe, North Africa, India, and China became linked in Roman times.

Those factors still don’t explain, though, why the New World apparently

ended up with no lethal crowd epidemics at all. (Tuberculosis DNA has been

reported from the mummy of a Peruvian Indian who died 1,000 years ago, but

the identification procedure used did not distinguish human tuberculosis from

a closely related pathogen ( Mycobacterium bovis) that is widespread in wild

animals.)

Instead, what must be the main reason for the failure of lethal crowd

epidemics to arise in the Americas becomes clear when we pause to ask a

simple question. From what microbes could they conceivably have evolved?

We’ve seen that Eurasian crowd diseases evolved out of diseases of Eurasian

herd animals that became domesticated. Whereas many such animals existed

in Eurasia, only five animals of any sort became domesticated in the

Americas: the turkey in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, the llama / alpaca

and the guinea pig in the Andes, the Muscovy duck in tropical South

America, and the dog throughout the Americas.

In turn, we also saw that this extreme paucity of domestic animals in the

New World reflects the paucity of wild starting material. About 80 percent of

the big wild mammals of the Americas became extinct at the end of the last

Ice Age, around 13,000 years ago. The few domesticates that remained to

Native Americans were not likely sources of crowd diseases, compared with

cows and pigs. Muscovy ducks and turkeys don’t live in enormous flocks, and

they’re not cuddly species (like young lambs) with which we have much

physical contact. Guinea pigs may have contributed a trypanosome infection

like Chagas’ disease or leishmaniasis to our catalog of woes, but that’s

uncertain. Initially, most surprising is the absence of any human disease

derived from llamas (or alpacas), which it’s tempting to consider the Andean

equivalent of Eurasian livestock. However, llamas had four strikes against

them as a source of human pathogens: they were kept in smaller herds than

were sheep and goats and pigs; their total numbers were never remotely as

large as those of the Eurasian populations of domestic livestock, since llamas

never spread beyond the Andes; people don’t drink (and get infected by)

llama milk; and llamas aren’t kept indoors, in close association with people.

In contrast, human mothers in the New Guinea highlands often nurse piglets,

and pigs as well as cows are frequently kept inside the huts of peasant

farmers.



THE HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE of animal-derived diseases extends far beyond

the collision of the Old and the New Worlds. Eurasian germs played a key

role in decimating native peoples in many other parts of the world, including

Pacific islanders, Aboriginal Australians, and the Khoisan peoples (Hottentots

and Bushmen) of southern Africa. Cumulative mortalities of these previously

unexposed peoples from Eurasian germs ranged from 50 percent to 100

percent. For instance, the Indian population of Hispaniola declined from

around 8 million, when Columbus arrived in A.D. 1492, to zero by 1535.

Measles reached Fiji with a Fijian chief returning from a visit to Australia in

1875, and proceeded to kill about one-quarter of all Fijians then alive (after

most Fijians had already been killed by epidemics beginning with the first

European visit, in 1791). Syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and influenza

arriving with Captain Cook in 1779, followed by a big typhoid epidemic in

1804 and numerous “minor” epidemics, reduced Hawaii’s population from

around half a million in 1779 to 84,000 in 1853, the year when smallpox

finally reached Hawaii and killed around 10,000 of the survivors. These

examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely.

However, germs did not act solely to Europeans’ advantage. While the

New World and Australia did not harbor native epidemic diseases awaiting

Europeans, tropical Asia, Africa, Indonesia, and New Guinea certainly did.

Malaria throughout the tropical Old World, cholera in tropical Southeast Asia,

and yellow fever in tropical Africa were (and still are) the most notorious of

the tropical killers. They posed the most serious obstacle to European

colonization of the tropics, and they explain why the European colonial

partitioning of New Guinea and most of Africa was not accomplished until

nearly 400 years after European partitioning of the New World began.

Furthermore, once malaria and yellow fever did become transmitted to the

Americas by European ship traffic, they emerged as the major impediment to

colonization of the New World tropics as well. A familiar example is the role

of those two diseases in aborting the French effort, and nearly aborting the

ultimately successful American effort, to construct the Panama Canal.

Bearing all these facts in mind, let’s try to regain our sense of perspective

about the role of germs in answering Yali’s question. There is no doubt that

Europeans developed a big advantage in weaponry, technology, and political

organization over most of the non-European peoples that they conquered. But

that advantage alone doesn’t fully explain how initially so few European

immigrants came to supplant so much of the native population of the

Americas and some other parts of the world. That might not have happened

without Europe’s sinister gift to other continents—the germs evolving from

Eurasians’ long intimacy with domestic animals.





CHAPTER 12

BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS

NINETEENTH-CENTURY AUTHORS TENDED TO INTERPRET history as a

progression from savagery to civilization. Key hallmarks of this transition

included the development of agriculture, metallurgy, complex technology,

centralized government, and writing. Of these, writing was traditionally the

one most restricted geographically: until the expansions of Islam and of

colonial Europeans, it was absent from Australia, Pacific islands,

subequatorial Africa, and the whole New World except for a small part of

Mesoamerica. As a result of that confined distribution, peoples who pride

themselves on being civilized have always viewed writing as the sharpest

distinction raising them above “barbarians” or “savages.”

Knowledge brings power. Hence writing brings power to modern

societies, by making it possible to transmit knowledge with far greater

accuracy and in far greater quantity and detail, from more distant lands and

more remote times. Of course, some peoples (notably the Incas) managed to

administer empires without writing, and “civilized” peoples don’t always

defeat “barbarians,” as Roman armies facing the Huns learned. But the

European conquests of the Americas, Siberia, and Australia illustrate the

typical recent outcome.

Writing marched together with weapons, microbes, and centralized

political organization as a modern agent of conquest. The commands of the

monarchs and merchants who organized colonizing fleets were conveyed in

writing. The fleets set their courses by maps and written sailing directions

prepared by previous expeditions. Written accounts of earlier expeditions

motivated later ones, by describing the wealth and fertile lands awaiting the

conquerors. The accounts taught subsequent explorers what conditions to

expect, and helped them prepare themselves. The resulting empires were

administered with the aid of writing. While all those types of information

were also transmitted by other means in preliterate societies, writing made the

transmission easier, more detailed, more accurate, and more persuasive.

Why, then, did only some peoples and not others develop writing, given

its overwhelming value? For example, why did no traditional hunters-

gatherers evolve or adopt writing? Among island empires, why did writing

arise in Minoan Crete but not in Polynesian Tonga? How many separate times

did writing evolve in human history, under what circumstances, and for what

uses? Of those peoples who did develop it, why did some do so much earlier

than others? For instance, today almost all Japanese and Scandinavians are

literate but most Iraqis are not: why did writing nevertheless arise nearly four

thousand years earlier in Iraq?

The diffusion of writing from its sites of origin also raises important

questions. Why, for instance, did it spread to Ethiopia and Arabia from the

Fertile Crescent, but not to the Andes from Mexico? Did writing systems

spread by being copied, or did existing systems merely inspire neighboring

peoples to invent their own systems? Given a writing system that works well

for one language, how do you devise a system for a different language?

Similar questions arise whenever one tries to understand the origins and

spread of many other aspects of human culture—such as technology, religion,

and food production. The historian interested in such questions about writing

has the advantage that they can often be answered in unique detail by means

of the written record itself. We shall therefore trace writing’s development not

only because of its inherent importance, but also for the general insights into

cultural history that it provides.



THE THREE BASIC strategies underlying writing systems differ in the size of

the speech unit denoted by one written sign: either a single basic sound, a

whole syllable, or a whole word. Of these, the one employed today by most

peoples is the alphabet, which ideally would provide a unique sign (termed a

letter) for each basic sound of the language (a phoneme). Actually, most

alphabets consist of only about 20 or 30 letters, and most languages have

more phonemes than their alphabets have letters. For example, English

transcribes about 40 phonemes with a mere 26 letters. Hence most

alphabetically written languages, including English, are forced to assign

several different phonemes to the same letter and to represent some phonemes

by combinations of letters, such as the English two-letter combinations sh and

th (each represented by a single letter in the Russian and Greek alphabets,

respectively).

The second strategy uses so-called logograms, meaning that one written

sign stands for a whole word. That’s the function of many signs of Chinese

writing and of the predominant Japanese writing system (termed kanji).

Before the spread of alphabetic writing, systems making much use of

logograms were more common and included Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya

glyphs, and Sumerian cuneiform.

The third strategy, least familiar to most readers of this book, uses a sign

for each syllable. In practice, most such writing systems (termed syllabaries)

provide distinct signs just for syllables of one consonant followed by one

vowel (like the syllables of the word “fa-mi-ly”), and resort to various tricks

in order to write other types of syllables by means of those signs. Syllabaries

were common in ancient times, as exemplified by the Linear B writing of

Mycenaean Greece. Some syllabaries persist today, the most important being

the kana syllabary that the Japanese use for telegrams, bank statements, and

texts for blind readers.

I’ve intentionally termed these three approaches strategies rather than

writing systems. No actual writing system employs one strategy exclusively.

Chinese writing is not purely logographic, nor is English writing purely

alphabetic. Like all alphabetic writing systems, English uses many logograms,

such as numerals, $, %, and + : that is, arbitrary signs, not made up of

phonetic elements, representing whole words. “Syllabic” Linear B had many

logograms, and “logographic” Egyptian hieroglyphs included many syllabic

signs as well as a virtual alphabet of individual letters for each consonant.



INVENTING A WRITING system from scratch must have been incomparably

more difficult than borrowing and adapting one. The first scribes had to settle

on basic principles that we now take for granted. For example, they had to

figure out how to decompose a continuous utterance into speech units,

regardless of whether those units were taken as words, syllables, or

phonemes. They had to learn to recognize the same sound or speech unit

through all our normal variations in speech volume, pitch, speed, emphasis,

phrase grouping, and individual idiosyncrasies of pronunciation. They had to

decide that a writing system should ignore all of that variation. They then had

to devise ways to represent sounds by symbols.

Somehow, the first scribes solved all those problems, without having in

front of them any example of the final result to guide their efforts. That task

was evidently so difficult that there have been only a few occasions in history

when people invented writing entirely on their own. The two indisputably

independent inventions of writing were achieved by the Sumerians of

Mesopotamia somewhat before 3000 B.C. and by Mexican Indians before 600

B.C. (Figure 12.1); Egyptian writing of 3000 B.C. and Chinese writing (by 1300

B.C.) may also have arisen independently. Probably all other peoples who have

developed writing since then have borrowed, adapted, or at least been inspired

by existing systems.

The independent invention that we can trace in greatest detail is history’s

oldest writing system, Sumerian cuneiform (Figure 12.1). For thousands of

years before it jelled, people in some farming villages of the Fertile Crescent

had been using clay tokens of various simple shapes for accounting purposes,

such as recording numbers of sheep and amounts of grain. In the last centuries

before 3000 B.C., developments in accounting technology, format, and signs

rapidly led to the first system of writing. One such technological innovation

was the use of flat clay tablets as a convenient writing surface. Initially, the

clay was scratched with pointed tools, which gradually yielded to reed

styluses for neatly pressing a mark into the tablet. Developments in format

included the gradual adoption of conventions whose necessity is now

universally accepted: that writing should be organized into ruled rows or

columns (horizontal rows for the Sumerians, as for modern Europeans); that

the lines should be read in a constant direction (left to right for Sumerians, as

for modern Europeans); and that the lines should be read from top to bottom

of the tablet rather than vice versa.

But the crucial change involved the solution of the problem basic to

virtually all writing systems: how to devise agreed-on visible marks that

represent actual spoken sounds, rather than only ideas or else words

independent of their pronunciation. Early stages in the development of the

solution have been detected especially in thousands of clay tablets excavated

from the ruins of the former Sumerian city of Uruk, on the Euphrates River

about 200 miles southeast of modern Baghdad. The first Sumerian writing

signs were recognizable pictures of the object referred to (for instance, a

picture of a fish or a bird). Naturally, those pictorial signs consisted mainly of

numerals plus nouns for visible objects; the resulting texts were merely

accounting reports in a telegraphic shorthand devoid of grammatical

elements. Gradually, the forms of the signs became more abstract, especially

when the pointed writing tools were replaced by reed styluses. New signs

were created by combining old signs to produce new meanings: for example,

the sign for head was combined with the sign for bread in order to produce a

sign signifying eat.

The earliest Sumerian writing consisted of nonphonetic logograms. That’s

to say, it was not based on the specific sounds of the Sumerian language, and

it could have been pronounced with entirely different sounds to yield the

same meaning in any other language—just as the numeral sign 4 is variously

pronounced four, chetwíre, neljä, and empat by speakers of English, Russian,

Finnish, and Indonesian, respectively. Perhaps the most important single step

in the whole history of writing was the Sumerians’ introduction of phonetic

representation, initially by writing an abstract noun (which could not be

readily drawn as a picture) by means of the sign for a depictable noun that had

the same phonetic pronunciation. For instance, it’s easy to draw a

recognizable picture of arrow, hard to draw a recognizable picture of life, but

both are pronounced ti in Sumerian, so a picture of an arrow came to mean

either arrow or life. The resulting ambiguity was resolved by the addition of a

silent sign called a determinative, to indicate the category of nouns to which

the intended object belonged. Linguists term this decisive innovation, which

also underlies puns today, the rebus principle.

Once Sumerians had hit upon this phonetic principle, they began to use it

for much more than just writing abstract nouns. They employed it to write

syllables or letters constituting grammatical endings. For instance, in English

it’s not obvious how to draw a picture of the common syllable - tion, but we

could instead draw a picture illustrating the verb shun, which has the same

pronunciation. Phonetically interpreted signs were also used to “spell out”

longer words, as a series of pictures each depicting the sound of one syllable.

That’s as if an English speaker were to write the word believe as a picture of a

bee followed by a picture of a leaf. Phonetic signs also permitted scribes to

use the same pictorial sign for a set of related words (such as tooth, speech,

and speaker), but to resolve the ambiguity with an additional phonetically

interpreted sign (such as selecting the sign for two, each, or peak).

Thus, Sumerian writing came to consist of a complex mixture of three

types of signs: logograms, referring to a whole word or name; phonetic signs,

used in effect for spelling syllables, letters, grammatical elements, or parts of

words; and determinatives, which were not pronounced but were used to

resolve ambiguities. Nevertheless, the phonetic signs in Sumerian writing fell

far short of a complete syllabary or alphabet. Some Sumerian syllables lacked

any written signs; the same sign could be pronounced in different ways; and

the same sign could variously be read as a word, a syllable, or a letter.

Besides Sumerian cuneiform, the other certain instance of independent

origins of writing in human history comes from Native American societies of

Mesoamerica, probably southern Mexico. Mesoamerican writing is believed

to have arisen independently of Old World writing, because there is no

convincing evidence for pre-Norse contact of New World societies with Old

World societies possessing writing. In addition, the forms of Mesoamerican

writing signs were entirely different from those of any Old World script.

About a dozen Mesoamerican scripts are known, all or most of them

apparently related to each other (for example, in their numerical and

calendrical systems), and most of them still only partially deciphered. At the

moment, the earliest preserved Mesoamerican script is from the Zapotec area

of southern Mexico around 600 B.C., but by far the best-understood one is of

the Lowland Maya region, where the oldest known written date corresponds

to A.D. 292.

Despite its independent origins and distinctive sign forms, Maya writing

is organized on principles basically similar to those of Sumerian writing and

other western Eurasian writing systems that Sumerian inspired. Like

Sumerian, Maya writing used both logograms and phonetic signs. Logograms

for abstract words were often derived by the rebus principle. That is, an

abstract word was written with the sign for another word pronounced

similarly but with a different meaning that could be readily depicted. Like the

signs of Japan’s kana and Mycenaean Greece’s Linear B syllabaries, Maya

phonetic signs were mostly signs for syllables of one consonant plus one

vowel (such as ta, te, ti, to, tu). Like letters of the early Semitic alphabet,

Maya syllabic signs were derived from pictures of the object whose

pronunciation began with that syllable (for example, the Maya syllabic sign

“ne” resembles a tail, for which the Maya word is neh).

All of these parallels between Mesoamerican and ancient western

Eurasian writing testify to the underlying universality of human creativity.

While Sumerian and Mesoamerican languages bear no special relation to each

other among the world’s languages, both raised similar basic issues in

reducing them to writing. The solutions that Sumerians invented before 3000

B.C. were reinvented, halfway around the world, by early Mesoamerican

Indians before 600 B.C.



WITH THE POSSIBLE exceptions of the Egyptian, Chinese, and Easter Island

writing to be considered later, all other writing systems devised anywhere in

the world, at any time, appear to have been descendants of systems modified

from or at least inspired by Sumerian or early Mesoamerican writing. One

reason why there were so few independent origins of writing is the great

difficulty of inventing it, as we have already discussed. The other reason is

that other opportunities for the independent invention of writing were

preempted by Sumerian or early Mesoamerican writing and their derivatives.

We know that the development of Sumerian writing took at least

hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. As we shall see, the prerequisites for

those developments consisted of several features of human society that

determined whether a society would find writing useful, and whether the

society could support the necessary specialist scribes. Many other human

societies besides those of the Sumerians and early Mexicans—such as those

of ancient India, Crete, and Ethiopia—evolved these prerequisites. However,

the Sumerians and early Mexicans happened to have been the first to evolve

them in the Old World and the New World, respectively. Once the Sumerians

and early Mexicans had invented writing, the details or principles of their

writing spread rapidly to other societies, before they could go through the

necessary centuries or millennia of independent experimentation with writing

themselves. Thus, that potential for other, independent experiments was

preempted or aborted.

The spread of writing has occurred by either of two contrasting methods,

which find parallels throughout the history of technology and ideas. Someone

invents something and puts it to use. How do you, another would-be user,

then design something similar for your own use, knowing that other people

have already got their own model built and working?

Such transmission of inventions assumes a whole spectrum of forms. At

the one end lies “blueprint copying,” when you copy or modify an available

detailed blueprint. At the opposite end lies “idea diffusion,” when you receive

little more than the basic idea and have to reinvent the details. Knowing that it

can be done stimulates you to try to do it yourself, but your eventual specific

solution may or may not resemble that of the first inventor.

To take a recent example, historians are still debating whether blueprint

copying or idea diffusion contributed more to Russia’s building of an atomic

bomb. Did Russia’s bomb-building efforts depend critically on blueprints of

the already constructed American bomb, stolen and transmitted to Russia by

spies? Or was it merely that the revelation of America’s A-bomb at Hiroshima

at last convinced Stalin of the feasibility of building such a bomb, and that

Russian scientists then reinvented the principles in an independent crash

program, with little detailed guidance from the earlier American effort?

Similar questions arise for the history of the development of wheels,

pyramids, and gunpowder. Let’s now examine how blueprint copying and

idea diffusion contributed to the spread of writing systems.



TODAY, PROFESSIONAL LINGUISTS design writing systems for unwritten

languages by the method of blueprint copying. Most such tailor-made systems

modify existing alphabets, though some instead design syllabaries. For

example, missionary linguists are working on modified Roman alphabets for

hundreds of New Guinea and Native American languages. Government

linguists devised the modified Roman alphabet adopted in 1928 by Turkey for

writing Turkish, as well as the modified Cyrillic alphabets designed for many

tribal languages of Russia.

In a few cases, we also know something about the individuals who

designed writing systems by blueprint copying in the remote past. For

instance, the Cyrillic alphabet itself (the one still used today in Russia) is

descended from an adaptation of Greek and Hebrew letters devised by Saint

Cyril, a Greek missionary to the Slavs in the ninth century A.D. The first

preserved texts for any Germanic language (the language family that includes

English) are in the Gothic alphabet created by Bishop Ulfilas, a missionary

living with the Visigoths in what is now Bulgaria in the fourth century A.D.

Like Saint Cyril’s invention, Ulfilas’s alphabet was a mishmash of letters

borrowed from different sources: about 20 Greek letters, about five Roman

letters, and two letters either taken from the runic alphabet or invented by

Ulfilas himself. Much more often, we know nothing about the individuals

responsible for devising famous alphabets of the past. But it’s still possible to

compare newly emerged alphabets of the past with previously existing ones,

and to deduce from letter forms which existing ones served as models. For the

same reason, we can be sure that the Linear B syllabary of Mycenaean Greece

had been adapted by around 1400 B.C. from the Linear A syllabary of Minoan

Crete.

At all of the hundreds of times when an existing writing system of one

language has been used as a blueprint to adapt to a different language, some

problems have arisen, because no two languages have exactly the same sets of

sounds. Some inherited letters or signs may simply be dropped, when the

sounds that those letters represent in the lending language do not exist in the

borrowing language. For example, Finnish lacks the sounds that many other

European languages express by the letters b, c, f, g, w, x, and z, so the Finns

dropped these letters from their version of the Roman alphabet. There has also

been a frequent reverse problem, of devising letters to represent “new” sounds

present in the borrowing language but absent in the lending language. That

problem has been solved in several different ways: such as using an arbitrary

combination of two or more letters (like the English th to represent a sound

for which the Greek and runic alphabets used a single letter); adding a small

distinguishing mark to an existing letter (like the Spanish tilde ñ, the German

umlaut ö, and the proliferation of marks dancing around Polish and Turkish

letters); co-opting existing letters for which the borrowing language had no

use (such as modern Czechs recycling the letter c of the Roman alphabet to

express the Czech sound ts); or just inventing a new letter (as our medieval

ancestors did when they created the new letters j, u, and w).

The Roman alphabet itself was the end product of a long sequence of

blueprint copying. Alphabets apparently arose only once in human history:

among speakers of Semitic languages, in the area from modern Syria to the

Sinai, during the second millennium B.C. All of the hundreds of historical and

now existing alphabets were ultimately derived from that ancestral Semitic

alphabet, in a few cases (such as the Irish ogham alphabet) by idea diffusion,

but in most by actual copying and modification of letter forms.

That evolution of the alphabet can be traced back to Egyptian

hieroglyphs, which included a complete set of 24 signs for the 24 Egyptian



consonants. The Egyptians never took the logical (to us) next step of

discarding all their logograms, determinatives, and signs for pairs and trios of

consonants, and using just their consonantal alphabet. Starting around 1700

B.C., though, Semites familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphs did begin to

experiment with that logical step.

Restricting signs to those for single consonants was only the first of three

crucial innovations that distinguished alphabets from other writing systems.

The second was to help users memorize the alphabet by placing the letters in

a fixed sequence and giving them easy-to-remember names. Our English

names are mostly meaningless monosyllables (“a,” “bee,” “cee,” “dee,” and

so on). But the Semitic names did possess meaning in Semitic languages: they

were the words for familiar objects (’aleph = ox, beth = house, gimel = camel,

daleth = door, and so on). These Semitic words were related “acrophonically”

to the Semitic consonants to which they refer: that is, the first letter of the

word for the object was also the letter named for the object (’ a, b, g, d, and so

on). In addition, the earliest forms of the Semitic letters appear in many cases

to have been pictures of those same objects. All these features made the

forms, names, and sequence of Semitic alphabet letters easy to remember.

Many modern alphabets, including ours, retain with minor modifications that

original sequence (and, in the case of Greek, even the letters’ original names:

alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on) over 3,000 years later. One minor

modification that readers will already have noticed is that the Semitic and

Greek g became the Roman and English c, while the Romans invented a new

g in its present position.

The third and last innovation leading to modern alphabets was to provide

for vowels. Already in the early days of the Semitic alphabet, experiments

began with methods for writing vowels by adding small extra letters to

indicate selected vowels, or else by dots, lines, or hooks sprinkled over the

consonantal letters. In the eighth century B.C. the Greeks became the first

people to indicate all vowels systematically by the same types of letters used

for consonants. Greeks derived the forms of their vowel letters

by “co-opting” five letters used in the Phoenician alphabet for consonantal

sounds lacking in Greek.

From those earliest Semitic alphabets, one line of blueprint copying and

evolutionary modification led via early Arabian alphabets to the modern

Ethiopian alphabet. A far more important line evolved by way of the Aramaic

alphabet, used for official documents of the Persian Empire, into the modern

Arabic, Hebrew, Indian, and Southeast Asian alphabets. But the line most

familiar to European and American readers is the one that led via the

Phoenicians to the Greeks by the early eighth century B.C., thence to the

Etruscans in the same century, and in the next century to the Romans, whose

alphabet with slight modifications is the one used to print this book. Thanks

to their potential advantage of combining precision with simplicity, alphabets

have now been adopted in most areas of the modern world.



WHILE BLUEPRINT COPYING and modification are the most straightforward

option for transmitting technology, that option is sometimes unavailable.

Blueprints may be kept secret, or they may be unreadable to someone not

already steeped in the technology. Word may trickle through about an

invention made somewhere far away, but the details may not get transmitted.

Perhaps only the basic idea is known: someone has succeeded, somehow, in

achieving a certain final result. That knowledge may nevertheless inspire

others, by idea diffusion, to devise their own routes to such a result.

A striking example from the history of writing is the origin of the

syllabary devised in Arkansas around 1820 by a Cherokee Indian named

Sequoyah, for writing the Cherokee language. Sequoyah observed that white

people made marks on paper, and that they derived great advantage by using

those marks to record and repeat lengthy speeches. However, the detailed

operations of those marks remained a mystery to him, since (like most

Cherokees before 1820) Sequoyah was illiterate and could neither speak nor

read English. Because he was a blacksmith, Sequoyah began by devising an

accounting system to help him keep track of his customers’ debts. He drew a

picture of each customer; then he drew circles and lines of various sizes to

represent the amount of money owed.

Around 1810, Sequoyah decided to go on to design a system for writing

the Cherokee language. He again began by drawing pictures, but gave them

up as too complicated and too artistically demanding. He next started to

invent separate signs for each word, and again became dissatisfied when he

had coined thousands of signs and still needed more.

Finally, Sequoyah realized that words were made up of modest numbers

of different sound bites that recurred in many different words—what we

would call syllables. He initially devised 200 syllabic signs and gradually

reduced them to 85, most of them for combinations of one consonant and one

vowel.

As one source of the signs themselves, Sequoyah practiced copying the

letters from an English spelling book given to him by a schoolteacher. About

two dozen of his Cherokee syllabic signs were taken directly from those

letters, though of course with completely changed meanings, since Sequoyah

did not know the English meanings. For example, he chose the shapes D, R,

b, h to represent the Cherokee syllables a, e, si, and ni, respectively, while the

shape of the numeral 4 was borrowed for the syllable se. He coined other





signs by modifying English letters, such as designing the signs , , and to

represent the syllables yu, sa, and na, respectively. Still other signs were

entirely of his creation, such as , , and for ho, li, and nu, respectively.

Sequoyah’s syllabary is widely admired by professional linguists for its good

fit to Cherokee sounds, and for the ease with which it can be learned. Within a

short time, the Cherokees achieved almost 100 percent literacy in the

syllabary, bought a printing press, had Sequoyah’s signs cast as type, and

began printing books and newspapers.

Cherokee writing remains one of the best-attested examples of a script

that arose through idea diffusion. We know that Sequoyah received paper and

other writing materials, the idea of a writing system, the idea of using separate

marks, and the forms of several dozen marks. Since, however, he could

neither read nor write English, he acquired no details or even principles from

the existing scripts around him. Surrounded by alphabets he could not

understand, he instead independently reinvented a syllabary, unaware that the

Minoans of Crete had already invented another syllabary 3,500 years

previously.



SEQUOYAH’S EXAMPLE CAN serve as a model for how idea diffusion probably

led to many writing systems of ancient times as well. The han’gul alphabet

devised by Korea’s King Sejong in A.D. 1446 for the Korean language was

evidently inspired by the block format of Chinese characters and by the

alphabetic principle of Mongol or Tibetan Buddhist writing. However, King

Sejong invented the forms of han’gul letters and several unique features of his

alphabet, including the grouping of letters by syllables into square blocks, the

use of related letter shapes to represent related vowel or consonant sounds,

and shapes of consonant letters that depict the position in which the lips or

tongue are held to pronounce that consonant. The ogham alphabet used in

Ireland and parts of Celtic Britain from around the fourth century A.D.

similarly adopted the alphabetic principle (in this case, from existing

European alphabets) but again devised unique letter forms, apparently based

on a five-finger system of hand signals.

We can confidently attribute the han’gul and ogham alphabets to idea

diffusion rather than to independent invention in isolation, because we know

that both societies were in close contact with societies possessing writing and

because it is clear which foreign scripts furnished the inspiration. In contrast,

we can confidently attribute Sumerian cuneiform and the earliest

Mesoamerican writing to independent invention, because at the times of their

first appearances there existed no other script in their respective hemispheres

that could have inspired them. Still debatable are the origins of writing on

Easter Island, in China, and in Egypt.

The Polynesians living on Easter Island, in the Pacific Ocean, had a

unique script of which the earliest preserved examples date back only to about

A.D. 1851, long after Europeans reached Easter in 1722. Perhaps writing arose

independently on Easter before the arrival of Europeans, although no

examples have survived. But the most straightforward interpretation is to take

the facts at face value, and to assume that Easter Islanders were stimulated to

devise a script after seeing the written proclamation of annexation that a

Spanish expedition handed to them in the year 1770.

As for Chinese writing, first attested around 1300 B.C. but with possible

earlier precursors, it too has unique local signs and some unique principles,

and most scholars assume that it evolved independently. Writing had

developed before 3000 B.C. in Sumer, 4,000 miles west of early Chinese urban

centers, and appeared by 2200 B.C. in the Indus Valley, 2,600 miles west, but

no early writing systems are known from the whole area between the Indus

Valley and China. Thus, there is no evidence that the earliest Chinese scribes

could have had knowledge of any other writing system to inspire them.

Egyptian hieroglyphics, the most famous of all ancient writing systems,

are also usually assumed to be the product of independent invention, but the

alternative interpretation of idea diffusion is more feasible than in the case of

Chinese writing. Hieroglyphic writing appeared rather suddenly, in nearly

full-blown form, around 3000 B.C. Egypt lay only 800 miles west of Sumer,

with which Egypt had trade contacts. I find it suspicious that no evidence of a

gradual development of hieroglyphs has come down to us, even though

Egypt’s dry climate would have been favorable for preserving earlier

experiments in writing, and though the similarly dry climate of Sumer has

yielded abundant evidence of the development of Sumerian cuneiform for at

least several centuries before 3000 B.C. Equally suspicious is the appearance

of several other, apparently independently designed, writing systems in Iran,

Crete, and Turkey (so-called proto-Elamite writing, Cretan pictographs, and

Hieroglyphic Hittite, respectively), after the rise of Sumerian and Egyptian

writing. Although each of those systems used distinctive sets of signs not

borrowed from Egypt or Sumer, the peoples involved could hardly have been

unaware of the writing of their neighboring trade partners.

It would be a remarkable coincidence if, after millions of years of human

existence without writing, all those Mediterranean and Near Eastern societies

had just happened to hit independently on the idea of writing within a few

centuries of each other. Hence a possible interpretation seems to me idea

diffusion, as in the case of Sequoyah’s syllabary. That is, Egyptians and other

peoples may have learned from Sumerians about the idea of writing and

possibly about some of the principles, and then devised other principles and

all the specific forms of the letters for themselves.



LET US NOW return to the main question with which we began this chapter:

why did writing arise in and spread to some societies, but not to many others?

Convenient starting points for our discussion are the limited capabilities, uses,

and users of early writing systems.

Early scripts were incomplete, ambiguous, or complex, or all three. For

example, the oldest Sumerian cuneiform writing could not render normal

prose but was a mere telegraphic shorthand, whose vocabulary was restricted

to names, numerals, units of measure, words for objects counted, and a few

adjectives. That’s as if a modern American court clerk were forced to write

“John 27 fat sheep,” because English writing lacked the necessary words and

grammar to write “We order John to deliver the 27 fat sheep that he owes to

the government.” Later Sumerian cuneiform did become capable of rendering

prose, but it did so by the messy system that I’ve already described, with

mixtures of logograms, phonetic signs, and unpronounced determinatives

totaling hundreds of separate signs. Linear B, the writing of Mycenaean

Greece, was at least simpler, being based on a syllabary of about 90 signs plus

logograms. Offsetting that virtue, Linear B was quite ambiguous. It omitted

any consonant at the end of a word, and it used the same sign for several

related consonants (for instance, one sign for both l and r, another for p and b and ph, and still another for g and k and kh). We know how confusing we find it when native-born Japanese people speak English without distinguishing l

and r: imagine the confusion if our alphabet did the same while similarly

homogenizing the other consonants that I mentioned! It’s as if we were to

spell the words “rap,” “lap,” “lab,” and “laugh” identically.

A related limitation is that few people ever learned to write these early

scripts. Knowledge of writing was confined to professional scribes in the

employ of the king or temple. For instance, there is no hint that Linear B was

used or understood by any Mycenaean Greek beyond small cadres of palace

bureaucrats. Since individual Linear B scribes can be distinguished by their

handwriting on preserved documents, we can say that all preserved Linear B

documents from the palaces of Knossos and Pylos are the work of a mere 75

and 40 scribes, respectively.

The uses of these telegraphic, clumsy, ambiguous early scripts were as

restricted as the number of their users. Anyone hoping to discover how

Sumerians of 3000 B.C. thought and felt is in for a disappointment. Instead, the

first Sumerian texts are emotionless accounts of palace and temple

bureaucrats. About 90 percent of the tablets in the earliest known Sumerian

archives, from the city of Uruk, are clerical records of goods paid in, workers

given rations, and agricultural products distributed. Only later, as Sumerians

progressed beyond logograms to phonetic writing, did they begin to write

prose narratives, such as propaganda and myths.

Mycenaean Greeks never even reached that propaganda-and-myths stage.

One-third of all Linear B tablets from the palace of Knossos are accountants’

records of sheep and wool, while an inordinate proportion of writing at the

palace of Pylos consists of records of flax. Linear B was inherently so

ambiguous that it remained restricted to palace accounts, whose context and

limited word choices made the interpretation clear. Not a trace of its use for

literature has survived. The Iliad and Odyssey were composed and transmitted

by nonliterate bards for nonliterate listeners, and not committed to writing

until the development of the Greek alphabet hundreds of years later.

Similarly restricted uses characterize early Egyptian, Mesoamerican, and

Chinese writing. Early Egyptian hieroglyphs recorded religious and state

propaganda and bureaucratic accounts. Preserved Maya writing was similarly

devoted to propaganda, births and accessions and victories of kings, and

astronomical observations of priests. The oldest preserved Chinese writing of

the late Shang Dynasty consists of religious divination about dynastic affairs,

incised into so-called oracle bones. A sample Shang text: “The king, reading

the meaning of the crack [in a bone cracked by heating], said: ‘If the child is

born on a keng day, it will be extremely auspicious.’”

To us today, it is tempting to ask why societies with early writing systems

accepted the ambiguities that restricted writing to a few functions and a few

scribes. But even to pose that question is to illustrate the gap between ancient

perspectives and our own expectations of mass literacy. The intended

restricted uses of early writing provided a positive disincentive for devising

less ambiguous writing systems. The kings and priests of ancient Sumer

wanted writing to be used by professional scribes to record numbers of sheep

owed in taxes, not by the masses to write poetry and hatch plots. As the

anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss put it, ancient writing’s main function was

“to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings.” Personal uses of

writing by nonprofessionals came only much later, as writing systems grew

simpler and more expressive.

For instance, with the fall of Mycenaean Greek civilization, around 1200

B.C., Linear B disappeared, and Greece returned to an age of preliteracy. When

writing finally returned to Greece, in the eighth century B.C., the new Greek

writing, its users, and its uses were very different. The writing was no longer

an ambiguous syllabary mixed with logograms but an alphabet borrowed

from the Phoenician consonantal alphabet and improved by the Greek

invention of vowels. In place of lists of sheep, legible only to scribes and read

only in palaces, Greek alphabetic writing from the moment of its appearance

was a vehicle of poetry and humor, to be read in private homes. For instance,

the first preserved example of Greek alphabetic writing, scratched onto an

Athenian wine jug of about 740 B.C., is a line of poetry announcing a dancing

contest: “Whoever of all dancers performs most nimbly will win this vase as a

prize.” The next example is three lines of dactylic hexameter scratched onto a

drinking cup: “I am Nestor’s delicious drinking cup. Whoever drinks from

this cup swiftly will the desire of fair-crowned Aphrodite seize him.” The

earliest preserved examples of the Etruscan and Roman alphabets are also

inscriptions on drinking cups and wine containers. Only later did the

alphabet’s easily learned vehicle of private communication become co-opted

for public or bureaucratic purposes. Thus, the developmental sequence of uses

for alphabetic writing was the reverse of that for the earlier systems of

logograms and syllabaries.



THE LIMITED USES and users of early writing suggest why writing appeared

so late in human evolution. All of the likely or possible independent

inventions of writing (in Sumer, Mexico, China, and Egypt), and all of the

early adaptations of those invented systems (for example, those in Crete, Iran,

Turkey, the Indus Valley, and the Maya area), involved socially stratified

societies with complex and centralized political institutions, whose necessary

relation to food production we shall explore in a later chapter. Early writing

served the needs of those political institutions (such as record keeping and

royal propaganda), and the users were full-time bureaucrats nourished by

stored food surpluses grown by food-producing peasants. Writing was never

developed or even adopted by hunter-gatherer societies, because they lacked

both the institutional uses of early writing and the social and agricultural

mechanisms for generating the food surpluses required to feed scribes.

Thus, food production and thousands of years of societal evolution

following its adoption were as essential for the evolution of writing as for the

evolution of microbes causing human epidemic diseases. Writing arose

independently only in the Fertile Crescent, Mexico, and probably China

precisely because those were the first areas where food production emerged in

their respective hemispheres. Once writing had been invented by those few

societies, it then spread, by trade and conquest and religion, to other societies

with similar economies and political organizations.

While food production was thus a necessary condition for the evolution or

early adoption of writing, it was not a sufficient condition. At the beginning

of this chapter, I mentioned the failure of some food-producing societies with

complex political organization to develop or adopt writing before modern

times. Those cases, initially so puzzling to us moderns accustomed to viewing

writing as indispensable to a complex society, included one of the world’s

largest empires as of A.D. 1520, the Inca Empire of South America. They also

included Tonga’s maritime proto-empire, the Hawaiian state emerging in the

late 18th century, all of the states and chiefdoms of subequatorial Africa and

sub-Saharan West Africa before the arrival of Islam, and the largest native

North American societies, those of the Mississippi Valley and its tributaries.

Why did all those societies fail to acquire writing, despite their sharing

prerequisites with societies that did do so?

Here we have to remind ourselves that the vast majority of societies with

writing acquired it by borrowing it from neighbors or by being inspired by

them to develop it, rather than by independently inventing it themselves. The

societies without writing that I just mentioned are ones that got a later start on

food production than did Sumer, Mexico, and China. (The only uncertainty in

this statement concerns the relative dates for the onset of food production in

Mexico and in the Andes, the eventual Inca realm.) Given enough time, the

societies lacking writing might also have eventually developed it on their

own. Had they been located nearer to Sumer, Mexico, and China, they might

instead have acquired writing or the idea of writing from those centers, just as

did India, the Maya, and most other societies with writing. But they were too

far from the first centers of writing to have acquired it before modern times.

The importance of isolation is most obvious for Hawaii and Tonga, both

of which were separated by at least 4,000 miles of ocean from the nearest

societies with writing. The other societies illustrate the important point that

distance as the crow flies is not an appropriate measure of isolation for

humans. The Andes, West Africa’s kingdoms, and the mouth of the

Mississippi River lay only about 1,200, 1,500, and 700 miles, respectively,

from societies with writing in Mexico, North Africa, and Mexico,

respectively. These distances are considerably less than the distances the

alphabet had to travel from its homeland on the eastern shores of the

Mediterranean to reach Ireland, Ethiopia, and Southeast Asia within 2,000

years of its invention. But humans are slowed by ecological and water barriers

that crows can fly over. The states of North Africa (with writing) and West

Africa (without writing) were separated from each other by Saharan desert

unsuitable for agriculture and cities. The deserts of northern Mexico similarly

separated the urban centers of southern Mexico from the chiefdoms of the

Mississippi Valley. Communication between southern Mexico and the Andes

required either a sea voyage or else a long chain of overland contacts via the

narrow, forested, never urbanized Isthmus of Darien. Hence the Andes, West

Africa, and the Mississippi Valley were effectively rather isolated from

societies with writing.

That’s not to say that those societies without writing were totally isolated.

West Africa eventually did receive Fertile Crescent domestic animals across

the Sahara, and later accepted Islamic influence, including Arabic writing.

Corn diffused from Mexico to the Andes and, more slowly, from Mexico to

the Mississippi Valley. But we already saw in Chapter 10 that the north-south

axes and ecological barriers within Africa and the Americas retarded the

diffusion of crops and domestic animals. The history of writing illustrates

strikingly the similar ways in which geography and ecology influenced the

spread of human inventions.





CHAPTER 13

NECESSITY’S MOTHER

ON JULY 3, 1908, ARCHAEOLOGISTS EXCAVATING THE ancient Minoan palace at

Phaistos, on the island of Crete, chanced upon one of the most remarkable

objects in the history of technology. At first glance it seemed

unprepossessing: just a small, flat, unpainted, circular disk of hard-baked clay,

6½ inches in diameter. Closer examination showed each side to be covered

with writing, resting on a curved line that spiraled clockwise in five coils

from the disk’s rim to its center. A total of 241 signs or letters was neatly

divided by etched vertical lines into groups of several signs, possibly

constituting words. The writer must have planned and executed the disk with

care, so as to start writing at the rim and fill up all the available space along

the spiraling line, yet not run out of space on reaching the center (Chapter 13).

Ever since it was unearthed, the disk has posed a mystery for historians of

writing. The number of distinct signs (45) suggests a syllabary rather than an

alphabet, but it is still undeciphered, and the forms of the signs are unlike

those of any other known writing system. Not another scrap of the strange

script has turned up in the 89 years since its discovery. Thus, it remains

unknown whether it represents an indigenous Cretan script or a foreign import

to Crete.

For historians of technology, the Phaistos disk is even more baffling; its

estimated date of 1700 B.C. makes it by far the earliest printed document in the

world. Instead of being etched by hand, as were all texts of Crete’s later

Linear A and Linear B scripts, the disk’s signs were punched into soft clay

(subsequently baked hard) by stamps that bore a sign as raised type. The

printer evidently had a set of at least 45 stamps, one for each sign appearing

on the disk. Making these stamps must have entailed a great deal of work, and

they surely weren’t manufactured just to print this single document. Whoever

used them was presumably doing a lot of writing. With those stamps, their

owner could make copies much more quickly and neatly than if he or she had

written out each of the script’s complicated signs at each appearance.

The Phaistos disk anticipates humanity’s next efforts at printing, which

similarly used cut type or blocks but applied them to paper with ink, not to

clay without ink. However, those next efforts did not appear until 2,500 years

later in China and 3,100 years later in medieval Europe. Why was the disk’s

precocious technology not widely adopted in Crete or elsewhere in the ancient

Mediterranean? Why was its printing method invented around 1700 B.C. in

Crete and not at some other time in Mesopotamia, Mexico, or any other

ancient center of writing? Why did it then take thousands of years to add the

ideas of ink and a press and arrive at a printing press? The disk thus

constitutes a threatening challenge to historians. If inventions are as

idiosyncratic and unpredictable as the disk seems to suggest, then efforts to

generalize about the history of technology may be doomed from the outset.

Technology, in the form of weapons and transport, provides the direct

means by which certain peoples have expanded their realms and conquered

other peoples. That makes it the leading cause of history’s broadest pattern.

But why were Eurasians, rather than Native Americans or sub-Saharan

Africans, the ones to invent firearms, oceangoing ships, and steel equipment?

The differences extend to most other significant technological advances, from

printing presses to glass and steam engines. Why were all those inventions

Eurasian? Why were all New Guineans and Native Australians in A.D. 1800

still using stone tools like ones discarded thousands of years ago in Eurasia

and most of Africa, even though some of the world’s richest copper and iron

deposits are in New Guinea and Australia, respectively? All those facts

explain why so many laypeople assume that Eurasians are superior to other

peoples in inventiveness and intelligence.

If, on the other hand, no such difference in human neurobiology exists to

account for continental differences in technological development, what does

account for them? An alternative view rests on the heroic theory of invention.

Technological advances seem to come disproportionately from a few very

rare geniuses, such as Johannes Gutenberg, James Watt, Thomas Edison, and

the Wright brothers. They were Europeans, or descendants of European

emigrants to America. So were Archimedes and other rare geniuses of ancient

times. Could such geniuses have equally well been born in Tasmania or

Namibia? Does the history of technology depend on nothing more than

accidents of the birthplaces of a few inventors?

Still another alternative view holds that it is a matter not of individual

inventiveness but of the receptivity of whole societies to innovation. Some

societies seem hopelessly conservative, inward looking, and hostile to change.

That’s the impression of many Westerners who have attempted to help Third

World peoples and ended up discouraged. The people seem perfectly

intelligent as individuals; the problem seems instead to lie with their societies.

How else can one explain why the Aborigines of northeastern Australia failed

to adopt bows and arrows, which they saw being used by Torres Straits

islanders with whom they traded? Might all the societies of an entire

continent be unreceptive, thereby explaining technology’s slow pace of

development there? In this chapter we shall finally come to grips with a

central problem of this book: the question of why technology did evolve at

such different rates on different continents.



THE STARTING POINT for our discussion is the common view expressed in the

saying “Necessity is the mother of invention.” That is, inventions supposedly

arise when a society has an unfulfilled need: some technology is widely

recognized to be unsatisfactory or limiting. Would-be inventors, motivated by

the prospect of money or fame, perceive the need and try to meet it. Some

inventor finally comes up with a solution superior to the existing,

unsatisfactory technology. Society adopts the solution if it is compatible with

the society’s values and other technologies.

Quite a few inventions do conform to this commonsense view of

necessity as invention’s mother. In 1942, in the middle of World War II, the

U.S. government set up the Manhattan Project with the explicit goal of

inventing the technology required to build an atomic bomb before Nazi

Germany could do so. That project succeeded in three years, at a cost of $2

billion (equivalent to over $20 billion today). Other instances are Eli

Whitney’s 1794 invention of his cotton gin to replace laborious hand cleaning

of cotton grown in the U.S. South, and James Watt’s 1769 invention of his

steam engine to solve the problem of pumping water out of British coal

mines.

These familiar examples deceive us into assuming that other major

inventions were also responses to perceived needs. In fact, many or most

inventions were developed by people driven by curiosity or by a love of

tinkering, in the absence of any initial demand for the product they had in

mind. Once a device had been invented, the inventor then had to find an

application for it. Only after it had been in use for a considerable time did

consumers come to feel that they “needed” it. Still other devices, invented to

serve one purpose, eventually found most of their use for other, unanticipated

purposes. It may come as a surprise to learn that these inventions in search of

a use include most of the major technological breakthroughs of modern times,

ranging from the airplane and automobile, through the internal combustion

engine and electric light bulb, to the phonograph and transistor. Thus,

invention is often the mother of necessity, rather than vice versa.

A good example is the history of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, the most

original invention of the greatest inventor of modern times. When Edison

built his first phonograph in 1877, he published an article proposing ten uses

to which his invention might be put. They included preserving the last words

of dying people, recording books for blind people to hear, announcing clock

time, and teaching spelling. Reproduction of music was not high on Edison’s

list of priorities. A few years later Edison told his assistant that his invention

had no commercial value. Within another few years he changed his mind and

did enter business to sell phonographs—but for use as office dictating

machines. When other entrepreneurs created jukeboxes by arranging for a

phonograph to play popular music at the drop of a coin, Edison objected to

this debasement, which apparently detracted from serious office use of his

invention. Only after about 20 years did Edison reluctantly concede that the

main use of his phonograph was to record and play music.

The motor vehicle is another invention whose uses seem obvious today.

However, it was not invented in response to any demand. When Nikolaus

Otto built his first gas engine, in 1866, horses had been supplying people’s

land transportation needs for nearly 6,000 years, supplemented increasingly

by steam-powered railroads for several decades. There was no crisis in the

availability of horses, no dissatisfaction with railroads.

Because Otto’s engine was weak, heavy, and seven feet tall, it did not

recommend itself over horses. Not until 1885 did engines improve to the point

that Gottfried Daimler got around to installing one on a bicycle to create the

first motorcycle; he waited until 1896 to build the first truck.

In 1905, motor vehicles were still expensive, unreliable toys for the rich.

Public contentment with horses and railroads remained high until World War

I, when the military concluded that it really did need trucks. Intensive postwar

lobbying by truck manufacturers and armies finally convinced the public of

its own needs and enabled trucks to begin to supplant horse-drawn wagons in

industrialized countries. Even in the largest American cities, the changeover

took 50 years.

Inventors often have to persist at their tinkering for a long time in the

absence of public demand, because early models perform too poorly to be

useful. The first cameras, typewriters, and television sets were as awful as

Otto’s seven-foot-tall gas engine. That makes it difficult for an inventor to

foresee whether his or her awful prototype might eventually find a use and

thus warrant more time and expense to develop it. Each year, the United

States issues about 70,000 patents, only a few of which ultimately reach the

stage of commercial production. For each great invention that ultimately

found a use, there are countless others that did not. Even inventions that meet

the need for which they were initially designed may later prove more valuable

at meeting unforeseen needs. While James Watt designed his steam engine to

pump water from mines, it soon was supplying power to cotton mills, then

(with much greater profit) propelling locomotives and boats.



THUS, THE COMMONSENSE view of invention that served as our starting point

reverses the usual roles of invention and need. It also overstates the

importance of rare geniuses, such as Watt and Edison. That “heroic theory of

invention,” as it is termed, is encouraged by patent law, because an applicant

for a patent must prove the novelty of the invention submitted. Inventors

thereby have a financial incentive to denigrate or ignore previous work. From

a patent lawyer’s perspective, the ideal invention is one that arises without

any precursors, like Athene springing fully formed from the forehead of Zeus.

In reality, even for the most famous and apparently decisive modern

inventions, neglected precursors lurked behind the bald claim “X invented Y.”

For instance, we are regularly told, “James Watt invented the steam engine in

1769,” supposedly inspired by watching steam rise from a teakettle’s spout.

Unfortunately for this splendid fiction, Watt actually got the idea for his

particular steam engine while repairing a model of Thomas Newcomen’s

steam engine, which Newcomen had invented 57 years earlier and of which

over a hundred had been manufactured in England by the time of Watt’s

repair work. Newcomen’s engine, in turn, followed the steam engine that the

Englishman Thomas Savery patented in 1698, which followed the steam

engine that the Frenchman Denis Papin designed (but did not build) around

1680, which in turn had precursors in the ideas of the Dutch scientist

Christiaan Huygens and others. All this is not to deny that Watt greatly

improved Newcomen’s engine (by incorporating a separate steam condenser

and a double-acting cylinder), just as Newcomen had greatly improved

Savery’s.

Similar histories can be related for all modern inventions that are

adequately documented. The hero customarily credited with the invention

followed previous inventors who had had similar aims and had already

produced designs, working models, or (as in the case of the Newcomen steam

engine) commercially successful models. Edison’s famous “invention” of the

incandescent light bulb on the night of October 21, 1879, improved on many

other incandescent light bulbs patented by other inventors between 1841 and

1878. Similarly, the Wright brothers’ manned powered airplane was preceded

by the manned unpowered gliders of Otto Lilienthal and the unmanned

powered airplane of Samuel Langley; Samuel Morse’s telegraph was

preceded by those of Joseph Henry, William Cooke, and Charles Wheatstone;

and Eli Whitney’s gin for cleaning short-staple (inland) cotton extended gins

that had been cleaning long-staple (Sea Island) cotton for thousands of years.

All this is not to deny that Watt, Edison, the Wright brothers, Morse, and

Whitney made big improvements and thereby increased or inaugurated

commercial success. The form of the invention eventually adopted might have

been somewhat different without the recognized inventor’s contribution. But

the question for our purposes is whether the broad pattern of world history

would have been altered significantly if some genius inventor had not been

born at a particular place and time. The answer is clear: there has never been

any such person. All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors

and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was

capable of using their product. As we shall see, the tragedy of the hero who

perfected the stamps used for the Phaistos disk was that he or she devised

something that the society of the time could not exploit on a large scale.



MY EXAMPLES SO far have been drawn from modern technologies, because

their histories are well known. My two main conclusions are that technology

develops cumulatively, rather than in isolated heroic acts, and that it finds

most of its uses after it has been invented, rather than being invented to meet

a foreseen need. These conclusions surely apply with much greater force to

the undocumented history of ancient technology. When Ice Age hunter-

gatherers noticed burned sand and limestone residues in their hearths, it was

impossible for them to foresee the long, serendipitous accumulation of

discoveries that would lead to the first Roman glass windows (around A.D. 1),

by way of the first objects with surface glazes (around 4000 B.C.), the first

free-standing glass objects of Egypt and Mesopotamia (around 2500 B.C.), and

the first glass vessels (around 1500 B.C.).

We know nothing about how those earliest known surface glazes

themselves were developed. Nevertheless, we can infer the methods of

prehistoric invention by watching technologically “primitive” people today,

such as the New Guineans with whom I work. I already mentioned their

knowledge of hundreds of local plant and animal species and each species’

edibility, medical value, and other uses. New Guineans told me similarly

about dozens of rock types in their environment and each type’s hardness,

color, behavior when struck or flaked, and uses. All of that knowledge is

acquired by observation and by trial and error. I see that process of

“invention” going on whenever I take New Guineans to work with me in an

area away from their homes. They constantly pick up unfamiliar things in the

forest, tinker with them, and occasionally find them useful enough to bring

home. I see the same process when I am abandoning a campsite, and local

people come to scavenge what is left. They play with my discarded objects

and try to figure out whether they might be useful in New Guinea society.

Discarded tin cans are easy: they end up reused as containers. Other objects

are tested for purposes very different from the one for which they were

manufactured. How would that yellow number 2 pencil look as an ornament,

inserted through a pierced ear-lobe or nasal septum? Is that piece of broken

glass sufficiently sharp and strong to be useful as a knife? Eureka!

The raw substances available to ancient peoples were natural materials

such as stone, wood, bone, skins, fiber, clay, sand, limestone, and minerals, all

existing in great variety. From those materials, people gradually learned to

work particular types of stone, wood, and bone into tools; to convert

particular clays into pottery and bricks; to convert certain mixtures of sand,

limestone, and other “dirt” into glass; and to work available pure soft metals

such as copper and gold, then to extract metals from ores, and finally to work

hard metals such as bronze and iron.

A good illustration of the histories of trial and error involved is furnished

by the development of gunpowder and gasoline from raw materials.

Combustible natural products inevitably make themselves noticed, as when a

resinous log explodes in a campfire. By 2000 B.C., Mesopotamians were

extracting tons of petroleum by heating rock asphalt. Ancient Greeks

discovered the uses of various mixtures of petroleum, pitch, resins, sulfur, and

quicklime as incendiary weapons, delivered by catapults, arrows, firebombs,

and ships. The expertise at distillation that medieval Islamic alchemists

developed to produce alcohols and perfumes also let them distill petroleum

into fractions, some of which proved to be even more powerful incendiaries.

Delivered in grenades, rockets, and torpedoes, those incendiaries played a key

role in Islam’s eventual defeat of the Crusaders. By then, the Chinese had

observed that a particular mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter, which

became known as gunpowder, was especially explosive. An Islamic chemical

treatise of about A.D. 1100 describes seven gunpowder recipes, while a treatise

from A.D. 1280 gives more than 70 recipes that had proved suitable for diverse

purposes (one for rockets, another for cannons).

As for postmedieval petroleum distillation, 19th-century chemists found

the middle distillate fraction useful as fuel for oil lamps. The chemists

discarded the most volatile fraction (gasoline) as an unfortunate waste product

—until it was found to be an ideal fuel for internal-combustion engines. Who

today remembers that gasoline, the fuel of modern civilization, originated as

yet another invention in search of a use?



ONCE AN INVENTOR has discovered a use for a new technology, the next step

is to persuade society to adopt it. Merely having a bigger, faster, more

powerful device for doing something is no guarantee of ready acceptance.

Innumerable such technologies were either not adopted at all or adopted only

after prolonged resistance. Notorious examples include the U.S. Congress’s

rejection of funds to develop a supersonic transport in 1971, the world’s

continued rejection of an efficiently designed typewriter keyboard, and

Britain’s long reluctance to adopt electric lighting. What is it that promotes an

invention’s acceptance by a society?

Let’s begin by comparing the acceptability of different inventions within

the same society. It turns out that at least four factors influence acceptance.

The first and most obvious factor is relative economic advantage

compared with existing technology. While wheels are very useful in modern

industrial societies, that has not been so in some other societies. Ancient

Native Mexicans invented wheeled vehicles with axles for use as toys, but not

for transport. That seems incredible to us, until we reflect that ancient

Mexicans lacked domestic animals to hitch to their wheeled vehicles, which

therefore offered no advantage over human porters.

A second consideration is social value and prestige, which can override

economic benefit (or lack thereof). Millions of people today buy designer

jeans for double the price of equally durable generic jeans—because the

social cachet of the designer label counts for more than the extra cost.

Similarly, Japan continues to use its horrendously cumbersome kanji writing

system in preference to efficient alphabets or Japan’s own efficient kana

syllabary—because the prestige attached to kanji is so great.

Still another factor is compatibility with vested interests. This book, like

probably every other typed document you have ever read, was typed with a

QWERTY keyboard, named for the left-most six letters in its upper row.

Unbelievable as it may now sound, that keyboard layout was designed in

1873 as a feat of anti-engineering. It employs a whole series of perverse tricks

designed to force typists to type as slowly as possible, such as scattering the

commonest letters over all keyboard rows and concentrating them on the left

side (where right-handed people have to use their weaker hand). The reason

behind all of those seemingly counterproductive features is that the

typewriters of 1873 jammed if adjacent keys were struck in quick succession,

so that manufacturers had to slow down typists. When improvements in

typewriters eliminated the problem of jamming, trials in 1932 with an

efficiently laid-out keyboard showed that it would let us double our typing

speed and reduce our typing effort by 95 percent. But QWERTY keyboards

were solidly entrenched by then. The vested interests of hundreds of millions

of QWERTY typists, typing teachers, typewriter and computer salespeople,

and manufacturers have crushed all moves toward keyboard efficiency for

over 60 years.

While the story of the QWERTY keyboard may sound funny, many

similar cases have involved much heavier economic consequences. Why does

Japan now dominate the world market for transistorized electronic consumer

products, to a degree that damages the United States’s balance of payments

with Japan, even though transistors were invented and patented in the United

States? Because Sony bought transistor licensing rights from Western Electric

at a time when the American electronics consumer industry was churning out

vacuum tube models and reluctant to compete with its own products. Why

were British cities still using gas street lighting into the 1920s, long after U.S.

and German cities had converted to electric street lighting? Because British

municipal governments had invested heavily in gas lighting and placed

regulatory obstacles in the way of the competing electric light companies.

The remaining consideration affecting acceptance of new technologies is

the ease with which their advantages can be observed. In A.D. 1340, when

firearms had not yet reached most of Europe, England’s earl of Derby and earl

of Salisbury happened to be present in Spain at the battle of Tarifa, where

Arabs used cannons against the Spaniards. Impressed by what they saw, the

earls introduced cannons to the English army, which adopted them

enthusiastically and already used them against French soldiers at the battle of

Crécy six years later.



THUS, WHEELS, DESIGNER jeans, and QWERTY keyboards illustrate the varied

reasons why the same society is not equally receptive to all inventions.

Conversely, the same invention’s reception also varies greatly among

contemporary societies. We are all familiar with the supposed generalization

that rural Third World societies are less receptive to innovation than are

Westernized industrial societies. Even within the industrialized world, some

areas are much more receptive than others. Such differences, if they existed

on a continental scale, might explain why technology developed faster on

some continents than on others. For instance, if all Aboriginal Australian

societies were for some reason uniformly resistant to change, that might

account for their continued use of stone tools after metal tools had appeared

on every other continent. How do differences in receptivity among societies

arise?

A laundry list of at least 14 explanatory factors has been proposed by

historians of technology. One is long life expectancy, which in principle

should give prospective inventors the years necessary to accumulate technical

knowledge, as well as the patience and security to embark on long

development programs yielding delayed rewards. Hence the greatly increased

life expectancy brought by modern medicine may have contributed to the

recently accelerating pace of invention.

The next five factors involve economics or the organization of society: (1)

The availability of cheap slave labor in classical times supposedly

discouraged innovation then, whereas high wages or labor scarcity now

stimulate the search for technological solutions. For example, the prospect of

changed immigration policies that would cut off the supply of cheap Mexican

seasonal labor to Californian farms was the immediate incentive for the

development of a machine-harvestable variety of tomatoes in California. (2)

Patents and other property laws, protecting ownership rights of inventors,

reward innovation in the modern West, while the lack of such protection

discourages it in modern China. (3) Modern industrial societies provide

extensive opportunities for technical training, as medieval Islam did and

modern Zaire does not. (4) Modern capitalism is, and the ancient Roman

economy was not, organized in a way that made it potentially rewarding to

invest capital in technological development. (5) The strong individualism of

U.S. society allows successful inventors to keep earnings for themselves,

whereas strong family ties in New Guinea ensure that someone who begins to

earn money will be joined by a dozen relatives expecting to move in and be

fed and supported.

Another four suggested explanations are ideological, rather than

economic or organizational: (1) Risk-taking behavior, essential for efforts at

innovation, is more widespread in some societies than in others. (2) The

scientific outlook is a unique feature of post-Renaissance European society

that has contributed heavily to its modern technological preeminence. (3)

Tolerance of diverse views and of heretics fosters innovation, whereas a

strongly traditional outlook (as in China’s emphasis on ancient Chinese

classics) stifles it. (4) Religions vary greatly in their relation to technological

innovation: some branches of Judaism and Christianity are claimed to be

especially compatible with it, while some branches of Islam, Hinduism, and

Brahmanism may be especially incompatible with it.

All ten of these hypotheses are plausible. But none of them has any

necessary association with geography. If patent rights, capitalism, and certain

religions do promote technology, what selected for those factors in

postmedieval Europe but not in contemporary China or India?

At least the direction in which those ten factors influence technology

seems clear. The remaining four proposed factors—war, centralized

government, climate, and resource abundance—appear to act inconsistently:

sometimes they stimulate technology, sometimes they inhibit it. (1)

Throughout history, war has often been a leading stimulant of technological

innovation. For instance, the enormous investments made in nuclear weapons

during World War II and in airplanes and trucks during World War I launched

whole new fields of technology. But wars can also deal devastating setbacks

to technological development. (2) Strong centralized government boosted

technology in late-19th-century Germany and Japan, and crushed it in China

after A.D. 1500. (3) Many northern Europeans assume that technology thrives

in a rigorous climate where survival is impossible without technology, and

withers in a benign climate where clothing is unnecessary and bananas

supposedly fall off the trees. An opposite view is that benign environments

leave people free from the constant struggle for existence, free to devote

themselves to innovation. (4) There has also been debate over whether

technology is stimulated by abundance or by scarcity of environmental

resources. Abundant resources might stimulate the development of inventions

utilizing those resources, such as water mill technology in rainy northern

Europe, with its many rivers—but why didn’t water mill technology progress

more rapidly in even rainier New Guinea? The destruction of Britain’s forests

has been suggested as the reason behind its early lead in developing coal

technology, but why didn’t deforestation have the same effect in China?

This discussion does not exhaust the list of reasons proposed to explain

why societies differ in their receptivity to new technology. Worse yet, all of

these proximate explanations bypass the question of the ultimate factors

behind them. This may seem like a discouraging setback in our attempt to

understand the course of history, since technology has undoubtedly been one

of history’s strongest forces. However, I shall now argue that the diversity of

independent factors behind technological innovation actually makes it easier,

not harder, to understand history’s broad pattern.



FOR THE PURPOSES of this book, the key question about the laundry list is

whether such factors differed systematically from continent to continent and

thereby led to continental differences in technological development. Most

laypeople and many historians assume, expressly or tacitly, that the answer is

yes. For example, it is widely believed that Australian Aborigines as a group

shared ideological characteristics contributing to their technological

backwardness: they were (or are) supposedly conservative, living in an

imagined past Dreamtime of the world’s creation, and not focused on

practical ways to improve the present. A leading historian of Africa

characterized Africans as inward looking and lacking Europeans’ drive for

expansion.

But all such claims are based on pure speculation. There has never been a

study of many societies under similar socioeconomic conditions on each of

two continents, demonstrating systematic ideological differences between the

two continents’ peoples. The usual reasoning is instead circular: because

technological differences exist, the existence of corresponding ideological

differences is inferred.

In reality, I regularly observe in New Guinea that native societies there

differ greatly from each other in their prevalent outlooks. Just like

industrialized Europe and America, traditional New Guinea has conservative

societies that resist new ways, living side by side with innovative societies

that selectively adopt new ways. The result, with the arrival of Western

technology, is that the more entrepreneurial societies are now exploiting

Western technology to overwhelm their conservative neighbors.

For example, when Europeans first reached the highlands of eastern New

Guinea, in the 1930s, they “discovered” dozens of previously uncontacted

Stone Age tribes, of which the Chimbu tribe proved especially aggressive in

adopting Western technology. When Chimbus saw white settlers planting

coffee, they began growing coffee themselves as a cash crop. In 1964 I met a

50-year-old Chimbu man, unable to read, wearing a traditional grass skirt, and

born into a society still using stone tools, who had become rich by growing

coffee, used his profits to buy a sawmill for $100,000 cash, and bought a fleet

of trucks to transport his coffee and timber to market. In contrast, a

neighboring highland people with whom I worked for eight years, the Daribi,

are especially conservative and uninterested in new technology. When the

first helicopter landed in the Daribi area, they briefly looked at it and just

went back to what they had been doing; the Chimbus would have been

bargaining to charter it. As a result, Chimbus are now moving into the Daribi

area, taking it over for plantations, and reducing the Daribi to working for

them.

On every other continent as well, certain native societies have proved

very receptive, adopted foreign ways and technology selectively, and

integrated them successfully into their own society. In Nigeria the Ibo people

became the local entrepreneurial equivalent of New Guinea’s Chimbus. Today

the most numerous Native American tribe in the United States is the Navajo,

who on European arrival were just one of several hundred tribes. But the

Navajo proved especially resilient and able to deal selectively with

innovation. They incorporated Western dyes into their weaving, became

silversmiths and ranchers, and now drive trucks while continuing to live in

traditional dwellings.

Among the supposedly conservative Aboriginal Australians as well, there

are receptive societies along with conservative ones. At the one extreme, the

Tasmanians continued to use stone tools superseded tens of thousands of

years earlier in Europe and replaced in most of mainland Australia too. At the

opposite extreme, some aboriginal fishing groups of southeastern Australia

devised elaborate technologies for managing fish populations, including the

construction of canals, weirs, and standing traps.

Thus, the development and reception of inventions vary enormously from

society to society on the same continent. They also vary over time within the

same society. Nowadays, Islamic societies in the Middle East are relatively

conservative and not at the forefront of technology. But medieval Islam in the

same region was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It

achieved far higher literacy rates than contemporary Europe; it assimilated the

legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical

Greek books are now known to us only through Arabic copies; it invented or

elaborated windmills, tidal mills, trigonometry, and lateen sails; it made major

advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering, and irrigation

methods; and it adopted paper and gunpowder from China and transmitted

them to Europe. In the Middle Ages the flow of technology was

overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe, rather than from Europe to Islam as it

is today. Only after around A.D. 1500 did the net direction of flow begin to

reverse.

Innovation in China too fluctuated markedly with time. Until around A.D.

1450, China was technologically much more innovative and advanced than

Europe, even more so than medieval Islam. The long list of Chinese

inventions includes canal lock gates, cast iron, deep drilling, efficient animal

harnesses, gunpowder, kites, magnetic compasses, movable type, paper,

porcelain, printing (except for the Phaistos disk), sternpost rudders, and

wheelbarrows. China then ceased to be innovative for reasons about which we

shall speculate in the Epilogue. Conversely, we think of western Europe and

its derived North American societies as leading the modern world in

technological innovation, but technology was less advanced in western

Europe than in any other “civilized” area of the Old World until the late

Middle Ages.

Thus, it is untrue that there are continents whose societies have tended to

be innovative and continents whose societies have tended to be conservative.

On any continent, at any given time, there are innovative societies and also

conservative ones. In addition, receptivity to innovation fluctuates in time

within the same region.

On reflection, these conclusions are precisely what one would expect if a

society’s innovativeness is determined by many independent factors. Without

a detailed knowledge of all of those factors, innovativeness becomes

unpredictable. Hence social scientists continue to debate the specific reasons

why receptivity changed in Islam, China, and Europe, and why the Chimbus,

Ibos, and Navajo were more receptive to new technology than were their

neighbors. To the student of broad historical patterns, though, it makes no

difference what the specific reasons were in each of those cases. The myriad

factors affecting innovativeness make the historian’s task paradoxically easier,

by converting societal variation in innovativeness into essentially a random

variable. That means that, over a large enough area (such as a whole

continent) at any particular time, some proportion of societies is likely to be

innovative.



WHERE DO INNOVATIONS actually come from? For all societies except the

few past ones that were completely isolated, much or most new technology is

not invented locally but is instead borrowed from other societies. The relative

importance of local invention and of borrowing depends mainly on two

factors: the ease of invention of the particular technology, and the proximity

of the particular society to other societies.

Some inventions arose straightforwardly from a handling of natural raw

materials. Such inventions developed on many independent occasions in

world history, at different places and times. One example, which we have

already considered at length, is plant domestication, with at least nine

independent origins. Another is pottery, which may have arisen from

observations of the behavior of clay, a very widespread natural material, when

dried or heated. Pottery appeared in Japan around 14,000 years ago, in the

Fertile Crescent and China by around 10,000 years ago, and in Amazonia,

Africa’s Sahel zone, the U.S. Southeast, and Mexico thereafter.

An example of a much more difficult invention is writing, which does not

suggest itself by observation of any natural material. As we saw in Chapter

12, it had only a few independent origins, and the alphabet arose apparently

only once in world history. Other difficult inventions include the water wheel,

rotary quern, tooth gearing, magnetic compass, windmill, and camera

obscura, all of which were invented only once or twice in the Old World and

never in the New World.

Such complex inventions were usually acquired by borrowing, because

they spread more rapidly than they could be independently invented locally. A

clear example is the wheel, which is first attested around 3400 B.C. near the

Black Sea, and then turns up within the next few centuries over much of

Europe and Asia. All those early Old World wheels are of a peculiar design: a

solid wooden circle constructed of three planks fastened together, rather than

a rim with spokes. In contrast, the sole wheels of Native American societies

(depicted on Mexican ceramic vessels) consisted of a single piece, suggesting

a second independent invention of the wheel—as one would expect from

other evidence for the isolation of New World from Old World civilizations.

No one thinks that that same peculiar Old World wheel design appeared

repeatedly by chance at many separate sites of the Old World within a few

centuries of each other, after 7 million years of wheelless human history.

Instead, the utility of the wheel surely caused it to diffuse rapidly east and

west over the Old World from its sole site of invention. Other examples of

complex technologies that diffused east and west in the ancient Old World,

from a single West Asian source, include door locks, pulleys, rotary querns,

windmills—and the alphabet. A New World example of technological

diffusion is metallurgy, which spread from the Andes via Panama to

Mesoamerica.

When a widely useful invention does crop up in one society, it then tends

to spread in either of two ways. One way is that other societies see or learn of

the invention, are receptive to it, and adopt it. The second is that societies

lacking the invention find themselves at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the inventing

society, and they become overwhelmed and replaced if the disadvantage is

sufficiently great. A simple example is the spread of muskets among New

Zealand’s Maori tribes. One tribe, the Ngapuhi, adopted muskets from

European traders around 1818. Over the course of the next 15 years, New

Zealand was convulsed by the so-called Musket Wars, as musketless tribes

either acquired muskets or were subjugated by tribes already armed with

them. The outcome was that musket technology had spread throughout the

whole of New Zealand by 1833: all surviving Maori tribes now had muskets.

When societies do adopt a new technology from the society that invented

it, the diffusion may occur in many different contexts. They include peaceful

trade (as in the spread of transistors from the United States to Japan in 1954),

espionage (the smuggling of silkworms from Southeast Asia to the Mideast in

A.D. 552), emigration (the spread of French glass and clothing manufacturing

techniques over Europe by the 200,000 Huguenots expelled from France in

1685), and war. A crucial case of the last was the transfer of Chinese

papermaking techniques to Islam, made possible when an Arab army defeated

a Chinese army at the battle of Talas River in Central Asia in A.D. 751, found

some papermakers among the prisoners of war, and brought them to

Samarkand to set up paper manufacture.

In Chapter 12 we saw that cultural diffusion can involve either detailed

“blueprints” or just vague ideas stimulating a reinvention of details. While

Chapter 12 illustrated those alternatives for the spread of writing, they also

apply to the diffusion of technology. The preceding paragraph gave examples

of blueprint copying, whereas the transfer of Chinese porcelain technology to

Europe provides an instance of long-drawn-out idea diffusion. Porcelain, a

fine-grained translucent pottery, was invented in China around the 7th century

A.D. When it began to reach Europe by the Silk Road in the 14th century (with

no information about how it was manufactured), it was much admired, and

many unsuccessful attempts were made to imitate it. Not until 1707 did the

German alchemist Johann Böttger, after lengthy experiments with processes

and with mixing various minerals and clays together, hit upon the solution

and established the now famous Meissen porcelain works. More or less

independent later experiments in France and England led to Sèvres,

Wedgwood, and Spode porcelains. Thus, European potters had to reinvent

Chinese manufacturing methods for themselves, but they were stimulated to

do so by having models of the desired product before them.



DEPENDING ON THEIR geographic location, societies differ in how readily

they can receive technology by diffusion from other societies. The most

isolated people on Earth in recent history were the Aboriginal Tasmanians,

living without oceangoing watercraft on an island 100 miles from Australia,

itself the most isolated continent. The Tasmanians had no contact with other

societies for 10,000 years and acquired no new technology other than what

they invented themselves. Australians and New Guineans, separated from the

Asian mainland by the Indonesian island chain, received only a trickle of

inventions from Asia. The societies most accessible to receiving inventions by

diffusion were those embedded in the major continents. In these societies

technology developed most rapidly, because they accumulated not only their

own inventions but also those of other societies. For example, medieval

Islam, centrally located in Eurasia, acquired inventions from India and China

and inherited ancient Greek learning.

The importance of diffusion, and of geographic location in making it

possible, is strikingly illustrated by some otherwise incomprehensible cases of

societies that abandoned powerful technologies. We tend to assume that

useful technologies, once acquired, inevitably persist until superseded by

better ones. In reality, technologies must be not only acquired but also

maintained, and that too depends on many unpredictable factors. Any society

goes through social movements or fads, in which economically useless things

become valued or useful things devalued temporarily. Nowadays, when

almost all societies on Earth are connected to each other, we cannot imagine a

fad’s going so far that an important technology would actually be discarded. A

society that temporarily turned against a powerful technology would continue

to see it being used by neighboring societies and would have the opportunity

to reacquire it by diffusion (or would be conquered by neighbors if it failed to

do so). But such fads can persist in isolated societies.

A famous example involves Japan’s abandonment of guns. Firearms

reached Japan in A.D. 1543, when two Portuguese adventurers armed with

harquebuses (primitive guns) arrived on a Chinese cargo ship. The Japanese

were so impressed by the new weapon that they commenced indigenous gun

production, greatly improved gun technology, and by A.D. 1600 owned more

and better guns than any other country in the world.

But there were also factors working against the acceptance of firearms in

Japan. The country had a numerous warrior class, the samurai, for whom

swords rated as class symbols and works of art (and as means for subjugating

the lower classes). Japanese warfare had previously involved single combats

between samurai swordsmen, who stood in the open, made ritual speeches,

and then took pride in fighting gracefully. Such behavior became lethal in the

presence of peasant soldiers ungracefully blasting away with guns. In

addition, guns were a foreign invention and grew to be despised, as did other

things foreign in Japan after 1600. The samurai-controlled government began

by restricting gun production to a few cities, then introduced a requirement of

a government license for producing a gun, then issued licenses only for guns

produced for the government, and finally reduced government orders for

guns, until Japan was almost without functional guns again.

Contemporary European rulers also included some who despised guns

and tried to restrict their availability. But such measures never got far in

Europe, where any country that temporarily swore off firearms would be

promptly overrun by gun-toting neighboring countries. Only because Japan

was a populous, isolated island could it get away with its rejection of the

powerful new military technology. Its safety in isolation came to an end in

1853, when the visit of Commodore Perry’s U.S. fleet bristling with cannons

convinced Japan of its need to resume gun manufacture.

That rejection and China’s abandonment of oceangoing ships (as well as

of mechanical clocks and water-driven spinning machines) are well-known

historical instances of technological reversals in isolated or semi-isolated

societies. Other such reversals occurred in prehistoric times. The extreme case

is that of Aboriginal Tasmanians, who abandoned even bone tools and fishing

to become the society with the simplest technology in the modern world

(Chapter 15). Aboriginal Australians may have adopted and then abandoned

bows and arrows. Torres Islanders abandoned canoes, while Gaua Islanders

abandoned and then readopted them. Pottery was abandoned throughout

Polynesia. Most Polynesians and many Melanesians abandoned the use of

bows and arrows in war. Polar Eskimos lost the bow and arrow and the kayak,

while Dorset Eskimos lost the bow and arrow, bow drill, and dogs.

These examples, at first so bizarre to us, illustrate well the roles of

geography and of diffusion in the history of technology. Without diffusion,

fewer technologies are acquired, and more existing technologies are lost.



BECAUSE TECHNOLOGY BEGETS more technology, the importance of an

invention’s diffusion potentially exceeds the importance of the original

invention. Technology’s history exemplifies what is termed an autocatalytic

process: that is, one that speeds up at a rate that increases with time, because

the process catalyzes itself. The explosion of technology since the Industrial

Revolution impresses us today, but the medieval explosion was equally

impressive compared with that of the Bronze Age, which in turn dwarfed that

of the Upper Paleolithic.

One reason why technology tends to catalyze itself is that advances

depend upon previous mastery of simpler problems. For example, Stone Age

farmers did not proceed directly to extracting and working iron, which

requires high-temperature furnaces. Instead, iron ore metallurgy grew out of

thousands of years of human experience with natural outcrops of pure metals

soft enough to be hammered into shape without heat (copper and gold). It also

grew out of thousands of years of development of simple furnaces to make

pottery, and then to extract copper ores and work copper alloys (bronzes) that

do not require as high temperatures as does iron. In both the Fertile Crescent

and China, iron objects became common only after about 2,000 years of

experience of bronze metallurgy. New World societies had just begun making

bronze artifacts and had not yet started making iron ones at the time when the

arrival of Europeans truncated the New World’s independent trajectory.

The other main reason for autocatalysis is that new technologies and

materials make it possible to generate still other new technologies by

recombination. For instance, why did printing spread explosively in medieval

Europe after Gutenberg printed his Bible in A.D. 1455, but not after that

unknown printer printed the Phaistos disk in 1700 B.C.? The explanation is

partly that medieval European printers were able to combine six technological

advances, most of which were unavailable to the maker of the Phaistos disk.

Of those advances—in paper, movable type, metallurgy, presses, inks, and

scripts—paper and the idea of movable type reached Europe from China.

Gutenberg’s development of typecasting from metal dies, to overcome the

potentially fatal problem of nonuniform type size, depended on many

metallurgical developments: steel for letter punches, brass or bronze alloys

(later replaced by steel) for dies, lead for molds, and a tin-zinc-lead alloy for

type. Gutenberg’s press was derived from screw presses in use for making

wine and olive oil, while his ink was an oil-based improvement on existing

inks. The alphabetic scripts that medieval Europe inherited from three

millennia of alphabet development lent themselves to printing with movable

type, because only a few dozen letter forms had to be cast, as opposed to the

thousands of signs required for Chinese writing.

In all six respects, the maker of the Phaistos disk had access to much less

powerful technologies to combine into a printing system than did Gutenberg.

The disk’s writing medium was clay, which is much bulkier and heavier than

paper. The metallurgical skills, inks, and presses of 1700 B.C. Crete were more

primitive than those of A.D. 1455 Germany, so the disk had to be punched by

hand rather than by cast movable type locked into a metal frame, inked, and

pressed. The disk’s script was a syllabary with more signs, of more complex

form, than the Roman alphabet used by Gutenberg. As a result, the Phaistos

disk’s printing technology was much clumsier, and offered fewer advantages

over writing by hand, than Gutenberg’s printing press. In addition to all those

technological drawbacks, the Phaistos disk was printed at a time when

knowledge of writing was confined to a few palace or temple scribes. Hence

there was little demand for the disk maker’s beautiful product, and little

incentive to invest in making the dozens of hand punches required. In

contrast, the potential mass market for printing in medieval Europe induced

numerous investors to lend money to Gutenberg.



HUMAN TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPED from the first stone tools, in use by two

and a half million years ago, to the 1996 laser printer that replaced my already

outdated 1992 laser printer and that was used to print this book’s manuscript.

The rate of development was undetectably slow at the beginning, when

hundreds of thousands of years passed with no discernible change in our stone

tools and with no surviving evidence for artifacts made of other materials.

Today, technology advances so rapidly that it is reported in the daily

newspaper.

In this long history of accelerating development, one can single out two

especially significant jumps. The first, occurring between 100,000 and 50,000

years ago, probably was made possible by genetic changes in our bodies:

namely, by evolution of the modern anatomy permitting modern speech or

modern brain function, or both. That jump led to bone tools, single-purpose

stone tools, and compound tools. The second jump resulted from our adoption

of a sedentary lifestyle, which happened at different times in different parts of

the world, as early as 13,000 years ago in some areas and not even today in

others. For the most part, that adoption was linked to our adoption of food

production, which required us to remain close to our crops, orchards, and

stored food surpluses.

Sedentary living was decisive for the history of technology, because it

enabled people to accumulate nonportable possessions. Nomadic hunter-

gatherers are limited to technology that can be carried. If you move often and

lack vehicles or draft animals, you confine your possessions to babies,

weapons, and a bare minimum of other absolute necessities small enough to

carry. You can’t be burdened with pottery and printing presses as you shift

camp. That practical difficulty probably explains the tantalizingly early

appearance of some technologies, followed by a long delay in their further

development. For example, the earliest attested precursors of ceramics are

fired clay figurines made in the area of modern Czechoslovakia 27,000 years

ago, long before the oldest known fired clay vessels (from Japan 14,000 years

ago). The same area of Czechoslovakia at the same time has yielded the

earliest evidence for weaving, otherwise not attested until the oldest known

basket appears around 13,000 years ago and the oldest known woven cloth

around 9,000 years ago. Despite these very early first steps, neither pottery

nor weaving took off until people became sedentary and thereby escaped the

problem of transporting pots and looms.

Besides permitting sedentary living and hence the accumulation of

possessions, food production was decisive in the history of technology for

another reason. It became possible, for the first time in human evolution, to

develop economically specialized societies consisting of non-food-producing

specialists fed by food-producing peasants. But we already saw, in Part 2 of

this book, that food production arose at different times in different continents.

In addition, as we’ve seen in this chapter, local technology depends, for both

its origin and its maintenance, not only on local invention but also on the

diffusion of technology from elsewhere. That consideration tended to cause

technology to develop most rapidly on continents with few geographic and

ecological barriers to diffusion, either within that continent or on other

continents. Finally, each society on a continent represents one more

opportunity to invent and adopt a technology, because societies vary greatly

in their innovativeness for many separate reasons. Hence, all other things

being equal, technology develops fastest in large productive regions with

large human populations, many potential inventors, and many competing

societies.

Let us now summarize how variations in these three factors—time of

onset of food production, barriers to diffusion, and human population size—

led straightforwardly to the observed intercontinental differences in the

development of technology. Eurasia (effectively including North Africa) is the

world’s largest landmass, encompassing the largest number of competing

societies. It was also the landmass with the two centers where food production

began the earliest: the Fertile Crescent and China. Its east–west major axis

permitted many inventions adopted in one part of Eurasia to spread relatively

rapidly to societies at similar latitudes and climates elsewhere in Eurasia. Its

breadth along its minor axis (north–south) contrasts with the Americas’

narrowness at the Isthmus of Panama. It lacks the severe ecological barriers

transecting the major axes of the Americas and Africa. Thus, geographic and

ecological barriers to diffusion of technology were less severe in Eurasia than

in other continents. Thanks to all these factors, Eurasia was the continent on

which technology started its post-Pleistocene acceleration earliest and

resulted in the greatest local accumulation of technologies.

North and South America are conventionally regarded as separate

continents, but they have been connected for several million years, pose

similar historical problems, and may be considered together for comparison

with Eurasia. The Americas form the world’s second-largest landmass,

significantly smaller than Eurasia. However, they are fragmented by

geography and by ecology: the Isthmus of Panama, only 40 miles wide,

virtually transects the Americas geographically, as do the isthmus’s Darien

rain forests and the northern Mexican desert ecologically. The latter desert

separated advanced human societies of Mesoamerica from those of North

America, while the isthmus separated advanced societies of Mesoamerica

from those of the Andes and Amazonia. In addition, the main axis of the

Americas is north-south, forcing most diffusion to go against a gradient of

latitude (and climate) rather than to operate within the same latitude. For

example, wheels were invented in Mesoamerica, and llamas were

domesticated in the central Andes by 3000 B.C., but 5,000 years later the

Americas’ sole beast of burden and sole wheels had still not encountered each

other, even though the distance separating Mesoamerica’s Maya societies

from the northern border of the Inca Empire (1,200 miles) was far less than

the 6,000 miles separating wheel- and horse-sharing France and China. Those

factors seem to me to account for the Americas’ technological lag behind

Eurasia.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s third largest landmass, considerably

smaller than the Americas. Throughout most of human history it was far more

accessible to Eurasia than were the Americas, but the Saharan desert is still a

major ecological barrier separating sub-Saharan Africa from Eurasia plus

North Africa. Africa’s north-south axis posed a further obstacle to the

diffusion of technology, both between Eurasia and sub-Saharan Africa and

within the sub-Saharan region itself. As an illustration of the latter obstacle,

pottery and iron metallurgy arose in or reached sub-Saharan Africa’s Sahel

zone (north of the equator) at least as early as they reached western Europe.

However, pottery did not reach the southern tip of Africa until around A.D. 1,

and metallurgy had not yet diffused overland to the southern tip by the time

that it arrived there from Europe on ships.

Finally, Australia is the smallest continent. The very low rainfall and

productivity of most of Australia makes it effectively even smaller as regards

its capacity to support human populations. It is also the most isolated

continent. In addition, food production never arose indigenously in Australia.

Those factors combined to leave Australia the sole continent still without

metal artifacts in modern times.

Table 13.1 translates these factors into numbers, by comparing the

continents with respect to their areas and their modern human populations.

The continents’ populations 10,000 years ago, just before the rise of food

production, are not known but surely stood in the same sequence, since many

of the areas producing the most food today would also have been productive

areas for hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago. The differences in population are

glaring: Eurasia’s (including North Africa’s) is nearly 6 times that of the

Americas, nearly 8 times that of Africa’s, and 230 times that of Australia’s.

Larger populations mean more inventors and more competing societies. Table

13.1 by itself goes a long way toward explaining the origins of guns and steel

in Eurasia.

TABLE 13.1 Human Populations of the Continents

Continent

1990 Population Area (square miles)

Eurasia and North Africa

4,120,000,000

24,200,000

(Eurasia)

(4,000,000,000) (21,500,000)

(North Africa)

(120,000,000)

(2,700,000)

North America and South America 736,000,000

16,400,000

Sub-Saharan Africa

535,000,000

9,100,000

Australia

18,000,000

3,000,000

All these effects that continental differences in area, population, ease of

diffusion, and onset of food production exerted on the rise of technology

became exaggerated, because technology catalyzes itself. Eurasia’s

considerable initial advantage thereby was translated into a huge lead as of

A.D. 1492—for reasons of Eurasia’s distinctive geography rather than of

distinctive human intellect. The New Guineans whom I know include

potential Edisons. But they directed their ingenuity toward technological

problems appropriate to their situations: the problems of surviving without

any imported items in the New Guinea jungle, rather than the problem of

inventing phonographs.





CHAPTER 14

FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY

IN 1979, WHILE I WAS FLYING WITH MISSIONARY FRIENDS over a remote swamp-

filled basin of New Guinea, I noticed a few huts many miles apart. The pilot

explained to me that, somewhere in that muddy expanse below us, a group of

Indonesian crocodile hunters had recently come across a group of New

Guinea nomads. Both groups had panicked, and the encounter had ended with

the Indonesians shooting several of the nomads.

My missionary friends guessed that the nomads belonged to an

uncontacted group called the Fayu, known to the outside world only through

accounts by their terrified neighbors, a missionized group of erstwhile

nomads called the Kirikiri. First contacts between outsiders and New Guinea

groups are always potentially dangerous, but this beginning was especially

inauspicious. Nevertheless, my friend Doug flew in by helicopter to try to

establish friendly relations with the Fayu. He returned, alive but shaken, to

tell a remarkable story.

It turned out that the Fayu normally lived as single families, scattered

through the swamp and coming together once or twice each year to negotiate

exchanges of brides. Doug’s visit coincided with such a gathering, of a few

dozen Fayu. To us, a few dozen people constitute a small, ordinary gathering,

but to the Fayu it was a rare, frightening event. Murderers suddenly found

themselves face-to-face with their victim’s relatives. For example, one Fayu

man spotted the man who had killed his father. The son raised his ax and

rushed at the murderer but was wrestled to the ground by friends; then the

murderer came at the prostrate son with an ax and was also wrestled down.

Both men were held, screaming in rage, until they seemed sufficiently

exhausted to be released. Other men periodically shouted insults at each other,

shook with anger and frustration, and pounded the ground with their axes.

That tension continued for the several days of the gathering, while Doug

prayed that the visit would not end in violence.

The Fayu consist of about 400 hunter-gatherers, divided into four clans

and wandering over a few hundred square miles. According to their own

account, they had formerly numbered about 2,000, but their population had

been greatly reduced as a result of Fayu killing Fayu. They lacked political

and social mechanisms, which we take for granted, to achieve peaceful

resolution of serious disputes. Eventually, as a result of Doug’s visit, one

group of Fayu invited a courageous husband-and-wife missionary couple to

live with them. The couple has now resided there for a dozen years and

gradually persuaded the Fayu to renounce violence. The Fayu are thereby

being brought into the modern world, where they face an uncertain future.

Many other previously uncontacted groups of New Guineans and

Amazonian Indians have similarly owed to missionaries their incorporation

into modern society. After the missionaries come teachers and doctors,

bureaucrats and soldiers. The spreads of government and of religion have thus

been linked to each other throughout recorded history, whether the spread has

been peaceful (as eventually with the Fayu) or by force. In the latter case it is

often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.

While nomads and tribespeople occasionally defeat organized governments

and religions, the trend over the past 13,000 years has been for the nomads

and tribespeople to lose.

At the end of the last Ice Age, much of the world’s population lived in

societies similar to that of the Fayu today, and no people then lived in a much

more complex society. As recently as A.D. 1500, less than 20 percent of the

world’s land area was marked off by boundaries into states run by bureaucrats

and governed by laws. Today, all land except Antarctica’s is so divided.

Descendants of those societies that achieved centralized government and

organized religion earliest ended up dominating the modern world. The

combination of government and religion has thus functioned, together with

germs, writing, and technology, as one of the four main sets of proximate

agents leading to history’s broadest pattern. How did government and religion

arise?



FAYU BANDS AND modern states represent opposite extremes along the

spectrum of human societies. Modern American society and the Fayu differ in

the presence or absence of a professional police force, cities, money,

distinctions between rich and poor, and many other political, economic, and

social institutions. Did all of those institutions arise together, or did some

arise before others? We can infer the answer to this question by comparing

modern societies at different levels of organization, by examining written

accounts or archaeological evidence about past societies, and by observing

how a society’s institutions change over time.

Cultural anthropologists attempting to describe the diversity of human

societies often divide them into as many as half a dozen categories. Any such

attempt to define stages of any evolutionary or developmental continuum—

whether of musical styles, human life stages, or human societies—is doubly

doomed to imperfection. First, because each stage grows out of some previous

stage, the lines of demarcation are inevitably arbitrary. (For example, is a 19-

year-old person an adolescent or a young adult?) Second, developmental

sequences are not invariant, so examples pigeonholed under the same stage

are inevitably heterogeneous. (Brahms and Liszt would turn in their graves to

know that they are now grouped together as composers of the romantic

period.) Nevertheless, arbitrarily delineated stages provide a useful shorthand

for discussing the diversity of music and of human societies, provided one

bears in mind the above caveats. In that spirit, we shall use a simple

classification based on just four categories—band, tribe, chiefdom, and state

(see Table 14.1)—to understand societies.

Bands are the tiniest societies, consisting typically of 5 to 80 people, most

or all of them close relatives by birth or by marriage. In effect, a band is an

extended family or several related extended families. Today, bands still living

autonomously are almost confined to the most remote parts of New Guinea

and Amazonia, but within modern times there were many others that have

only recently fallen under state control or been assimilated or exterminated.

They include many or most African Pygmies, southern African San hunter-

gatherers (so-called Bushmen), Aboriginal Australians, Eskimos (Inuit), and

Indians of some resource-poor areas of the Americas such as Tierra del Fuego

and the northern boreal forests. All those modern bands are or were nomadic

hunter-gatherers rather than settled food producers. Probably all humans lived

in bands until at least 40,000 years ago, and most still did as recently as

11,000 years ago.

TABLE 14.1 Types of Societies

Band

Tribe

Chiefdom

State

Membership

Number of people

dozens

hundreds

thousands

over 50,000

fixed: 1 or more

fixed: many villages

Settlement pattern

nomadic

fixed: 1 village

villages

and cities

class and

Basis of relationships

kin

kin-based clans

class and residence





residence

Ethnicities and languages

1

1

1

1 or more

Government

Decision making,

“egalitarian” or

centralized,

“egalitarian”

centralized

leadership

big-man

hereditary

none, or 1 or 2

Bureaucracy

none

none

many levels

levels

Monopoly of force and

no

no

yes

yes

information

Conflict resolution

informal

informal

centralized

laws, judges

no

paramount

Hierarchy of settlement

no

no

capital

village

Religion

Justifies kleptocracy?

no

no

yes

yes

no

Economy

Food production

no

no

yes

yes

intensive

intensive

Division of labor

no

no

no

yes

yes

redistributive

Exchanges

reciprocal

reciprocal

redistributive (“taxes”)

(“tribute”)

Control of land

band

clan

chief

various

Society

Stratified

no

no

yes, by kin

yes, not by kin

Slavery

no

no

small-scale

large-scale

Luxury goods for elite

no

no

yes

yes

Public architecture

no

no

no

yes

yes

Indigenous literacy

no

no

no

often

A horizontal arrow indicates that the attribute varies between less and more complex societies of

that type.

Bands lack many institutions that we take for granted in our own society.

They have no permanent single base of residence. The band’s land is used

jointly by the whole group, instead of being partitioned among subgroups or

individuals. There is no regular economic specialization, except by age and

sex: all able-bodied individuals forage for food. There are no formal

institutions, such as laws, police, and treaties, to resolve conflicts within and

between bands. Band organization is often described as “egalitarian”: there is

no formalized social stratification into upper and lower classes, no formalized

or hereditary leadership, and no formalized monopolies of information and

decision making. However, the term “egalitarian” should not be taken to

mean that all band members are equal in prestige and contribute equally to

decisions. Rather, the term merely means that any band “leadership” is

informal and acquired through qualities such as personality, strength,

intelligence, and fighting skills.

My own experience with bands comes from the swampy lowland area of

New Guinea where the Fayu live, a region known as the Lakes Plains. There,

I still encounter extended families of a few adults with their dependent

children and elderly, living in crude temporary shelters along streams and

traveling by canoe and on foot. Why do peoples of the Lakes Plains continue

to live as nomadic bands, when most other New Guinea peoples, and almost

all other peoples elsewhere in the world, now live in settled larger groups?

The explanation is that the region lacks dense local concentrations of

resources that would permit many people to live together, and that (until the

arrival of missionaries bringing crop plants) it also lacked native plants that

could have permitted productive farming. The bands’ food staple is the sago

palm tree, whose core yields a starchy pith when the palm reaches maturity.

The bands are nomadic, because they must move when they have cut the

mature sago trees in an area. Band numbers are kept low by diseases

(especially malaria), by the lack of raw materials in the swamp (even stone

for tools must be obtained by trade), and by the limited amount of food that

the swamp yields for humans. Similar limitations on the resources accessible

to existing human technology prevail in the regions of the world recently

occupied by other bands.

Our closest animal relatives, the gorillas and chimpanzees and bonobos of

Africa, also live in bands. All humans presumably did so too, until improved

technology for extracting food allowed some hunter-gatherers to settle in

permanent dwellings in some resource-rich areas. The band is the political,

economic, and social organization that we inherited from our millions of years

of evolutionary history. Our developments beyond it all took place within the

last few tens of thousands of years.



THE FIRST OF those stages beyond the band is termed the tribe, which differs

in being larger (typically comprising hundreds rather than dozens of people)

and usually having fixed settlements. However, some tribes and even

chiefdoms consist of herders who move seasonally.

Tribal organization is exemplified by New Guinea highlanders, whose

political unit before the arrival of colonial government was a village or else a

close-knit cluster of villages. This political definition of “tribe” is thus often

much smaller than what linguists and cultural anthropologists would define as

a tribe—namely, a group that shares language and culture. For example, in

1964 I began to work among a group of highlanders known as the Foré. By

linguistic and cultural standards, there were then 12,000 Foré, speaking two

mutually intelligible dialects and living in 65 villages of several hundred

people each. But there was no political unity whatsoever among villages of

the Foré language group. Each hamlet was involved in a kaleidoscopically

changing pattern of war and shifting alliances with all neighboring hamlets,

regardless of whether the neighbors were Foré or speakers of a different

language.

Tribes, recently independent and now variously subordinated to national

states, still occupy much of New Guinea, Melanesia, and Amazonia. Similar

tribal organization in the past is inferred from archaeological evidence of

settlements that were substantial but lacked the archaeological hallmarks of

chiefdoms that I shall explain below. That evidence suggests that tribal

organization began to emerge around 13,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent

and later in some other areas. A prerequisite for living in settlements is either

food production or else a productive environment with especially

concentrated resources that can be hunted and gathered within a small area.

That’s why settlements, and by inference tribes, began to proliferate in the

Fertile Crescent at that time, when climate changes and improved technology

combined to permit abundant harvests of wild cereals.

Besides differing from a band by virtue of its settled residence and its

larger numbers, a tribe also differs in that it consists of more than one

formally recognized kinship group, termed clans, which exchange marriage

partners. Land belongs to a particular clan, not to the whole tribe. However,

the number of people in a tribe is still low enough that everyone knows

everyone else by name and relationships.

For other types of human groups as well, “a few hundred” seems to be an

upper limit for group size compatible with everyone’s knowing everybody. In

our state society, for instance, school principals are likely to know all their

students by name if the school contains a few hundred children, but not if it

contains a few thousand children. One reason why the organization of human

government tends to change from that of a tribe to that of a chiefdom in

societies with more than a few hundred members is that the difficult issue of

conflict resolution between strangers becomes increasingly acute in larger

groups. A fact further diffusing potential problems of conflict resolution in

tribes is that almost everyone is related to everyone else, by blood or marriage

or both. Those ties of relationships binding all tribal members make police,

laws, and other conflict-resolving institutions of larger societies unnecessary,

since any two villagers getting into an argument will share many kin, who

apply pressure on them to keep it from becoming violent. In traditional New

Guinea society, if a New Guinean happened to encounter an unfamiliar New

Guinean while both were away from their respective villages, the two

engaged in a long discussion of their relatives, in an attempt to establish some

relationship and hence some reason why the two should not attempt to kill

each other.

Despite all of these differences between bands and tribes, many

similarities remain. Tribes still have an informal, “egalitarian” system of

government. Information and decision making are both communal. In the

New Guinea highlands, I have watched village meetings where all adults in

the village were present, sitting on the ground, and individuals made

speeches, without any appearance of one person’s “chairing” the discussion.

Many highland villages do have someone known as the “big-man,” the most

influential man of the village. But that position is not a formal office to be

filled and carries only limited power. The big-man has no independent

decision-making authority, knows no diplomatic secrets, and can do no more

than attempt to sway communal decisions. Big-men achieve that status by

their own attributes; the position is not inherited.

Tribes also share with bands an “egalitarian” social system, without

ranked lineages or classes. Not only is status not inherited; no member of a

traditional tribe or band can become disproportionately wealthy by his or her

own efforts, because each individual has debts and obligations to many

others. It is therefore impossible for an outsider to guess, from appearances,

which of all the adult men in a village is the big-man: he lives in the same

type of hut, wears the same clothes or ornaments, or is as naked, as everyone

else.

Like bands, tribes lack a bureaucracy, police force, and taxes. Their

economy is based on reciprocal exchanges between individuals or families,

rather than on a redistribution of tribute paid to some central authority.

Economic specialization is slight: full-time crafts specialists are lacking, and

every able-bodied adult (including the big-man) participates in growing,

gathering, or hunting food. I recall one occasion when I was walking past a

garden in the Solomon Islands, saw a man digging and waving at me in the

distance, and realized to my astonishment that it was a friend of mine named

Faletau. He was the most famous wood carver of the Solomons, an artist of

great originality—but that did not free him of the necessity to grow his own

sweet potatoes. Since tribes thus lack economic specialists, they also lack

slaves, because there are no specialized menial jobs for a slave to perform.

Just as musical composers of the classical period range from C. P. E. Bach

to Schubert and thereby cover the whole spectrum from baroque composers to

romantic composers, tribes also shade into bands at one extreme and into

chiefdoms at the opposite extreme. In particular, a tribal big-man’s role in

dividing the meat of pigs slaughtered for feasts points to the role of chiefs in

collecting and redistributing food and goods—now reconstrued as tribute—in

chiefdoms. Similarly, presence or absence of public architecture is supposedly

one of the distinctions between tribes and chiefdoms, but large New Guinea

villages often have cult houses (known as haus tamburan, on the Sepik River)

that presage the temples of chiefdoms.



ALTHOUGH A FEW bands and tribes survive today on remote and ecologically

marginal lands outside state control, fully independent chiefdoms had

disappeared by the early twentieth century, because they tended to occupy

prime land coveted by states. However, as of A.D. 1492, chiefdoms were still

widespread over much of the eastern United States, in productive areas of

South and Central America and sub-Saharan Africa that had not yet been

subsumed under native states, and in all of Polynesia. The archaeological

evidence discussed below suggests that chiefdoms arose by around 5500 B.C.

in the Fertile Crescent and by around 1000 B.C. in Mesoamerica and the

Andes. Let us consider the distinctive features of chiefdoms, very different

from modern European and American states and, at the same time, from

bands and simple tribal societies.

As regards population size, chiefdoms were considerably larger than

tribes, ranging from several thousand to several tens of thousands of people.

That size created serious potential for internal conflict because, for any person

living in a chiefdom, the vast majority of other people in the chiefdom were

neither closely related by blood or marriage nor known by name. With the rise

of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in

history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.

Part of the solution to that problem was for one person, the chief, to

exercise a monopoly on the right to use force. In contrast to a tribe’s big-man,

a chief held a recognized office, filled by hereditary right. Instead of the

decentralized anarchy of a village meeting, the chief was a permanent

centralized authority, made all significant decisions, and had a monopoly on

critical information (such as what a neighboring chief was privately

threatening, or what harvest the gods had supposedly promised). Unlike big-

men, chiefs could be recognized from afar by visible distinguishing features,

such as a large fan worn over the back on Rennell Island in the Southwest

Pacific. A commoner encountering a chief was obliged to perform ritual

marks of respect, such as (on Hawaii) prostrating oneself. The chief’s orders

might be transmitted through one or two levels of bureaucrats, many of whom

were themselves low-ranked chiefs. However, in contrast to state bureaucrats,

chiefdom bureaucrats had generalized rather than specialized roles. In

Polynesian Hawaii the same bureaucrats (termed konohiki) extracted tribute

and oversaw irrigation and organized labor corvées for the chief, whereas

state societies have separate tax collectors, water district managers, and draft

boards.

A chiefdom’s large population in a small area required plenty of food,

obtained by food production in most cases, by hunting-gathering in a few

especially rich areas. For example, American Indians of the Pacific Northwest

coast, such as the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Tlingit Indians, lived under chiefs in

villages without any agriculture or domestic animals, because the rivers and

sea were so rich in salmon and halibut. The food surpluses generated by some

people, relegated to the rank of commoners, went to feed the chiefs, their

families, bureaucrats, and crafts specialists, who variously made canoes,

adzes, or spittoons or worked as bird catchers or tattooers.

Luxury goods, consisting of those specialized crafts products or else rare

objects obtained by long-distance trade, were reserved for chiefs. For

example, Hawaiian chiefs had feather cloaks, some of them consisting of tens

of thousands of feathers and requiring many human generations for their

manufacture (by commoner cloak makers, of course). That concentration of

luxury goods often makes it possible to recognize chiefdoms archaeologically,

by the fact that some graves (those of chiefs) contain much richer goods than

other graves (those of commoners), in contrast to the egalitarian burials of

earlier human history. Some ancient complex chiefdoms can also be

distinguished from tribal villages by the remains of elaborate public

architecture (such as temples) and by a regional hierarchy of settlements, with

one site (the site of the paramount chief) being obviously larger and having

more administrative buildings and artifacts than other sites.

Like tribes, chiefdoms consisted of multiple hereditary lineages living at

one site. However, whereas the lineages of tribal villages are equal-ranked

clans, in a chiefdom all members of the chief’s lineage had hereditary

perquisites. In effect, the society was divided into hereditary chief and

commoner classes, with Hawaiian chiefs themselves subdivided into eight

hierarchically ranked lineages, each concentrating its marriages within its

own lineage. Furthermore, since chiefs required menial servants as well as

specialized craftspeople, chiefdoms differed from tribes in having many jobs

that could be filled by slaves, typically obtained by capture in raids.

The most distinctive economic feature of chiefdoms was their shift from

reliance solely on the reciprocal exchanges characteristic of bands and tribes,

by which A gives B a gift while expecting that B at some unspecified future

time will give a gift of comparable value to A. We modern state dwellers

indulge in such behavior on birthdays and holidays, but most of our flow of

goods is achieved instead by buying and selling for money according to the

law of supply and demand. While continuing reciprocal exchanges and

without marketing or money, chiefdoms developed an additional new system

termed a redistributive economy. A simple example would involve a chief

receiving wheat at harvest time from every farmer in the chiefdom, then

throwing a feast for everybody and serving bread or else storing the wheat

and gradually giving it out again in the months between harvests. When a

large portion of the goods received from commoners was not redistributed to

them but was retained and consumed by the chiefly lineages and craftspeople,

the redistribution became tribute, a precursor of taxes that made its first

appearance in chiefdoms. From the commoners the chiefs claimed not only

goods but also labor for construction of public works, which again might

return to benefit the commoners (for example, irrigation systems to help feed

everybody) or instead benefited mainly the chiefs (for instance, lavish tombs).

We have been talking about chiefdoms generically, as if they were all the

same. In fact, chiefdoms varied considerably. Larger ones tended to have

more powerful chiefs, more ranks of chiefly lineages, greater distinctions

between chiefs and commoners, more retention of tribute by the chiefs, more

layers of bureaucrats, and grander public architecture. For instance, societies

on small Polynesian islands were effectively rather similar to tribal societies

with a big-man, except that the position of chief was hereditary. The chief’s

hut looked like any other hut, there were no bureaucrats or public works, the

chief redistributed most goods he received back to the commoners, and land

was controlled by the community. But on the largest Polynesian islands, such

as Hawaii, Tahiti, and Tonga, chiefs were recognizable at a glance by their

ornaments, public works were erected by large labor forces, most tribute was

retained by the chiefs, and all land was controlled by them. A further

gradation among societies with ranked lineages was from those where the

political unit was a single autonomous village, to those consisting of a

regional assemblage of villages in which the largest village with a paramount

chief controlled the smaller villages with lesser chiefs.



BY NOW, IT should be obvious that chiefdoms introduced the dilemma

fundamental to all centrally governed, nonegalitarian societies. At best, they

do good by providing expensive services impossible to contract for on an

individual basis. At worst, they function unabashedly as kleptocracies,

transferring net wealth from commoners to upper classes. These noble and

selfish functions are inextricably linked, although some governments

emphasize much more of one function than of the other. The difference

between a kleptocrat and a wise statesman, between a robber baron and a

public benefactor, is merely one of degree: a matter of just how large a

percentage of the tribute extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and

how much the commoners like the public uses to which the redistributed

tribute is put. We consider President Mobutu of Zaire a kleptocrat because he

keeps too much tribute (the equivalent of billions of dollars) and redistributes

too little tribute (no functioning telephone system in Zaire). We consider

George Washington a statesman because he spent tax money on widely

admired programs and did not enrich himself as president. Nevertheless,

George Washington was born into wealth, which is much more unequally

distributed in the United States than in New Guinea villages.

For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask:

why do the commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to

kleptocrats? This question, raised by political theorists from Plato to Marx, is

raised anew by voters in every modern election. Kleptocracies with little

public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by downtrodden

commoners or by upstart would-be replacement kleptocrats seeking public

support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to fruits stolen. For

example, Hawaiian history was repeatedly punctuated by revolts against

repressive chiefs, usually led by younger brothers promising less oppression.

This may sound funny to us in the context of old Hawaii, until we reflect on

all the misery still being caused by such struggles in the modern world.

What should an elite do to gain popular support while still maintaining a

more comfortable lifestyle than commoners? Kleptocrats throughout the ages

have resorted to a mixture of four solutions:

1. Disarm the populace, and arm the elite. That’s much easier in these

days of high-tech weaponry, produced only in industrial plants and easily

monopolized by an elite, than in ancient times of spears and clubs easily made

at home.

2. Make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute received,

in popular ways. This principle was as valid for Hawaiian chiefs as it is for

American politicians today.

3. Use the monopoly of force to promote happiness, by maintaining

public order and curbing violence. This is potentially a big and

underappreciated advantage of centralized societies over noncentralized ones.

Anthropologists formerly idealized band and tribal societies as gentle and

nonviolent, because visiting anthropologists observed no murder in a band of

25 people in the course of a three-year study. Of course they didn’t: it’s easy

to calculate that a band of a dozen adults and a dozen children, subject to the

inevitable deaths occurring anyway for the usual reasons other than murder,

could not perpetuate itself if in addition one of its dozen adults murdered

another adult every three years. Much more extensive long-term information

about band and tribal societies reveals that murder is a leading cause of death.

For example, I happened to be visiting New Guinea’s Iyau people at a time

when a woman anthropologist was interviewing Iyau women about their life

histories. Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named

several sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer

went like this: “My first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second

husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third

husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband,

seeking to avenge his murder.” Such biographies prove common for so-called

gentle tribespeople and contributed to the acceptance of centralized authority

as tribal societies grew larger.

4. The remaining way for kleptocrats to gain public support is to construct

an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy. Bands and tribes already had

supernatural beliefs, just as do modern established religions. But the

supernatural beliefs of bands and tribes did not serve to justify central

authority, justify transfer of wealth, or maintain peace between unrelated

individuals. When supernatural beliefs gained those functions and became

institutionalized, they were thereby transformed into what we term a religion.

Hawaiian chiefs were typical of chiefs elsewhere, in asserting divinity, divine

descent, or at least a hotline to the gods. The chief claimed to serve the people

by interceding for them with the gods and reciting the ritual formulas required

to obtain rain, good harvests, and success in fishing.

Chiefdoms characteristically have an ideology, precursor to an

institutionalized religion, that buttresses the chief’s authority. The chief may

either combine the offices of political leader and priest in a single person, or

may support a separate group of kleptocrats (that is, priests) whose function is

to provide ideological justification for the chiefs. That is why chiefdoms

devote so much collected tribute to constructing temples and other public

works, which serve as centers of the official religion and visible signs of the

chief’s power.

Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized

religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First,

shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated

individuals are to live together without killing each other—by providing them

with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than

genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. At the cost

of a few society members who die in battle as soldiers, the whole society

becomes much more effective at conquering other societies or resisting

attacks.



THE POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, and social institutions most familiar to us today

are those of states, which now rule all of the world’s land area except for

Antarctica. Many early states and all modern ones have had literate elites, and

many modern states have literate masses as well. Vanished states tended to

leave visible archaeological hallmarks, such as ruins of temples with

standardized designs, at least four levels of settlement sizes, and pottery styles

covering tens of thousands of square miles. We thereby know that states arose

around 3700 B.C. in Mesopotamia and around 300 B.C. in Mesoamerica, over

2,000 years ago in the Andes, China, and Southeast Asia, and over 1,000

years ago in West Africa. In modern times the formation of states out of

chiefdoms has been observed repeatedly. Thus, we possess much more

information about past states and their formation than about past chiefdoms,

tribes, and bands.

Protostates extend many features of large paramount (multivillage)

chiefdoms. They continue the increase in size from bands to tribes to

chiefdoms. Whereas chiefdoms’ populations range from a few thousand to a

few tens of thousands, the populations of most modern states exceed one

million, and China’s exceeds one billion. The paramount chief’s location may

become the state’s capital city. Other population centers of states outside the

capital may also qualify as true cities, which are lacking in chiefdoms. Cities

differ from villages in their monumental public works, palaces of rulers,

accumulation of capital from tribute or taxes, and concentration of people

other than food producers.

Early states had a hereditary leader with a title equivalent to king, like a

super paramount chief and exercising an even greater monopoly of

information, decision making, and power. Even in democracies today, crucial

knowledge is available to only a few individuals, who control the flow of

information to the rest of the government and consequently control decisions.

For instance, in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, information and discussions

that determined whether nuclear war would engulf half a billion people were

initially confined by President Kennedy to a ten-member executive committee

of the National Security Council that he himself appointed; then he limited

final decisions to a four-member group consisting of himself and three of his

cabinet ministers.

Central control is more far-reaching, and economic redistribution in the

form of tribute (renamed taxes) more extensive, in states than in chiefdoms.

Economic specialization is more extreme, to the point where today not even

farmers remain self-sufficient. Hence the effect on society is catastrophic

when state government collapses, as happened in Britain upon the removal of

Roman troops, administrators, and coinage between A.D. 407 and 411. Even

the earliest Mesopotamian states exercised centralized control of their

economies. Their food was produced by four specialist groups (cereal

farmers, herders, fishermen, and orchard and garden growers), from each of

which the state took the produce and to each of which it gave out the

necessary supplies, tools, and foods other than the type of food that this group

produced. The state supplied seeds and plow animals to the cereal farmers,

took wool from the herders, exchanged the wool by long-distance trade for

metal and other essential raw materials, and paid out food rations to the

laborers who maintained the irrigation systems on which the farmers

depended.

Many, perhaps most, early states adopted slavery on a much larger scale

than did chiefdoms. That was not because chiefdoms were more kindly

disposed toward defeated enemies but because the greater economic

specialization of states, with more mass production and more public works,

provided more uses for slave labor. In addition, the larger scale of state

warfare made more captives available.

A chiefdom’s one or two levels of administration are greatly multiplied in

states, as anyone who has seen an organizational chart of any government

knows. Along with the proliferation of vertical levels of bureaucrats, there is

also horizontal specialization. Instead of konohiki carrying out every aspect of

administration for a Hawaiian district, state governments have several

separate departments, each with its own hierarchy, to handle water

management, taxes, military draft, and so on. Even small states have more

complex bureaucracies than large chiefdoms. For instance, the West African

state of Maradi had a central administration with over 130 titled offices.

Internal conflict resolution within states has become increasingly

formalized by laws, a judiciary, and police. The laws are often written,

because many states (with conspicuous exceptions, such as that of the Incas)

have had literate elites, writing having been developed around the same time

as the formation of the earliest states in both Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica.

In contrast, no early chiefdom not on the verge of statehood developed

writing.

Early states had state religions and standardized temples. Many early

kings were considered divine and were accorded special treatment in

innumerable respects. For example, the Aztec and Inca emperors were both

carried about in litters; servants went ahead of the Inca emperor’s litter and

swept the ground clear; and the Japanese language includes special forms of

the pronoun “you” for use only in addressing the emperor. Early kings were

themselves the head of the state religion or else had separate high priests. The

Mesopotamian temple was the center not only of religion but also of

economic redistribution, writing, and crafts technology.

All these features of states carry to an extreme the developments that led

from tribes to chiefdoms. In addition, though, states have diverged from

chiefdoms in several new directions. The most fundamental such distinction is

that states are organized on political and territorial lines, not on the kinship

lines that defined bands, tribes, and simple chiefdoms. Furthermore, bands

and tribes always, and chiefdoms usually, consist of a single ethnic and

linguistic group. States, though—especially so-called empires formed by

amalgamation or conquest of states—are regularly multiethnic and

multilingual. State bureaucrats are not selected mainly on the basis of kinship,

as in chiefdoms, but are professionals selected at least partly on the basis of

training and ability. In later states, including most today, the leadership often

became nonhereditary, and many states abandoned the entire system of formal

hereditary classes carried over from chiefdoms.



OVER THE PAST 13,000 years the predominant trend in human society has

been the replacement of smaller, less complex units by larger, more complex

ones. Obviously, that is no more than an average long-term trend, with

innumerable shifts in either direction: 1,000 amalgamations for 999 reversals.

We know from our daily newspaper that large units (for instance, the former

USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia) can disintegrate into smaller units,

as did Alexander of Macedon’s empire over 2,000 years ago. More complex

units don’t always conquer less complex ones but may succumb to them, as

when the Roman and Chinese Empires were overrun by “barbarian” and

Mongol chiefdoms, respectively. But the long-term trend has still been toward

large, complex societies, culminating in states.

Obviously, too, part of the reason for states’ triumphs over simpler entities

when the two collide is that states usually enjoy an advantage of weaponry

and other technology, and a large numerical advantage in population. But

there are also two other potential advantages inherent in chiefdoms and states.

First, a centralized decision maker has the advantage at concentrating troops

and resources. Second, the official religions and patriotic fervor of many

states make their troops willing to fight suicidally.

The latter willingness is one so strongly programmed into us citizens of

modern states, by our schools and churches and governments, that we forget

what a radical break it marks with previous human history. Every state has its

slogan urging its citizens to be prepared to die if necessary for the state:

Britain’s “For King and Country,” Spain’s “Por Dios y España,” and so on.

Similar sentiments motivated 16th-century Aztec warriors: “There is nothing

like death in war, nothing like the flowery death so precious to Him [the

Aztec national god Huitzilopochtli] who gives life: far off I see it, my heart

yearns for it!”

Such sentiments are unthinkable in bands and tribes. In all the accounts

that my New Guinea friends have given me of their former tribal wars, there

has been not a single hint of tribal patriotism, of a suicidal charge, or of any

other military conduct carrying an accepted risk of being killed. Instead, raids

are initiated by ambush or by superior force, so as to minimize at all costs the

risk that one might die for one’s village. But that attitude severely limits the

military options of tribes, compared with state societies. Naturally, what

makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the

deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of

a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.

Fanaticism in war, of the type that drove recorded Christian and Islamic

conquests, was probably unknown on Earth until chiefdoms and especially

states emerged within the last 6,000 years.



HOW DID SMALL, noncentralized, kin-based societies evolve into large

centralized ones in which most members are not closely related to each other?

Having reviewed the stages in this transformation from bands to states, we

now ask what impelled societies thus to transform themselves.

At many moments in history, states have arisen independently—or, as

cultural anthropologists say, “pristinely,” that is, in the absence of any

preexisting surrounding states. Pristine state origins took place at least once,

possibly many times, on each of the continents except Australia and North

America. Prehistoric states included those of Mesopotamia, North China, the

Nile and Indus Valleys, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and West Africa. Native

states in contact with European states have arisen from chiefdoms repeatedly

in the last three centuries in Madagascar, Hawaii, Tahiti, and many parts of

Africa. Chiefdoms have arisen pristinely even more often, in all of the same

regions and in North America’s Southeast and Pacific Northwest, the

Amazon, Polynesia, and sub-Saharan Africa. All these origins of complex

societies give us a rich database for understanding their development.

Of the many theories addressing the problem of state origins, the simplest

denies that there is any problem to solve. Aristotle considered states the

natural condition of human society, requiring no explanation. His error was

understandable, because all the societies with which he would have been

acquainted—Greek societies of the fourth century B.C.—were states.

However, we now know that, as of A.D. 1492, much of the world was instead

organized into chiefdoms, tribes, or bands. State formation does demand an

explanation.

The next theory is the most familiar one. The French philosopher Jean-

Jacques Rousseau speculated that states are formed by a social contract, a

rational decision reached when people calculated their self-interest, came to

the agreement that they would be better off in a state than in simpler societies,

and voluntarily did away with their simpler societies. But observation and

historical records have failed to uncover a single case of a state’s being

formed in that ethereal atmosphere of dispassionate farsightedness. Smaller

units do not voluntarily abandon their sovereignty and merge into larger units.

They do so only by conquest, or under external duress.

A third theory, still popular with some historians and economists, sets out

from the undoubted fact that, in both Mesopotamia and North China and

Mexico, large-scale irrigation systems began to be constructed around the

time that states started to emerge. The theory also notes that any big, complex

system for irrigation or hydraulic management requires a centralized

bureaucracy to construct and maintain it. The theory then turns an observed

rough correlation in time into a postulated chain of cause and effect.

Supposedly, Mesopotamians and North Chinese and Mexicans foresaw the

advantages that a large-scale irrigation system would bring them, even though

there was at the time no such system within thousands of miles (or anywhere

on Earth) to illustrate for them those advantages. Those farsighted people

chose to merge their inefficient little chiefdoms into a larger state capable of

blessing them with large-scale irrigation.

However, this “hydraulic theory” of state formation is subject to the same

objections leveled against social contract theories in general. More

specifically, it addresses only the final stage in the evolution of complex

societies. It says nothing about what drove the progression from bands to

tribes to chiefdoms during all the millennia before the prospect of large-scale

irrigation loomed up on the horizon. When historical or archaeological dates

are examined in detail, they fail to support the view of irrigation as the driving

force for state formation. In Mesopotamia, North China, Mexico, and

Madagascar, small-scale irrigation systems already existed before the rise of

states. Construction of large-scale irrigation systems did not accompany the

emergence of states but came only significantly later in each of those areas. In

most of the states formed over the Maya area of Mesoamerica and the Andes,

irrigation systems always remained small-scale ones that local communities

could build and maintain themselves. Thus, even in those areas where

complex systems of hydraulic management did emerge, they were a

secondary consequence of states that must have formed for other reasons.

What seems to me to point to a fundamentally correct view of state

formation is an undoubted fact of much wider validity than the correlation

between irrigation and the formation of some states—namely, that the size of

the regional population is the strongest single predictor of societal complexity.

As we have seen, bands number a few dozen individuals, tribes a few

hundred, chiefdoms a few thousand to a few tens of thousands, and states

generally over about 50,000. In addition to that coarse correlation between

regional population size and type of society (band, tribe, and so on), there is a

finer trend, within each of those categories, between population and societal

complexity: for instance, that chiefdoms with large populations prove to be

the most centralized, stratified, and complex ones.

These correlations suggest strongly that regional population size or

population density or population pressure has something to do with the

formation of complex societies. But the correlations do not tell us precisely

how population variables function in a chain of cause and effect whose

outcome is a complex society. To trace out that chain, let us now remind

ourselves how large dense populations themselves arise. Then we can

examine why a large but simple society could not maintain itself. With that as

background, we shall finally return to the question of how a simpler society

actually becomes more complex as the regional population increases.



WE HAVE SEEN that large or dense populations arise only under conditions

of food production, or at least under exceptionally productive conditions for

hunting-gathering. Some productive hunter-gatherer societies reached the

organizational level of chiefdoms, but none reached the level of states: all

states nourish their citizens by food production. These considerations, along

with the just mentioned correlation between regional population size and

societal complexity, have led to a protracted chicken-or-egg debate about the

causal relations between food production, population variables, and societal

complexity. Is it intensive food production that is the cause, triggering

population growth and somehow leading to a complex society? Or are large

populations and complex societies instead the cause, somehow leading to

intensification of food production?

Posing the question in that either-or form misses the point. Intensified

food production and societal complexity stimulate each other, by

autocatalysis. That is, population growth leads to societal complexity, by

mechanisms that we shall discuss, while societal complexity in turn leads to

intensified food production and thereby to population growth. Complex

centralized societies are uniquely capable of organizing public works

(including irrigation systems), long-distance trade (including the importation

of metals to make better agricultural tools), and activities of different groups

of economic specialists (such as feeding herders with farmers’ cereal, and

transferring the herders’ livestock to farmers for use as plow animals). All of

these capabilities of centralized societies have fostered intensified food

production and hence population growth throughout history.

In addition, food production contributes in at least three ways to specific

features of complex societies. First, it involves seasonally pulsed inputs of

labor. When the harvest has been stored, the farmers’ labor becomes available

for a centralized political authority to harness—in order to build public works

advertising state power (such as the Egyptian pyramids), or to build public

works that could feed more mouths (such as Polynesian Hawaii’s irrigation

systems or fishponds), or to undertake wars of conquest to form larger

political entities.

Second, food production may be organized so as to generate stored food

surpluses, which permit economic specialization and social stratification. The

surpluses can be used to feed all tiers of a complex society: the chiefs,

bureaucrats, and other members of the elite; the scribes, craftspeople, and

other non-food-producing specialists; and the farmers themselves, during

times that they are drafted to construct public works.

Finally, food production permits or requires people to adopt sedentary

living, which is a prerequisite for accumulating substantial possessions,

developing elaborate technology and crafts, and constructing public works.

The importance of fixed residence to a complex society explains why

missionaries and governments, whenever they make first contact with

previously uncontacted nomadic tribes or bands in New Guinea or the

Amazon, universally have two immediate goals. One goal, of course, is the

obvious one of “pacifying” the nomads: that is, dissuading them from killing

missionaries, bureaucrats, or each other. The other goal is to induce the

nomads to settle in villages, so that the missionaries and bureaucrats can find

the nomads, bring them services such as medical care and schools, and

proselytize and control them.



THUS, FOOD PRODUCTION, which increases population size, also acts in many

ways to make features of complex societies possible. But that doesn’t prove

that food production and large populations make complex societies inevitable.

How can we account for the empirical observation that band or tribal

organization just does not work for societies of hundreds of thousands of

people, and that all existing large societies have complex centralized

organization? We can cite at least four obvious reasons.

One reason is the problem of conflict between unrelated strangers. That

problem grows astronomically as the number of people making up the society

increases. Relationships within a band of 20 people involve only 190 two-

person interactions (20 people times 19 divided by 2), but a band of 2,000

would have 1,999,000 dyads. Each of those dyads represents a potential time

bomb that could explode in a murderous argument. Each murder in band and

tribal societies usually leads to an attempted revenge killing, starting one

more unending cycle of murder and countermurder that destabilizes the

society.

In a band, where everyone is closely related to everyone else, people

related simultaneously to both quarreling parties step in to mediate quarrels.

In a tribe, where many people are still close relatives and everyone at least

knows everybody else by name, mutual relatives and mutual friends mediate

the quarrel. But once the threshold of “several hundred,” below which

everyone can know everyone else, has been crossed, increasing numbers of

dyads become pairs of unrelated strangers. When strangers fight, few people

present will be friends or relatives of both combatants, with self-interest in

stopping the fight. Instead, many onlookers will be friends or relatives of only

one combatant and will side with that person, escalating the two-person fight

into a general brawl. Hence a large society that continues to leave conflict

resolution to all of its members is guaranteed to blow up. That factor alone

would explain why societies of thousands can exist only if they develop

centralized authority to monopolize force and resolve conflicts.

A second reason is the growing impossibility of communal decision

making with increasing population size. Decision making by the entire adult

population is still possible in New Guinea villages small enough that news

and information quickly spread to everyone, that everyone can hear everyone

else in a meeting of the whole village, and that everyone who wants to speak

at the meeting has the opportunity to do so. But all those prerequisites for

communal decision making become unattainable in much larger communities.

Even now, in these days of microphones and loudspeakers, we all know that a

group meeting is no way to resolve issues for a group of thousands of people.

Hence a large society must be structured and centralized if it is to reach

decisions effectively.

A third reason involves economic considerations. Any society requires

means to transfer goods between its members. One individual may happen to

acquire more of some essential commodity on one day and less on another.

Because individuals have different talents, one individual consistently tends

to wind up with an excess of some essentials and a deficit of others. In small

societies with few pairs of members, the resulting necessary transfers of

goods can be arranged directly between pairs of individuals or families, by

reciprocal exchanges. But the same mathematics that makes direct pairwise

conflict resolution inefficient in large societies makes direct pairwise

economic transfers also inefficient. Large societies can function economically

only if they have a redistributive economy in addition to a reciprocal

economy. Goods in excess of an individual’s needs must be transferred from

the individual to a centralized authority, which then redistributes the goods to

individuals with deficits.

A final consideration mandating complex organization for large societies

has to do with population densities. Large societies of food producers have

not only more members but also higher population densities than do small

bands of hunter-gatherers. Each band of a few dozen hunters occupies a large

territory, within which they can acquire most of the resources essential to

them. They can obtain their remaining necessities by trading with neighboring

bands during intervals between band warfare. As population density

increases, the territory of that band-sized population of a few dozen would

shrink to a small area, with more and more of life’s necessities having to be

obtained outside the area. For instance, one couldn’t just divide Holland’s

16,000 square miles and 16,000,000 people into 800,000 individual

territories, each encompassing 13 acres and serving as home to an

autonomous band of 20 people who remained self-sufficient confined within

their 13 acres, occasionally taking advantage of a temporary truce to come to

the borders of their tiny territory in order to exchange some trade items and

brides with the next band. Such spatial realities require that densely populated

regions support large and complexly organized societies.

Considerations of conflict resolution, decision making, economics, and

space thus converge in requiring large societies to be centralized. But

centralization of power inevitably opens the door—for those who hold the

power, are privy to information, make the decisions, and redistribute the

goods—to exploit the resulting opportunities to reward themselves and their

relatives. To anyone familiar with any modern grouping of people, that’s

obvious. As early societies developed, those acquiring centralized power

gradually established themselves as an elite, perhaps originating as one of

several formerly equal-ranked village clans that became “more equal” than

the others.



THOSE ARE THE reasons why large societies cannot function with band

organization and instead are complex kleptocracies. But we are still left with

the question of how small, simple societies actually evolve or amalgamate

into large, complex ones. Amalgamation, centralized conflict resolution,

decision making, economic redistribution, and kleptocratic religion don’t just

develop automatically through a Rousseauesque social contract. What drives

the amalgamation?

In part, the answer depends upon evolutionary reasoning. I said at the

outset of this chapter that societies classified in the same category are not all

identical to each other, because humans and human groups are infinitely

diverse. For example, among bands and tribes, the big-men of some are

inevitably more charismatic, powerful, and skilled in reaching decisions than

the big-men of others. Among large tribes, those with stronger big-men and

hence greater centralization tend to have an advantage over those with less

centralization. Tribes that resolve conflicts as poorly as did the Fayu tend to

blow apart again into bands, while ill-governed chiefdoms blow apart into

smaller chiefdoms or tribes. Societies with effective conflict resolution, sound

decision making, and harmonious economic redistribution can develop better

technology, concentrate their military power, seize larger and more productive

territories, and crush autonomous smaller societies one by one.

Thus, competition between societies at one level of complexity tends to

lead to societies on the next level of complexity if conditions permit. Tribes

conquer or combine with tribes to reach the size of chiefdoms, which conquer

or combine with other chiefdoms to reach the size of states, which conquer or

combine with other states to become empires. More generally, large units

potentially enjoy an advantage over individual small units if—and that’s a big

“if”—the large units can solve the problems that come with their larger size,

such as perennial threats from upstart claimants to leadership, commoner

resentment of kleptocracy, and increased problems associated with economic

integration.

The amalgamation of smaller units into larger ones has often been

documented historically or archaeologically. Contrary to Rousseau, such

amalgamations never occur by a process of unthreatened little societies freely

deciding to merge, in order to promote the happiness of their citizens. Leaders

of little societies, as of big ones, are jealous of their independence and

prerogatives. Amalgamation occurs instead in either of two ways: by merger

under the threat of external force, or by actual conquest. Innumerable

examples are available to illustrate each mode of amalgamation.

Merger under the threat of external force is well illustrated by the

formation of the Cherokee Indian confederation in the U.S. Southeast. The

Cherokees were originally divided into 30 or 40 independent chiefdoms, each

consisting of a village of about 400 people. Increasing white settlement led to

conflicts between Cherokees and whites. When individual Cherokees robbed

or assaulted white settlers and traders, the whites were unable to discriminate

among the different Cherokee chiefdoms and retaliated indiscriminately

against any Cherokees, either by military action or by cutting off trade. In

response, the Cherokee chiefdoms gradually found themselves compelled to

join into a single confederacy in the course of the 18th century. Initially, the

larger chiefdoms in 1730 chose an overall leader, a chief named Moytoy, who

was succeeded in 1741 by his son. The first task of these leaders was to

punish individual Cherokees who attacked whites, and to deal with the white

government. Around 1758 the Cherokees regularized their decision making

with an annual council modeled on previous village councils and meeting at

one village (Echota), which thereby became a de facto “capital.” Eventually,

the Cherokees became literate (as we saw in Chapter 12) and adopted a

written constitution.

The Cherokee confederacy was thus formed not by conquest but by the

amalgamation of previously jealous smaller entities, which merged only when

threatened with destruction by powerful external forces. In much the same

way, in an example of state formation described in every American history

textbook, the white American colonies themselves, one of which (Georgia)

had precipitated the formation of the Cherokee state, were impelled to form a

nation of their own when threatened with the powerful external force of the

British monarchy. The American colonies were initially as jealous of their

autonomy as the Cherokee chiefdoms, and their first attempt at amalgamation

under the Articles of Confederation (1781) proved unworkable because it

reserved too much autonomy to the ex-colonies. Only further threats, notably

Shays’s Rebellion of 1786 and the unsolved burden of war debt, overcame the

ex-colonies’ extreme reluctance to sacrifice autonomy and pushed them into

adopting our current strong federal constitution in 1787. The 19th-century

unification of Germany’s jealous principalities proved equally difficult. Three

early attempts (the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848, the restored German

Confederation of 1850, and the North German Confederation of 1866) failed

before the external threat of France’s declaration of war in 1870 finally led to

the princelets’ surrendering much of their power to a central imperial German

government in 1871.

The other mode of formation of complex societies, besides merger under

threat of external force, is merger by conquest. A well-documented example is

the origin of the Zulu state, in southeastern Africa. When first observed by

white settlers, the Zulus were divided into dozens of little chiefdoms. During

the late 1700s, as population pressure rose, fighting between the chiefdoms

became increasingly intense. Among all those chiefdoms, the ubiquitous

problem of devising centralized power structures was solved most

successfully by a chief called Dingiswayo, who gained ascendancy of the

Mtetwa chiefdom by killing a rival around 1807. Dingiswayo developed a

superior centralized military organization by drafting young men from all

villages and grouping them into regiments by age rather than by their village.

He also developed superior centralized political organization by abstaining

from slaughter as he conquered other chiefdoms, leaving the conquered

chief’s family intact, and limiting himself to replacing the conquered chief

himself with a relative willing to cooperate with Dingiswayo. He developed

superior centralized conflict resolution by expanding the adjudication of

quarrels. In that way Dingiswayo was able to conquer and begin the

integration of 30 other Zulu chiefdoms. His successors strengthened the

resulting embryonic Zulu state by expanding its judicial system, policing, and

ceremonies.

This Zulu example of a state formed by conquest can be multiplied almost

indefinitely. Native states whose formation from chiefdoms happened to be

witnessed by Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries include the Polynesian

Hawaiian state, the Polynesian Tahitian state, the Merina state of Madagascar,

Lesotho and Swazi and other southern African states besides that of the Zulus,

the Ashanti state of West Africa, and the Ankole and Buganda states of

Uganda. The Aztec and Inca Empires were formed by 15th-century

conquests, before Europeans arrived, but we know much about their

formation from Indian oral histories transcribed by early Spanish settlers. The

formation of the Roman state and the expansion of the Macedonian Empire

under Alexander were described in detail by contemporary classical authors.

All these examples illustrate that wars, or threats of war, have played a

key role in most, if not all, amalgamations of societies. But wars, even

between mere bands, have been a constant fact of human history. Why is it,

then, that they evidently began causing amalgamations of societies only

within the past 13,000 years? We had already concluded that the formation of

complex societies is somehow linked to population pressure, so we should

now seek a link between population pressure and the outcome of war. Why

should wars tend to cause amalgamations of societies when populations are

dense but not when they are sparse? The answer is that the fate of defeated

peoples depends on population density, with three possible outcomes:

Where population densities are very low, as is usual in regions occupied

by hunter-gatherer bands, survivors of a defeated group need only move

farther away from their enemies. That tends to be the result of wars between

nomadic bands in New Guinea and the Amazon.

Where population densities are moderate, as in regions occupied by food-

producing tribes, no large vacant areas remain to which survivors of a

defeated band can flee. But tribal societies without intensive food production

have no employment for slaves and do not produce large enough food

surpluses to be able to yield much tribute. Hence the victors have no use for

survivors of a defeated tribe, unless to take the women in marriage. The

defeated men are killed, and their territory may be occupied by the victors.

Where population densities are high, as in regions occupied by states or

chiefdoms, the defeated still have nowhere to flee, but the victors now have

two options for exploiting them while leaving them alive. Because chiefdoms

and state societies have economic specialization, the defeated can be used as

slaves, as commonly happened in biblical times. Alternatively, because many

such societies have intensive food production systems capable of yielding

large surpluses, the victors can leave the defeated in place but deprive them of

political autonomy, make them pay regular tribute in food or goods, and

amalgamate their society into the victorious state or chiefdom. This has been

the usual outcome of battles associated with the founding of states or empires

throughout recorded history. For example, the Spanish conquistadores wished

to exact tribute from Mexico’s defeated native populations, so they were very

interested in the Aztec Empire’s tribute lists. It turned out that the tribute

received by the Aztecs each year from subject peoples had included 7,000

tons of corn, 4,000 tons of beans, 4,000 tons of grain amaranth, 2,000,000

cotton cloaks, and huge quantities of cacao beans, war costumes, shields,

feather headdresses, and amber.

Thus, food production, and competition and diffusion between societies,

led as ultimate causes, via chains of causation that differed in detail but that

all involved large dense populations and sedentary living, to the proximate

agents of conquest: germs, writing, technology, and centralized political

organization. Because those ultimate causes developed differently on different

continents, so did those agents of conquest. Hence those agents tended to

arise in association with each other, but the association was not strict: for

example, an empire arose without writing among the Incas, and writing with

few epidemic diseases among the Aztecs. Dingiswayo’s Zulus illustrate that

each of those agents contributed somewhat independently to history’s pattern.

Among the dozens of Zulu chiefdoms, the Mtetwa chiefdom enjoyed no

advantage whatsoever of technology, writing, or germs over the other

chiefdoms, which it nevertheless succeeded in defeating. Its advantage lay

solely in the spheres of government and ideology. The resulting Zulu state

was thereby enabled to conquer a fraction of a continent for nearly a century.





PART FOUR

AROUND THE WORLD IN FIVE CHAPTERS





CHAPTER 15

YALI’S PEOPLE

WHEN MY WIFE, MARIE, AND I WERE VACATIONING IN Australia one summer,

we decided to visit a site with well-preserved Aboriginal rock paintings in the

desert near the town of Menindee. While I knew of the Australian desert’s

reputation for dryness and summer heat, I had already spent long periods

working under hot, dry conditions in the Californian desert and New Guinea

savanna, so I considered myself experienced enough to deal with the minor

challenges we would face as tourists in Australia. Carrying plenty of drinking

water, Marie and I set off at noon on a hike of a few miles to the paintings.

The trail from the ranger station led uphill, under a cloudless sky, through

open terrain offering no shade whatsoever. The hot, dry air that we were

breathing reminded me of how it had felt to breathe while sitting in a Finnish

sauna. By the time we reached the cliff site with the paintings, we had

finished our water. We had also lost our interest in art, so we pushed on uphill,

breathing slowly and regularly. Presently I noticed a bird that was

unmistakably a species of babbler, but it seemed enormous compared with

any known babbler species. At that point, I realized that I was experiencing

heat hallucinations for the first time in my life. Marie and I decided that we

had better head straight back.

Both of us stopped talking. As we walked, we concentrated on listening to

our breathing, calculating the distance to the next landmark, and estimating

the remaining time. My mouth and tongue were now dry, and Marie’s face

was red. When we at last reached the air-conditioned ranger station, we

sagged into chairs next to the water cooler, drank down the cooler’s last half-

gallon of water, and asked the ranger for another bottle. Sitting there

exhausted, both physically and emotionally, I reflected that the Aborigines

who had made those paintings had somehow spent their entire lives in that

desert without air-conditioned retreats, managing to find food as well as

water.

To white Australians, Menindee is famous as the base camp for two

whites who had suffered worse from the desert’s dry heat over a century

earlier: the Irish policeman Robert Burke and the English astronomer William

Wills, ill-fated leaders of the first European expedition to cross Australia from

south to north. Setting out with six camels packing food enough for three

months, Burke and Wills ran out of provisions while in the desert north of

Menindee. Three successive times, they encountered and were rescued by

well-fed Aborigines whose home was that desert, and who plied the explorers

with fish, fern cakes, and roasted fat rats. But then Burke foolishly shot his

pistol at one of the Aborigines, whereupon the whole group fled. Despite their

big advantage over the Aborigines in possessing guns with which to hunt,

Burke and Wills starved, collapsed, and died within a month after the

Aborigines’ departure.

My wife’s and my experience at Menindee, and the fate of Burke and

Wills, made vivid for me the difficulties of building a human society in

Australia. Australia stands out from all the other continents: the differences

between Eurasia, Africa, North America, and South America fade into

insignificance compared with the differences between Australia and any of

those other landmasses. Australia is by far the driest, smallest, flattest, most

infertile, climatically most unpredictable, and biologically most impoverished

continent. It was the last continent to be occupied by Europeans. Until then, it

had supported the most distinctive human societies, and the least numerous

human population, of any continent.

Australia thus provides a crucial test of theories about intercontinental

differences in societies. It had the most distinctive environment, and also the

most distinctive societies. Did the former cause the latter? If so, how?

Australia is the logical continent with which to begin our around-the-world

tour, applying the lessons of Parts 2 and 3 to understanding the differing

histories of all the continents.



MOST LAYPEOPLE WOULD describe as the most salient feature of Native

Australian societies their seeming “backwardness.” Australia is the sole

continent where, in modern times, all native peoples still lived without any of

the hallmarks of so-called civilization—without farming, herding, metal,

bows and arrows, substantial buildings, settled villages, writing, chiefdoms,

or states. Instead, Australian Aborigines were nomadic or seminomadic

hunter-gatherers, organized into bands, living in temporary shelters or huts,

and still dependent on stone tools. During the last 13,000 years less cultural

change has accumulated in Australia than in any other continent. The

prevalent European view of Native Australians was already typified by the

words of an early French explorer, who wrote, “They are the most miserable

people of the world, and the human beings who approach closest to brute

beasts.”

Yet, as of 40,000 years ago, Native Australian societies enjoyed a big

head start over societies of Europe and the other continents. Native

Australians developed some of the earliest known stone tools with ground

edges, the earliest hafted stone tools (that is, stone ax heads mounted on

handles), and by far the earliest watercraft, in the world. Some of the oldest

known painting on rock surfaces comes from Australia. Anatomically modern

humans may have settled Australia before they settled western Europe. Why,

despite that head start, did Europeans end up conquering Australia, rather than

vice versa?

Within that question lies another. During the Pleistocene Ice Ages, when

much ocean water was sequestered in continental ice sheets and sea level

dropped far below its present stand, the shallow Arafura Sea now separating

Australia from New Guinea was low, dry land. With the melting of ice sheets

between around 12,000 and 8,000 years ago, sea level rose, that low land

became flooded, and the former continent of Greater Australia became

sundered into the two hemi-continents of Australia and New Guinea (Figure

15.1 on Chapter 15).

The human societies of those two formerly joined landmasses were in

modern times very different from each other. In contrast to everything that I

just said about Native Australians, most New Guineans, such as Yali’s people,

were farmers and swineherds. They lived in settled villages and were

organized politically into tribes rather than bands. All New Guineans had

bows and arrows, and many used pottery. New Guineans tended to have much

more substantial dwellings, more seaworthy boats, and more numerous and

more varied utensils than did Australians. As a consequence of being food

producers instead of hunter-gatherers, New Guineans lived at much higher

average population densities than Australians: New Guinea has only one-tenth

of Australia’s area but supported a native population several times that of

Australia’s.

Why did the human societies of the larger landmass derived from

Pleistocene Greater Australia remain so “backward” in their development,

while the societies of the smaller landmass “advanced” much more rapidly?

Why didn’t all those New Guinea innovations spread to Australia, which is

separated from New Guinea by only 90 miles of sea at Torres Strait? From the

perspective of cultural anthropology, the geographic distance between

Australia and New Guinea is even less than 90 miles, because Torres Strait is

sprinkled with islands inhabited by farmers using bows and arrows and

culturally resembling New Guineans. The largest Torres Strait island lies only

10 miles from Australia. Islanders carried on a lively trade with Native

Australians as well as with New Guineans. How could two such different

cultural universes maintain themselves across a calm strait only 10 miles wide

and routinely traversed by canoes?

Compared with Native Australians, New Guineans rate as culturally

“advanced.” But most other modern people consider even New Guineans

“backward.” Until Europeans began to colonize New Guinea in the late 19th

century, all New Guineans were nonliterate, dependent on stone tools, and

politically not yet organized into states or (with few exceptions) chiefdoms.

Granted that New Guineans had “progressed” beyond Native Australians,

why had they not yet “progressed” as far as many Eurasians, Africans, and

Native Americans? Thus, Yali’s people and their Australian cousins pose a

puzzle inside a puzzle.

When asked to account for the cultural “backwardness” of Aboriginal

Australian society, many white Australians have a simple answer: supposed

deficiencies of the Aborigines themselves. In facial structure and skin color,

Aborigines certainly look different from Europeans, leading some late-19th

century authors to consider them a missing link between apes and humans.

How else can one account for the fact that white English colonists created a

literate, food-producing, industrial democracy, within a few decades of

colonizing a continent whose inhabitants after more than 40,000 years were

still nonliterate hunter-gatherers? It is especially striking that Australia has

some of the world’s richest iron and aluminum deposits, as well as rich

reserves of copper, tin, lead, and zinc. Why, then, were Native Australians

still ignorant of metal tools and living in the Stone Age?

It seems like a perfectly controlled experiment in the evolution of human

societies. The continent was the same; only the people were different. Ergo,

the explanation for the differences between Native Australian and European-

Australian societies must lie in the different people composing them. The

logic behind this racist conclusion appears compelling. We shall see, however,

that it contains a simple error.



AS THE FIRST step in examining this logic, let us examine the origins of the

peoples themselves. Australia and New Guinea were both occupied by at least

40,000 years ago, at a time when they were both still joined as Greater

Australia. A glance at a map (Figure 15.1) suggests that the colonists must

have originated ultimately from the nearest continent, Southeast Asia, by

island hopping through the Indonesian Archipelago. This conclusion is

supported by genetic relationships between modern Australians, New

Guineans, and Asians, and by the survival today of a few populations of

somewhat similar physical appearance in the Philippines, Malay Peninsula,

and Andaman Islands off Myanmar.

Once the colonists had reached the shores of Greater Australia, they

spread quickly over the whole continent to occupy even its farthest reaches

and most inhospitable habitats. By 40,000 years ago, fossils and stone tools

attest to their presence in Australia’s southwestern corner; by 35,000 years

ago, in Australia’s southeastern corner and Tasmania, the corner of Australia

most remote from the colonists’ likely beachhead in western Australia or New

Guinea (the parts nearest Indonesia and Asia); and by 30,000 years ago, in the

cold New Guinea highlands. All of those areas could have been reached

overland from a western beachhead. However, the colonization of both the

Bismarck and the Solomon Archipelagoes northeast of New Guinea, by

35,000 years ago, required further overwater crossings of dozens of miles.

The occupation could have been even more rapid than that apparent spread of

dates from 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, since the various dates hardly differ

within the experimental error of the radiocarbon method.

At the Pleistocene times when Australia and New Guinea were initially

occupied, the Asian continent extended eastward to incorporate the modern

islands of Borneo, Java, and Bali, nearly 1,000 miles nearer to Australia and

New Guinea than Southeast Asia’s present margin. However, at least eight

channels up to 50 miles wide still remained to be crossed in getting from

Borneo or Bali to Pleistocene Greater Australia. Forty thousand years ago,

those crossings may have been achieved by bamboo rafts, low-tech but

seaworthy watercraft still in use in coastal South China today. The crossings

must nevertheless have been difficult, because after that initial landfall by

40,000 years ago the archaeological record provides no compelling evidence

of further human arrivals in Greater Australia from Asia for tens of thousands

of years. Not until within the last few thousand years do we encounter the

next firm evidence, in the form of the appearance of Asian-derived pigs in

New Guinea and Asian-derived dogs in Australia.

Thus, the human societies of Australia and New Guinea developed in

substantial isolation from the Asian societies that founded them. That

isolation is reflected in languages spoken today. After all those millennia of

isolation, neither modern Aboriginal Australian languages nor the major

group of modern New Guinea languages (the so-called Papuan languages)

exhibit any clear relationships with any modern Asian languages.

The isolation is also reflected in genes and physical anthropology. Genetic

studies suggest that Aboriginal Australians and New Guinea highlanders are

somewhat more similar to modern Asians than to peoples of other continents,

but the relationship is not a close one. In skeletons and physical appearance,

Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans are also distinct from most

Southeast Asian populations, as becomes obvious if one compares photos of

Australians or New Guineans with those of Indonesians or Chinese. Part of

the reason for all these differences is that the initial Asian colonists of Greater

Australia have had a long time in which to diverge from their stay-at-home

Asian cousins, with only limited genetic exchanges during most of that time.

But probably a more important reason is that the original Southeast Asian

stock from which the colonists of Greater Australia were derived has by now

been largely replaced by other Asians expanding out of China.

Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans have also diverged genetically,

physically, and linguistically from each other. For instance, among the major

(genetically determined) human blood groups, groups B of the so-called ABO

system and S of the MNS system occur in New Guinea as well as in most of

the rest of the world, but both are virtually absent in Australia. The tightly

coiled hair of most New Guineans contrasts with the straight or wavy hair of

most Australians. Australian languages and New Guinea’s Papuan languages

are unrelated not only to Asian languages but also to each other, except for

some spread of vocabulary in both directions across Torres Strait.

All that divergence of Australians and New Guineans from each other

reflects lengthy isolation in very different environments. Since the rise of the

Arafura Sea finally separated Australia and New Guinea from each other

around 10,000 years ago, gene exchange has been limited to tenuous contact

via the chain of Torres Strait islands. That has allowed the populations of the

two hemi-continents to adapt to their own environments. While the savannas

and mangroves of coastal southern New Guinea are fairly similar to those of

northern Australia, other habitats of the hemi-continents differ in almost all

major respects.

Here are some of the differences. New Guinea lies nearly on the equator,

while Australia extends far into the temperate zones, reaching almost 40

degrees south of the equator. New Guinea is mountainous and extremely

rugged, rising to 16,500 feet and with glaciers capping the highest peaks,

while Australia is mostly low and flat—94 percent of its area lies below 2,000

feet of elevation. New Guinea is one of the wettest areas on Earth, Australia

one of the driest. Most of New Guinea receives over 100 inches of rain

annually, and much of the highlands receives over 200 inches, while most of

Australia receives less than 20 inches. New Guinea’s equatorial climate varies

only modestly from season to season and year to year, but Australia’s climate

is highly seasonal and varies from year to year far more than that of any other

continent. As a result, New Guinea is laced with permanent large rivers, while

Australia’s permanently flowing rivers are confined in most years to eastern

Australia, and even Australia’s largest river system (the Murray-Darling) has

ceased flowing for months during droughts. Most of New Guinea’s land area

is clothed in dense rain forest, while most of Australia’s supports only desert

and open dry woodland.

New Guinea is covered with young fertile soil, as a consequence of

volcanic activity, glaciers repeatedly advancing and retreating and scouring

the highlands, and mountain streams carrying huge quantities of silt to the

lowlands. In contrast, Australia has by far the oldest, most infertile, most

nutrient-leached soils of any continent, because of Australia’s little volcanic

activity and its lack of high mountains and glaciers. Despite having only one-

tenth of Australia’s area, New Guinea is home to approximately as many

mammal and bird species as is Australia—a result of New Guinea’s equatorial

location, much higher rainfall, much greater range of elevations, and greater

fertility. All of those environmental differences influenced the two hemi-

continents’ very disparate cultural histories, which we shall now consider.



THE EARLIEST AND most intensive food production, and the densest

populations, of Greater Australia arose in the highland valleys of New Guinea

at altitudes between 4,000 and 9,000 feet above sea level. Archaeological

excavations uncovered complex systems of drainage ditches dating back to

9,000 years ago and becoming extensive by 6,000 years ago, as well as

terraces serving to retain soil moisture in drier areas. The ditch systems were

similar to those still used today in the highlands to drain swampy areas for use

as gardens. By around 5,000 years ago, pollen analyses testify to widespread

deforestation of highland valleys, suggesting forest clearance for agriculture.

Today, the staple crops of highland agriculture are the recently introduced

sweet potato, along with taro, bananas, yams, sugarcane, edible grass stems,

and several leafy vegetables. Because taro, bananas, and yams are native to

Southeast Asia, an undoubted site of plant domestication, it used to be

assumed that New Guinea highland crops other than sweet potatoes arrived

from Asia. However, it was eventually realized that the wild ancestors of

sugarcane, the leafy vegetables, and the edible grass stems are New Guinea

species, that the particular types of bananas grown in New Guinea have New

Guinea rather than Asian wild ancestors, and that taro and some yams are

native to New Guinea as well as to Asia. If New Guinea agriculture had really

had Asian origins, one might have expected to find highland crops derived

unequivocally from Asia, but there are none. For those reasons it is now

generally acknowledged that agriculture arose indigenously in the New

Guinea highlands by domestication of New Guinea wild plant species.

New Guinea thus joins the Fertile Crescent, China, and a few other

regions as one of the world’s centers of independent origins of plant

domestication. No remains of the crops actually being grown in the highlands

6,000 years ago have been preserved in archaeological sites. However, that is

not surprising, because modern highland staple crops are plant species that do

not leave archaeologically visible residues except under exceptional

conditions. Hence it seems likely that some of them were also the founding

crops of highland agriculture, especially as the ancient drainage systems

preserved are so similar to the modern drainage systems used for growing

taro.

The three unequivocally foreign elements in New Guinea highland food

production as seen by the first European explorers were chickens, pigs, and

sweet potatoes. Chickens and pigs were domesticated in Southeast Asia and

introduced around 3,600 years ago to New Guinea and most other Pacific

islands by Austronesians, a people of ultimately South Chinese origin whom

we shall discuss in Chapter 17. (Pigs may have arrived earlier.) As for the

sweet potato, native to South America, it apparently reached New Guinea

only within the last few centuries, following its introduction to the Philippines

by Spaniards. Once established in New Guinea, the sweet potato overtook

taro as the highland’s leading crop, because of its shorter time required to

reach maturity, higher yields per acre, and greater tolerance of poor soil

conditions.

The development of New Guinea highland agriculture must have

triggered a big population explosion thousands of years ago, because the

highlands could have supported only very low population densities of hunter-

gatherers after New Guinea’s original megafauna of giant marsupials had

been exterminated. The arrival of the sweet potato triggered a further

explosion in recent centuries. When Europeans first flew over the highlands

in the 1930s, they were astonished to see below them a landscape similar to

Holland’s. Broad valleys were completely deforested and dotted with villages,

and drained and fenced fields for intensive food production covered entire

valley floors. That landscape testifies to the population densities achieved in

the highlands by farmers with stone tools.

Steep terrain, persistent cloud cover, malaria, and risk of drought at lower

elevations confine New Guinea highland agriculture to elevations above about

4,000 feet. In effect, the New Guinea highlands are an island of dense farming

populations thrust up into the sky and surrounded below by a sea of clouds.

Lowland New Guineans on the seacoast and rivers are villagers depending

heavily on fish, while those on dry ground away from the coast and rivers

subsist at low densities by slash-and-burn agriculture based on bananas and

yams, supplemented by hunting and gathering. In contrast, lowland New

Guinea swamp dwellers live as nomadic hunter-gatherers dependent on the

starchy pith of wild sago palms, which are very productive and yield three

times more calories per hour of work than does gardening. New Guinea

swamps thus provide a clear instance of an environment where people

remained hunter-gatherers because farming could not compete with the

hunting-gathering lifestyle.

The sago eaters persisting in lowland swamps exemplify the nomadic

hunter-gatherer band organization that must formerly have characterized all

New Guineans. For all the reasons that we discussed in Chapters 13 and 14,

the farmers and the fishing peoples were the ones to develop more-complex

technology, societies, and political organization. They live in permanent

villages and tribal societies, often led by a big-man. Some of them construct

large, elaborately decorated, ceremonial houses. Their great art, in the form of

wooden statues and masks, is prized in museums around the world.



NEW GUINEA THUS became the part of Greater Australia with the most-

advanced technology, social and political organization, and art. However,

from an urban American or European perspective, New Guinea still rates as

“primitive” rather than “advanced.” Why did New Guineans continue to use

stone tools instead of developing metal tools, remain nonliterate, and fail to

organize themselves into chiefdoms and states? It turns out that New Guinea

had several biological and geographic strikes against it.

First, although indigenous food production did arise in the New Guinea

highlands, we saw in Chapter 8 that it yielded little protein. The dietary

staples were low-protein root crops, and production of the sole domesticated

animal species (pigs and chickens) was too low to contribute much to

people’s protein budgets. Since neither pigs nor chickens can be harnessed to

pull carts, highlanders remained without sources of power other than human

muscle power, and also failed to evolve epidemic diseases to repel the

eventual European invaders.

A second restriction on the size of highland populations was the limited

available area: the New Guinea highlands have only a few broad valleys,

notably the Wahgi and Baliem Valleys, capable of supporting dense

populations. Still a third limitation was the reality that the mid-montane zone

between 4,000 and 9,000 feet was the sole altitudinal zone in New Guinea

suitable for intensive food production. There was no food production at all in

New Guinea alpine habitats above 9,000 feet, little on the hillslopes between

4,000 and 1,000 feet, and only low-density slash-and-burn agriculture in the

lowlands. Thus, large-scale economic exchanges of food, between

communities at different altitudes specializing in different types of food

production, never developed in New Guinea. Such exchanges in the Andes,

Alps, and Himalayas not only increased population densities in those areas,

by providing people at all altitudes with a more balanced diet, but also

promoted regional economic and political integration.

For all these reasons, the population of traditional New Guinea never

exceeded 1,000,000 until European colonial governments brought Western

medicine and the end of intertribal warfare. Of the approximately nine world

centers of agricultural origins that we discussed in Chapter 5, New Guinea

remained the one with by far the smallest population. With a mere 1,000,000

people, New Guinea could not develop the technology, writing, and political

systems that arose among populations of tens of millions in China, the Fertile

Crescent, the Andes, and Mesoamerica.

New Guinea’s population is not only small in aggregate, but also

fragmented into thousands of micropopulations by the rugged terrain: swamps

in much of the lowlands, steep-sided ridges and narrow canyons alternating

with each other in the highlands, and dense jungle swathing both the lowlands

and the highlands. When I am engaged in biological exploration in New

Guinea, with teams of New Guineans as field assistants, I consider excellent

progress to be three miles per day even if we are traveling over existing trails.

Most highlanders in traditional New Guinea never went more than 10 miles

from home in the course of their lives.

Those difficulties of terrain, combined with the state of intermittent

warfare that characterized relations between New Guinea bands or villages,

account for traditional New Guinea’s linguistic, cultural, and political

fragmentation. New Guinea has by far the highest concentration of languages

in the world: 1,000 out of the world’s 6,000 languages, crammed into an area

only slightly larger than that of Texas, and divided into dozens of language

families and isolated languages as different from each other as English is from

Chinese. Nearly half of all New Guinea languages have fewer than 500

speakers, and even the largest language groups (still with a mere 100,000

speakers) were politically fragmented into hundreds of villages, fighting as

fiercely with each other as with speakers of other languages. Each of those

microsocieties alone was far too small to support chiefs and craft specialists,

or to develop metallurgy and writing.

Besides a small and fragmented population, the other limitation on

development in New Guinea was geographic isolation, restricting the inflow

of technology and ideas from elsewhere. New Guinea’s three neighbors were

all separated from New Guinea by water gaps, and until a few thousand years

ago they were all even less advanced than New Guinea (especially the New

Guinea highlands) in technology and food production. Of those three

neighbors, Aboriginal Australians remained hunter-gatherers with almost

nothing to offer New Guineans that New Guineans did not already possess.

New Guinea’s second neighbor was the much smaller islands of the Bismarck

and the Solomon Archipelagoes to the east. That left, as New Guinea’s third

neighbor, the islands of eastern Indonesia. But that area, too, remained a

cultural backwater occupied by hunter-gatherers for most of its history. There

is no item that can be identified as having reached New Guinea via Indonesia,

after the initial colonization of New Guinea over 40,000 years ago, until the

time of the Austronesian expansion around 1600 B.C.

With that expansion, Indonesia became occupied by food producers of

Asian origins, with domestic animals, with agriculture and technology at least

as complex as New Guinea’s, and with navigational skills that served as a

much more efficient conduit from Asia to New Guinea. Austronesians settled

on islands west and north and east of New Guinea, and in the far west and on

the north and southeast coasts of New Guinea itself. Austronesians introduced

pottery, chickens, and probably dogs and pigs to New Guinea. (Early

archaeological surveys claimed pig bones in the New Guinea highlands by

4000 B.C., but those claims have not been confirmed.) For at least the last

thousand years, trade connected New Guinea to the technologically much

more advanced societies of Java and China. In return for exporting bird of

paradise plumes and spices, New Guineans received Southeast Asian goods,

including even such luxury items as Dong Son bronze drums and Chinese

porcelain.

With time, the Austronesian expansion would surely have had more

impact on New Guinea. Western New Guinea would eventually have been

incorporated politically into the sultanates of eastern Indonesia, and metal

tools might have spread through eastern Indonesia to New Guinea. But—that

hadn’t happened by A.D. 1511, the year the Portuguese arrived in the

Moluccas and truncated Indonesia’s separate train of developments. When

Europeans reached New Guinea soon thereafter, its inhabitants were still

living in bands or in fiercely independent little villages, and still using stone

tools.



WHILE THE NEW Guinea hemi-continent of Greater Australia thus developed

both animal husbandry and agriculture, the Australian hemi-continent

developed neither. During the Ice Ages Australia had supported even more

big marsupials than New Guinea, including diprotodonts (the marsupial

equivalent of cows and rhinoceroses), giant kangaroos, and giant wombats.

But all those marsupial candidates for animal husbandry disappeared in the

wave of extinctions (or exterminations) that accompanied human colonization

of Australia. That left Australia, like New Guinea, with no domesticable

native mammals. The sole foreign domesticated mammal adopted in Australia

was the dog, which arrived from Asia (presumably in Austronesian canoes)

around 1500 B.C. and established itself in the wild in Australia to become the

dingo. Native Australians kept captive dingos as companions, watchdogs, and

even as living blankets, giving rise to the expression “five-dog night” to mean

a very cold night. But they did not use dingos / dogs for food, as did

Polynesians, or for cooperative hunting of wild animals, as did New

Guineans.

Agriculture was another nonstarter in Australia, which is not only the

driest continent but also the one with the most infertile soils. In addition,

Australia is unique in that the overwhelming influence on climate over most

of the continent is an irregular nonannual cycle, the ENSO (acronym for El

Niño Southern Oscillation), rather than the regular annual cycle of the seasons

so familiar in most other parts of the world. Unpredictable severe droughts

last for years, punctuated by equally unpredictable torrential rains and floods.

Even today, with Eurasian crops and with trucks and railroads to transport

produce, food production in Australia remains a risky business. Herds build

up in good years, only to be killed off by drought. Any incipient farmers in

Aboriginal Australia would have faced similar cycles in their own

populations. If in good years they had settled in villages, grown crops, and

produced babies, those large populations would have starved and died off in

drought years, when the land could support far fewer people.

The other major obstacle to the development of food production in

Australia was the paucity of domesticable wild plants. Even modern European

plant geneticists have failed to develop any crop except macadamia nuts from

Australia’s native wild flora. The list of the world’s potential prize cereals—

the 56 wild grass species with the heaviest grains—includes only two

Australian species, both of which rank near the bottom of the list (grain

weight only 13 milligrams, compared with a whopping 40 milligrams for the

heaviest grains elsewhere in the world). That’s not to say that Australia had

no potential crops at all, or that Aboriginal Australians would never have

developed indigenous food production. Some plants, such as certain species

of yams, taro, and arrowroot, are cultivated in southern New Guinea but also

grow wild in northern Australia and were gathered by Aborigines there. As

we shall see, Aborigines in the climatically most favorable areas of Australia

were evolving in a direction that might have eventuated in food production.

But any food production that did arise indigenously in Australia would have

been limited by the lack of domesticable animals, the poverty of domesticable

plants, and the difficult soils and climate.

Nomadism, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and minimal investment in

shelter and possessions were sensible adaptations to Australia’s ENSO-driven

resource unpredictability. When local conditions deteriorated, Aborigines

simply moved to an area where conditions were temporarily better. Rather

than depending on just a few crops that could fail, they minimized risk by

developing an economy based on a great variety of wild foods, not all of

which were likely to fail simultaneously. Instead of having fluctuating

populations that periodically outran their resources and starved, they

maintained smaller populations that enjoyed an abundance of food in good

years and a sufficiency in bad years.

The Aboriginal Australian substitute for food production has been termed

“firestick farming.” The Aborigines modified and managed the surrounding

landscape in ways that increased its production of edible plants and animals,

without resorting to cultivation. In particular, they intentionally burned much

of the landscape periodically. That served several purposes: the fires drove

out animals that could be killed and eaten immediately; fires converted dense

thickets into open parkland in which people could travel more easily; the

parkland was also an ideal habitat for kangaroos, Australia’s prime game

animal; and the fires stimulated the growth both of new grass on which

kangaroos fed and of fern roots on which Aborigines themselves fed.

We think of Australian Aborigines as desert people, but most of them

were not. Instead, their population densities varied with rainfall (because it

controls the production of terrestrial wild plant and animal foods) and with

abundance of aquatic foods in the sea, rivers, and lakes. The highest

population densities of Aborigines were in Australia’s wettest and most

productive regions: the Murray-Darling river system of the Southeast, the

eastern and northern coasts, and the southwestern corner. Those areas also

came to support the densest populations of European settlers in modern

Australia. The reason we think of Aborigines as desert people is simply that

Europeans killed or drove them out of the most desirable areas, leaving the

last intact Aboriginal populations only in areas that Europeans didn’t want.

Within the last 5,000 years, some of those productive regions witnessed

an intensification of Aboriginal food-gathering methods, and a buildup of

Aboriginal population density. Techniques were developed in eastern

Australia for rendering abundant and starchy, but extremely poisonous, cycad

seeds edible, by leaching out or fermenting the poison. The previously

unexploited highlands of southeastern Australia began to be visited regularly

during the summer, by Aborigines feasting not only on cycad nuts and yams

but also on huge hibernating aggregations of a migratory moth called the

bogong moth, which tastes like a roasted chestnut when grilled. Another type

of intensified food-gathering activity that developed was the freshwater eel

fisheries of the Murray-Darling river system, where water levels in marshes

fluctuate with seasonal rains. Native Australians constructed elaborate

systems of canals up to a mile and a half long, in order to enable eels to

extend their range from one marsh to another. Eels were caught by equally

elaborate weirs, traps set in dead-end side canals, and stone walls across

canals with a net placed in an opening of the wall. Traps at different levels in

the marsh came into operation as the water level rose and fell. While the

initial construction of those “fish farms” must have involved a lot of work,

they then fed many people. Nineteenth-century European observers found

villages of a dozen Aboriginal houses at the eel farms, and there are

archaeological remains of villages of up to 146 stone houses, implying at least

seasonally resident populations of hundreds of people.

Still another development in eastern and northern Australia was the

harvesting of seeds of a wild millet, belonging to the same genus as the

broomcorn millet that was a staple of early Chinese agriculture. The millet

was reaped with stone knives, piled into haystacks, and threshed to obtain the

seeds, which were then stored in skin bags or wooden dishes and finally

ground with millstones. Several of the tools used in this process, such as the

stone reaping knives and grindstones, were similar to the tools independently

invented in the Fertile Crescent for processing seeds of other wild grasses. Of

all the food-acquiring methods of Aboriginal Australians, millet harvesting is

perhaps the one most likely to have evolved eventually into crop production.

Along with intensified food gathering in the last 5,000 years came new

types of tools. Small stone blades and points provided more length of sharp

edge per pound of tool than the large stone tools they replaced. Hatchets with

ground stone edges, once present only locally in Australia, became

widespread. Shell fishhooks appeared within the last thousand years.



WHY DID AUSTRALIA not develop metal tools, writing, and politically

complex societies? A major reason is that Aborigines remained hunter-

gatherers, whereas, as we saw in Chapters 12–14, those developments arose

elsewhere only in populous and economically specialized societies of food

producers. In addition, Australia’s aridity, infertility, and climatic

unpredictability limited its hunter-gatherer population to only a few hundred

thousand people. Compared with the tens of millions of people in ancient

China or Mesoamerica, that meant that Australia had far fewer potential

inventors, and far fewer societies to experiment with adopting innovations.

Nor were its several hundred thousand people organized into closely

interacting societies. Aboriginal Australia instead consisted of a sea of very

sparsely populated desert separating several more productive ecological

“islands,” each of them holding only a fraction of the continent’s population

and with interactions attenuated by the intervening distance. Even within the

relatively moist and productive eastern side of the continent, exchanges

between societies were limited by the 1,900 miles from Queensland’s tropical

rain forests in the northeast to Victoria’s temperate rain forests in the

southeast, a geographic and ecological distance as great as that from Los

Angeles to Alaska.

Some apparent regional or continentwide regressions of technology in

Australia may stem from the isolation and relatively few inhabitants of its

population centers. The boomerang, that quintessential Australian weapon,

was abandoned in the Cape York Peninsula of northeastern Australia. When

encountered by Europeans, the Aborigines of southwestern Australia did not

eat shellfish. The function of the small stone points that appear in Australian

archaeological sites around 5,000 years ago remains uncertain: while an easy

explanation is that they may have been used as spearpoints and barbs, they are

suspiciously similar to the stone points and barbs used on arrows elsewhere in

the world. If they really were so used, the mystery of bows and arrows being

present in modern New Guinea but absent in Australia might be compounded:

perhaps bows and arrows actually were adopted for a while, then abandoned,

across the Australian continent. All these examples remind us of the

abandonment of guns in Japan, of bows and arrows and pottery in most of

Polynesia, and of other technologies in other isolated societies (Chapter 13).

The most extreme losses of technology in the Australian region took place

on the island of Tasmania, 130 miles off the coast of southeastern Australia.

At Pleistocene times of low sea level, the shallow Bass Strait now separating

Tasmania from Australia was dry land, and the people occupying Tasmania

were part of the human population distributed continuously over an expanded

Australian continent. When the strait was at last flooded around 10,000 years

ago, Tasmanians and mainland Australians became cut off from each other

because neither group possessed watercraft capable of negotiating Bass Strait.

Thereafter, Tasmania’s population of 4,000 hunter-gatherers remained out of

contact with all other humans on Earth, living in an isolation otherwise known

only from science fiction novels.

When finally encountered by Europeans in A.D. 1642, the Tasmanians had

the simplest material culture of any people in the modern world. Like

mainland Aborigines, they were hunter-gatherers without metal tools. But

they also lacked many technologies and artifacts widespread on the mainland,

including barbed spears, bone tools of any type, boomerangs, ground or

polished stone tools, hafted stone tools, hooks, nets, pronged spears, traps,

and the practices of catching and eating fish, sewing, and starting a fire. Some

of these technologies may have arrived or been invented in mainland

Australia only after Tasmania became isolated, in which case we can conclude

that the tiny Tasmanian population did not independently invent these

technologies for itself. Others of these technologies were brought to Tasmania

when it was still part of the Australian mainland, and were subsequently lost

in Tasmania’s cultural isolation. For example, the Tasmanian archaeological

record documents the disappearance of fishing, and of awls, needles, and

other bone tools, around 1500 B.C. On at least three smaller islands (Flinders,

Kangaroo, and King) that were isolated from Australia or Tasmania by rising

sea levels around 10,000 years ago, human populations that would initially

have numbered around 200 to 400 died out completely.

Tasmania and those three smaller islands thus illustrate in extreme form a

conclusion of broad potential significance for world history. Human

populations of only a few hundred people were unable to survive indefinitely

in complete isolation. A population of 4,000 was able to survive for 10,000

years, but with significant cultural losses and significant failures to invent,

leaving it with a uniquely simplified material culture. Mainland Australia’s

300,000 hunter-gatherers were more numerous and less isolated than the

Tasmanians but still constituted the smallest and most isolated human

population of any of the continents. The documented instances of

technological regression on the Australian mainland, and the example of

Tasmania, suggest that the limited repertoire of Native Australians compared

with that of peoples of other continents may stem in part from the effects of

isolation and population size on the development and maintenance of

technology—like those effects on Tasmania, but less extreme. By implication,

the same effects may have contributed to differences in technology between

the largest continent (Eurasia) and the next smaller ones (Africa, North

America, and South America).



WHY DIDN’T MORE-ADVANCED technology reach Australia from its

neighbors, Indonesia and New Guinea? As regards Indonesia, it was separated

from northwestern Australia by water and was very different from it

ecologically. In addition, Indonesia itself was a cultural and technological

backwater until a few thousand years ago. There is no evidence of any new

technology or introduction reaching Australia from Indonesia, after

Australia’s initial colonization 40,000 years ago, until the dingo appeared

around 1500 B.C.

The dingo reached Australia at the peak of the Austronesian expansion

from South China through Indonesia. Austronesians succeeded in settling all

the islands of Indonesia, including the two closest to Australia—Timor and

Tanimbar (only 275 and 205 miles from modern Australia, respectively).

Since Austronesians covered far greater sea distances in the course of their

expansion across the Pacific, we would have to assume that they repeatedly

reached Australia, even if we did not have the evidence of the dingo to prove

it. In historical times northwestern Australia was visited each year by sailing

canoes from the Macassar district on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi

(Celebes), until the Australian government stopped the visits in 1907.

Archaeological evidence traces the visits back until around A.D. 1000, and

they may well have been going on earlier. The main purpose of the visits was

to obtain sea cucumbers (also known as bêche-de-mer or trepang), starfish

relatives exported from Macassar to China as a reputed aphrodisiac and prized

ingredient of soups.

Naturally, the trade that developed during the Macassans’ annual visits

left many legacies in northwestern Australia. The Macassans planted tamarind

trees at their coastal campsites and sired children by Aboriginal women.

Cloth, metal tools, pottery, and glass were brought as trade goods, though

Aborigines never learned to manufacture those items themselves. Aborigines

did acquire from the Macassans some loan words, some ceremonies, and the

practices of using dugout sailing canoes and smoking tobacco in pipes.

But none of these influences altered the basic character of Australian

society. More important than what happened as a result of the Macassan visits

is what did not happen. The Macassans did not settle in Australia—

undoubtedly because the area of northwestern Australia facing Indonesia is

much too dry for Macassan agriculture. Had Indonesia faced the tropical rain

forests and savannas of northeastern Australia, the Macassans could have

settled, but there is no evidence that they ever traveled that far. Since the

Macassans thus came only in small numbers and for temporary visits and

never penetrated inland, just a few groups of Australians on a small stretch of

coast were exposed to them. Even those few Australians got to see only a

fraction of Macassan culture and technology, rather than a full Macassan

society with rice fields, pigs, villages, and workshops. Because the

Australians remained nomadic hunter-gatherers, they acquired only those few

Macassan products and practices compatible with their lifestyle. Dugout

sailing canoes and pipes, yes; forges and pigs, no.

Apparently much more astonishing than Australians’ resistance to

Indonesian influence is their resistance to New Guinea influence. Across the

narrow ribbon of water known as Torres Strait, New Guinea farmers who

spoke New Guinea languages and had pigs, pottery, and bows and arrows

faced Australian hunter-gatherers who spoke Australian languages and lacked

pigs, pottery, and bows and arrows. Furthermore, the strait is not an open-

water barrier but is dotted with a chain of islands, of which the largest

(Muralug Island) lies only 10 miles from the Australian coast. There were

regular trading visits between Australia and the islands, and between the

islands and New Guinea. Many Aboriginal women came as wives to Muralug

Island, where they saw gardens and bows and arrows. How was it that those

New Guinea traits did not get transmitted to Australia?

This cultural barrier at Torres Strait is astonishing only because we may

mislead ourselves into picturing a full-fledged New Guinea society with

intensive agriculture and pigs 10 miles off the Australian coast. In reality,

Cape York Aborigines never saw a mainland New Guinean. Instead, there

was trade between New Guinea and the islands nearest New Guinea, then

between those islands and Mabuiag Island halfway down the strait, then

between Mabuiag Island and Badu Island farther down the strait, then

between Badu Island and Muralug Island, and finally between Muralug and

Cape York.

New Guinea society became attenuated along that island chain. Pigs were

rare or absent on the islands. Lowland South New Guineans along Torres

Strait practiced not the intensive agriculture of the New Guinea highlands but

a slash-and-burn agriculture with heavy reliance on seafoods, hunting, and

gathering. The importance of even those slash-and-burn practices decreased

from southern New Guinea toward Australia along the island chain. Muralug

Island itself, the island nearest Australia, was dry, marginal for agriculture,

and supported only a small human population, which subsisted mainly on

seafood, wild yams, and mangrove fruits.

The interface between New Guinea and Australia across Torres Strait was

thus reminiscent of the children’s game of telephone, in which children sit in

a circle, one child whispers a word into the ear of the second child, who

whispers what she thinks she has just heard to the third child, and the word

finally whispered by the last child back to the first child bears no resemblance

to the initial word. In the same way, trade along the Torres Strait islands was a

telephone game that finally presented Cape York Aborigines with something

very different from New Guinea society. In addition, we should not imagine

that relations between Muralug Islanders and Cape York Aborigines were an

uninterrupted love feast at which Aborigines eagerly sopped up culture from

island teachers. Trade instead alternated with war for the purposes of head-

hunting and capturing women to become wives.

Despite the dilution of New Guinea culture by distance and war, some

New Guinea influence did manage to reach Australia. Intermarriage carried

New Guinea physical features, such as coiled rather than straight hair, down

the Cape York Peninsula. Four Cape York languages had phonemes unusual

for Australia, possibly because of the influence of New Guinea languages.

The most important transmissions were of New Guinea shell fishhooks, which

spread far into Australia, and of New Guinea outrigger canoes, which spread

down the Cape York Peninsula. New Guinea drums, ceremonial masks,

funeral posts, and pipes were also adopted on Cape York. But Cape York

Aborigines did not adopt agriculture, in part because what they saw of it on

Muralug Island was so watered-down. They did not adopt pigs, of which there

were few or none on the islands, and which they would in any case have been

unable to feed without agriculture. Nor did they adopt bows and arrows,

remaining instead with their spears and spear-throwers.

Australia is big, and so is New Guinea. But contact between those two big

landmasses was restricted to those few small groups of Torres Strait islanders

with a highly attenuated New Guinea culture, interacting with those few small

groups of Cape York Aborigines. The latter groups’ decisions, for whatever

reason, to use spears rather than bows and arrows, and not to adopt certain

other features of the diluted New Guinea culture they saw, blocked

transmission of those New Guinea cultural traits to all the rest of Australia.

As a result, no New Guinea trait except shell fishhooks spread far into

Australia. If the hundreds of thousands of farmers in the cool New Guinea

highlands had been in close contact with the Aborigines in the cool highlands

of southeastern Australia, a massive transfer of intensive food production and

New Guinea culture to Australia might have followed. But the New Guinea

highlands are separated from the Australian highlands by 2,000 miles of

ecologically very different landscape. The New Guinea highlands might as

well have been the mountains of the moon, as far as Australians’ chances of

observing and adopting New Guinea highland practices were concerned.

In short, the persistence of Stone Age nomadic hunter-gatherers in

Australia, trading with Stone Age New Guinea farmers and Iron Age

Indonesian farmers, at first seems to suggest singular obstinacy on the part of

Native Australians. On closer examination, it merely proves to reflect the

ubiquitous role of geography in the transmission of human culture and

technology.



IT REMAINS FOR us to consider the encounters of New Guinea’s and

Australia’s Stone Age societies with Iron Age Europeans. A Portuguese

navigator “discovered” New Guinea in 1526, Holland claimed the western

half in 1828, and Britain and Germany divided the eastern half in 1884. The

first Europeans settled on the coast, and it took them a long time to penetrate

into the interior, but by 1960 European governments had established political

control over most New Guineans.

The reasons that Europeans colonized New Guinea, rather than vice versa,

are obvious. Europeans were the ones who had the oceangoing ships and

compasses to travel to New Guinea; the writing systems and printing presses

to produce maps, descriptive accounts, and administrative paperwork useful

in establishing control over New Guinea; the political institutions to organize

the ships, soldiers, and administration; and the guns to shoot New Guineans

who resisted with bow and arrow and clubs. Yet the number of European

settlers was always very small, and today New Guinea is still populated

largely by New Guineans. That contrasts sharply with the situation in

Australia, the Americas, and South Africa, where European settlement was

numerous and lasting and replaced the original native population over large

areas. Why was New Guinea different?

A major factor was the one that defeated all European attempts to settle

the New Guinea lowlands until the 1880s: malaria and other tropical diseases,

none of them an acute epidemic crowd infection as discussed in Chapter 11.

The most ambitious of those failed lowland settlement plans, organized by the

French marquis de Rays around 1880 on the nearby island of New Ireland,

ended with 930 out of the 1,000 colonists dead within three years. Even with

modern medical treatments available today, many of my American and

European friends in New Guinea have been forced to leave because of

malaria, hepatitis, or other diseases, while my own health legacy of New

Guinea has been a year of malaria and a year of dysentery.

As Europeans were being felled by New Guinea lowland germs, why

were Eurasian germs not simultaneously felling New Guineans? Some New

Guineans did become infected, but not on the massive scale that killed off

most of the native peoples of Australia and the Americas. One lucky break for

New Guineans was that there were no permanent European settlements in

New Guinea until the 1880s, by which time public health discoveries had

made progress in bringing smallpox and other infectious diseases of European

populations under control. In addition, the Austronesian expansion had

already been bringing a stream of Indonesian settlers and traders to New

Guinea for 3,500 years. Since Asian mainland infectious diseases were well

established in Indonesia, New Guineans thereby gained long exposure and

built up much more resistance to Eurasian germs than did Aboriginal

Australians.

The sole part of New Guinea where Europeans do not suffer from severe

health problems is the highlands, above the altitudinal ceiling for malaria. But

the highlands, already occupied by dense populations of New Guineans, were

not reached by Europeans until the 1930s. By then, the Australian and Dutch

colonial governments were no longer willing to open up lands for white

settlement by killing native people in large numbers or driving them off their

lands, as had happened during earlier centuries of European colonialism.

The remaining obstacle to European would-be settlers was that European

crops, livestock, and subsistence methods do poorly everywhere in the New

Guinea environment and climate. While introduced tropical American crops

such as squash, corn, and tomatoes are now grown in small quantities, and tea

and coffee plantations have been established in the highlands of Papua New

Guinea, staple European crops, like wheat, barley, and peas, have never taken

hold. Introduced cattle and goats, kept in small numbers, suffer from tropical

diseases, just as do European people themselves. Food production in New

Guinea is still dominated by the crops and agricultural methods that New

Guineans perfected over the course of thousands of years.

All those problems of disease, rugged terrain, and subsistence contributed

to Europeans’ leaving eastern New Guinea (now the independent nation of

Papua New Guinea) occupied and governed by New Guineans, who

nevertheless use English as their official language, write with the alphabet,

live under democratic governmental institutions modeled on those of

England, and use guns manufactured overseas. The outcome was different in

western New Guinea, which Indonesia took over from Holland in 1963 and

renamed Irian Jaya province. The province is now governed by Indonesians,

for Indonesians. Its rural population is still overwhelmingly New Guinean,

but its urban population is Indonesian, as a result of government policy aimed

at encouraging Indonesian immigration. Indonesians, with their long history

of exposure to malaria and other tropical diseases shared with New Guineans,

have not faced as potent a germ barrier as have Europeans. They are also

better prepared than Europeans for subsisting in New Guinea, because

Indonesian agriculture already included bananas, sweet potatoes, and some

other staple crops of New Guinea agriculture. The ongoing changes in Irian

Jaya represent the continuation, backed by a centralized government’s full

resources, of the Austronesian expansion that began to reach New Guinea

3,500 years ago. Indonesians are modern Austronesians.



EUROPEANS COLONIZED AUSTRALIA, rather than Native Australians colonizing

Europe, for the same reasons that we have just seen in the case of New

Guinea. However, the fates of New Guineans and of Aboriginal Australians

were very different. Today, Australia is populated and governed by 20 million

non-Aborigines, most of them of European descent, plus increasing numbers

of Asians arriving since Australia abandoned its previous White Australia

immigration policy in 1973. The Aboriginal population declined by 80

percent, from around 300,000 at the time of European settlement to a

minimum of 60,000 in 1921. Aborigines today form an underclass of

Australian society. Many of them live on mission stations or government

reserves, or else work for whites as herdsmen on cattle stations. Why did

Aborigines fare so much worse than New Guineans?

The basic reason is Australia’s suitability (in some areas) for European

food production and settlement, combined with the role of European guns,

germs, and steel in clearing Aborigines out of the way. While I already

stressed the difficulties posed by Australia’s climate and soils, its most

productive or fertile areas can nevertheless support European farming.

Agriculture in the Australian temperate zone is now dominated by the

Eurasian temperate-zone staple crops of wheat (Australia’s leading crop),

barley, oats, apples, and grapes, along with sorghum and cotton of African

Sahel origins and potatoes of Andean origins. In tropical areas of northeastern

Australia (Queensland) beyond the optimal range of Fertile Crescent crops,

European farmers introduced sugarcane of New Guinea origins, bananas and

citrus fruit of tropical Southeast Asian origins, and peanuts of tropical South

American origins. As for livestock, Eurasian sheep made it possible to extend

food production to arid areas of Australia unsuitable for agriculture, and

Eurasian cattle joined crops in moister areas.

Thus, the development of food production in Australia had to await the

arrival of non-native crops and animals domesticated in climatically similar

parts of the world too remote for their domesticates to reach Australia until

brought by transoceanic shipping. Unlike New Guinea, most of Australia

lacked diseases serious enough to keep out Europeans. Only in tropical

northern Australia did malaria and other tropical diseases force Europeans to

abandon their 19th-century attempts at settlement, which succeeded only with

the development of 20th-century medicine.

Australian Aborigines, of course, stood in the way of European food

production, especially because what was potentially the most productive

farmland and dairy country initially supported Australia’s densest populations

of Aboriginal hunter-gatherers. European settlement reduced the number of

Aborigines by two means. One involved shooting them, an option that

Europeans considered more acceptable in the 19th and late 18th centuries than

when they entered the New Guinea highlands in the 1930s. The last large-

scale massacre, of 31 Aborigines, occurred at Alice Springs in 1928. The

other means involved European-introduced germs to which Aborigines had

had no opportunity to acquire immunity or to evolve genetic resistance.

Within a year of the first European settlers’ arrival at Sydney, in 1788, corpses

of Aborigines who had died in epidemics became a common sight. The

principal recorded killers were smallpox, influenza, measles, typhoid, typhus,

chicken pox, whooping cough, tuberculosis, and syphilis.

In these two ways, independent Aboriginal societies were eliminated in

all areas suitable for European food production. The only societies that

survived more or less intact were those in areas of northern and western

Australia useless to Europeans. Within one century of European colonization,

40,000 years of Aboriginal traditions had been mostly swept away.



WE CAN NOW return to the problem that I posed near the beginning of this

chapter. How, except by postulating deficiencies in the Aborigines

themselves, can one account for the fact that white English colonists

apparently created a literate, food-producing, industrial democracy, within a

few decades of colonizing a continent whose inhabitants after more than

40,000 years were still nonliterate nomadic hunter-gatherers? Doesn’t that

constitute a perfectly controlled experiment in the evolution of human

societies, forcing us to a simple racist conclusion?

The resolution of this problem is simple. White English colonists did not

create a literate, food-producing, industrial democracy in Australia. Instead,

they imported all of the elements from outside Australia: the livestock, all of

the crops (except macadamia nuts), the metallurgical knowledge, the steam

engines, the guns, the alphabet, the political institutions, even the germs. All

these were the end products of 10,000 years of development in Eurasian

environments. By an accident of geography, the colonists who landed at

Sydney in 1788 inherited those elements. Europeans have never learned to

survive in Australia or New Guinea without their inherited Eurasian

technology. Robert Burke and William Wills were smart enough to write, but

not smart enough to survive in Australian desert regions where Aborigines

were living.

The people who did create a society in Australia were Aboriginal

Australians. Of course, the society that they created was not a literate, food-

producing, industrial democracy. The reasons follow straightforwardly from

features of the Australian environment.





CHAPTER 16

HOW CHINA BECAME CHINESE

IMMIGRATION, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, MULTILINGUALISM, ethnic diversity—my

state of California was among the pioneers of these controversial policies and

is now pioneering a backlash against them. A glance into the classrooms of

the Los Angeles public school system, where my sons are being educated,

fleshes out the abstract debates with the faces of children. Those children

represent over 80 languages spoken in the home, with English-speaking

whites in the minority. Every single one of my sons’ playmates has at least

one parent or grandparent who was born outside the United States; that’s true

of three of my own sons’ four grandparents. But immigration is merely

restoring the diversity that America held for thousands of years. Before

European settlement, the mainland United States was home to hundreds of

Native American tribes and languages and came under control of a single

government only within the last hundred years.

In these respects the United States is a thoroughly “normal” country. All

but one of the world’s six most populous nations are melting pots that

achieved political unification recently, and that still support hundreds of

languages and ethnic groups. For example, Russia, once a small Slavic state

centered on Moscow, did not even begin its expansion beyond the Ural

Mountains until A.D. 1582. From then until the 19th century, Russia proceeded

to swallow up dozens of non-Slavic peoples, many of which retain their

original language and cultural identity. Just as American history is the story of

how our continent’s expanse became American, Russia’s history is the story

of how Russia became Russian. India, Indonesia, and Brazil are also recent

political creations (or re-creations, in the case of India), home to about 850,

670, and 210 languages, respectively.

The great exception to this rule of the recent melting pot is the world’s

most populous nation, China. Today, China appears politically, culturally, and

linguistically monolithic, at least to laypeople. It was already unified

politically in 221 B.C. and has remained so for most of the centuries since

then. From the beginnings of literacy in China, it has had only a single writing

system, whereas modern Europe uses dozens of modified alphabets. Of

China’s 1.2 billion people, over 800 million speak Mandarin, the language

with by far the largest number of native speakers in the world. Some 300

million others speak seven other languages as similar to Mandarin, and to

each other, as Spanish is to Italian. Thus, not only is China not a melting pot,

but it seems absurd to ask how China became Chinese. China has been

Chinese, almost from the beginnings of its recorded history.

We take this seeming unity of China so much for granted that we forget

how astonishing it is. One reason why we should not have expected such

unity is genetic. While a coarse racial classification of world peoples lumps

all Chinese people as so-called Mongoloids, that category conceals much

more variation than the differences between Swedes, Italians, and Irish within

Europe. In particular, North and South Chinese are genetically and physically

rather different: North Chinese are most similar to Tibetans and Nepalese,

while South Chinese are similar to Vietnamese and Filipinos. My North and

South Chinese friends can often distinguish each other at a glance by physical

appearance: the North Chinese tend to be taller, heavier, paler, with more

pointed noses, and with smaller eyes that appear more “slanted” (because of

what is termed their epicanthic fold).

North and South China differ in environment and climate as well: the

north is drier and colder; the south, wetter and hotter. Genetic differences

arising in those differing environments imply a long history of moderate

isolation between peoples of North and South China. How did those peoples

nevertheless end up with the same or very similar languages and cultures?

China’s apparent linguistic near-unity is also puzzling in view of the

linguistic disunity of other long-settled parts of the world. For instance, we

saw in the last chapter that New Guinea, with less than one-tenth of China’s

area and with only about 40,000 years of human history, has a thousand

languages, including dozens of language groups whose differences are far

greater than those among the eight main Chinese languages. Western Europe

has evolved or acquired about 40 languages just in the 6,000–8,000 years

since the arrival of Indo-European languages, including languages as different

as English, Finnish, and Russian. Yet fossils attest to human presence in

China for over half a million years. What happened to the tens of thousands of

distinct languages that must have arisen in China over that long time span?

These paradoxes hint that China too was once diverse, as all other

populous nations still are. China differs only by having been unified much

earlier. Its “Sinification” involved the drastic homogenization of a huge

region in an ancient melting pot, the repopulation of tropical Southeast Asia,

and the exertion of a massive influence on Japan, Korea, and possibly even

India. Hence the history of China offers the key to the history of all of East

Asia. This chapter will tell the story of how China did become Chinese.



A CONVENIENT STARTING point is a detailed linguistic map of China (see

Figure 16.1). A glance at it is an eye-opener to all of us accustomed to

thinking of China as monolithic. It turns out that, in addition to China’s eight

“big” languages—Mandarin and its seven close relatives (often referred to

collectively simply as “Chinese”), with between 11 million and 800 million

speakers each—China also has over 130 “little” languages, many of them

with just a few thousand speakers. All these languages, “big” and “little,” fall

into four language families, which differ greatly in the compactness of their

distributions.

At the one extreme, Mandarin and its relatives, which constitute the

Chinese subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan language family, are distributed

continuously from North to South China. One could walk through China,

from Manchuria in the north to the Gulf of Tonkin in the south, while

remaining entirely within land occupied by native speakers of Mandarin and

its relatives. The other three families have fragmented distributions, being

spoken by “islands” of people surrounded by a “sea” of speakers of Chinese

and other language families.

Especially fragmented is the distribution of the Miao-Yao (alias Hmong-

Mien) family, which consists of 6 million speakers divided among about five

languages, bearing the colorful names of Red Miao, White Miao (alias Striped

Miao), Black Miao, Green Miao (alias Blue Miao), and Yao. Miao-Yao

speakers live in dozens of small enclaves, all surrounded by speakers of other

language families and scattered over an area of half a million square miles,

extending from South China to Thailand. More than 100,000 Miao-speaking

refugees from Vietnam have carried this language family to the United States,

where they are better known under the alternative name of Hmong.

Another fragmented language group is the Austroasiatic family, whose

most widely spoken languages are Vietnamese and Cambodian. The 60

million Austroasiatic speakers are scattered from Vietnam in the east to the

Malay Peninsula in the south and to northern India in the west. The fourth and

last of China’s language families is the Tai-Kadai family (including Thai and

Lao), whose 50 million speakers are distributed from South China southward

into Peninsular Thailand and west to Myanmar (Figure 16.1).

Naturally, Miao-Yao speakers did not acquire their current fragmented

distribution as a result of ancient helicopter flights that dropped them here and

there over the Asian landscape. Instead, one might guess that they once had a

more nearly continuous distribution, which became fragmented as speakers of

other language families expanded or induced Miao-Yao speakers to abandon

their tongues. In fact, much of that process of linguistic fragmentation

occurred within the past 2,500 years and is well documented historically. The

ancestors of modern speakers of Thai, Lao, and Burmese all moved south

from South China and adjacent areas to their present locations within

historical times, successively inundating the settled descendants of previous

migrations. Speakers of Chinese languages were especially vigorous in

replacing and linguistically converting other ethnic groups, whom Chinese

speakers looked down upon as primitive and inferior. The recorded history of

China’s Zhou Dynasty, from 1100 to 221 B.C., describes the conquest and

absorption of most of China’s non-Chinese-speaking population by Chinese-

speaking states.

We can use several types of reasoning to try to reconstruct the linguistic

map of East Asia as of several thousand years ago. First, we can reverse the

historically known linguistic expansions of recent millennia. Second, we can

reason that modern areas with just a single language or related language

group occupying a large, continuous area testify to a recent geographic

expansion of that group, such that not enough historical time has elapsed for it

to differentiate into many languages. Finally, we can reason conversely that

modern areas with a high diversity of languages within a given language

family lie closer to the early center of distribution of that language family.

Using those three types of reasoning to turn back the linguistic clock, we

conclude that North China was originally occupied by speakers of Chinese

and other Sino-Tibetan languages; that different parts of South China were

variously occupied by speakers of Miao-Yao, Austroasiatic, and Tai-Kadai

languages; and that Sino-Tibetan speakers have replaced most speakers of

those other families over South China. An even more drastic linguistic

upheaval must have swept over tropical Southeast Asia to the south of China

—in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Peninsular

Malaysia. Whatever languages were originally spoken there must now be

entirely extinct, because all of the modern languages of those countries appear

to be recent invaders, mainly from South China or, in a few cases, from

Indonesia. Since Miao-Yao languages barely survived into the present, we

might also guess that South China once harbored still other language families

besides Miao-Yao, Austroasiatic, and Tai-Kadai, but that those other families

left no modern surviving languages. As we shall see, the Austronesian

language family (to which all Philippine and Polynesian languages belong)

may have been one of those other families that vanished from the Chinese

mainland, and that we know only because it spread to Pacific islands and

survived there.

These language replacements in East Asia remind us of the spread of

European languages, especially English and Spanish, into the New World,

formerly home to a thousand or more Native American languages. We know

from our recent history that English did not come to replace U.S. Indian

languages merely because English sounded musical to Indians’ ears. Instead,

the replacement entailed English-speaking immigrants’ killing most Indians

by war, murder, and introduced diseases, and the surviving Indians’ being

pressured into adopting English, the new majority language. The immediate

causes of that language replacement were the advantages in technology and

political organization, stemming ultimately from the advantage of an early

rise of food production, that invading Europeans held over Native Americans.

Essentially the same processes accounted for the replacement of Aboriginal

Australian languages by English, and of subequatorial Africa’s original

Pygmy and Khoisan languages by Bantu languages.

Hence East Asia’s linguistic upheavals raise a corresponding question:

what enabled Sino-Tibetan speakers to spread from North China to South

China, and speakers of Austroasiatic and the other original South China

language families to spread south into tropical Southeast Asia? Here, we must

turn to archaeology for evidence of the technological, political, and

agricultural advantages that some Asians evidently gained over other Asians.



AS EVERYWHERE ELSE in the world, the archaeological record in East Asia for

most of human history reveals only the debris of hunter-gatherers using

unpolished stone tools and lacking pottery. The first East Asian evidence for

something different comes from China, where crop remains, bones of

domestic animals, pottery, and polished (Neolithic) stone tools appear by

around 7500 B.C. That date is within a thousand years of the beginning of the

Neolithic Age and food production in the Fertile Crescent. But because the

previous millennium in China is poorly known archaeologically, one cannot

decide at present whether the origins of Chinese food production were

contemporaneous with those in the Fertile Crescent, slightly earlier, or

slightly later. At the least, we can say that China was one of the world’s first

centers of plant and animal domestication.

China may actually have encompassed two or more independent centers

of origins of food production. I already mentioned the ecological differences

between China’s cool, dry north and warm, wet south. At a given latitude,

there are also ecological distinctions between the coastal lowlands and the

interior uplands. Different wild plants are native to these disparate

environments and would thus have been variously available to incipient

farmers in various parts of China. In fact, the earliest identified crops were

two drought-resistant species of millet in North China, but rice in South

China, suggesting the possibility of separate northern and southern centers of

plant domestication.

Chinese sites with the earliest evidence of crops also contained bones of

domestic pigs, dogs, and chickens. These domestic animals and crops were

gradually joined by China’s many other domesticates. Among the animals,

water buffalo were most important (for pulling plows), while silkworms,

ducks, and geese were others. Familiar later Chinese crops include soybeans,

hemp, citrus fruit, tea, apricots, peaches, and pears. In addition, just as

Eurasia’s east–west axis permitted many of these Chinese animals and crops

to spread westward in ancient times, West Asian domesticates also spread

eastward to China and became important there. Especially significant western

contributions to ancient China’s economy have been wheat and barley, cows

and horses, and (to a lesser extent) sheep and goats.

As elsewhere in the world, in China food production gradually led to the

other hallmarks of “civilization” discussed in Chapters 11–14. A superb

Chinese tradition of bronze metallurgy had its origins in the third millennium

B.C. and eventually resulted in China’s developing by far the earliest cast-iron

production in the world, around 500 B.C. The following 1,500 years saw the

outpouring of Chinese technological inventions, mentioned in Chapter 13,

that included paper, the compass, the wheelbarrow, and gunpowder. Fortified

towns emerged in the third millennium B.C., with cemeteries whose great

variation between unadorned and luxuriously furnished graves bespeaks

emerging class differences. Stratified societies whose rulers could mobilize

large labor forces of commoners are also attested by huge urban defensive

walls, big palaces, and eventually the Grand Canal (the world’s longest canal,

over 1,000 miles long), linking North and South China. Writing is preserved

from the second millennium B.C. but probably arose earlier. Our

archaeological knowledge of China’s emerging cities and states then becomes

supplemented by written accounts of China’s first dynasties, going back to the

Xia Dynasty, which arose around 2000 B.C.

As for food production’s more sinister by-product of infectious diseases,

we cannot specify where within the Old World most major diseases of Old

World origin arose. However, European writings from Roman and medieval

times clearly describe the arrival of bubonic plague and possibly smallpox

from the east, so these germs could be of Chinese or East Asian origin.

Influenza (derived from pigs) is even more likely to have arisen in China,

since pigs were domesticated so early and became so important there.

China’s size and ecological diversity spawned many separate local

cultures, distinguishable archaeologically by their differing styles of pottery

and artifacts. In the fourth millennium B.C. those local cultures expanded

geographically and began to interact, compete with each other, and coalesce.

Just as exchanges of domesticates between ecologically diverse regions

enriched Chinese food production, exchanges between culturally diverse

regions enriched Chinese culture and technology, and fierce competition

between warring chiefdoms drove the formation of ever larger and more

centralized states (Chapter 14).

While China’s east–west gradient retarded crop diffusion, the gradient

was less of a barrier there than in the Americas or Africa, because China’s

east–west distances were smaller; and because China’s is transected neither

by desert, as is Africa and northern Mexico, nor by a narrow isthmus, as is

Central America. Instead, China’s long east–west rivers (the Yellow River in

the north, the Yangtze River in the south) facilitated diffusion of crops and

technology between the coast and inland, while its broad east–west expanse

and relatively gentle terrain, which eventually permitted those two river

systems to be joined by canals, facilitated east–west exchanges. All these

geographic factors contributed to the early cultural and political unification of

China, whereas western Europe, with a similar area but a more rugged terrain

and no such unifying rivers, has resisted cultural and political unification to

this day.

Some developments spread from south to north in China, especially iron

smelting and rice cultivation. But the predominant direction of spread was

from north to south. That trend is clearest for writing: in contrast to western

Eurasia, which produced a plethora of early writing systems, such as

Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Hittite, Minoan, and the

Semitic alphabet, China developed just a single well-attested writing system.

It was perfected in North China, spread and preempted or replaced any other

nascent system, and evolved into the writing still used in China today. Other

major features of North Chinese societies that spread southward were bronze

technology, Sino-Tibetan languages, and state formation. All three of China’s

first three dynasties, the Xia and Shang and Zhou Dynasties, arose in North

China in the second millennium B.C.

Preserved writings of the first millennium B.C. show that ethnic Chinese

already tended then (as many still do today) to feel culturally superior to non-

Chinese “barbarians,” while North Chinese tended to regard even South

Chinese as barbarians. For example, a late Zhou Dynasty writer of the first

millennium B.C. described China’s other peoples as follows: “The people of

those five regions—the Middle states and the Rong, Yi, and other wild tribes

around them—had all their several natures, which they could not be made to

alter. The tribes on the east were called Yi. They had their hair unbound, and

tattooed their bodies. Some of them ate their food without its being cooked by

fire.” The Zhou author went on to describe wild tribes to the south, west, and

north as indulging in equally barbaric practices, such as turning their feet

inward, tattooing their foreheads, wearing skins, living in caves, not eating

cereals, and, of course, eating their food raw.

States organized by or modeled on that Zhou Dynasty of North China

spread to South China during the first millennium B.C., culminating in China’s

political unification under the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C. Its cultural unification

accelerated during that same period, as literate “civilized” Chinese states

absorbed, or were copied by, the illiterate “barbarians.” Some of that cultural

unification was ferocious: for instance, the first Qin emperor condemned all

previously written historical books as worthless and ordered them burned,

much to the detriment of our understanding of early Chinese history and

writing. Those and other draconian measures must have contributed to the

spread of North China’s Sino-Tibetan languages over most of China, and to

reducing the Miao-Yao and other language families to their present

fragmented distributions.

Within East Asia, China’s head start in food production, technology,

writing, and state formation had the consequence that Chinese innovations

also contributed heavily to developments in neighboring regions. For

instance, until the fourth millennium B.C. most of tropical Southeast Asia was

still occupied by hunter-gatherers making pebble and flake stone tools

belonging to what is termed the Hoabinhian tradition, named after the site of

Hoa Binh, in Vietnam. Thereafter, Chinese-derived crops, Neolithic

technology, village living, and pottery similar to that of South China spread

into tropical Southeast Asia, probably accompanied by South China’s

language families. The historical southward expansions of Burmese, Laotians,

and Thais from South China completed the Sinification of tropical Southeast

Asia. All those modern peoples are recent offshoots of their South Chinese

cousins.

So overwhelming was this Chinese steamroller that the former peoples of

tropical Southeast Asia have left behind few traces in the region’s modern

populations. Just three relict groups of hunter-gatherers—the Semang

Negritos of the Malay Peninsula, the Andaman Islanders, and the Veddoid

Negritos of Sri Lanka—remain to suggest that tropical Southeast Asia’s

former inhabitants may have been dark-skinned and curly-haired, like modern

New Guineans and unlike the light-skinned, straight-haired South Chinese

and the modern tropical Southeast Asians who are their offshoots. Those

relict Negritos of Southeast Asia may be the last survivors of the source

population from which New Guinea was colonized. The Semang Negritos

persisted as hunter-gatherers trading with neighboring farmers but adopted an

Austroasiatic language from those farmers—much as, we shall see, Philippine

Negrito and African Pygmy hunter-gatherers adopted languages from their

farmer trading partners. Only on the remote Andaman Islands do languages

unrelated to the South Chinese language families persist—the last linguistic

survivors of what must have been hundreds of now extinct aboriginal

Southeast Asian languages.

Even Korea and Japan were heavily influenced by China, although their

geographic isolation from it ensured that they did not lose their languages or

physical and genetic distinctness, as did tropical Southeast Asia. Korea and

Japan adopted rice from China in the second millennium B.C., bronze

metallurgy by the first millennium B.C., and writing in the first millennium

A.D. China also transmitted West Asian wheat and barley to Korea and Japan.

In thus describing China’s seminal role in East Asian civilization, we

should not exaggerate. It is not the case that all cultural advances in East Asia

stemmed from China and that Koreans, Japanese, and tropical Southeast

Asians were noninventive barbarians who contributed nothing. The ancient

Japanese developed some of the oldest pottery in the world and settled as

hunter-gatherers in villages subsisting on Japan’s rich seafood resources, long

before the arrival of food production. Some crops were probably domesticated

first or independently in Japan, Korea, and tropical Southeast Asia.

But China’s role was nonetheless disproportionate. For example, the

prestige value of Chinese culture is still so great in Japan and Korea that

Japan has no thought of discarding its Chinese-derived writing system despite

its drawbacks for representing Japanese speech, while Korea is only now

replacing its clumsy Chinese-derived writing with its wonderful indigenous

han’gul alphabet. That persistence of Chinese writing in Japan and Korea is a

vivid 20th-century legacy of plant and animal domestication in China nearly

10,000 years ago. Thanks to the achievements of East Asia’s first farmers,

China became Chinese, and peoples from Thailand to (as we shall see in the

next chapter) Easter Island became their cousins.





CHAPTER 17

SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA

PACIFIC ISLAND HISTORY IS ENCAPSULATED FOR ME IN AN incident that happened

when three Indonesian friends and I walked into a store in Jayapura, the

capital of Indonesian New Guinea. My friends’ names were Achmad, Wiwor,

and Sauakari, and the store was run by a merchant named Ping Wah. Achmad,

an Indonesian government officer, was acting as the boss, because he and I

were organizing an ecological survey for the government and had hired

Wiwor and Sauakari as local assistants. But Achmad had never before been in

a New Guinea mountain forest and had no idea what supplies to buy. The

results were comical.

At the moment that my friends entered the store, Ping Wah was reading a

Chinese newspaper. When he saw Wiwor and Sauakari, he kept reading it but

then shoved it out of sight under the counter as soon as he noticed Achmad.

Achmad picked up an ax head, causing Wiwor and Sauakari to laugh, because

he was holding it upside down. Wiwor and Sauakari showed him how to hold

it correctly and to test it. Achmad and Sauakari then looked at Wiwor’s bare

feet, with toes splayed wide from a lifetime of not wearing shoes. Sauakari

picked out the widest available shoes and held them against Wiwor’s feet, but

the shoes were still too narrow, sending Achmad and Sauakari and Ping Wah

into peals of laughter. Achmad picked up a plastic comb with which to comb

out his straight, coarse black hair. Glancing at Wiwor’s tough, tightly coiled

hair, he handed the comb to Wiwor. It immediately stuck in Wiwor’s hair,

then broke as soon as Wiwor pulled on the comb. Everyone laughed,

including Wiwor. Wiwor responded by reminding Achmad that he should buy

lots of rice, because there would be no food to buy in New Guinea mountain

villages except sweet potatoes, which would upset Achmad’s stomach—more

hilarity.

Despite all the laughter, I could sense the underlying tensions. Achmad

was Javan, Ping Wah Chinese, Wiwor a New Guinea highlander, and Sauakari

a New Guinea lowlander from the north coast. Javans dominate the

Indonesian government, which annexed western New Guinea in the 1960s

and used bombs and machine guns to crush New Guinean opposition.

Achmad later decided to stay in town and to let me do the forest survey alone

with Wiwor and Sauakari. He explained his decision to me by pointing to his

straight, coarse hair, so unlike that of New Guineans, and saying that New

Guineans would kill anyone with hair like his if they found him far from army

backup.

Ping Wah had put away his newspaper because importation of Chinese

writing is nominally illegal in Indonesian New Guinea. In much of Indonesia

the merchants are Chinese immigrants. Latent mutual fear between the

economically dominant Chinese and politically dominant Javans erupted in

1966 in a bloody revolution, when Javans slaughtered hundreds of thousands

of Chinese. As New Guineans, Wiwor and Sauakari shared most New

Guineans’ resentment of Javan dictatorship, but they also scorned each other’s

groups. Highlanders dismiss lowlanders as effete sago eaters, while

lowlanders dismiss highlanders as primitive big-heads, referring both to their

massive coiled hair and to their reputation for arrogance. Within a few days of

my setting up an isolated forest camp with Wiwor and Sauakari, they came

close to fighting each other with axes.

Tensions among the groups that Achmad, Wiwor, Sauakari, and Ping Wah

represent dominate the politics of Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most-

populous nation. These modern tensions have roots going back thousands of

years. When we think of major overseas population movements, we tend to

focus on those since Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, and on the

resulting replacements of non-Europeans by Europeans within historic times.

But there were also big overseas movements long before Columbus, and

prehistoric replacements of non-European peoples by other non-European

peoples. Wiwor, Achmad, and Sauakari represent three prehistorical waves of

people that moved overseas from the Asian mainland into the Pacific.

Wiwor’s highlanders are probably descended from an early wave that had

colonized New Guinea from Asia by 40,000 years ago. Achmad’s ancestors

arrived in Java ultimately from the South China coast, around 4,000 years

ago, completing the replacement there of people related to Wiwor’s ancestors.

Sauakari’s ancestors reached New Guinea around 3,600 years ago, as part of

that same wave from the South China coast, while Ping Wah’s ancestors still

occupy China.

The population movement that brought Achmad’s and Sauakari’s

ancestors to Java and New Guinea, respectively, termed the Austronesian

expansion, was among the biggest population movements of the last 6,000

years. One prong of it became the Polynesians, who populated the most

remote islands of the Pacific and were the greatest seafarers among Neolithic

peoples. Austronesian languages are spoken today as native languages over

more than half of the globe’s span, from Madagascar to Easter Island. In this

book on human population movements since the end of the Ice Ages, the

Austronesian expansion occupies a central place, as one of the most important

phenomena to be explained. Why did Austronesian people, stemming

ultimately from mainland China, colonize Java and the rest of Indonesia and

replace the original inhabitants there, instead of Indonesians colonizing China

and replacing the Chinese? Having occupied all of Indonesia, why were the

Austronesians then unable to occupy more than a narrow coastal strip of the

New Guinea lowlands, and why were they completely unable to displace

Wiwor’s people from the New Guinea highlands? How did the descendants of

Chinese emigrants become transformed into Polynesians?



TODAY, THE POPULATION of Java, most other Indonesian islands (except the

easternmost ones), and the Philippines is rather homogeneous. In appearance

and genes those islands’ inhabitants are similar to South Chinese, and even

more similar to tropical Southeast Asians, especially those of the Malay

Peninsula. Their languages are equally homogeneous: while 374 languages

are spoken in the Philippines and western and central Indonesia, all of them

are closely related and fall within the same sub-subfamily (Western Malayo-

Polynesian) of the Austronesian language family. Austronesian languages

reached the Asian mainland on the Malay Peninsula and in small pockets in

Vietnam and Cambodia, near the westernmost Indonesian islands of Sumatra

and Borneo, but they occur nowhere else on the mainland (Figure 17.1). Some

Austronesian words borrowed into English include “taboo” and “tattoo” (from

a Polynesian language), “boondocks” (from the Tagalog language of the

Philippines), and “amok,” “batik,” and “orangutan” (from Malay).

That genetic and linguistic uniformity of Indonesia and the Philippines is

initially as surprising as is the predominant linguistic uniformity of China.

The famous Java Homo erectus fossils prove that humans have occupied at

least western Indonesia for a million years. That should have given ample

time for humans to evolve genetic and linguistic diversity and tropical

adaptations, such as dark skins like those of many other tropical peoples—but

instead Indonesians and Filipinos have light skins.

It is also surprising that Indonesians and Filipinos are so similar to

tropical Southeast Asians and South Chinese in other physical features

besides light skins and in their genes. A glance at a map makes it obvious that

Indonesia offered the only possible route by which humans could have

reached New Guinea and Australia 40,000 years ago, so one might naively

have expected modern Indonesians to be like modern New Guineans and

Australians. In reality, there are only a few New Guinean–like populations in

the Philippine / western Indonesia area, notably the Negritos living in

mountainous areas of the Philippines. As is also true of the three New

Guinean-like relict populations that I mentioned in speaking of tropical

Southeast Asia (Chapter 16), the Philippine Negritos could be relicts of

populations ancestral to Wiwor’s people before they reached New Guinea.

Even those Negritos speak Austronesian languages similar to those of their

Filipino neighbors, implying that they too (like Malaysia’s Semang Negritos

and Africa’s Pygmies) have lost their original language.

All these facts suggest strongly that either tropical Southeast Asians or

South Chinese speaking Austronesian languages recently spread through the

Philippines and Indonesia, replacing all the former inhabitants of those islands

except the Philippine Negritos, and replacing all the original island languages.

That event evidently took place too recently for the colonists to evolve dark

skins, distinct language families, or genetic distinctiveness or diversity. Their

languages are of course much more numerous than the eight dominant

Chinese languages of mainland China, but are no more diverse. The

proliferation of many similar languages in the Philippines and Indonesia

merely reflects the fact that the islands never underwent a political and

cultural unification, as did China.

Details of language distributions provide valuable clues to the route of

this hypothesized Austronesian expansion. The whole Austronesian language

family consists of 959 languages, divided among four subfamilies. But one of

those subfamilies, termed Malayo-Polynesian, comprises 945 of those 959

languages and covers almost the entire geographic range of the Austronesian

family. Before the recent overseas expansion of Europeans speaking Indo-

European languages, Austronesian was the most widespread language family

in the world. That suggests that the Malayo-Polynesian subfamily

differentiated recently out of the Austronesian family and spread far from the

Austronesian homeland, giving rise to many local languages, all of which are

still closely related because there has been too little time to develop large

linguistic differences. For the location of that Austronesian homeland, we

should therefore look not to MalayoPolynesian but to the other three

Austronesian subfamilies, which differ considerably more from each other

and from Malayo-Polynesian than the sub-subfamilies of Malayo-Polynesian

differ among each other.

It turns out that those three other subfamilies have coincident

distributions, all of them tiny compared with the distribution of Malayo-

Polynesian. They are confined to aborigines of the island of Taiwan, lying

only 90 miles from the South China mainland. Taiwan’s aborigines had the

island largely to themselves until mainland Chinese began settling in large

numbers within the last thousand years. Still more mainlanders arrived after

1945, especially after the Chinese Communists defeated the Chinese

Nationalists in 1949, so that aborigines now constitute only 2 percent of

Taiwan’s population. The concentration of three out of the four Austronesian

subfamilies on Taiwan suggests that, within the present Austronesian realm,

Taiwan is the homeland where Austronesian languages have been spoken for

the most millennia and have consequently had the longest time in which to

diverge. All other Austronesian languages, from those on Madagascar to

those on Easter Island, would then stem from a population expansion out of

Taiwan.



WE CAN NOW turn to archaeological evidence. While the debris of ancient

village sites does not include fossilized words along with bones and pottery, it

does reveal movements of people and cultural artifacts that could be

associated with languages. Like the rest of the world, most of the present

Austronesian realm—Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and many Pacific

islands—was originally occupied by hunter-gatherers lacking pottery,

polished stone tools, domestic animals, and crops. (The sole exceptions to this

generalization are the remote islands of Madagascar, eastern Melanesia,

Polynesia, and Micronesia, which were never reached by hunter-gatherers and

remained empty of humans until the Austronesian expansion.) The first

archaeological signs of something different within the Austronesian realm

come from—Taiwan. Beginning around the fourth millennium B.C., polished

stone tools and a distinctive decorated pottery style (so-called Ta-p’en-k’eng

pottery) derived from earlier South China mainland pottery appeared on

Taiwan and on the opposite coast of the South China mainland. Remains of

rice and millet at later Taiwanese sites provide evidence of agriculture.

Ta-p’en-k’eng sites of Taiwan and the South China coast are full of fish

bones and mollusk shells, as well as of stone net sinkers and adzes suitable for

hollowing out a wooden canoe. Evidently, those first Neolithic occupants of

Taiwan had watercraft adequate for deep-sea fishing and for regular sea traffic

across Taiwan Strait, separating that island from the China coast. Thus,

Taiwan Strait may have served as the training ground where mainland

Chinese developed the open-water maritime skills that would permit them to

expand over the Pacific.

One specific type of artifact linking Taiwan’s Ta-p’en-k’eng culture to

later Pacific island cultures is a bark beater, a stone implement used for

pounding the fibrous bark of certain tree species into rope, nets, and clothing.

Once Pacific peoples spread beyond the range of wool-yielding domestic

animals and fiber plant crops and hence of woven clothing, they became

dependent on pounded bark “cloth” for their clothing. Inhabitants of Rennell

Island, a traditional Polynesian island that did not become Westernized until

the 1930s, told me that Westernization yielded the wonderful side benefit that

the island became quiet. No more sounds of bark beaters everywhere,

pounding out bark cloth from dawn until after dusk every day!

Within a millennium or so after the Ta-p’en-k’eng culture reached

Taiwan, archaeological evidence shows that cultures obviously derived from

it spread farther and farther from Taiwan to fill up the modern Austronesian

realm (Figure 17.2). The evidence includes ground stone tools, pottery, bones

of domestic pigs, and crop remains. For example, the decorated Ta-p’en-k’eng

pottery on Taiwan gave way to undecorated plain or red pottery, which has

also been found at sites in the Philippines and on the Indonesian islands of

Celebes and Timor. This cultural “package” of pottery, stone tools, and

domesticates appeared around 3000 B.C. in the Philippines, around 2500 B.C.

on the Indonesian islands of Celebes and North Borneo and Timor, around

2000 B.C. on Java and Sumatra, and around 1600 B.C. in the New Guinea

region. There, as we shall see, the expansion assumed a speedboat pace, as

bearers of the cultural package raced eastward into the previously uninhabited

Pacific Ocean beyond the Solomon Archipelago. The last phases of the

expansion, during the millennium after A.D. 1, resulted in the colonization of

every Polynesian and Micronesian island capable of supporting humans.

Astonishingly, it also swept westward across the Indian Ocean to the east

coast of Africa, resulting in the colonization of the island of Madagascar.

At least until the expansion reached coastal New Guinea, travel between

islands was probably by double-outrigger sailing canoes, which are still

widespread throughout Indonesia today. That boat design represented a major

advance over the simple dugout canoes prevalent among traditional peoples

living on inland waterways throughout the world. A dugout canoe is just what

its name implies: a solid tree trunk “dug out” (that is, hollowed out), and its

ends shaped, by an adze. Since the canoe is as round-bottomed as the trunk

from which it was carved, the least imbalance in weight distribution tips the

canoe toward the overweighted side. Whenever I’ve been paddled in dugouts

up New Guinea rivers by New Guineans, I have spent much of the trip in

terror: it seemed that every slight movement of mine risked capsizing the

canoe and spilling out me and my binoculars to commune with crocodiles.

New Guineans manage to look secure while paddling dugouts on calm lakes

and rivers, but not even New Guineans can use a dugout in seas with modest

waves. Hence some stabilizing device must have been essential not only for

the Austronesian expansion through Indonesia but even for the initial

colonization of Taiwan.

The solution was to lash two smaller logs (“outriggers”) parallel to the

hull and several feet from it, one on each side, connected to the hull by poles

lashed perpendicular to the hull and outriggers. Whenever the hull starts to tip

toward one side, the buoyancy of the outrigger on that side prevents the

outrigger from being pushed under the water and hence makes it virtually

impossible to capsize the vessel. The invention of the double-outrigger sailing

canoe may have been the technological breakthrough that triggered the

Austronesian expansion from the Chinese mainland.



TWO STRIKING COINCIDENCES between archaeological and linguistic evidence

support the inference that the people bringing a Neolithic culture to Taiwan,

the Philippines, and Indonesia thousands of years ago spoke Austronesian

languages and were ancestral to the Austronesian speakers still inhabiting

those islands today. First, both types of evidence point unequivocally to the

colonization of Taiwan as the first stage of the expansion from the South

China coast, and to the colonization of the Philippines and Indonesia from

Taiwan as the next stage. If the expansion had proceeded from tropical

Southeast Asia’s Malay Peninsula to the nearest Indonesian island of Sumatra,

then to other Indonesian islands, and finally to the Philippines and Taiwan, we

would find the deepest divisions (reflecting the greatest time depth) of the

Austronesian language family among the modern languages of the Malay

Peninsula and Sumatra, and the languages of Taiwan and the Philippines

would have differentiated only recently within a single subfamily. Instead, the

deepest divisions are in Taiwan, and the languages of the Malay Peninsula

and Sumatra fall together in the same sub-sub-subfamily: a recent branch of

the Western Malayo-Polynesian sub-subfamily, which is in turn a fairly recent

branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subfamily. Those details of linguistic

relationships agree perfectly with the archaeological evidence that the

colonization of the Malay Peninsula was recent, and followed rather than

preceded the colonization of Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

The other coincidence between archaeological and linguistic evidence

concerns the cultural baggage that ancient Austronesians used. Archaeology

provides us with direct evidence of culture in the form of pottery, pig and fish

bones, and so on. One might initially wonder how a linguist, studying only

modern languages whose unwritten ancestral forms remain unknown, could

ever figure out whether Austronesians living on Taiwan 6,000 years ago had

pigs. The solution is to reconstruct the vocabularies of vanished ancient

languages (so-called protolanguages) by comparing vocabularies of modern

languages derived from them.

For instance, the words meaning “sheep” in many languages of the Indo-

European language family, distributed from Ireland to India, are quite similar:

“avis,” “avis,” “ovis,” “oveja,” “ovtsa,” “owis,” and “oi” in Lithuanian,

Sanskrit, Latin, Spanish, Russian, Greek, and Irish, respectively. (The English

“sheep” is obviously from a different root, but English retains the original

root in the word “ewe.”) Comparison of the sound shifts that the various

modern Indo-European languages have undergone during their histories

suggests that the original form was “owis” in the ancestral Indo-European

language spoken around 6,000 years ago. That unwritten ancestral language is

termed Proto-Indo-European.

Evidently, Proto-Indo-Europeans 6,000 years ago had sheep, in agreement

with archaeological evidence. Nearly 2,000 other words of their vocabulary

can similarly be reconstructed, including words for “goat,” “horse,” “wheel,”

“brother,” and “eye.” But no Proto-Indo-European word can be reconstructed

for “gun,” which uses different roots in different modern Indo-European

languages: “gun” in English, “fusil” in French, “ruzhyo” in Russian, and so

on. That shouldn’t surprise us: people 6,000 years ago couldn’t possibly have

had a word for guns, which were invented only within the past 1,000 years.

Since there was thus no inherited shared root meaning “gun,” each Indo-

European language had to invent or borrow its own word when guns were

finally invented.

Proceeding in the same way, we can compare modern Taiwanese,

Philippine, Indonesian, and Polynesian languages to reconstruct a Proto-

Austronesian language spoken in the distant past. To no one’s surprise, that

reconstructed Proto-Austronesian language had words with meanings such as

“two,” “bird,” “ear,” and “head louse”: of course, Proto-Austronesians could

count to 2, knew of birds, and had ears and lice. More interestingly, the

reconstructed language had words for “pig,” “dog,” and “rice,” which must

therefore have been part of Proto-Austronesian culture. The reconstructed

language is full of words indicating a maritime economy, such as “outrigger

canoe,” “sail,” “giant clam,” “octopus,” “fish trap,” and “sea turtle.” This

linguistic evidence regarding the culture of Proto-Austronesians, wherever

and whenever they lived, agrees well with the archaeological evidence

regarding the pottery-making, sea-oriented, food-producing people living on

Taiwan around 6,000 years ago.

The same procedure can be applied to reconstruct Proto-Malayo-

Polynesian, the ancestral language spoken by Austronesians after emigrating

from Taiwan. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian contains words for many tropical

crops like taro, breadfruit, bananas, yams, and coconuts, for which no word

can be reconstructed in Proto-Austronesian. Thus, the linguistic evidence

suggests that many tropical crops were added to the Austronesian repertoire

after the emigration from Taiwan. This conclusion agrees with archaeological

evidence: as colonizing farmers spread southward from Taiwan (lying about

23 degrees north of the equator) toward the equatorial tropics, they came to

depend increasingly on tropical root and tree crops, which they proceeded to

carry with them out into the tropical Pacific.

How could those Austronesian-speaking farmers from South China via

Taiwan replace the original hunter-gatherer population of the Philippines and

western Indonesia so completely that little genetic and no linguistic evidence

of that original population survived? The reasons resemble the reasons why

Europeans replaced or exterminated Native Australians within the last two

centuries, and why South Chinese replaced the original tropical Southeast

Asians earlier: the farmers’ much denser populations, superior tools and

weapons, more developed watercraft and maritime skills, and epidemic

diseases to which the farmers but not the hunter-gatherers had some

resistance. On the Asian mainland Austronesian-speaking farmers were able

similarly to replace some of the former hunter-gatherers of the Malay

Peninsula, because Austronesians colonized the peninsula from the south and

east (from the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo) around the same

time that Austroasiatic-speaking farmers were colonizing the peninsula from

the north (from Thailand). Other Austronesians managed to establish

themselves in parts of southern Vietnam and Cambodia to become the

ancestors of the modern Chamic minority of those countries.

However, Austronesian farmers could spread no farther into the Southeast

Asian mainland, because Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai farmers had already

replaced the former hunter-gatherers there, and because Austronesian farmers

had no advantage over Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai farmers. Although we

infer that Austronesian speakers originated from coastal South China,

Austronesian languages today are not spoken anywhere in mainland China,

possibly because they were among the hundreds of former Chinese languages

eliminated by the southward expansion of Sino-Tibetan speakers. But the

language families closest to Austronesian are thought to be Tai-Kadai,

Austroasiatic, and Miao-Yao. Thus, while Austronesian languages in China

may not have survived the onslaught of Chinese dynasties, some of their sister

and cousin languages did.



WE HAVE NOW followed the initial stages of the Austronesian expansion for

2,500 miles from the South China coast, through Taiwan and the Philippines,

to western and central Indonesia. In the course of that expansion,

Austronesians came to occupy all habitable areas of those islands, from the

seacoast to the interior, and from the lowlands to the mountains. By 1500 B.C.

their familiar archaeological hallmarks, including pig bones and plain red-

slipped pottery, show that they had reached the eastern Indonesian island of

Halmahera, less than 200 miles from the western end of the big mountainous

island of New Guinea. Did they proceed to overrun that island, just as they

had already overrun the big mountainous islands of Celebes, Borneo, Java,

and Sumatra?

They did not, as a glance at the faces of most modern New Guineans

makes obvious, and as detailed studies of New Guinean genes confirm. My

friend Wiwor and all other New Guinea highlanders differ obviously from

Indonesians, Filipinos, and South Chinese in their dark skins, tightly coiled

hair, and face shapes. Most lowlanders from New Guinea’s interior and south

coast resemble the highlanders except that they tend to be taller. Geneticists

have failed to find characteristic Austronesian gene markers in blood samples

from New Guinea highlanders.

But peoples of New Guinea’s north and east coasts, and of the Bismarck

and Solomon Archipelagoes north and east of New Guinea, present a more

complex picture. In appearance, they are variably intermediate between

highlanders like Wiwor and Indonesians like Achmad, though on the average

considerably closer to Wiwor. For instance, my friend Sauakari from the north

coast has wavy hair intermediate between Achmad’s straight hair and

Wiwor’s coiled hair, and skin somewhat paler than Wiwor’s, though

considerably darker than Achmad’s. Genetically, the Bismarck and Solomon

islanders and north coastal New Guineans are about 15 percent Austronesian

and 85 percent like New Guinea highlanders. Hence Austronesians evidently

reached the New Guinea region but failed completely to penetrate the island’s

interior and were genetically diluted by New Guinea’s previous residents on

the north coast and islands.

Modern languages tell essentially the same story but add detail. In

Chapter 15 I explained that most New Guinea languages, termed Papuan

languages, are unrelated to any language families elsewhere in the world.

Without exception, every language spoken in the New Guinea mountains, the

whole of southwestern and south-central lowland New Guinea, including the

coast, and the interior of northern New Guinea is a Papuan language. But

Austronesian languages are spoken in a narrow strip immediately on the north

and southeast coasts. Most languages of the Bismarck and Solomon islands

are Austronesian: Papuan languages are spoken only in isolated pockets on a

few islands.

Austronesian languages spoken in the Bismarcks and Solomons and north

coastal New Guinea are related, as a separate sub-sub-subfamily termed

Oceanic, to the sub-sub-subfamily of languages spoken on Halmahera and the

west end of New Guinea. That linguistic relationship confirms, as one would

expect from a map, that Austronesian speakers of the New Guinea region

arrived by way of Halmahera. Details of Austronesian and Papuan languages

and their distributions in North New Guinea testify to long contact between

the Austronesian invaders and the Papuan-speaking residents. Both the

Austronesian and the Papuan languages of the region show massive

influences of each other’s vocabularies and grammars, making it difficult to

decide whether certain languages are basically Austronesian languages

influenced by Papuan ones or the reverse. As one travels from village to

village along the north coast or its fringing islands, one passes from a village

with an Austronesian language to a village with a Papuan language and then

to another Austronesian-speaking village, without any genetic discontinuity at

the linguistic boundaries.

All this suggests that descendants of Austronesian invaders and of

original New Guineans have been trading, intermarrying, and acquiring each

other’s genes and languages for several thousand years on the North New

Guinea coast and its islands. That long contact transferred Austronesian

languages more effectively than Austronesian genes, with the result that most

Bismarck and Solomon islanders now speak Austronesian languages, even

though their appearance and most of their genes are still Papuan. But neither

the genes nor the languages of the Austronesians penetrated New Guinea’s

interior. The outcome of their invasion of New Guinea was thus very different

from the outcome of their invasion of Borneo, Celebes, and other big

Indonesian islands, where their steamroller eliminated almost all traces of the

previous inhabitants’ genes and languages. To understand what happened in

New Guinea, let us now turn to the evidence from archaeology.



AROUND 1600 B.C., almost simultaneously with their appearance on

Halmahera, the familiar archaeological hallmarks of the Austronesian

expansion—pigs, chickens, dogs, red-slipped pottery, and adzes of ground

stone and of giant clamshells—appear in the New Guinea region. But two

features distinguish the Austronesians’ arrival there from their earlier arrival

in the Philippines and Indonesia.

The first feature consists of pottery designs, which are aesthetic features

of no economic significance but which do let archaeologists immediately

recognize an early Austronesian site. Whereas most early Austronesian

pottery in the Philippines and Indonesia was undecorated, pottery in the New

Guinea region was finely decorated with geometric designs arranged in

horizontal bands. In other respects the pottery preserved the red slip and the

vessel forms characteristic of earlier Austronesian pottery in Indonesia.

Evidently, Austronesian settlers in the New Guinea region got the idea of

“tattooing” their pots, perhaps inspired by geometric designs that they had

already been using on their bark cloth and body tattoos. This style is termed

Lapita pottery, after an archaeological site named Lapita, where it was

described.

The much more significant distinguishing feature of early Austronesian

sites in the New Guinea region is their distribution. In contrast to those in the

Philippines and Indonesia, where even the earliest known Austronesian sites

are on big islands like Luzon and Borneo and Celebes, sites with Lapita

pottery in the New Guinea region are virtually confined to small islets

fringing remote larger islands. To date, Lapita pottery has been found at only

one site (Aitape) on the north coast of New Guinea itself, and at a couple of

sites in the Solomons. Most Lapita sites of the New Guinea region are in the

Bismarcks, on islets off the coast of the larger Bismarck islands, occasionally

on the coasts of the larger islands themselves. Since (as we shall see) the

makers of Lapita pottery were capable of sailing thousands of miles, their

failure to transfer their villages a few miles to the large Bismarck islands, or a

few dozen miles to New Guinea, was certainly not due to inability to get

there.

The basis of Lapita subsistence can be reconstructed from the garbage

excavated by archaeologists at Lapita sites. Lapita people depended heavily

on seafood, including fish, porpoises, sea turtles, sharks, and shellfish. They

had pigs, chickens, and dogs and ate the nuts of many trees (including

coconuts). While they probably also ate the usual Austronesian root crops,

such as taro and yams, evidence of those crops is hard to obtain, because hard

nut shells are much more likely than soft roots to persist for thousands of

years in garbage heaps.

Naturally, it is impossible to prove directly that the people who made

Lapita pots spoke an Austronesian language. However, two facts make this

inference virtually certain. First, except for the decorations on the pots, the

pots themselves and their associated cultural paraphernalia are similar to the

cultural remains found at Indonesian and Philippine sites ancestral to modern

Austronesian-speaking societies. Second, Lapita pottery also appears on

remote Pacific islands with no previous human inhabitants, with no evidence

of a major second wave of settlement subsequent to that bringing Lapita pots,

and where the modern inhabitants speak an Austronesian language (more of

this below). Hence Lapita pottery may be safely assumed to mark

Austronesians’ arrival in the New Guinea region.

What were those Austronesian pot makers doing on islets adjacent to

bigger islands? They were probably living in the same way as modern pot

makers lived until recently on islets in the New Guinea region. In 1972 I

visited such a village on Malai Islet, in the Siassi island group, off the

medium-sized island of Umboi, off the larger Bismarck island of New Britain.

When I stepped ashore on Malai in search of birds, knowing nothing about

the people there, I was astonished by the sight that greeted me. Instead of the

usual small village of low huts, surrounded by large gardens sufficient to feed

the village, and with a few canoes drawn up on the beach, most of the area of

Malai was occupied by two-story wooden houses side by side, leaving no

ground available for gardens—the New Guinea equivalent of downtown

Manhattan. On the beach were rows of big canoes. It turned out that Malai

islanders, besides being fishermen, were also specialized potters, carvers, and

traders, who lived by making beautifully decorated pots and wooden bowls,

transporting them in their canoes to larger islands and exchanging their wares

for pigs, dogs, vegetables, and other necessities. Even the timber for Malai

canoes was obtained by trade from villagers on nearby Umboi Island, since

Malai does not have trees big enough to be fashioned into canoes.

In the days before European shipping, trade between islands in the New

Guinea region was monopolized by such specialized groups of canoe-building

potters, skilled in sailing without navigational instruments, and living on

offshore islets or occasionally in mainland coastal villages. By the time I

reached Malai in 1972, those indigenous trade networks had collapsed or

contracted, partly because of competition from European motor vessels and

aluminum pots, partly because the Australian colonial government forbade

long-distance canoe voyaging after some accidents in which traders were

drowned. I would guess that the Lapita potters were the inter-island traders of

the New Guinea region in the centuries after 1600 B.C.

The spread of Austronesian languages to the north coast of New Guinea

itself, and over even the largest Bismarck and Solomon islands, must have

occurred mostly after Lapita times, since Lapita sites themselves were

concentrated on Bismarck islets. Not until around A.D. 1 did pottery derived

from the Lapita style appear on the south side of New Guinea’s southeast

peninsula. When Europeans began exploring New Guinea in the late 19th

century, all the remainder of New Guinea’s south coast still supported

populations only of Papuan-language speakers, even though Austronesian-

speaking populations were established not only on the southeastern peninsula

but also on the Aru and Kei Islands (lying 70–80 miles off western New

Guinea’s south coast). Austronesians thus had thousands of years in which to

colonize New Guinea’s interior and its southern coast from nearby bases, but

they never did so. Even their colonization of North New Guinea’s coastal

fringe was more linguistic than genetic: all northern coastal peoples remained

predominantly New Guineans in their genes. At most, some of them merely

adopted Austronesian languages, possibly in order to communicate with the

long-distance traders who linked societies.



THUS, THE OUTCOME of the Austronesian expansion in the New Guinea

region was opposite to that in Indonesia and the Philippines. In the latter

region the indigenous population disappeared—presumably driven off, killed,

infected, or assimilated by the invaders. In the former region the indigenous

population mostly kept the invaders out. The invaders (the Austronesians)

were the same in both cases, and the indigenous populations may also have

been genetically similar to each other, if the original Indonesian population

supplanted by Austronesians really was related to New Guineans, as I

suggested earlier. Why the opposite outcomes?

The answer becomes obvious when one considers the differing cultural

circumstances of Indonesia’s and New Guinea’s indigenous populations.

Before Austronesians arrived, most of Indonesia was thinly occupied by

hunter-gatherers lacking even polished stone tools. In contrast, food

production had already been established for thousands of years in the New

Guinea highlands, and probably in the New Guinea lowlands and in the

Bismarcks and Solomons as well. The New Guinea highlands supported some

of the densest populations of Stone Age people anywhere in the modern

world.

Austronesians enjoyed few advantages in competing with those

established New Guinean populations. Some of the crops on which

Austronesians subsisted, such as taro, yams, and bananas, had probably

already been independently domesticated in New Guinea before

Austronesians arrived. The New Guineans readily integrated Austronesian

chickens, dogs, and especially pigs into their food-producing economies. New

Guineans already had polished stone tools. They were at least as resistant to

tropical diseases as were Austronesians, because they carried the same five

types of genetic protections against malaria as did Austronesians, and some or

all of those genes evolved independently in New Guinea. New Guineans were

already accomplished seafarers, although not as accomplished as the makers

of Lapita pottery. Tens of thousands of years before the arrival of

Austronesians, New Guineans had colonized the Bismarck and Solomon

Archipelagoes, and a trade in obsidian (a volcanic stone suitable for making

sharp tools) was thriving in the Bismarcks at least 18,000 years before the

Austronesians arrived. New Guineans even seem to have expanded recently

westward against the Austronesian tide, into eastern Indonesia, where

languages spoken on the islands of North Halmahera and of Timor are typical

Papuan languages related to some languages of western New Guinea.

In short, the variable outcomes of the Austronesian expansion strikingly

illustrate the role of food production in human population movements.

Austronesian food-producers migrated into two regions (New Guinea and

Indonesia) occupied by resident peoples who were probably related to each

other. The residents of Indonesia were still hunter-gatherers, while the

residents of New Guinea were already food producers and had developed

many of the concomitants of food production (dense populations, disease

resistance, more advanced technology, and so on). As a result, while the

Austronesian expansion swept away the original Indonesians, it failed to

make much headway in the New Guinea region, just as it also failed to make

headway against Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai food producers in tropical

Southeast Asia.

We have now traced the Austronesian expansion through Indonesia and

up to the shores of New Guinea and tropical Southeast Asia. In Chapter 19 we

shall trace it across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar, while in Chapter 15 we

saw that ecological difficulties kept Austronesians from establishing

themselves in northern and western Australia. The expansion’s remaining

thrust began when the Lapita potters sailed far eastward into the Pacific

beyond the Solomons, into an island realm that no other humans had reached

previously. Around 1200 B.C. Lapita potsherds, the familiar triumvirate of pigs

and chickens and dogs, and the usual other archaeological hallmarks of

Austronesians appeared on the Pacific archipelagoes of Fiji, Samoa, and

Tonga, over a thousand miles east of the Solomons. Early in the Christian era,

most of those same hallmarks (with the notable exception of pottery)

appeared on the islands of eastern Polynesia, including the Societies and

Marquesas. Further long overwater canoe voyages brought settlers north to

Hawaii, east to Pitcairn and Easter Islands, and southwest to New Zealand.

The native inhabitants of most of those islands today are the Polynesians, who

thus are the direct descendants of the Lapita potters. They speak Austronesian

languages closely related to those of the New Guinea region, and their main

crops are the Austronesian package that included taro, yams, bananas,

coconuts, and breadfruit.

With the occupation of the Chatham Islands off New Zealand around A.D.

1400, barely a century before European “explorers” entered the Pacific, the

task of exploring the Pacific was finally completed by Asians. Their tradition

of exploration, lasting tens of thousands of years, had begun when Wiwor’s

ancestors spread through Indonesia to New Guinea and Australia. It ended

only when it had run out of targets and almost every habitable Pacific island

had been occupied.



TO ANYONE INTERESTED in world history, human societies of East Asia and

the Pacific are instructive, because they provide so many examples of how

environment molds history. Depending on their geographic homeland, East

Asian and Pacific peoples differed in their access to domesticable wild plant

and animal species and in their connectedness to other peoples. Again and

again, people with access to the prerequisites for food production, and with a

location favoring diffusion of technology from elsewhere, replaced peoples

lacking these advantages. Again and again, when a single wave of colonists

spread out over diverse environments, their descendants developed in separate

ways, depending on those environmental differences.

For instance, we have seen that South Chinese developed indigenous food

production and technology, received writing and still more technology and

political structures from North China, and went on to colonize tropical

Southeast Asia and Taiwan, largely replacing the former inhabitants of those

areas. Within Southeast Asia, among the descendants or relatives of those

food-producing South Chinese colonists, the Yumbri in the mountain rain

forests of northeastern Thailand and Laos reverted to living as hunter-

gatherers, while the Yumbri’s close relatives the Vietnamese (speaking a

language in the same sub-subfamily of Austroasiatic as the Yumbri language)

remained food producers in the rich Red Delta and established a vast metal-

based empire. Similarly, among Austronesian emigrant farmers from Taiwan

and Indonesia, the Punan in the rain forests of Borneo were forced to turn

back to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while their relatives living on Java’s rich

volcanic soils remained food producers, founded a kingdom under the

influence of India, adopted writing, and built the great Buddhist monument at

Borobudur. The Austronesians who went on to colonize Polynesia became

isolated from East Asian metallurgy and writing and hence remained without

writing or metal. As we saw in Chapter 2, though, Polynesian political and

social organization and economies underwent great diversification in different

environments. Within a millennium, East Polynesian colonists had reverted to

hunting-gathering on the Chathams while building a protostate with intensive

food production on Hawaii.

When Europeans at last arrived, their technological and other advantages

enabled them to establish temporary colonial domination over most of

tropical Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands. However, indigenous germs

and food producers prevented Europeans from settling most of this region in

significant numbers. Within this area, only New Zealand, New Caledonia, and

Hawaii—the largest and most remote islands, lying farthest from the equator

and hence in the most nearly temperate (Europe-like) climates—now support

large European populations. Thus, unlike Australia and the Americas, East

Asia and most Pacific islands remain occupied by East Asian and Pacific

peoples.





CHAPTER 18

HEMISPHERES COLLIDING

THE LARGEST POPULATION REPLACEMENT OF THE LAST 13,000 years has been

the one resulting from the recent collision between Old World and New World

societies. Its most dramatic and decisive moment, as we saw in Chapter 3,

occurred when Pizarro’s tiny army of Spaniards captured the Inca emperor

Atahuallpa, absolute ruler of the largest, richest, most populous, and

administratively and technologically most advanced Native American state.

Atahuallpa’s capture symbolizes the European conquest of the Americas,

because the same mix of proximate factors that caused it was also responsible

for European conquests of other Native American societies. Let us now return

to that collision of hemispheres, applying what we have learned since Chapter

3. The basic question to be answered is: why did Europeans reach and

conquer the lands of Native Americans, instead of vice versa? Our starting

point will be a comparison of Eurasian and Native American societies as of

A.D. 1492, the year of Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas.



OUR COMPARISON BEGINS with food production, a major determinant of local

population size and societal complexity—hence an ultimate factor behind the

conquest. The most glaring difference between American and Eurasian food

production involved big domestic mammal species. In Chapter 9 we

encountered Eurasia’s 13 species, which became its chief source of animal

protein (meat and milk), wool, and hides, its main mode of land transport of

people and goods, its indispensable vehicles of warfare, and (by drawing

plows and providing manure) a big enhancer of crop production. Until

waterwheels and windmills began to replace Eurasia’s mammals in medieval

times, they were also the major source of its “industrial” power beyond

human muscle power—for example, for turning grindstones and operating

water lifts. In contrast, the Americas had only one species of big domestic

mammal, the llama / alpaca, confined to a small area of the Andes and the

adjacent Peruvian coast. While it was used for meat, wool, hides, and goods

transport, it never yielded milk for human consumption, never bore a rider,

never pulled a cart or a plow, and never served as a power source or vehicle of

warfare.

That’s an enormous set of differences between Eurasian and Native

American societies—due largely to the Late Pleistocene extinction

(extermination?) of most of North and South America’s former big wild

mammal species. If it had not been for those extinctions, modern history

might have taken a different course. When Cortés and his bedraggled

adventurers landed on the Mexican coast in 1519, they might have been

driven into the sea by thousands of Aztec cavalry mounted on domesticated

native American horses. Instead of the Aztecs’ dying of smallpox, the

Spaniards might have been wiped out by American germs transmitted by

disease-resistant Aztecs. American civilizations resting on animal power

might have been sending their own conquistadores to ravage Europe. But

those hypothetical outcomes were foreclosed by mammal extinctions

thousands of years earlier.

Those extinctions left Eurasia with many more wild candidates for

domestication than the Americas offered. Most candidates disqualify

themselves as potential domesticates for any of half a dozen reasons. Hence

Eurasia ended up with its 13 species of big domestic mammals and the

Americas with just its one very local species. Both hemispheres also had

domesticated species of birds and small mammals—the turkey, guinea pig,

and Muscovy duck very locally and the dog more widely in the Americas;

chickens, geese, ducks, cats, dogs, rabbits, honeybees, silkworms, and some

others in Eurasia. But the significance of all those species of small domestic

animals was trivial compared with that of the big ones.

Eurasia and the Americas also differed with respect to plant food

production, though the disparity here was less marked than for animal food

production. In 1492 agriculture was widespread in Eurasia. Among the few

Eurasian hunter-gatherers lacking both crops and domestic animals were the

Ainu of northern Japan, Siberian societies without reindeer, and small hunter-

gatherer groups scattered through the forests of India and tropical Southeast

Asia and trading with neighboring farmers. Some other Eurasian societies,

notably the Central Asian pastoralists and the reindeer-herding Lapps and

Samoyeds of the Arctic, had domestic animals but little or no agriculture.

Virtually all other Eurasian societies engaged in agriculture as well as in

herding animals.

Agriculture was also widespread in the Americas, but hunter-gatherers

occupied a larger fraction of the Americas’ area than of Eurasia’s. Those

regions of the Americas without food production included all of northern

North America and southern South America, the Canadian Great Plains, and

all of western North America except for small areas of the U.S. Southwest

that supported irrigation agriculture. It is striking that the areas of Native

America without food production included what today, after Europeans’

arrival, are some of the most productive farmlands and pastures of both North

and South America: the Pacific states of the United States, Canada’s wheat

belt, the pampas of Argentina, and the Mediterranean zone of Chile. The

former absence of food production in these lands was due entirely to their

local paucity of domesticable wild animals and plants, and to geographic and

ecological barriers that prevented the crops and the few domestic animal

species of other parts of the Americas from arriving. Those lands became

productive not only for European settlers but also, in some cases, for Native

Americans, as soon as Europeans introduced suitable domestic animals and

crops. For instance, Native American societies became renowned for their

mastery of horses, and in some cases of cattle and sheepherding, in parts of

the Great Plains, the western United States, and the Argentine pampas. Those

mounted plains warriors and Navajo sheepherders and weavers now figure

prominently in white Americans’ image of American Indians, but the basis for

that image was created only after 1492. These examples demonstrate that the

sole missing ingredients required to sustain food production in large areas of

the Americas were domestic animals and crops themselves.

In those parts of the Americas that did support Native American

agriculture, it was constrained by five major disadvantages vis-à-vis Eurasian

agriculture: widespread dependence on protein-poor corn, instead of Eurasia’s

diverse and protein-rich cereals; hand planting of individual seeds, instead of

broadcast sowing; tilling by hand instead of plowing by animals, which

enables one person to cultivate a much larger area, and which also permits

cultivation of some fertile but tough soils and sods that are difficult to till by

hand (such as those of the North American Great Plains); lack of animal

manuring to increase soil fertility; and just human muscle power, instead of

animal power, for agricultural tasks such as threshing, grinding, and

irrigation. These differences suggest that Eurasian agriculture as of 1492 may

have yielded on the average more calories and protein per person-hour of

labor than Native American agriculture did.



SUCH DIFFERENCES IN food production constituted a major ultimate cause of

the disparities between Eurasian and Native American societies. Among the

resulting proximate factors behind the conquest, the most important included

differences in germs, technology, political organization, and writing. Of these,

the one linked most directly to the differences in food production was germs.

The infectious diseases that regularly visited crowded Eurasian societies, and

to which many Eurasians consequently developed immune or genetic

resistance, included all of history’s most lethal killers: smallpox, measles,

influenza, plague, tuberculosis, typhus, cholera, malaria, and others. Against

that grim list, the sole crowd infectious diseases that can be attributed with

certainty to pre-Columbian Native American societies were nonsyphilitic

treponemas. (As I explained in Chapter 11, it remains uncertain whether

syphilis arose in Eurasia or in the Americas, and the claim that human

tuberculosis was present in the Americas before Columbus is in my opinion

unproven.)

This continental difference in harmful germs resulted paradoxically from

the difference in useful livestock. Most of the microbes responsible for the

infectious diseases of crowded human societies evolved from very similar

ancestral microbes causing infectious diseases of the domestic animals with

which food producers began coming into daily close contact around 10,000

years ago. Eurasia harbored many domestic animal species and hence

developed many such microbes, while the Americas had very few of each.

Other reasons why Native American societies evolved so few lethal microbes

were that villages, which provide ideal breeding grounds for epidemic

diseases, arose thousands of years later in the Americas than in Eurasia; and

that the three regions of the New World supporting urban societies (the

Andes, Mesoamerica, and the U.S. Southeast) were never connected by fast,

high-volume trade on the scale that brought plague, influenza, and possibly

smallpox to Europe from Asia. As a result, even malaria and yellow fever, the

infectious diseases that eventually became major obstacles to European

colonization of the American tropics, and that posed the biggest barrier to the

construction of the Panama Canal, are not American diseases at all but are

caused by microbes of Old World tropical origin, introduced to the Americas

by Europeans.

Rivaling germs as proximate factors behind Europe’s conquest of the

Americas were the differences in all aspects of technology. These differences

stemmed ultimately from Eurasia’s much longer history of densely populated,

economically specialized, politically centralized, interacting and competing

societies dependent on food production. Five areas of technology may be

singled out:

First, metals—initially copper, then bronze, and finally iron—were used

for tools in all complex Eurasian societies as of 1492. In contrast, although

copper, silver, gold, and alloys were used for ornaments in the Andes and

some other parts of the Americas, stone and wood and bone were still the

principal materials for tools in all Native American societies, which made

only limited local use of copper tools.

Second, military technology was far more potent in Eurasia than in the

Americas. European weapons were steel swords, lances, and daggers,

supplemented by small firearms and artillery, while body armor and helmets

were also made of solid steel or else of chain mail. In place of steel, Native

Americans used clubs and axes of stone or wood (occasionally copper in the

Andes), slings, bows and arrows, and quilted armor, constituting much less

effective protection and weaponry. In addition, Native American armies had

no animals to oppose to horses, whose value for assaults and fast transport

gave Europeans an overwhelming advantage until some Native American

societies themselves adopted them.

Third, Eurasian societies enjoyed a huge advantage in their sources of

power to operate machines. The earliest advance over human muscle power

was the use of animals—cattle, horses, and donkeys—to pull plows and to

turn wheels for grinding grain, raising water, and irrigating or draining fields.

Waterwheels appeared in Roman times and then proliferated, along with tidal

mills and windmills, in the Middle Ages. Coupled to systems of geared

wheels, those engines harnessing water and wind power were used not only to

grind grain and move water but also to serve myriad manufacturing purposes,

including crushing sugar, driving blast furnace bellows, grinding ores, making

paper, polishing stone, pressing oil, producing salt, producing textiles, and

sawing wood. It is conventional to define the Industrial Revolution arbitrarily

as beginning with the harnessing of steam power in 18th-century England, but

in fact an industrial revolution based on water and wind power had begun

already in medieval times in many parts of Europe. As of 1492, all of those

operations to which animal, water, and wind power were being applied in

Eurasia were still being carried out by human muscle power in the Americas.

Long before the wheel began to be used in power conversion in Eurasia, it

had become the basis of most Eurasian land transport—not only for animal-

drawn vehicles but also for human-powered wheelbarrows, which enabled

one or more people, still using just human muscle power, to transport much

greater weights than they could have otherwise. Wheels were also adopted in

Eurasian pottery making and in clocks. None of those uses of the wheel was

adopted in the Americas, where wheels are attested only in Mexican ceramic

toys.

The remaining area of technology to be mentioned is sea transport. Many

Eurasian societies developed large sailing ships, some of them capable of

sailing against the wind and crossing the ocean, equipped with sextants,

magnetic compasses, sternpost rudders, and cannons. In capacity, speed,

maneuverability, and seaworthiness, those Eurasian ships were far superior to

the rafts that carried out trade between the New World’s most advanced

societies, those of the Andes and Mesoamerica. Those rafts sailed with the

wind along the Pacific coast. Pizarro’s ship easily ran down and captured such

a raft on his first voyage toward Peru.



IN ADDITION TO their germs and technology, Eurasian and Native American

societies differed in their political organization. By late medieval or

Renaissance times, most of Eurasia had come under the rule of organized

states. Among these, the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Chinese states, the Mogul

state of India, and the Mongol state at its peak in the 13th century started out

as large polyglot amalgamations formed by the conquest of other states. For

that reason they are generally referred to as empires. Many Eurasian states

and empires had official religions that contributed to state cohesion, being

invoked to legitimize the political leadership and to sanction wars against

other peoples. Tribal and band societies in Eurasia were largely confined to

the Arctic reindeer herders, the Siberian hunter-gatherers, and the hunter-

gatherer enclaves in the Indian subcontinent and tropical Southeast Asia.

The Americas had two empires, those of the Aztecs and Incas, which

resembled their Eurasian counterparts in size, population, polyglot makeup,

official religions, and origins in the conquest of smaller states. In the

Americas those were the sole two political units capable of mobilizing

resources for public works or war on the scale of many Eurasian states,

whereas seven European states (Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland,

Sweden, and Denmark) had the resources to acquire American colonies

between 1492 and 1666. The Americas also held many chiefdoms (some of

them virtually small states) in tropical South America, Mesoamerica beyond

Aztec rule, and the U.S. Southeast. The rest of the Americas was organized

only at the tribal or band level.

The last proximate factor to be discussed is writing. Most Eurasian states

had literate bureaucracies, and in some a significant fraction of the populace

other than bureaucrats was also literate. Writing empowered European

societies by facilitating political administration and economic exchanges,

motivating and guiding exploration and conquest, and making available a

range of information and human experience extending into remote places and

times. In contrast, use of writing in the Americas was confined to the elite in a

small area of Mesoamerica. The Inca Empire employed an accounting system

and mnemonic device based on knots (termed quipu), but it could not have

approached writing as a vehicle for transmitting detailed information.



THUS, EURASIAN SOCIETIES in the time of Columbus enjoyed big advantages

over Native American societies in food production, germs, technology

(including weapons), political organization, and writing. These were the main

factors tipping the outcome of the post-Columbian collisions. But those

differences as of A.D. 1492 represent just one snapshot of historical trajectories

that had extended over at least 13,000 years in the Americas, and over a much

longer time in Eurasia. For the Americas, in particular, the 1492 snapshot

captures the end of the independent trajectory of Native Americans. Let us

now trace out the earlier stages of those trajectories.

Table 18.1 summarizes approximate dates of the appearance of key

developments in the main “homelands” of each hemisphere (the Fertile

Crescent and China in Eurasia, the Andes and Amazonia and Mesoamerica in

the Americas). It also includes the trajectory for the minor New World

homeland of the eastern United States, and that for England, which is not a

homeland at all but is listed to illustrate how rapidly developments spread

from the Fertile Crescent.

This table is sure to horrify any knowledgeable scholar, because it reduces

exceedingly complex histories to a few seemingly precise dates. In reality, all

of those dates are merely attempts to label arbitrary points along a continuum.

For example, more significant than the date of the first metal tool found by

some archaeologist is the time when a significant fraction of all tools was

made of metal, but how common must metal tools be to rate as “widespread”?

Dates for the appearance of the same development may differ among different

parts of the same homeland. For instance, within the Andean region pottery

appears about 1,300 years earlier in coastal Ecuador (3100 B.C.) than in Peru

(1800 B.C.). Some dates, such as those for the rise of chiefdoms, are more

difficult to infer from the archaeological record than are dates of artifacts like

pottery or metal tools. Some of the dates in Table 18.1 are very uncertain,

especially those for the onset of American food production. Nevertheless, as

long as one understands that the table is a simplification, it is useful for

comparing continental histories.

The table suggests that food production began to provide a large fraction

of human diets around 5,000 years earlier in the Eurasian homelands than in

those of the Americas. A caveat must be mentioned immediately: while there

is no doubt about the antiquity of food production in Eurasia, there is

controversy about its onset in the Americas. In particular, archaeologists often

cite considerably older claimed dates for domesticated plants at Coxcatlán

Cave in Mexico, at Guitarrero Cave in Peru, and at some other American sites

than the dates given in the table. Those claims are now being reevaluated for

several reasons: recent direct radiocarbon dating of crop remains themselves

has in some cases been yielding younger dates; the older dates previously

reported were based instead on charcoal thought to be contemporaneous with

the plant remains, but possibly not so; and the status of some of the older

plant remains as crops or just as collected wild plants is uncertain. Still, even

if plant domestication did begin earlier in the Americas than the dates shown

in Table 18.1, agriculture surely did not provide the basis for most human

calorie intake and sedentary existence in American homelands until much

later than in Eurasian homelands.

TABLE 18.1 Historical Trajectories of Eurasia and the Americas

Approximate Date of Adoption

Eurasia

Fertile Crescent

China

England

Plant domestication

8500 B.C.

by 7500 B.C. 3500 B.C.

Animal domestication

8000 B.C.

by 7500 B.C. 3500 B.C.

Pottery

7000 B.C.

by 7500 B.C. 3500 B.C.

Villages

9000 B.C.

by 7500 B.C. 3000 B.C.

Chiefdoms

5500 B.C.

4000 B.C.

2500 B.C.

Widespread metal tools or artifacts (copper and/or bronze) 4000 B.C.

2000 B.C.

2000 B.C.

States

3700 B.C.

2000 B.C.

A.D. 500

Writing

3200 B.C.

by 1300 B.C. A.D. 43

Widespread iron tools

900 B.C.

500 B.C.

650 B.C.

Native America

Andes

Amazonia

Mesoamerica

Eastern U.S.

by 3000 B.C.

3000 B.C.

by 3000 B.C.

2500 B.C.

3500 B.C.

?

500 B.C.

—

3100–1800 B.C.

6000 B.C.

1500 B.C.

2500 B.C.

3100–1800 B.C.

6000 B.C.

1500 B.C.

500 B.C.

by 1500 B.C.

A.D. 1

1500 B.C.

200 B.C.

A.D. 1000

—

—

—

A.D. 1

—

300 B.C.

—

—

—

600 B.C.

—

—

—

—

—

This table gives approximate dates of widespread adoption of significant developments in three

Eurasian and four Native American areas. Dates for animal domestication neglect dogs, which were

domesticated earlier than food-producing animals in both Eurasia and the Americas. Chiefdoms are

inferred from archaeological evidence, such as ranked burials, architecture, and settlement patterns.

The table greatly simplifies a complex mass of historical facts: see the text for some of the many

important caveats.



As we saw in Chapters 5 and 10, only a few relatively small areas of each

hemisphere acted as a “homeland” where food production first arose and from

which it then spread. Those homelands were the Fertile Crescent and China in

Eurasia, and the Andes and Amazonia, Mesoamerica, and the eastern United

States in the Americas. The rate of spread of key developments is especially

well understood for Europe, thanks to the many archaeologists at work there.

As Table 18.1 summarizes for England, once food production and village

living had arrived from the Fertile Crescent after a long lag (5,000 years), the

subsequent lag for England’s adoption of chiefdoms, states, writing, and

especially metal tools was much shorter: 2,000 years for the first widespread

metal tools of copper and bronze, and only 250 years for widespread iron

tools. Evidently, it was much easier for one society of already sedentary

farmers to “borrow” metallurgy from another such society than for nomadic

hunter-gatherers to “borrow” food production from sedentary farmers (or to

be replaced by the farmers).



WHY WERE THE trajectories of all key developments shifted to later dates in

the Americas than in Eurasia? Four groups of reasons suggest themselves: the

later start, more limited suite of wild animals and plants available for

domestication, greater barriers to diffusion, and possibly smaller or more

isolated areas of dense human populations in the Americas than in Eurasia.

As for Eurasia’s head start, humans have occupied Eurasia for about a

million years, far longer than they have lived in the Americas. According to

the archaeological evidence discussed in Chapter 1, humans entered the

Americas at Alaska only around 12,000 B.C., spread south of the Canadian ice

sheets as Clovis hunters a few centuries before 11,000 B.C., and reached the

southern tip of South America by 10,000 B.C. Even if the disputed claims of

older human occupation sites in the Americas prove valid, those postulated

pre-Clovis inhabitants remained for unknown reasons very sparsely

distributed and did not launch a Pleistocene proliferation of hunter-gatherer

societies with expanding populations, technology, and art as in the Old World.

Food production was already arising in the Fertile Crescent only 1,500 years

after the time when Clovis-derived hunter-gatherers were just reaching

southern South America.

Several possible consequences of that Eurasian head start deserve

consideration. First, could it have taken a long time after 11,000 B.C. for the

Americas to fill up with people? When one works out the likely numbers

involved, one finds that this effect would make only a trivial contribution to

the Americas’ 5,000-year lag in food-producing villages. The calculations

given in Chapter 1 tell us that even if a mere 100 pioneering Native

Americans had crossed the Canadian border into the lower United States and

increased at a rate of only 1 percent per year, they would have saturated the

Americas with hunter-gatherers within 1,000 years. Spreading south at a mere

one mile per month, those pioneers would have reached the southern tip of

South America only 700 years after crossing the Canadian border. Those

postulated rates of spread and of population increase are very low compared

with actual known rates for peoples occupying previously uninhabited or

sparsely inhabited lands. Hence the Americas were probably fully occupied

by hunter-gatherers within a few centuries of the arrival of the first colonists.

Second, could a large part of the 5,000-year lag have represented the time

that the first Americans required to become familiar with the new local plant

species, animal species, and rock sources that they encountered? If we can

again reason by analogy with New Guinean and Polynesian hunter-gatherers

and farmers occupying previously unfamiliar environments—such as Maori

colonists of New Zealand or Tudawhe colonists of New Guinea’s Karimui

Basin—the colonists probably discovered the best rock sources and learned to

distinguish useful from poisonous wild plants and animals in much less than a

century.

Third, what about Eurasians’ head start in developing locally appropriate

technology? The early farmers of the Fertile Crescent and China were heirs to

the technology that behaviorally modern Homo sapiens had been developing

to exploit local resources in those areas for tens of thousands of years. For

instance, the stone sickles, underground storage pits, and other technology

that hunter-gatherers of the Fertile Crescent had been evolving to utilize wild

cereals were available to the first cereal farmers of the Fertile Crescent. In

contrast, the first settlers of the Americas arrived in Alaska with equipment

appropriate to the Siberian Arctic tundra. They had to invent for themselves

the equipment suitable to each new habitat they encountered. That technology

lag may have contributed significantly to the delay in Native American

developments.

An even more obvious factor behind the delay was the wild animals and

plants available for domestication. As I discussed in Chapter 6, when hunter-

gatherers adopt food production, it is not because they foresee the potential

benefits awaiting their remote descendants but because incipient food

production begins to offer advantages over the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Early

food production was less competitive with hunting-gathering in the Americas

than in the Fertile Crescent or China, partly owing to the Americas’ virtual

lack of domesticable wild mammals. Hence early American farmers remained

dependent on wild animals for animal protein and necessarily remained part-

time hunter-gatherers, whereas in both the Fertile Crescent and China animal

domestication followed plant domestication very closely in time to create a

food producing package that quickly won out over hunting-gathering. In

addition, Eurasian domestic animals made Eurasian agriculture itself more

competitive by providing fertilizer, and eventually by drawing plows.

Features of American wild plants also contributed to the lesser

competitiveness of Native American food production. That conclusion is

clearest for the eastern United States, where less than a dozen crops were

domesticated, including small-seeded grains but no large-seeded grains,

pulses, fiber crops, or cultivated fruit or nut trees. It is also clear for

Mesoamerica’s staple grain of corn, which spread to become a dominant crop

elsewhere in the Americas as well. Whereas the Fertile Crescent’s wild wheat

and barley evolved into crops with minimal changes and within a few

centuries, wild teosinte may have required several thousand years to evolve

into corn, having to undergo drastic changes in its reproductive biology and

energy allocation to seed production, loss of the seed’s rock-hard casings, and

an enormous increase in cob size.

As a result, even if one accepts the recently postulated later dates for the

onset of Native American plant domestication, about 1,500 or 2,000 years

would have elapsed between that onset (about 3000–2500 B.C.) and

widespread year-round villages (1800–500 B.C.) in Mesoamerica, the inland

Andes, and the eastern United States. Native American farming served for a

long time just as a small supplement to food acquisition by hunting-gathering,

and supported only a sparse population. If one accepts the traditional, earlier

dates for the onset of American plant domestication, then 5,000 years instead

of 1,500 or 2,000 years elapsed before food production supported villages. In

contrast, villages were closely associated in time with the rise of food

production in much of Eurasia. (The hunter-gatherer lifestyle itself was

sufficiently productive to support villages even before the adoption of

agriculture in parts of both hemispheres, such as Japan and the Fertile

Crescent in the Old World, and coastal Ecuador and Amazonia in the New

World.) The limitations imposed by locally available domesticates in the New

World are well illustrated by the transformations of Native American societies

themselves when other crops or animals arrived, whether from elsewhere in

the Americas or from Eurasia. Examples include the effects of corn’s arrival

in the eastern United States and Amazonia, the llama’s adoption in the

northern Andes after its domestication to the south, and the horse’s

appearance in many parts of North and South America.

In addition to Eurasia’s head start and wild animal and plant species,

developments in Eurasia were also accelerated by the easier diffusion of

animals, plants, ideas, technology, and people in Eurasia than in the

Americas, as a result of several sets of geographic and ecological factors.

Eurasia’s east–west major axis, unlike the Americas’ north–south major axis,

permitted diffusion without change in latitude and associated environmental

variables. In contrast to Eurasia’s consistent east–west breadth, the New

World was constricted over the whole length of Central America and

especially at Panama. Not least, the Americas were more fragmented by areas

unsuitable for food production or for dense human populations. These

ecological barriers included the rain forests of the Panamanian isthmus

separating Mesoamerican societies from Andean and Amazonian societies;

the deserts of northern Mexico separating Mesoamerica from U.S.

southwestern and southeastern societies; dry areas of Texas separating the

U.S. Southwest from the Southeast; and the deserts and high mountains

fencing off U.S. Pacific coast areas that would otherwise have been suitable

for food production. As a result, there was no diffusion of domestic animals,

writing, or political entities, and limited or slow diffusion of crops and

technology, between the New World centers of Mesoamerica, the eastern

United States, and the Andes and Amazonia.

Some specific consequences of these barriers within the Americas deserve

mention. Food production never diffused from the U.S. Southwest and

Mississippi Valley to the modern American breadbaskets of California and

Oregon, where Native American societies remained hunter-gatherers merely

because they lacked appropriate domesticates. The llama, guinea pig, and

potato of the Andean highlands never reached the Mexican highlands, so

Mesoamerica and North America remained without domestic mammals

except for dogs. Conversely, the domestic sunflower of the eastern United

States never reached Mesoamerica, and the domestic turkey of Mesoamerica

never made it to South America or the eastern United States. Mesoamerican

corn and beans took 3,000 and 4,000 years, respectively, to cover the 700

miles from Mexico’s farmlands to the eastern U.S. farmlands. After corn’s

arrival in the eastern United States, seven centuries more passed before the

development of a corn variety productive in North American climates

triggered the Mississippian emergence. Corn, beans, and squash may have

taken several thousand years to spread from Mesoamerica to the U.S.

Southwest. While Fertile Crescent crops spread west and east sufficiently fast

to preempt independent domestication of the same species or else

domestication of closely related species elsewhere, the barriers within the

Americas gave rise to many such parallel domestications of crops.

As striking as these effects of barriers on crop and livestock diffusion are

the effects on other features of human societies. Alphabets of ultimately

eastern Mediterranean origin spread throughout all complex societies of

Eurasia, from England to Indonesia, except for areas of East Asia where

derivatives of the Chinese writing system took hold. In contrast, the New

World’s sole writing systems, those of Mesoamerica, never spread to the

complex Andean and eastern U.S. societies that might have adopted them.

The wheels invented in Mesoamerica as parts of toys never met the llamas

domesticated in the Andes, to generate wheeled transport for the New World.

From east to west in the Old World, the Macedonian Empire and the Roman

Empire both spanned 3,000 miles, the Mongol Empire 6,000 miles. But the

empires and states of Mesoamerica had no political relations with, and

apparently never even heard of, the chiefdoms of the eastern United States

700 miles to the north or the empires and states of the Andes 1,200 miles to

the south.

The greater geographic fragmentation of the Americas compared with

Eurasia is also reflected in distributions of languages. Linguists agree in

grouping all but a few Eurasian languages into about a dozen language

families, each consisting of up to several hundred related languages. For

example, the Indo-European language family, which includes English as well

as French, Russian, Greek, and Hindi, comprises about 144 languages. Quite

a few of those families occupy large contiguous areas—in the case of Indo-

European, the area encompassing most of Europe east through much of

western Asia to India. Linguistic, historical, and archaeological evidence

combines to make clear that each of these large, contiguous distributions

stems from a historical expansion of an ancestral language, followed by

subsequent local linguistic differentiation to form a family of related

languages (Table 18.2). Most such expansions appear to be attributable to the

advantages that speakers of the ancestral language, belonging to food-

producing societies, held over hunter-gatherers. We already discussed such

historical expansions in Chapters 16 and 17 for the Sino-Tibetan,

Austronesian, and other East Asian language families. Among major

expansions of the last millennium are those that carried Indo-European

languages from Europe to the Americas and Australia, the Russian language

from eastern Europe across Siberia, and Turkish (a language of the Altaic

family) from Central Asia westward to Turkey.

With the exception of the Eskimo-Aleut language family of the American

Arctic and the Na-Dene language family of Alaska, northwestern Canada, and

the U.S. Southwest, the Americas lack examples of large-scale language

expansions widely accepted by linguists. Most linguists specializing in Native

American languages do not discern large, clear-cut groupings other than

Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene. At most, they consider the evidence sufficient

only to group other Native American languages (variously estimated to

number from 600 to 2,000) into a hundred or more language groups or

isolated languages. A controversial minority view is that of the linguist Joseph

Greenberg, who groups all Native American languages other than Eskimo-

Aleut and Na-Dene languages into a single large family, termed Amerind,

with about a dozen subfamilies.

TABLE 18.2 Language Expansions in the Old World





Inferred

Language Family or

Expansion

Ultimate Driving Force

Date

Language

6000 or 4000

Ukraine or Anatolia

Europe, C.

food production or horse-

Indo-European

B.C.

Asia, India

based pastoralism

6000 B.C.–

Elamo-Dravidian

Iran

India

food production

2000 B.C.

4000 B.C.–

Tibetan Plateau, N. China

S.

Sino-Tibetan

food production

present

China, tropical S.E. Asia

3000 B.C.–

Austronesian

S. China

Indonesia, Pacific islands food production

1000 B.C.

3000

B.C.–A.D.

Bantu

Nigeria and Cameroon

S. Africa

food production

1000

3000

Austroasiatic

S. China

tropical S.E. Asia, India

food production

B.C.–A.D. 1

1000

B.C.–A.D.

Tai-Kadai, Miao-Yao S. China

tropical S.E. Asia

food production

1500

A.D. 892

Hungarian

Ural Mts.

Hungary

horse-based pastoralism

A.D.

Altaic (Mongol,

Asian steppes

Europe, Turkey,

1000–A.D.

horse-based pastoralism

Turkish)

China, India

1300

A.D.

1480–A.D.

Russian

European Russia

Asiatic Siberia

food production

1638

Some of Greenberg’s subfamilies, and some groupings recognized by

more-traditional linguists, may turn out to be legacies of New World

population expansions driven in part by food production. These legacies may

include the Uto-Aztecan languages of Mesoamerica and the western United

States, the Oto-Manguean languages of Mesoamerica, the Natchez-

Muskogean languages of the U.S. Southeast, and the Arawak languages of the

West Indies. But the difficulties that linguists have in agreeing on groupings

of Native American languages reflect the difficulties that complex Native

American societies themselves faced in expanding within the New World.

Had any food-producing Native American peoples succeeded in spreading far

with their crops and livestock and rapidly replacing hunter-gatherers over a

large area, they would have left legacies of easily recognized language

families, as in Eurasia, and the relationships of Native American languages

would not be so controversial.

Thus, we have identified three sets of ultimate factors that tipped the

advantage to European invaders of the Americas: Eurasia’s long head start on

human settlement; its more effective food production, resulting from greater

availability of domesticable wild plants and especially of animals; and its less

formidable geographic and ecological barriers to intracontinental diffusion. A

fourth, more speculative ultimate factor is suggested by some puzzling non-

inventions in the Americas: the non-inventions of writing and wheels in

complex Andean societies, despite a time depth of those societies

approximately equal to that of complex Mesoamerican societies that did make

those inventions; and wheels’ confinement to toys and their eventual

disappearance in Mesoamerica, where they could presumably have been

useful in human-powered wheelbarrows, as in China. These puzzles remind

one of equally puzzling non-inventions, or else disappearances of inventions,

in small isolated societies, including Aboriginal Tasmania, Aboriginal

Australia, Japan, Polynesian islands, and the American Arctic. Of course, the

Americas in aggregate are anything but small: their combined area is fully 76

percent that of Eurasia, and their human population as of A.D. 1492 was

probably also a large fraction of Eurasia’s. But the Americas, as we have seen,

are broken up into “islands” of societies with tenuous connections to each

other. Perhaps the histories of Native American wheels and writing exemplify

the principles illustrated in a more extreme form by true island societies.



AFTER AT LEAST 13,000 years of separate developments, advanced American

and Eurasian societies finally collided within the last thousand years. Until

then, the sole contacts between human societies of the Old and the New

Worlds had involved the hunter-gatherers on opposite sides of the Bering

Strait.

There were no Native American attempts to colonize Eurasia, except at

the Bering Strait, where a small population of Inuit (Eskimos) derived from

Alaska established itself across the strait on the opposite Siberian coast. The

first documented Eurasian attempt to colonize the Americas was by the Norse

at Arctic and sub-Arctic latitudes (Figure 18.1). Norse from Norway

colonized Iceland in A.D. 874, then Norse from Iceland colonized Greenland

in A.D. 986, and finally Norse from Greenland repeatedly visited the

northeastern coast of North America between about A.D. 1000 and 1350. The

sole Norse archaeological site discovered in the Americas is on

Newfoundland, possibly the region described as Vinland in Norse sagas, but

these also mention landings evidently farther north, on the coasts of Labrador

and Baffin Island.

Iceland’s climate permitted herding and extremely limited agriculture, and

its area was sufficient to support a Norse-derived population that has persisted

to this day. But most of Greenland is covered by an ice cap, and even the two

most favorable coastal fjords were marginal for Norse food production. The

Greenland Norse population never exceeded a few thousand. It remained

dependent on imports of food and iron from Norway, and of timber from the

Labrador coast. Unlike Easter Island and other remote Polynesian islands,

Greenland could not support a self-sufficient food-producing society, though

it did support self-sufficient Inuit hunter-gatherer populations before, during,

and after the Norse occupation period. The populations of Iceland and

Norway themselves were too small and too poor for them to continue their

support of the Greenland Norse population.

In the Little Ice Age that began in the 13th century, the cooling of the

North Atlantic made food production in Greenland, and Norse voyaging to

Greenland from Norway or Iceland, even more marginal than before. The

Greenlanders’ last known contact with Europeans came in 1410 with an

Icelandic ship that arrived after being blown off course. When Europeans

finally began again to visit Greenland in 1577, its Norse colony no longer

existed, having evidently disappeared without any record during the 15th

century.

But the coast of North America lay effectively beyond the reach of ships

sailing directly from Norway itself, given Norse ship technology of the period

A.D. 986–1410. The Norse visits were instead launched from the Greenland

colony, separated from North America only by the 200-mile width of Davis

Strait. However, the prospect of that tiny marginal colony’s sustaining an

exploration, conquest, and settlement of the Americas was nil. Even the sole

Norse site located on Newfoundland apparently represents no more than a

winter camp occupied by a few dozen people for a few years. The Norse

sagas describe attacks on their Vinland camp by people termed Skraelings,

evidently either Newfoundland Indians or Dorset Eskimos.

The fate of the Greenland colony, medieval Europe’s most remote

outpost, remains one of archaeology’s romantic mysteries. Did the last

Greenland Norse starve to death, attempt to sail off, intermarry with Eskimos,

or succumb to disease or Eskimo arrows? While those questions of proximate

cause remain unanswered, the ultimate reasons why Norse colonization of

Greenland and America failed are abundantly clear. It failed because the

source (Norway), the targets (Greenland and Newfoundland), and the time

(A.D. 984–1410) guaranteed that Europe’s potential advantages of food

production, technology, and political organization could not be applied

effectively. At latitudes too high for much food production, the iron tools of a

few Norse, weakly supported by one of Europe’s poorer states, were no match

for the stone, bone, and wooden tools of Eskimo and Indian hunter-gatherers,

the world’s greatest masters of Arctic survival skills.



THE SECOND EURASIAN attempt to colonize the Americas succeeded because

it involved a source, target, latitude, and time that allowed Europe’s potential

advantages to be exerted effectively. Spain, unlike Norway, was rich and

populous enough to support exploration and subsidize colonies. Spanish

landfalls in the Americas were at subtropical latitudes highly suitable for food

production, based at first mostly on Native American crops but also on

Eurasian domestic animals, especially cattle and horses. Spain’s transatlantic

colonial enterprise began in 1492, at the end of a century of rapid

development of European oceangoing ship technology, which by then

incorporated advances in navigation, sails, and ship design developed by Old

World societies (Islam, India, China, and Indonesia) in the Indian Ocean. As a

result, ships built and manned in Spain itself were able to sail to the West

Indies; there was nothing equivalent to the Greenland bottleneck that had

throttled Norse colonization. Spain’s New World colonies were soon joined

by those of half a dozen other European states.

The first European settlements in the Americas, beginning with the one

founded by Columbus in 1492, were in the West Indies. The island Indians,

whose estimated population at the time of their “discovery” exceeded a

million, were rapidly exterminated on most islands by disease, dispossession,

enslavement, warfare, and casual murder. Around 1508 the first colony was

founded on the American mainland, at the Isthmus of Panama. Conquest of

the two large mainland empires, those of the Aztecs and Incas, followed in

1519–1520 and 1532–1533, respectively. In both conquests European-

transmitted epidemics (probably smallpox) made major contributions, by

killing the emperors themselves, as well as a large fraction of the population.

The overwhelming military superiority of even tiny numbers of mounted

Spaniards, together with their political skills at exploiting divisions within the

native population, did the rest. European conquest of the remaining native

states of Central America and northern South America followed during the

16th and 17th centuries.

As for the most advanced native societies of North America, those of the

U.S. Southeast and the Mississippi River system, their destruction was

accomplished largely by germs alone, introduced by early European explorers

and advancing ahead of them. As Europeans spread throughout the Americas,

many other native societies, such as the Mandans of the Great Plains and the

Sadlermiut Eskimos of the Arctic, were also wiped out by disease, without

need for military action. Populous native societies not thereby eliminated

were destroyed in the same way the Aztecs and Incas had been—by full-scale

wars, increasingly waged by professional European soldiers and their native

allies. Those soldiers were backed by the political organizations initially of

the European mother countries, then of the European colonial governments in

the New World, and finally of the independent neo-European states that

succeeded the colonial governments.

Smaller native societies were destroyed more casually, by small-scale

raids and murders carried out by private citizens. For instance, California’s

native hunter-gatherers initially numbered about 200,000 in aggregate, but

they were splintered among a hundred tribelets, none of which required a war

to be defeated. Most of those tribelets were killed off or dispossessed during

or soon after the California gold rush of 1848–52, when large numbers of

immigrants flooded the state. As one example, the Yahi tribelet of northern

California, numbering about 2,000 and lacking firearms, was destroyed in

four raids by armed white settlers: a dawn raid on a Yahi village carried out

by 17 settlers on August 6, 1865; a massacre of Yahis surprised in a ravine in

1866; a massacre of 33 Yahis tracked to a cave around 1867; and a final

massacre of about 30 Yahis trapped in another cave by 4 cowboys around

1868. Many Amazonian Indian groups were similarly eliminated by private

settlers during the rubber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The

final stages of the conquest are being played out in the present decade, as the

Yanomamo and other Amazonian Indian societies that remain independent are

succumbing to disease, being murdered by miners, or being brought under

control by missionaries or government agencies.

The end result has been the elimination of populous Native American

societies from most temperate areas suitable for European food production

and physiology. In North America those that survived as sizable intact

communities now live mostly on reservations or other lands considered

undesirable for European food production and mining, such as the Arctic and

arid areas of the U.S. West. Native Americans in many tropical areas have

been replaced by immigrants from the Old World tropics (especially black

Africans, along with Asian Indians and Javanese in Suriname).

In parts of Central America and the Andes, the Native Americans were

originally so numerous that, even after epidemics and wars, much of the

population today remains Native American or mixed. That is especially true

at high altitudes in the Andes, where genetically European women have

physiological difficulties even in reproducing, and where native Andean crops

still offer the most suitable basis for food production. However, even where

Native Americans do survive, there has been extensive replacement of their

culture and languages with those of the Old World. Of the hundreds of Native

American languages originally spoken in North America, all except 187 are

no longer spoken at all, and 149 of these last 187 are moribund in the sense

that they are being spoken only by old people and no longer learned by

children. Of the approximately 40 New World nations, all now have an Indo-

European language or creole as the official language. Even in the countries

with the largest surviving Native American populations, such as Peru,

Bolivia, Mexico, and Guatemala, a glance at photographs of political and

business leaders shows that they are disproportionately Europeans, while

several Caribbean nations have black African leaders and Guyana has had

Asian Indian leaders.

The original Native American population has been reduced by a debated

large percentage: estimates for North America range up to 95 percent. But the

total human population of the Americas is now approximately ten times what

it was in 1492, because of arrivals of Old World peoples (Europeans,

Africans, and Asians). The Americas’ population now consists of a mixture of

peoples originating from all continents except Australia. That demographic

shift of the last 500 years—the most massive shift on any continent except

Australia—has its ultimate roots in developments between about 11,000 B.C.

and A.D. 1.





CHAPTER 19

HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK

NO MATTER HOW MUCH ONE HAS READ ABOUT AFRICA beforehand, one’s first

impressions from actually being there are overwhelming. On the streets of

Windhoek, capital of newly independent Namibia, I saw black Herero people,

black Ovambos, whites, and Namas, different again from both blacks and

whites. They were no longer mere pictures in a textbook, but living humans in

front of me. Outside Windhoek, the last of the formerly widespread Kalahari

Bushmen were struggling for survival. But what most surprised me in

Namibia was a street sign: one of downtown Windhoek’s main roads was

called Goering Street!

Surely, I thought, no country could be so dominated by unrepentant Nazis

as to name a street after the notorious Nazi Reichskommissar and founder of

the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering! No, it turned out that the street instead

commemorated Hermann’s father, Heinrich Goering, founding

Reichskommissar of the former German colony of South-West Africa, which

became Namibia. But Heinrich was also a problematic figure, for his legacy

included one of the most vicious attacks by European colonists on Africans,

Germany’s 1904 war of extermination against the Hereros. Today, while

events in neighboring South Africa command more of the world’s attention,

Namibia as well is struggling to deal with its colonial past and establish a

multiracial society. Namibia illustrated for me how inseparable Africa’s past

is from its present.

Most Americans and many Europeans equate native Africans with blacks,

white Africans with recent intruders, and African racial history with the story

of European colonialism and slave trading. There is an obvious reason why

we focus on those particular facts: blacks are the sole native Africans familiar

to most Americans, because they were brought in large numbers as slaves to

the United States. But very different peoples may have occupied much of

modern black Africa until as recently as a few thousand years ago, and so-

called African blacks themselves are heterogeneous. Even before the arrival

of white colonialists, Africa already harbored not just blacks but (as we shall

see) five of the world’s six major divisions of humanity, and three of them are

confined as natives to Africa. One-quarter of the world’s languages are

spoken only in Africa. No other continent approaches this human diversity.

Africa’s diverse peoples resulted from its diverse geography and its long

prehistory. Africa is the only continent to extend from the northern to the

southern temperate zone, while also encompassing some of the world’s driest

deserts, largest tropical rain forests, and highest equatorial mountains.

Humans have lived in Africa far longer than anywhere else: our remote

ancestors originated there around 7 million years ago, and anatomically

modern Homo sapiens may have arisen there since then. The long interactions

between Africa’s many peoples generated its fascinating prehistory, including

two of the most dramatic population movements of the past 5,000 years—the

Bantu expansion and the Indonesian colonization of Madagascar. All of those

past interactions continue to have heavy consequences, because the details of

who arrived where before whom are shaping Africa today.

How did those five divisions of humanity get to be where they are now in

Africa? Why were blacks the ones who came to be so widespread, rather than

the four other groups whose existence Americans tend to forget? How can we

ever hope to wrest the answers to those questions from Africa’s preliterate

past, lacking the written evidence that teaches us about the spread of the

Roman Empire? African prehistory is a puzzle on a grand scale, still only

partly solved. As it turns out, the story has some little-appreciated but striking

parallels with the American prehistory that we encountered in the preceding

chapter.



THE FIVE MAJOR human groups to which Africa was already home by A.D.

1000 are those loosely referred to by laypeople as blacks, whites, African

Pygmies, Khoisan, and Asians. Figure 19.1 depicts their distributions, while

the portraits in Chapter 14 will remind you of their striking differences in skin

color, hair form and color, and facial features. Blacks were formerly confined

to Africa, Pygmies and Khoisan still live only there, while many more whites

and Asians live outside Africa than in it. These five groups constitute or

represent all the major divisions of humanity except for Aboriginal

Australians and their relatives.

Many readers may already be protesting: don’t stereotype people by

classifying them into arbitrary “races”! Yes, I acknowledge that each of these

so-called major groups is very diverse. To lump people as different as Zulus,

Somalis, and Ibos under the single heading of “blacks” ignores the differences

between them. We ignore equally big differences when we lump Africa’s

Egyptians and Berbers with each other and with Europe’s Swedes under the

single heading of “whites.” In addition, the divisions between blacks, whites,

and the other major groups are arbitrary, because each such group shades into

others: all human groups on Earth have mated with humans of every other

group that they encountered. Nevertheless, as we’ll see, recognizing these

major groups is still so useful for understanding history that I’ll use the group

names as shorthand, without repeating the above caveats in every sentence.

Of the five African groups, representatives of many populations of blacks

and whites are familiar to Americans and Europeans and need no physical

description. Blacks occupied the largest area of Africa even as of A.D. 1400:

the southern Sahara and most of sub-Saharan Africa (see Figure 19.1). While

American blacks of African descent originated mainly from Africa’s west

coastal zone, similar peoples traditionally occupied East Africa as well, north

to the Sudan and south to the southeast coast of South Africa itself. Whites,

ranging from Egyptians and Libyans to Moroccans, occupied Africa’s north

coastal zone and the northern Sahara. Those North Africans would hardly be

confused with blue-eyed blond-haired Swedes, but most laypeople would still

call them “whites” because they have lighter skin and straighter hair than

peoples to the south termed “blacks.” Most of Africa’s blacks and whites

depended on farming or herding, or both, for their living.

In contrast, the next two groups, the Pygmies and Khoisan, include

hunter-gatherers without crops or livestock. Like blacks, Pygmies have dark

skins and tightly curled hair. However, Pygmies differ from blacks in their

much smaller size, more reddish and less black skins, more extensive facial

and body hair, and more prominent foreheads, eyes, and teeth. Pygmies are

mostly hunter-gatherers living in groups widely scattered through the Central

African rain forest and trading with (or working for) neighboring black

farmers.

The Khoisan make up the group least familiar to Americans, who are

unlikely even to have heard of their name. Formerly distributed over much of

southern Africa, they consisted not only of small-sized hunter-gatherers,

known as San, but also of larger herders, known as Khoi. (These names are

now preferred to the better-known terms Hottentot and Bushmen.) Both the

Khoi and the San look (or looked) quite unlike African blacks: their skins are

yellowish, their hair is very tightly coiled, and the women tend to accumulate

much fat in their buttocks (termed “steatopygia”). As a distinct group, the

Khoi have been greatly reduced in numbers: European colonists shot,

displaced, or infected many of them, and most of the survivors interbred with

Europeans to produce the populations variously known in South Africa as

Coloreds or Basters. The San were similarly shot, displaced, and infected, but

a dwindling small number have preserved their distinctness in Namibian

desert areas unsuitable for agriculture, as depicted some years ago in the

widely seen film The Gods Must Be Crazy.

The northern distribution of Africa’s whites is unsurprising, because

physically similar peoples live in adjacent areas of the Near East and Europe.

Throughout recorded history, people have been moving back and forth

between Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. I’ll therefore say little more

about Africa’s whites in this chapter, since their origins aren’t mysterious.

Instead, the mystery involves blacks, Pygmies, and Khoisan, whose

distributions hint at past population upheavals. For instance, the present

fragmented distribution of the 200,000 Pygmies, scattered amid 120 million

blacks, suggests that Pygmy hunters were formerly widespread through the

equatorial forests until displaced and isolated by the arrival of black farmers.

The Khoisan area of southern Africa is surprisingly small for a people so

distinct in anatomy and language. Could the Khoisan, too, have been

originally more widespread until their more northerly populations were

somehow eliminated?

I’ve saved the biggest anomaly for last. The large island of Madagascar

lies only 250 miles off the East African coast, much closer to Africa than to

any other continent, and separated by the whole expanse of the Indian Ocean

from Asia and Australia. Madagascar’s people prove to be a mixture of two

elements. Not surprisingly, one element is African blacks, but the other

consists of people instantly recognizable, from their appearance, as tropical

Southeast Asians. Specifically, the language spoken by all the people of

Madagascar—Asians, blacks, and mixed—is Austronesian and very similar to

the Ma’anyan language spoken on the Indonesian island of Borneo, over

4,000 miles across the open Indian Ocean from Madagascar. No other people

remotely resembling Borneans live within thousands of miles of Madagascar.

These Austronesians, with their Austronesian language and modified

Austronesian culture, were already established on Madagascar by the time it

was first visited by Europeans, in 1500. This strikes me as the single most

astonishing fact of human geography for the entire world. It’s as if Columbus,

on reaching Cuba, had found it occupied by blue-eyed, blond-haired

Scandinavians speaking a language close to Swedish, even though the nearby

North American continent was inhabited by Native Americans speaking

Amerindian languages. How on earth could prehistoric people of Borneo,

presumably voyaging in boats without maps or compasses, end up in

Madagascar?



THE CASE OF Madagascar tells us that peoples’ languages, as well as their

physical appearance, can yield important clues to their origins. Just by

looking at the people of Madagascar, we’d have known that some of them

came from tropical Southeast Asia, but we wouldn’t have known from which

area of tropical Southeast Asia, and we’d never have guessed Borneo. What

else can we learn from African languages that we didn’t already know from

African faces?

The mind-boggling complexities of Africa’s 1,500 languages were

clarified by Stanford University’s great linguist Joseph Greenberg, who

recognized that all those languages fall into just five families (see Figure 19.2

for their distribution). Readers accustomed to thinking of linguistics as dull

and technical may be surprised to learn what fascinating contributions Figure

19.2 makes to our understanding of African history.

If we begin by comparing Figure 19.2 with Figure 19.1, we’ll see a rough

correspondence between language families and anatomically defined human

groups: languages of a given language family tend to be spoken by distinct

people. In particular, Afroasiatic speakers mostly prove to be people who

would be classified as whites or blacks, Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo

speakers prove to be blacks, Khoisan speakers Khoisan, and Austronesian

speakers Indonesian. This suggests that languages have tended to evolve

along with the people who speak them.

Concealed at the top of Figure 19.2 is our first surprise, a big shock for

Eurocentric believers in the superiority of so-called Western civilization.

We’re taught that Western civilization originated in the Near East, was

brought to brilliant heights in Europe by the Greeks and Romans, and

produced three of the world’s great religions: Christianity, Judaism, and

Islam. Those religions arose among peoples speaking three closely related

languages, termed Semitic languages: Aramaic (the language of Christ and

the Apostles), Hebrew, and Arabic, respectively. We instinctively associate

Semitic peoples with the Near East.

However, Greenberg determined that Semitic languages really form only

one of six or more branches of a much larger language family, Afroasiatic, all

of whose other branches (and other 222 surviving languages) are confined to

Africa. Even the Semitic subfamily itself is mainly African, 12 of its 19

surviving languages being confined to Ethiopia. This suggests that Afroasiatic

languages arose in Africa, and that only one branch of them spread to the

Near East. Hence it may have been Africa that gave birth to the languages

spoken by the authors of the Old and New Testaments and the Koran, the

moral pillars of Western civilization.

The next surprise in Figure 19.2 is a seeming detail on which I didn’t

comment when I just told you that distinct peoples tend to have distinct

languages. Among Africa’s five groups of people—blacks, whites, Pygmies,

Khoisan, and Indonesians—only the Pygmies lack any distinct languages:

each band of Pygmies speaks the same language as the neighboring group of

black farmers. However, if one compares a given language as spoken by

Pygmies with the same language as spoken by blacks, the Pygmy version

seems to contain some unique words with distinctive sounds.

Originally, of course, people as distinctive as the Pygmies, living in a

place as distinctive as the equatorial African rain forest, were surely isolated

enough to develop their own language family. However, today those

languages are gone, and we already saw from Figure 19.1 that the Pygmies’

modern distribution is highly fragmented. Thus, distributional and linguistic

clues combine to suggest that the Pygmy homeland was engulfed by invading

black farmers, whose languages the remaining Pygmies adopted, leaving only

traces of their original languages in some words and sounds. We saw

previously that much the same is true of the Malaysian Negritos (Semang)

and Philippine Negritos, who adopted Austroasiatic and Austronesian

languages, respectively, from the farmers who came to surround them.

The fragmented distribution of Nilo-Saharan languages in Figure 19.2

similarly implies that many speakers of those languages have been engulfed

by speakers of Afroasiatic or Niger-Congo languages. But the distribution of

Khoisan languages testifies to an even more dramatic engulfing. Those

languages are famously unique in the whole world in their use of clicks as

consonants. (If you’ve been puzzled by the name !Kung Bushman, the

exclamation mark is not an expression of premature astonishment; it’s just

how linguists denote a click.) All existing Khoisan languages are confined to

southern Africa, with two exceptions. Those exceptions are two very

distinctive, click-laden Khoisan languages named Hadza and Sandawe,

stranded in Tanzania more than 1,000 miles from the nearest Khoisan

languages of southern Africa.

In addition, Xhosa and a few other Niger-Congo languages of southern

Africa are full of clicks. Even more unexpectedly, clicks or Khoisan words

also appear in two Afroasiatic languages spoken by blacks in Kenya, stranded

still farther from present Khoisan peoples than are the Hadza and Sandawe

peoples of Tanzania. All this suggests that Khoisan languages and peoples

formerly extended far north of their present southern African distribution,

until they too, like the Pygmies, were engulfed by the blacks, leaving only

linguistic legacies of their former presence. That’s a unique contribution of

the linguistic evidence, something we could hardly have guessed just from

physical studies of living people.

I have saved the most remarkable contribution of linguistics for last. If

you look again at Figure 19.2, you’ll see that the Niger-Congo language

family is distributed all over West Africa and most of subequatorial Africa,

apparently giving no clue as to where within that enormous range the family

originated. However, Greenberg recognized that all Niger-Congo languages of

subequatorial Africa belong to a single language subgroup termed Bantu. That

subgroup accounts for nearly half of the 1,032 Niger-Congo languages and

for more than half (nearly 200 million) of the Niger-Congo speakers. But all

those 500 Bantu languages are so similar to each other that they have been

facetiously described as 500 dialects of a single language.

Collectively, the Bantu languages constitute only a single, low-order

subfamily of the Niger-Congo language family. Most of the 176 other

subfamilies are crammed into West Africa, a small fraction of the entire

Niger-Congo range. In particular, the most distinctive Bantu languages, and

the non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages most closely related to Bantu

languages, are packed into a tiny area of Cameroon and adjacent eastern

Nigeria.

Evidently, the Niger-Congo language family arose in West Africa; the

Bantu branch of it arose at the east end of that range, in Cameroon and

Nigeria; and the Bantu then spread out of that homeland over most of

subequatorial Africa. That spread must have begun long ago enough that the

ancestral Bantu language had time to split into 500 daughter languages, but

nevertheless recently enough that all those daughter languages are still very

similar to each other. Since all other Niger-Congo speakers, as well as the

Bantu, are blacks, we couldn’t have inferred who migrated in which direction

just from the evidence of physical anthropology.

To make this type of linguistic reasoning clear, let me give you a familiar

example: the geographic origins of the English language. Today, by far the

largest number of people whose first language is English live in North

America, with others scattered over the globe in Britain, Australia, and other

countries. Each of those countries has its own dialects of English. If we knew

nothing else about language distributions and history, we might have guessed

that the English language arose in North America and was carried overseas to

Britain and Australia by colonists.

But all those English dialects form only one low-order subgroup of the

Germanic language family. All the other subgroups—the various

Scandinavian, German, and Dutch languages—are crammed into

northwestern Europe. In particular, Frisian, the other Germanic language most

closely related to English, is confined to a tiny coastal area of Holland and

western Germany. Hence a linguist would immediately deduce correctly that

the English language arose in coastal northwestern Europe and spread around

the world from there. In fact, we know from recorded history that English

really was carried from there to England by invading Anglo-Saxons in the

fifth and sixth centuries A.D.

Essentially the same line of reasoning tells us that the nearly 200 million

Bantu people, now flung over much of the map of Africa, arose from

Cameroon and Nigeria. Along with the North African origins of Semites and

the origins of Madagascar’s Asians, that’s another conclusion that we couldn’t

have reached without linguistic evidence.

We had already deduced, from Khoisan language distributions and the

lack of distinct Pygmy languages, that Pygmies and Khoisan peoples had

formerly ranged more widely, until they were engulfed by blacks. (I’m using

“engulfing” as a neutral all-embracing word, regardless of whether the

process involved conquest, expulsion, interbreeding, killing, or epidemics.)

We’ve now seen, from Niger-Congo language distributions, that the blacks

who did the engulfing were the Bantu. The physical and linguistic evidence

considered so far has let us infer these prehistoric engulfings, but it still hasn’t

solved their mysteries for us. Only the further evidence that I’ll now present

can help us answer two more questions: What advantages enabled the Bantu

to displace the Pygmies and Khoisan? When did the Bantu reach the former

Pygmy and Khoisan homelands?



TO APPROACH THE question about the Bantu’s advantages, let’s examine the

remaining type of evidence from the living present—the evidence derived

from domesticated plants and animals. As we saw in previous chapters, that

evidence is important because food production led to high population

densities, germs, technology, political organization, and other ingredients of

power. Peoples who, by accident of their geographic location, inherited or

developed food production thereby became able to engulf geographically less

endowed people.

When Europeans reached sub-Saharan Africa in the 1400s, Africans were

growing five sets of crops (Figure 19.3), each of them laden with significance

for African history. The first set was grown only in North Africa, extending to

the highlands of Ethiopia. North Africa enjoys a Mediterranean climate,

characterized by rainfall concentrated in the winter months. (Southern

California also experiences a Mediterranean climate, explaining why my

basement and that of millions of other southern Californians often gets

flooded in the winter but infallibly dries out in the summer.) The Fertile

Crescent, where agriculture arose, enjoys that same Mediterranean pattern of

winter rains.

Hence North Africa’s original crops all prove to be ones adapted to

germinating and growing with winter rains, and known from archaeological

evidence to have been first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent beginning

around 10,000 years ago. Those Fertile Crescent crops spread into

climatically similar adjacent areas of North Africa and laid the foundations

for the rise of ancient Egyptian civilization. They include such familiar crops

as wheat, barley, peas, beans, and grapes. These are familiar to us precisely

because they also spread into climatically similar adjacent areas of Europe,

thence to America and Australia, and became some of the staple crops of

temperate-zone agriculture around the world.

As one travels south in Africa across the Saharan desert and reencounters

rain in the Sahel zone just south of the desert, one notices that Sahel rains fall

in the summer rather than in the winter. Even if Fertile Crescent crops adapted

to winter rain could somehow have crossed the Sahara, they would have been

difficult to grow in the summer-rain Sahel zone. Instead, we find two sets of

African crops whose wild ancestors occur just south of the Sahara, and which

are adapted to summer rains and less seasonal variation in day length. One set

consists of plants whose ancestors are widely distributed from west to east

across the Sahel zone and were probably domesticated there. They include,

notably, sorghum and pearl millet, which became the staple cereals of much

of sub-Saharan Africa. Sorghum proved so valuable that it is now grown in

areas with hot, dry climates on all the continents, including in the United

States.

The other set consists of plants whose wild ancestors occur in Ethiopia

and were probably domesticated there in the highlands. Most are still grown

mainly just in Ethiopia and remain unknown to Americans—including

Ethiopia’s narcotic chat, its banana-like ensete, its oily noog, its finger millet

used to brew its national beer, and its tiny-seeded cereal called teff, used to

make its national bread. But every reader addicted to coffee can thank ancient

Ethiopian farmers for domesticating the coffee plant. It remained confined to

Ethiopia until it caught on in Arabia and then around the world, to sustain

today the economies of countries as far-flung as Brazil and Papua New

Guinea.

The next-to-last set of African crops arose from wild ancestors in the wet

climate of West Africa. Some, including African rice, have remained virtually

confined there; others, such as African yams, spread throughout other areas of

sub-Saharan Africa; and two, the oil palm and kola nut, reached other

continents. West Africans were chewing the caffeine-containing nuts of the

latter as a narcotic, long before the Coca-Cola Company enticed first

Americans and then the world to drink a beverage originally laced with its

extracts.

The last batch of African crops is also adapted to wet climates but

provides the biggest surprise of Figure 19.3. Bananas, Asian yams, and taro

were already widespread in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1400s, and Asian rice

was established on the coast of East Africa. But those crops originated in

tropical Southeast Asia. Their presence in Africa would astonish us, if the

presence of Indonesian people on Madagascar had not already alerted us to

Africa’s prehistoric Asian connection. Did Austronesians sailing from Borneo

land on the East African coast, bestow their crops on grateful African farmers,

pick up African fishermen, and sail off into the sunrise to colonize

Madagascar, leaving no other Austronesian traces in Africa?

The remaining surprise is that all of Africa’s indigenous crops—those of

the Sahel, Ethiopia, and West Africa—originated north of the equator. Not a

single African crop originated south of it. This already gives us a hint why

speakers of Niger-Congo languages, stemming from north of the equator,

were able to displace Africa’s equatorial Pygmies and subequatorial Khoisan

people. The failure of the Khoisan and Pygmies to develop agriculture was

due not to any inadequacy of theirs as farmers but merely to the accident that

southern Africa’s wild plants were mostly unsuitable for domestication.

Neither Bantu nor white farmers, heirs to thousands of years of farming

experience, were subsequently able to develop southern African native plants

into food crops.

Africa’s domesticated animal species can be summarized much more

quickly than its plants, because there are so few of them. The sole animal that

we know for sure was domesticated in Africa, because its wild ancestor is

confined there, is a turkeylike bird called the guinea fowl. Wild ancestors of

domestic cattle, donkeys, pigs, dogs, and house cats were native to North

Africa but also to Southwest Asia, so we can’t yet be certain where they were

first domesticated, although the earliest dates currently known for domestic

donkeys and house cats favor Egypt. Recent evidence suggests that cattle may

have been domesticated independently in North Africa, Southwest Asia, and

India, and that all three of those stocks have contributed to modern African

cattle breeds. Otherwise, all the remainder of Africa’s domestic mammals

must have been domesticated elsewhere and introduced as domesticates to

Africa, because their wild ancestors occur only in Eurasia. Africa’s sheep and

goats were domesticated in Southwest Asia, its chickens in Southeast Asia, its

horses in southern Russia, and its camels probably in Arabia.

The most unexpected feature of this list of African domestic animals is

again a negative one. The list includes not a single one of the big wild

mammal species for which Africa is famous and which it possesses in such

abundance—its zebras and wildebeests, its rhinos and hippos, its giraffes and

buffalo. As we’ll see, that reality was as fraught with consequences for

African history as was the absence of native domestic plants in subequatorial

Africa.

This quick tour through Africa’s food staples suffices to show that some

of them traveled a long way from their points of origin, both inside and

outside Africa. In Africa as elsewhere in the world, some peoples were much

“luckier” than others, in the suites of domesticable wild plant and animal

species that they inherited from their environment. By analogy with the

engulfing of Aboriginal Australian hunter-gatherers by British colonists fed

on wheat and cattle, we have to suspect that some of the “lucky” Africans

parlayed their advantage into engulfing their African neighbors. Now, at last,

let’s turn to the archaeological record to find out who engulfed whom when.



WHAT CAN ARCHAEOLOGY can tell us about actual dates and places for the

rise of farming and herding in Africa? Any reader steeped in the history of

Western civilization would be forgiven for assuming that African food

production began in ancient Egypt’s Nile Valley, land of the pharaohs and

pyramids. After all, Egypt by 3000 B.C. was undoubtedly the site of Africa’s

most complex society, and one of the world’s earliest centers of writing. In

fact, though, possibly the earliest archaeological evidence for food production

in Africa comes instead from the Sahara.

Today, of course, much of the Sahara is so dry that it cannot support even

grass. But between about 9000 and 4000 B.C. the Sahara was more humid,

held numerous lakes, and teemed with game. In that period, Saharans began

to tend cattle and make pottery, then to keep sheep and goats, and they may

also have been starting to domesticate sorghum and millet. Saharan

pastoralism precedes the earliest known date (5200 B.C.) for the arrival of food

production in Egypt, in the form of a full package of Southwest Asian winter

crops and livestock. Food production also arose in West Africa and Ethiopia,

and by around 2500 B.C. cattle herders had already crossed the modern border

from Ethiopia into northern Kenya.

While those conclusions rest on archaeological evidence, there is also an

independent method for dating the arrival of domestic plants and animals: by

comparing the words for them in modern languages. Comparisons of terms

for plants in southern Nigerian languages of the Niger-Congo family show

that the words fall into three groups. First are cases in which the word for a

particular crop is very similar in all those southern Nigerian languages. Those

crops prove to be ones like West African yams, oil palm, and kola nut—plants

that were already believed on botanical and other evidence to be native to

West Africa and first domesticated there. Since those are the oldest West

African crops, all modern southern Nigerian languages inherited the same

original set of words for them.

Next come crops whose names are consistent only among the languages

falling within a small subgroup of those southern Nigerian languages. Those

crops turn out to be ones believed to be of Indonesian origin, such as bananas

and Asian yams. Evidently, those crops reached southern Nigeria only after

languages began to break up into subgroups, so each subgroup coined or

received different names for the new plants, which the modern languages of

only that particular subgroup inherited. Last come crop names that aren’t

consistent within language groups at all, but instead follow trade routes.

These prove to be New World crops like corn and peanuts, which we know

were introduced into Africa after the beginnings of transatlantic ship traffic

(A.D. 1492) and diffused since then along trade routes, often bearing their

Portuguese or other foreign names.

Thus, even if we possessed no botanical or archaeological evidence

whatsoever, we would still be able to deduce from the linguistic evidence

alone that native West African crops were domesticated first, that Indonesian

crops arrived next, and that finally the European introductions came in. The

UCLA historian Christopher Ehret has applied this linguistic approach to

determining the sequence in which domestic plants and animals became

utilized by the people of each African language family. By a method termed

glottochronology, based on calculations of how rapidly words tend to change

over historical time, comparative linguistics can even yield estimated dates

for domestications or crop arrivals.

Putting together direct archaeological evidence of crops with the more

indirect linguistic evidence, we deduce that the people who were

domesticating sorghum and millet in the Sahara thousands of years ago spoke

languages ancestral to modern Nilo-Saharan languages. Similarly, the people

who first domesticated wet-country crops of West Africa spoke languages

ancestral to the modern Niger-Congo languages. Finally, speakers of ancestral

Afroasiatic languages may have been involved in domesticating the crops

native to Ethiopia, and they certainly introduced Fertile Crescent crops to

North Africa.

Thus, the evidence derived from plant names in modern African

languages permits us to glimpse the existence of three languages being

spoken in Africa thousands of years ago: ancestral Nilo-Saharan, ancestral

Niger-Congo, and ancestral Afroasiatic. In addition, we can glimpse the

existence of ancestral Khoisan from other linguistic evidence, though not that

of crop names (because ancestral Khoisan people domesticated no crops).

Now surely, since Africa harbors 1,500 languages today, it is big enough to

have harbored more than four ancestral languages thousands of years ago. But

all those other languages must have disappeared—either because the people

speaking them survived but lost their original language, like the Pygmies, or

because the people themselves disappeared.

The survival of modern Africa’s four native language families (that is, the

four other than the recently arrived Austronesian language of Madagascar)

isn’t due to the intrinsic superiority of those languages as vehicles for

communication. Instead, it must be attributed to a historical accident:

ancestral speakers of Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Afroasiatic happened

to be living at the right place and time to acquire domestic plants and animals,

which let them multiply and either replace other peoples or impose their

language. The few modern Khoisan speakers survived mainly because of their

isolation in areas of southern Africa unsuitable for Bantu farming.



BEFORE WE TRACE Khoisan survival beyond the Bantu tide, let’s see what

archaeology tells us about Africa’s other great prehistoric population

movement—the Austronesian colonization of Madagascar. Archaeologists

exploring Madagascar have now proved that Austronesians had arrived at

least by A.D. 800, possibly as early as A.D. 300. There the Austronesians

encountered (and proceeded to exterminate) a strange world of living animals

as distinctive as if they had come from another planet, because those animals

had evolved on Madagascar during its long isolation. They included giant

elephant birds, primitive primates called lemurs as big as gorillas, and pygmy

hippos. Archaeological excavations of the earliest human settlements on

Madagascar yield remains of iron tools, livestock, and crops, so the colonists

were not just a small canoeload of fishermen blown off course; they formed a

full-fledged expedition. How did that prehistoric 4,000-mile expedition come

about?

One hint is in an ancient book of sailors’ directions, the Periplus of the

Erythrean Sea, written by an anonymous merchant living in Egypt around A.D.

100. The merchant describes an already thriving sea trade connecting India

and Egypt with the coast of East Africa. With the spread of Islam after A.D.

800, Indian Ocean trade becomes well documented archaeologically by

copious quantities of Mideastern (and occasionally even Chinese!) products

such as pottery, glass, and porcelain in East African coastal settlements. The

traders waited for favorable winds to let them cross the Indian Ocean directly

between East Africa and India. When the Portuguese navigator Vasco da

Gama became the first European to sail around the southern cape of Africa

and reached the Kenya coast in 1498, he encountered Swahili trading

settlements and picked up a pilot who guided him on that direct route to India.

But there was an equally vigorous sea trade from India eastward, between

India and Indonesia. Perhaps the Austronesian colonists of Madagascar

reached India from Indonesia by that eastern trade route and then fell in with

the westward trade route to East Africa, where they joined with Africans and

discovered Madagascar. That union of Austronesians and East Africans lives

on today in Madagascar’s basically Austronesian language, which contains

loan words from coastal Kenyan Bantu languages. But there are no

corresponding Austronesian loan words in Kenyan languages, and other

traces of Austronesians are very thin on the ground in East Africa: mainly just

Africa’s possible legacy of Indonesian musical instruments (xylophones and

zithers) and, of course, the Austronesian crops that became so important in

African agriculture. Hence one wonders whether Austronesians, instead of

taking the easier route to Madagascar via India and East Africa, somehow

(incredibly) sailed straight across the Indian Ocean, discovered Madagascar,

and only later got plugged into East African trade routes. Thus, some mystery

remains about Africa’s most surprising fact of human geography.



WHAT CAN ARCHAEOLOGY tell us about the other great population movement

in recent African prehistory—the Bantu expansion? We saw from the twin

evidence of modern peoples and their languages that sub-Saharan Africa was

not always a black continent, as we think of it today. Instead, this evidence

suggested that Pygmies had once been widespread in the rain forest of Central

Africa, while Khoisan peoples had been widespread in drier parts of

subequatorial Africa. Can archaeology test those assumptions?

In the case of the Pygmies, the answer is “not yet,” merely because

archaeologists have yet to discover ancient human skeletons from the Central

African forests. For the Khoisan, the answer is “yes.” In Zambia, to the north

of the modern Khoisan range, archaeologists have found skulls of people

possibly resembling the modern Khoisan, as well as stone tools resembling

those that Khoisan peoples were still making in southern Africa at the time

Europeans arrived.

As for how the Bantu came to replace those northern Khoisan,

archaeological and linguistic evidence suggest that the expansion of ancestral

Bantu farmers from West Africa’s inland savanna south into its wetter coastal

forest may have begun as early as 3000 B.C. (Figure 19.4). Words still

widespread in all Bantu languages show that, already then, the Bantu had

cattle and wet-climate crops such as yams, but that they lacked metal and

were still engaged in much fishing, hunting, and gathering. They even lost

their cattle to disease borne by tsetse flies in the forest. As they spread into

the Congo Basin’s equatorial forest zone, cleared gardens, and increased in

numbers, they began to engulf the Pygmy hunter-gatherers and compress

them into the forest itself.

By soon after 1000 B.C. the Bantu had emerged from the eastern side of

the forest into the more open country of East Africa’s Rift Valley and Great

Lakes. Here they encountered a melting pot of Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan

farmers and herders growing millet and sorghum and raising livestock in drier

areas, along with Khoisan hunter-gatherers. Thanks to their wet-climate crops

inherited from their West African homeland, the Bantu were able to farm in

wet areas of East Africa unsuitable for all those previous occupants. By the

last centuries B.C. the advancing Bantu had reached the East African coast.

In East Africa the Bantu began to acquire millet and sorghum (along with

the Nilo-Saharan names for those crops), and to reacquire cattle, from their

Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic neighbors. They also acquired iron, which had

just begun to be smelted in Africa’s Sahel zone. The origins of ironworking in

sub-Saharan Africa soon after 1000 B.C. are still unclear. That early date is

suspiciously close to dates for the arrival of Near Eastern ironworking

techniques in Carthage, on the North African coast. Hence historians often

assume that knowledge of metallurgy reached sub-Saharan Africa from the

north. On the other hand, copper smelting had been going on in the West

African Sahara and Sahel since at least 2000 B.C. That could have been the

precursor to an independent African discovery of iron metallurgy.

Strengthening that hypothesis, the iron-smelting techniques of smiths in sub-

Saharan Africa were so different from those of the Mediterranean as to

suggest independent development: African smiths discovered how to produce

high temperatures in their village furnaces and manufacture steel over 2,000

years before the Bessemer furnaces of 19th-century Europe and America.

With the addition of iron tools to their wet-climate crops, the Bantu had

finally put together a military-industrial package that was unstoppable in the

subequatorial Africa of the time. In East Africa they still had to compete

against numerous Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic Iron Age farmers. But to the

south lay 2,000 miles of country thinly occupied by Khoisan hunter-gatherers,

lacking iron and crops. Within a few centuries, in one of the swiftest

colonizing advances of recent prehistory, Bantu farmers had swept all the way

to Natal, on the east coast of what is now South Africa.

It’s easy to oversimplify what was undoubtedly a rapid and dramatic

expansion, and to picture all Khoisan in the way being trampled by onrushing

Bantu hordes. In reality, things were more complicated. Khoisan peoples of

southern Africa had already acquired sheep and cattle a few centuries ahead

of the Bantu advance. The first Bantu pioneers probably were few in number,

selected wet-forest areas suitable for their yam agriculture, and leapfrogged

over drier areas, which they left to Khoisan herders and hunter-gatherers.

Trading and marriage relationships were undoubtedly established between

those Khoisan and the Bantu farmers, each occupying different adjacent

habitats, just as Pygmy hunter-gatherers and Bantu farmers still do today in

equatorial Africa. Only gradually, as the Bantu multiplied and incorporated

cattle and dry-climate cereals into their economy, did they fill in the

leapfrogged areas. But the eventual result was still the same: Bantu farmers

occupying most of the former Khoisan realm; the legacy of those former

Khoisan inhabitants reduced to clicks in scattered non-Khoisan languages, as

well as buried skulls and stone tools waiting for archaeologists to discover;

and the Khoisan-like appearance of some southern African Bantu peoples.

What actually happened to all those vanished Khoisan populations? We

don’t know. All we can say for sure is that, in places where Khoisan peoples

had lived for perhaps tens of thousands of years, there are now Bantu. We can

only venture a guess, by analogy with witnessed events in modern times when

steel-toting white farmers collided with stone tool–using hunter-gatherers of

Aboriginal Australia and Indian California. There, we know that hunter-

gatherers were rapidly eliminated in a combination of ways: they were driven

out, men were killed or enslaved, women were appropriated as wives, and

both sexes became infected with epidemics of the farmers’ diseases. An

example of such a disease in Africa is malaria, which is borne by mosquitoes

that breed around farmers’ villages, and to which the invading Bantu had

already developed genetic resistance but Khoisan hunter-gatherers probably

had not.

However, Figure 19.1, of recent African human distributions, reminds us

that the Bantu did not overrun all the Khoisan, who did survive in southern

African areas unsuitable for Bantu agriculture. The southernmost Bantu

people, the Xhosa, stopped at the Fish River on South Africa’s south coast,

500 miles east of Cape Town. It’s not that the Cape of Good Hope itself is too

dry for agriculture: it is, after all, the breadbasket of modern South Africa.

Instead, the Cape has a Mediterranean climate of winter rains, in which the

Bantu summer-rain crops do not grow. By 1652, the year the Dutch arrived at

Cape Town with their winter-rain crops of Near Eastern origin, the Xhosa had

still not spread beyond the Fish River.

That seeming detail of plant geography had enormous implications for

politics today. One consequence was that, once South African whites had

quickly killed or infected or driven off the Cape’s Khoisan population, whites

could claim correctly that they had occupied the Cape before the Bantu and

thus had prior rights to it. That claim needn’t be taken seriously, since the

prior rights of the Cape Khoisan didn’t inhibit whites from dispossessing

them. The much heavier consequence was that the Dutch settlers in 1652 had

to contend only with a sparse population of Khoisan herders, not with a dense

population of steel-equipped Bantu farmers. When whites finally spread east

to encounter the Xhosa at the Fish River in 1702, a period of desperate

fighting began. Even though Europeans by then could supply troops from

their secure base at the Cape, it took nine wars and 175 years for their armies,

advancing at an average rate of less than one mile per year, to subdue the

Xhosa. How could whites have succeeded in establishing themselves at the

Cape at all, if those first few arriving Dutch ships had faced such fierce

resistance?

Thus, the problems of modern South Africa stem at least in part from a

geographic accident. The homeland of the Cape Khoisan happened to contain

few wild plants suitable for domestication; the Bantu happened to inherit

summer-rain crops from their ancestors of 5,000 years ago; and Europeans

happened to inherit winter-rain crops from their ancestors of nearly 10,000

years ago. Just as the sign “Goering Street” in the capital of newly

independent Namibia reminded me, Africa’s past has stamped itself deeply on

Africa’s present.



THAT’S HOW THE Bantu were able to engulf the Khoisan, instead of vice

versa. Now let’s turn to the remaining question in our puzzle of African

prehistory: why Europeans were the ones to colonize sub-Saharan Africa.

That it was not the other way around is especially surprising, because Africa

was the sole cradle of human evolution for millions of years, as well as

perhaps the homeland of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. To these

advantages of Africa’s enormous head start were added those of highly

diverse climates and habitats and of the world’s highest human diversity. An

extraterrestrial visiting Earth 10,000 years ago might have been forgiven for

predicting that Europe would end up as a set of vassal states of a sub-Saharan

African empire.

The proximate reasons behind the outcome of Africa’s collision with

Europe are clear. Just as in their encounter with Native Americans, Europeans

entering Africa enjoyed the triple advantage of guns and other technology,

widespread literacy, and the political organization necessary to sustain

expensive programs of exploration and conquest. Those advantages

manifested themselves almost as soon as the collisions started: barely four

years after Vasco da Gama first reached the East African coast, in 1498, he

returned with a fleet bristling with cannons to compel the surrender of East

Africa’s most important port, Kilwa, which controlled the Zimbabwe gold

trade. But why did Europeans develop those three advantages before sub-

Saharan Africans could?

As we have discussed, all three arose historically from the development of

food production. But food production was delayed in sub-Saharan Africa

(compared with Eurasia) by Africa’s paucity of domesticable native animal

and plant species, its much smaller area suitable for indigenous food

production, and its north–south axis, which retarded the spread of food

production and inventions. Let’s examine how those factors operated.

First, as regards domestic animals, we’ve already seen that those of sub-

Saharan Africa came from Eurasia, with the possible exception of a few from

North Africa. As a result, domestic animals did not reach sub-Saharan Africa

until thousands of years after they began to be utilized by emerging Eurasian

civilizations. That’s initially surprising, because we think of Africa as the

continent of big wild mammals. But we saw in Chapter 9 that a wild animal,

to be domesticated, must be sufficiently docile, submissive to humans, cheap

to feed, and immune to diseases and must grow rapidly and breed well in

captivity. Eurasia’s native cows, sheep, goats, horses, and pigs were among

the world’s few large wild animal species to pass all those tests. Their African

equivalents—such as the African buffalo, zebra, bush pig, rhino, and

hippopotamus—have never been domesticated, not even in modern times.

It’s true, of course, that some large African animals have occasionally

been tamed. Hannibal enlisted tamed African elephants in his unsuccessful

war against Rome, and ancient Egyptians may have tamed giraffes and other

species. But none of those tamed animals was actually domesticated—that is,

selectively bred in captivity and genetically modified so as to become more

useful to humans. Had Africa’s rhinos and hippos been domesticated and

ridden, they would not only have fed armies but also have provided an

unstoppable cavalry to cut through the ranks of European horsemen. Rhino-

mounted Bantu shock troops could have overthrown the Roman Empire. It

never happened.

A second factor is a corresponding, though less extreme, disparity

between sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia in domesticable plants. The Sahel,

Ethiopia, and West Africa did yield indigenous crops, but many fewer

varieties than grew in Eurasia. Because of the limited variety of wild starting

material suitable for plant domestication, even Africa’s earliest agriculture

may have begun several thousand years later than that of the Fertile Crescent.

Thus, as far as plant and animal domestication was concerned, the head

start and high diversity lay with Eurasia, not with Africa. A third factor is that

Africa’s area is only about half that of Eurasia. Furthermore, only about one-

third of its area falls within the sub-Saharan zone north of the equator that

was occupied by farmers and herders before 1000 B.C. Today, the total

population of Africa is less than 700 million, compared with 4 billion for

Eurasia. But, all other things being equal, more land and more people mean

more competing societies and inventions, hence a faster pace of development.

The remaining factor behind Africa’s slower rate of post-Pleistocene

development compared with Eurasia’s is the different orientation of the main

axes of these continents. Like that of the Americas, Africa’s major axis is

north–south, whereas Eurasia’s is east–west (Figure 10.1). As one moves

along a north–south axis, one traverses zones differing greatly in climate,

habitat, rainfall, day length, and diseases of crops and livestock. Hence, crops

and animals domesticated or acquired in one part of Africa had great

difficulty in moving to other parts. In contrast, crops and animals moved

easily between Eurasian societies thousands of miles apart but at the same

latitude and sharing similar climates and day lengths.

The slow passage or complete halt of crops and livestock along Africa’s

north–south axis had important consequences. For example, the

Mediterranean crops that became Egypt’s staples require winter rains and

seasonal variation in day length for their germination. Those crops were

unable to spread south of the Sudan, beyond which they encountered summer

rains and little or no seasonal variation in daylight. Egypt’s wheat and barley

never reached the Mediterranean climate at the Cape of Good Hope until

European colonists brought them in 1652, and the Khoisan never developed

agriculture. Similarly, the Sahel crops adapted to summer rain and to little or

no seasonal variation in day length were brought by the Bantu into southern

Africa but could not grow at the Cape itself, thereby halting the advance of

Bantu agriculture. Bananas and other tropical Asian crops for which Africa’s

climate is eminently suitable, and which today are among the most productive

staples of tropical African agriculture, were unable to reach Africa by land

routes. They apparently did not arrive until the first millennium A.D., long

after their domestication in Asia, because they had to wait for large-scale boat

traffic across the Indian Ocean.

Africa’s north–south axis also seriously impeded the spread of livestock.

Equatorial Africa’s tsetse flies, carrying trypanosomes to which native

African wild mammals are resistant, proved devastating to introduced

Eurasian and North African species of livestock. The cows that the Bantu

acquired from the tsetse-free Sahel zone failed to survive the Bantu expansion

through the equatorial forest. Although horses had already reached Egypt

around 1800 B.C. and transformed North African warfare soon thereafter, they

did not cross the Sahara to drive the rise of cavalry-mounted West African

kingdoms until the first millennium A.D., and they never spread south through

the tsetse fly zone. While cattle, sheep, and goats had already reached the

northern edge of the Serengeti in the third millennium B.C., it took more than

2,000 years beyond that for livestock to cross the Serengeti and reach

southern Africa.

Similarly slow in spreading down Africa’s north–south axis was human

technology. Pottery, recorded in the Sudan and Sahara around 8000 B.C., did

not reach the Cape until around A.D. 1. Although writing developed in Egypt

by 3000 B.C. and spread in an alphabetized form to the Nubian kingdom of

Meroe, and although alphabetic writing reached Ethiopia (possibly from

Arabia), writing did not arise independently in the rest of Africa, where it was

instead brought in from the outside by Arabs and Europeans.

In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with

differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white

racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and

biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and

suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical

trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real

estate.





EPILOGUE

THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS A

SCIENCE

YALI’S QUESTION WENT TO THE HEART OF THE CURRENT human condition, and

of post-Pleistocene human history. Now that we have completed this brief

tour over the continents, how shall we answer Yali?

I would say to Yali: the striking differences between the long-term

histories of peoples of the different continents have been due not to innate

differences in the peoples themselves but to differences in their environments.

I expect that if the populations of Aboriginal Australia and Eurasia could have

been interchanged during the Late Pleistocene, the original Aboriginal

Australians would now be the ones occupying most of the Americas and

Australia, as well as Eurasia, while the original Aboriginal Eurasians would

be the ones now reduced to downtrodden population fragments in Australia.

One might at first be inclined to dismiss this assertion as meaningless,

because the experiment is imaginary and my claim about its outcome cannot

be verified. But historians are nevertheless able to evaluate related hypotheses

by retrospective tests. For instance, one can examine what did happen when

European farmers were transplanted to Greenland or the U.S. Great Plains,

and when farmers stemming ultimately from China emigrated to the Chatham

Islands, the rain forests of Borneo, or the volcanic soils of Java or Hawaii.

These tests confirm that the same ancestral peoples either ended up extinct, or

returned to living as hunter-gatherers, or went on to build complex states,

depending on their environments. Similarly, Aboriginal Australian hunter-

gatherers, variously transplanted to Flinders Island, Tasmania, or southeastern

Australia, ended up extinct, or as hunter-gatherers with the modern world’s

simplest technology, or as canal builders intensively managing a productive

fishery, depending on their environments.

Of course, the continents differ in innumerable environmental features

affecting trajectories of human societies. But a mere laundry list of every

possible difference does not constitute an answer to Yali’s question. Just four

sets of differences appear to me to be the most important ones.

The first set consists of continental differences in the wild plant and

animal species available as starting materials for domestication. That’s

because food production was critical for the accumulation of food surpluses

that could feed non-food-producing specialists, and for the buildup of large

populations enjoying a military advantage through mere numbers even before

they had developed any technological or political advantage. For both of

those reasons, all developments of economically complex, socially stratified,

politically centralized societies beyond the level of small nascent chiefdoms

were based on food production.

But most wild animal and plant species have proved unsuitable for

domestication: food production has been based on relatively few species of

livestock and crops. It turns out that the number of wild candidate species for

domestication varied greatly among the continents, because of differences in

continental areas and also (in the case of big mammals) in Late Pleistocene

extinctions. These extinctions were much more severe in Australia and the

Americas than in Eurasia or Africa. As a result, Africa ended up biologically

somewhat less well endowed than the much larger Eurasia, the Americas still

less so, and Australia even less so, as did Yali’s New Guinea (with one-

seventieth of Eurasia’s area and with all of its original big mammals extinct in

the Late Pleistocene).

On each continent, animal and plant domestication was concentrated in a

few especially favorable homelands accounting for only a small fraction of

the continent’s total area. In the case of technological innovations and

political institutions as well, most societies acquire much more from other

societies than they invent themselves. Thus, diffusion and migration within a

continent contribute importantly to the development of its societies, which

tend in the long run to share each other’s developments (insofar as

environments permit) because of the processes illustrated in such simple form

by Maori New Zealand’s Musket Wars. That is, societies initially lacking an

advantage either acquire it from societies possessing it or (if they fail to do

so) are replaced by those other societies.

Hence a second set of factors consists of those affecting rates of diffusion

and migration, which differed greatly among continents. They were most

rapid in Eurasia, because of its east–west major axis and its relatively modest

ecological and geographical barriers. The reasoning is straightforward for

movements of crops and livestock, which depend strongly on climate and

hence on latitude. But similar reasoning also applies to the diffusion of

technological innovations, insofar as they are best suited without modification

to specific environments. Diffusion was slower in Africa and especially in the

Americas, because of those continents’ east–west major axes and geographic

and ecological barriers. It was also difficult in traditional New Guinea, where

rugged terrain and the long backbone of high mountains prevented any

significant progress toward political and linguistic unification.

Related to these factors affecting diffusion within continents is a third set

of factors influencing diffusion between continents, which may also help

build up a local pool of domesticates and technology. Ease of intercontinental

diffusion has varied, because some continents are more isolated than others.

Within the last 6,000 years it has been easiest from Eurasia to sub-Saharan

Africa, supplying most of Africa’s species of livestock. But interhemispheric

diffusion made no contribution to Native America’s complex societies,

isolated from Eurasia at low latitudes by broad oceans, and at high latitudes

by geography and by a climate suitable just for hunting-gathering. To

Aboriginal Australia, isolated from Eurasia by the water barriers of the

Indonesian Archipelago, Eurasia’s sole proven contribution was the dingo.

The fourth and last set of factors consists of continental differences in

area or total population size. A larger area or population means more potential

inventors, more competing societies, more innovations available to adopt—

and more pressure to adopt and retain innovations, because societies failing to

do so will tend to be eliminated by competing societies. That fate befell

African pygmies and many other hunter-gatherer populations displaced by

farmers. Conversely, it also befell the stubborn, conservative Greenland Norse

farmers, replaced by Eskimo hunter-gatherers whose subsistence methods and

technology were far superior to those of the Norse under Greenland

conditions. Among the world’s landmasses, area and the number of

competing societies were largest for Eurasia, much smaller for Australia and

New Guinea and especially for Tasmania. The Americas, despite their large

aggregate area, were fragmented by geography and ecology and functioned

effectively as several poorly connected smaller continents.

Those four sets of factors constitute big environmental differences that

can be quantified objectively and that are not subject to dispute. While one

can contest my subjective impression that New Guineans are on the average

smarter than Eurasians, one cannot deny that New Guinea has a much smaller

area and far fewer big animal species than Eurasia. But mention of these

environmental differences invites among historians the label “geographic

determinism,” which raises hackles. The label seems to have unpleasant

connotations, such as that human creativity counts for nothing, or that we

humans are passive robots helplessly programmed by climate, fauna, and

flora. Of course these fears are misplaced. Without human inventiveness, all

of us today would still be cutting our meat with stone tools and eating it raw,

like our ancestors of a million years ago. All human societies contain

inventive people. It’s just that some environments provide more starting

materials, and more favorable conditions for utilizing inventions, than do

other environments.



THESE ANSWERS TO Yali’s question are longer and more complicated than

Yali himself would have wanted. Historians, however, may find them too

brief and oversimplified. Compressing 13,000 years of history on all

continents into a 400-page book works out to an average of about one page

per continent per 150 years, making brevity and simplification inevitable. Yet

the compression brings a compensating benefit: long-term comparisons of

regions yield insights that cannot be won from short-term studies of single

societies.

Naturally, a host of issues raised by Yali’s question remain unresolved. At

present, we can put forward some partial answers plus a research agenda for

the future, rather than a fully developed theory. The challenge now is to

develop human history as a science, on a par with acknowledged historical

sciences such as astronomy, geology, and evolutionary biology. Hence it

seems appropriate to conclude this book by looking to the future of the

discipline of history, and by outlining some of the unresolved issues.

The most straightforward extension of this book will be to quantify

further, and thus to establish more convincingly the role of, intercontinental

differences in the four sets of factors that appear to be most important. To

illustrate differences in starting materials for domestication, I provided

numbers for each continent’s total of large wild terrestrial mammalian

herbivores and omnivores (Table 9.2) and of large-seeded cereals (Table 8.1).

One extension would be to assemble corresponding numbers for large-seeded

legumes (pulses), such as beans, peas, and vetches. In addition, I mentioned

factors disqualifying big mammalian candidates for domestication, but I did

not tabulate how many candidates are disqualified by each factor on each

continent. It would be interesting to do so, especially for Africa, where a

higher percentage of candidates is disqualified than in Eurasia: which

disqualifying factors are most important in Africa, and what has selected for

their high frequency in African mammals? Quantitative data should also be

assembled to test my preliminary calculations suggesting differing rates of

diffusion along the major axes of Eurasia, the Americas, and Africa.



A SECOND EXTENSION will be to smaller geographic scales and shorter time

scales than those of this book. For instance, the following obvious question

has probably occurred to readers already: why, within Eurasia, were European

societies, rather than those of the Fertile Crescent or China or India, the ones

that colonized America and Australia, took the lead in technology, and

became politically and economically dominant in the modern world? A

historian who had lived at any time between 8500 B.C. and A.D. 1450, and who

had tried then to predict future historical trajectories, would surely have

labeled Europe’s eventual dominance as the least likely outcome, because

Europe was the most backward of those three Old World regions for most of

those 10,000 years. From 8500 B.C. until the rise of Greece and then Italy after

500 B.C., almost all major innovations in western Eurasia—animal

domestication, plant domestication, writing, metallurgy, wheels, states, and so

on—arose in or near the Fertile Crescent. Until the proliferation of water mills

after about A.D. 900, Europe west or north of the Alps contributed nothing of

significance to Old World technology or civilization; it was instead a recipient

of developments from the eastern Mediterranean, Fertile Crescent, and China.

Even from A.D. 1000 to 1450 the flow of science and technology was

predominantly into Europe from the Islamic societies stretching from India to

North Africa, rather than vice versa. During those same centuries China led

the world in technology, having launched itself on food production nearly as

early as the Fertile Crescent did.

Why, then, did the Fertile Crescent and China eventually lose their

enormous leads of thousands of years to late-starting Europe? One can, of

course, point to proximate factors behind Europe’s rise: its development of a

merchant class, capitalism, and patent protection for inventions, its failure to

develop absolute despots and crushing taxation, and its Greco-Judeo-Christian

tradition of critical empirical inquiry. Still, for all such proximate causes one

must raise the question of ultimate cause: why did these proximate factors

themselves arise in Europe, rather than in China or the Fertile Crescent?

For the Fertile Crescent, the answer is clear. Once it had lost the head start

that it had enjoyed thanks to its locally available concentration of

domesticable wild plants and animals, the Fertile Crescent possessed no

further compelling geographic advantages. The disappearance of that head

start can be traced in detail, as the westward shift in powerful empires. After

the rise of Fertile Crescent states in the fourth millennium B.C., the center of

power initially remained in the Fertile Crescent, rotating between empires

such as those of Babylon, the Hittites, Assyria, and Persia. With the Greek

conquest of all advanced societies from Greece east to India under Alexander

the Great in the late fourth century B.C., power finally made its first shift

irrevocably westward. It shifted farther west with Rome’s conquest of Greece

in the second century B.C., and after the fall of the Roman Empire it eventually

moved again, to western and northern Europe.

The major factor behind these shifts becomes obvious as soon as one

compares the modern Fertile Crescent with ancient descriptions of it. Today,

the expressions “Fertile Crescent” and “world leader in food production” are

absurd. Large areas of the former Fertile Crescent are now desert, semidesert,

steppe, or heavily eroded or salinized terrain unsuited for agriculture. Today’s

ephemeral wealth of some of the region’s nations, based on the single

nonrenewable resource of oil, conceals the region’s long-standing

fundamental poverty and difficulty in feeding itself.

In ancient times, however, much of the Fertile Crescent and eastern

Mediterranean region, including Greece, was covered with forest. The

region’s transformation from fertile woodland to eroded scrub or desert has

been elucidated by paleobotanists and archaeologists. Its woodlands were

cleared for agriculture, or cut to obtain construction timber, or burned as

firewood or for manufacturing plaster. Because of low rainfall and hence low

primary productivity (proportional to rainfall), regrowth of vegetation could

not keep pace with its destruction, especially in the presence of overgrazing

by abundant goats. With the tree and grass cover removed, erosion proceeded

and valleys silted up, while irrigation agriculture in the low-rainfall

environment led to salt accumulation. These processes, which began in the

Neolithic era, continued into modern times. For instance, the last forests near

the ancient Nabataean capital of Petra, in modern Jordan, were felled by the

Ottoman Turks during construction of the Hejaz railroad just before World

War I.

Thus, Fertile Crescent and eastern Mediterranean societies had the

misfortune to arise in an ecologically fragile environment. They committed

ecological suicide by destroying their own resource base. Power shifted

westward as each eastern Mediterranean society in turn undermined itself,

beginning with the oldest societies, those in the east (the Fertile Crescent).

Northern and western Europe has been spared this fate, not because its

inhabitants have been wiser but because they have had the good luck to live in

a more robust environment with higher rainfall, in which vegetation regrows

quickly. Much of northern and western Europe is still able to support

productive intensive agriculture today, 7,000 years after the arrival of food

production. In effect, Europe received its crops, livestock, technology, and

writing systems from the Fertile Crescent, which then gradually eliminated

itself as a major center of power and innovation.

That is how the Fertile Crescent lost its huge early lead over Europe. Why

did China also lose its lead? Its falling behind is initially surprising, because

China enjoyed undoubted advantages: a rise of food production nearly as

early as in the Fertile Crescent; ecological diversity from North to South

China and from the coast to the high mountains of the Tibetan plateau, giving

rise to a diverse set of crops, animals, and technology; a large and productive

expanse, nourishing the largest regional human population in the world; and

an environment less dry or ecologically fragile than the Fertile Crescent’s,

allowing China still to support productive intensive agriculture after nearly

10,000 years, though its environmental problems are increasing today and are

more serious than western Europe’s.

These advantages and head start enabled medieval China to lead the

world in technology. The long list of its major technological firsts includes

cast iron, the compass, gunpowder, paper, printing, and many others

mentioned earlier. It also led the world in political power, navigation, and

control of the seas. In the early 15th century it sent treasure fleets, each

consisting of hundreds of ships up to 400 feet long and with total crews of up

to 28,000, across the Indian Ocean as far as the east coast of Africa, decades

before Columbus’s three puny ships crossed the narrow Atlantic Ocean to the

Americas’ east coast. Why didn’t Chinese ships proceed around Africa’s

southern cape westward and colonize Europe, before Vasco da Gama’s own

three puny ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope eastward and launched

Europe’s colonization of East Asia? Why didn’t Chinese ships cross the

Pacific to colonize the Americas’ west coast? Why, in brief, did China lose its

technological lead to the formerly so backward Europe?

The end of China’s treasure fleets gives us a clue. Seven of those fleets

sailed from China between A.D. 1405 and 1433. They were then suspended as

a result of a typical aberration of local politics that could happen anywhere in

the world: a power struggle between two factions at the Chinese court (the

eunuchs and their opponents). The former faction had been identified with

sending and captaining the fleets. Hence when the latter faction gained the

upper hand in a power struggle, it stopped sending fleets, eventually

dismantled the shipyards, and forbade oceangoing shipping. The episode is

reminiscent of the legislation that strangled development of public electric

lighting in London in the 1880s, the isolationism of the United States between

the First and Second World Wars, and any number of backward steps in any

number of countries, all motivated by local political issues. But in China there

was a difference, because the entire region was politically unified. One

decision stopped fleets over the whole of China. That one temporary decision

became irreversible, because no shipyards remained to turn out ships that

would prove the folly of that temporary decision, and to serve as a focus for

rebuilding other shipyards.

Now contrast those events in China with what happened when fleets of

exploration began to sail from politically fragmented Europe. Christopher

Columbus, an Italian by birth, switched his allegiance to the duke of Anjou in

France, then to the king of Portugal. When the latter refused his request for

ships in which to explore westward, Columbus turned to the duke of Medina-

Sedonia, who also refused, then to the count of Medina-Celi, who did

likewise, and finally to the king and queen of Spain, who denied Columbus’s

first request but eventually granted his renewed appeal. Had Europe been

united under any one of the first three rulers, its colonization of the Americas

might have been stillborn.

In fact, precisely because Europe was fragmented, Columbus succeeded

on his fifth try in persuading one of Europe’s hundreds of princes to sponsor

him. Once Spain had thus launched the European colonization of America,

other European states saw the wealth flowing into Spain, and six more joined

in colonizing America. The story was the same with Europe’s cannon, electric

lighting, printing, small firearms, and innumerable other innovations: each

was at first neglected or opposed in some parts of Europe for idiosyncratic

reasons, but once adopted in one area, it eventually spread to the rest of

Europe.

These consequences of Europe’s disunity stand in sharp contrast to those

of China’s unity. From time to time the Chinese court decided to halt other

activities besides overseas navigation: it abandoned development of an

elaborate water-driven spinning machine, stepped back from the verge of an

industrial revolution in the 14th century, demolished or virtually abolished

mechanical clocks after leading the world in clock construction, and retreated

from mechanical devices and technology in general after the late 15th century.

Those potentially harmful effects of unity have flared up again in modern

China, notably during the madness of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s

and 1970s, when a decision by one or a few leaders closed the whole

country’s school systems for five years.

China’s frequent unity and Europe’s perpetual disunity both have a long

history. The most productive areas of modern China were politically joined

for the first time in 221 B.C. and have remained so for most of the time since

then. China has had only a single writing system from the beginnings of

literacy, a single dominant language for a long time, and substantial cultural

unity for two thousand years. In contrast, Europe has never come remotely

close to political unification: it was still splintered into 1,000 independent

statelets in the 14th century, into 500 statelets in A.D. 1500, got down to a

minimum of 25 states in the 1980s, and is now up again to nearly 40 at the

moment that I write this sentence. Europe still has 45 languages, each with its

own modified alphabet, and even greater cultural diversity. The disagreements

that continue today to frustrate even modest attempts at European unification

through the European Economic Community (EEC) are symptomatic of

Europe’s ingrained commitment to disunity.

Hence the real problem in understanding China’s loss of political and

technological preeminence to Europe is to understand China’s chronic unity

and Europe’s chronic disunity. The answer is again suggested by maps (see

Backmatter). Europe has a highly indented coastline, with five large

peninsulas that approach islands in their isolation, and all of which evolved

independent languages, ethnic groups, and governments: Greece, Italy, Iberia,

Denmark, and Norway / Sweden. China’s coastline is much smoother, and

only the nearby Korean Peninsula attained separate importance. Europe has

two islands (Britain and Ireland) sufficiently big to assert their political

independence and to maintain their own languages and ethnicities, and one of

them (Britain) big and close enough to become a major independent European

power. But even China’s two largest islands, Taiwan and Hainan, have each

less than half the area of Ireland; neither was a major independent power until

Taiwan’s emergence in recent decades; and Japan’s geographic isolation kept

it until recently much more isolated politically from the Asian mainland than

Britain has been from mainland Europe. Europe is carved up into independent

linguistic, ethnic, and political units by high mountains (the Alps, Pyrenees,

Carpathians, and Norwegian border mountains), while China’s mountains east

of the Tibetan plateau are much less formidable barriers. China’s heartland is

bound together from east to west by two long navigable river systems in rich

alluvial valleys (the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers), and it is joined from north to

south by relatively easy connections between these two river systems

(eventually linked by canals). As a result, China very early became dominated

by two huge geographic core areas of high productivity, themselves only

weakly separated from each other and eventually fused into a single core.

Europe’s two biggest rivers, the Rhine and Danube, are smaller and connect

much less of Europe. Unlike China, Europe has many scattered small core

areas, none big enough to dominate the others for long, and each the center of

chronically independent states.

Once China was finally unified, in 221 B.C., no other independent state

ever had a chance of arising and persisting for long in China. Although

periods of disunity returned several times after 221 B.C., they always ended in

reunification. But the unification of Europe has resisted the efforts of such

determined conquerors as Charlemagne, Napoleon, and Hitler; even the

Roman Empire at its peak never controlled more than half of Europe’s area.

Thus, geographic connectedness and only modest internal barriers gave

China an initial advantage. North China, South China, the coast, and the

interior contributed different crops, livestock, technologies, and cultural

features to the eventually unified China. For example, millet cultivation,

bronze technology, and writing arose in North China, while rice cultivation

and cast-iron technology emerged in South China. For much of this book I

have emphasized the diffusion of technology that takes place in the absence of

formidable barriers. But China’s connectedness eventually became a

disadvantage, because a decision by one despot could and repeatedly did halt

innovation. In contrast, Europe’s geographic balkanization resulted in dozens

or hundreds of independent, competing statelets and centers of innovation. If

one state did not pursue some particular innovation, another did, forcing

neighboring states to do likewise or else be conquered or left economically

behind. Europe’s barriers were sufficient to prevent political unification, but

insufficient to halt the spread of technology and ideas. There has never been

one despot who could turn off the tap for all of Europe, as of China.

These comparisons suggest that geographic connectedness has exerted

both positive and negative effects on the evolution of technology. As a result,

in the very long run, technology may have developed most rapidly in regions

with moderate connectedness, neither too high nor too low. Technology’s

course over the last 1,000 years in China, Europe, and possibly the Indian

subcontinent exemplifies those net effects of high, moderate, and low

connectedness, respectively.

Naturally, additional factors contributed to history’s diverse courses in

different parts of Eurasia. For instance, the Fertile Crescent, China, and

Europe differed in their exposure to the perennial threat of barbarian

invasions by horse-mounted pastoral nomads of Central Asia. One of those

nomad groups (the Mongols) eventually destroyed the ancient irrigation

systems of Iran and Iraq, but none of the Asian nomads ever succeeded in

establishing themselves in the forests of western Europe beyond the

Hungarian plains. Environmental factors also include the Fertile Crescent’s

geographically intermediate location, controlling the trade routes linking

China and India to Europe, and China’s more remote location from Eurasia’s

other advanced civilizations, making China a gigantic virtual island within a

continent. China’s relative isolation is especially relevant to its adoption and

then rejection of technologies, so reminiscent of the rejections on Tasmania

and other islands (Chapters 13 and 15). But this brief discussion may at least

indicate the relevance of environmental factors to smaller-scale and shorter-

term patterns of history, as well as to history’s broadest pattern.

The histories of the Fertile Crescent and China also hold a salutary lesson

for the modern world: circumstances change, and past primacy is no

guarantee of future primacy. One might even wonder whether the

geographical reasoning employed throughout this book has at last become

wholly irrelevant in the modern world, now that ideas diffuse everywhere

instantly on the Internet and cargo is routinely airfreighted overnight between

continents. It might seem that entirely new rules apply to competition

between the world’s peoples, and that as a result new powers are emerging—

such as Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, and especially Japan.

On reflection, though, we see that the supposedly new rules are just

variations on the old ones. Yes, the transistor, invented at Bell Labs in the

eastern United States in 1947, leapt 8,000 miles to launch an electronics

industry in Japan—but it did not make the shorter leap to found new

industries in Zaire or Paraguay. The nations rising to new power are still ones

that were incorporated thousands of years ago into the old centers of

dominance based on food production, or that have been repopulated by

peoples from those centers. Unlike Zaire or Paraguay, Japan and the other

new powers were able to exploit the transistor quickly because their

populations already had a long history of literacy, metal machinery, and

centralized government. The world’s two earliest centers of food production,

the Fertile Crescent and China, still dominate the modern world, either

through their immediate successor states (modern China), or through states

situated in neighboring regions influenced early by those two centers (Japan,

Korea, Malaysia, and Europe), or through states repopulated or ruled by their

overseas emigrants (the United States, Australia, Brazil). Prospects for world

dominance of sub-Saharan Africans, Aboriginal Australians, and Native

Americans remain dim. The hand of history’s course at 8000 B.C. lies heavily

on us.



AMONG OTHER FACTORS relevant to answering Yali’s question, cultural

factors and influences of individual people loom large. To take the former

first, human cultural traits vary greatly around the world. Some of that

cultural variation is no doubt a product of environmental variation, and I have

discussed many examples in this book. But an important question concerns

the possible significance of local cultural factors unrelated to the

environment. A minor cultural feature may arise for trivial, temporary local

reasons, become fixed, and then predispose a society toward more important

cultural choices, as is suggested by applications of chaos theory to other fields

of science. Such cultural processes are among history’s wild cards that would

tend to make history unpredictable.

As one example, I mentioned in Chapter 13 the QWERTY keyboard for

typewriters. It was adopted initially, out of many competing keyboard

designs, for trivial specific reasons involving early typewriter construction in

America in the 1860s, typewriter salesmanship, a decision in 1882 by a

certain Ms. Longley who founded the Shorthand and Typewriter Institute in

Cincinnati, and the success of Ms. Longley’s star typing pupil Frank

McGurrin, who thrashed Ms. Longley’s non-QWERTY competitor Louis

Taub in a widely publicized typing contest in 1888. The decision could have

gone to another keyboard at any of numerous stages between the 1860s and

the 1880s; nothing about the American environment favored the QWERTY

keyboard over its rivals. Once the decision had been made, though, the

QWERTY keyboard became so entrenched that it was also adopted for

computer keyboard design a century later. Equally trivial specific reasons,

now lost in the remote past, may have lain behind the Sumerian adoption of a

counting system based on 12 instead of 10 (leading to our modern 60-minute

hour, 24-hour day, 12-month year, and 360-degree circle), in contrast to the

widespread Mesoamerican counting system based on 20 (leading to its

calendar using two concurrent cycles of 260 named days and a 365-day year).

Those details of typewriter, clock, and calendar design have not affected

the competitive success of the societies adopting them. But it is easy to

imagine how they could have. For example, if the QWERTY keyboard of the

United States had not been adopted elsewhere in the world as well—say, if

Japan or Europe had adopted the much more efficient Dvorak keyboard—that

trivial decision in the 19th century might have had big consequences for the

competitive position of 20th-century American technology.

Similarly, a study of Chinese children suggested that they learn to write

more quickly when taught an alphabetic transcription of Chinese sounds

(termed pinyin) than when taught traditional Chinese writing, with its

thousands of signs. It has been suggested that the latter arose because of their

convenience for distinguishing the large numbers of Chinese words

possessing differing meanings but the same sounds (homophones). If so, the

abundance of homophones in the Chinese language may have had a large

impact on the role of literacy in Chinese society, yet it seems unlikely that

there was anything in the Chinese environment selecting for a language rich

in homophones. Did a linguistic or cultural factor account for the otherwise

puzzling failure of complex Andean civilizations to develop writing? Was

there anything about India’s environment predisposing toward rigid

socioeconomic castes, with grave consequences for the development of

technology in India? Was there anything about the Chinese environment

predisposing toward Confucian philosophy and cultural conservatism, which

may also have profoundly affected history? Why was proselytizing religion

(Christianity and Islam) a driving force for colonization and conquest among

Europeans and West Asians but not among Chinese?

These examples illustrate the broad range of questions concerning cultural

idiosyncrasies, unrelated to environment and initially of little significance,

that might evolve into influential and long-lasting cultural features. Their

significance constitutes an important unanswered question. It can best be

approached by concentrating attention on historical patterns that remain

puzzling after the effects of major environmental factors have been taken into

account.



WHAT ABOUT THE effects of idiosyncratic individual people? A familiar

modern example is the narrow failure, on July 20, 1944, of the assassination

attempt against Hitler and of a simultaneous uprising in Berlin. Both had been

planned by Germans who were convinced that the war could not be won and

who wanted to seek peace then, at a time when the eastern front between the

German and Russian armies still lay mostly within Russia’s borders. Hitler

was wounded by a time bomb in a briefcase placed under a conference table;

he might have been killed if the case had been placed slightly closer to the

chair where he was sitting. It is likely that the modern map of Eastern Europe

and the Cold War’s course would have been significantly different if Hitler

had indeed been killed and if World War II had ended then.

Less well known but even more fateful was a traffic accident in the

summer of 1930, over two years before Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany,

when a car in which he was riding in the “death seat” (right front passenger

seat) collided with a heavy trailer truck. The truck braked just in time to avoid

running over Hitler’s car and crushing him. Because of the degree to which

Hitler’s psychopathology determined Nazi policy and success, the form of an

eventual World War II would probably have been quite different if the truck

driver had braked one second later.

One can think of other individuals whose idiosyncrasies apparently

influenced history as did Hitler’s: Alexander the Great, Augustus, Buddha,

Christ, Lenin, Martin Luther, the Inca emperor Pachacuti, Mohammed,

William the Conqueror, and the Zulu king Shaka, to name a few. To what

extent did each really change events, as opposed to “just” happening to be the

right person in the right place at the right time? At the one extreme is the view

of the historian Thomas Carlyle: “Universal history, the history of what man

[ sic] has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great

Men who have worked here.” At the opposite extreme is the view of the

Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck, who unlike Carlyle had long firsthand

experience of politics’ inner workings: “The statesman’s task is to hear God’s

footsteps marching through history, and to try to catch on to His coattails as

He marches past.”

Like cultural idiosyncrasies, individual idiosyncrasies throw wild cards

into the course of history. They may make history inexplicable in terms of

environmental forces, or indeed of any generalizable causes. For the purposes

of this book, however, they are scarcely relevant, because even the most

ardent proponent of the Great Man theory would find it difficult to interpret

history’s broadest pattern in terms of a few Great Men. Perhaps Alexander the

Great did nudge the course of western Eurasia’s already literate, food-

producing, iron-equipped states, but he had nothing to do with the fact that

western Eurasia already supported literate, food-producing, iron-equipped

states at a time when Australia still supported only nonliterate hunter-gatherer

tribes lacking metal tools. Nevertheless, it remains an open question how

wide and lasting the effects of idiosyncratic individuals on history really are.



THE DISCIPLINE OF history is generally not considered to be a science, but

something closer to the humanities. At best, history is classified among the

social sciences, of which it rates as the least scientific. While the field of

government is often termed “political science” and the Nobel Prize in

economics refers to “economic science,” history departments rarely if ever

label themselves “Department of Historical Science.” Most historians do not

think of themselves as scientists and receive little training in acknowledged

sciences and their methodologies. The sense that history is nothing more than

a mass of details is captured in numerous aphorisms: “History is just one

damn fact after another,” “History is more or less bunk,” “There is no law of

history any more than of a kaleidoscope,” and so on.

One cannot deny that it is more difficult to extract general principles from

studying history than from studying planetary orbits. However, the difficulties

seem to me not fatal. Similar ones apply to other historical subjects whose

place among the natural sciences is nevertheless secure, including astronomy,

climatology, ecology, evolutionary biology, geology, and paleontology.

People’s image of science is unfortunately often based on physics and a few

other fields with similar methodologies. Scientists in those fields tend to be

ignorantly disdainful of fields to which those methodologies are inappropriate

and which must therefore seek other methodologies—such as my own

research areas of ecology and evolutionary biology. But recall that the word

“science” means “knowledge” (from the Latin scire, “to know,” and scientia,

“knowledge”), to be obtained by whatever methods are most appropriate to

the particular field. Hence I have much empathy with students of human

history for the difficulties they face.

Historical sciences in the broad sense (including astronomy and the like)

share many features that set them apart from nonhistorical sciences such as

physics, chemistry, and molecular biology. I would single out four:

methodology, causation, prediction, and complexity.

In physics the chief method for gaining knowledge is the laboratory

experiment, by which one manipulates the parameter whose effect is in

question, executes parallel control experiments with that parameter held

constant, holds other parameters constant throughout, replicates both the

experimental manipulation and the control experiment, and obtains

quantitative data. This strategy, which also works well in chemistry and

molecular biology, is so identified with science in the minds of many people

that experimentation is often held to be the essence of the scientific method.

But laboratory experimentation can obviously play little or no role in many of

the historical sciences. One cannot interrupt galaxy formation, start and stop

hurricanes and ice ages, experimentally exterminate grizzly bears in a few

national parks, or rerun the course of dinosaur evolution. Instead, one must

gain knowledge in these historical sciences by other means, such as

observation, comparison, and so-called natural experiments (to which I shall

return in a moment).

Historical sciences are concerned with chains of proximate and ultimate

causes. In most of physics and chemistry the concepts of “ultimate cause,”

“purpose,” and “function” are meaningless, yet they are essential to

understanding living systems in general and human activities in particular. For

instance, an evolutionary biologist studying Arctic hares whose fur color turns

from brown in summer to white in winter is not satisfied with identifying the

mundane proximate causes of fur color in terms of the fur pigments’

molecular structures and biosynthetic pathways. The more important

questions involve function (camouflage against predators?) and ultimate

cause (natural selection starting with an ancestral hare population with

seasonally unchanging fur color?). Similarly, a European historian is not

satisfied with describing the condition of Europe in both 1815 and 1918 as

having just achieved peace after a costly pan-European war. Understanding

the contrasting chains of events leading up to the two peace treaties is

essential to understanding why an even more costly pan-European war broke

out again within a few decades of 1918 but not of 1815. But chemists do not

assign a purpose or function to a collision of two gas molecules, nor do they

seek an ultimate cause for the collision.

Still another difference between historical and nonhistorical sciences

involves prediction. In chemistry and physics the acid test of one’s

understanding of a system is whether one can successfully predict its future

behavior. Again, physicists tend to look down on evolutionary biology and

history, because those fields appear to fail this test. In historical sciences, one

can provide a posteriori explanations (e.g., why an asteroid impact on Earth

66 million years ago may have driven dinosaurs but not many other species to

extinction), but a priori predictions are more difficult (we would be uncertain

which species would be driven to extinction if we did not have the actual past

event to guide us). However, historians and historical scientists do make and

test predictions about what future discoveries of data will show us about past

events.

The properties of historical systems that complicate attempts at prediction

can be described in several alternative ways. One can point out that human

societies and dinosaurs are extremely complex, being characterized by an

enormous number of independent variables that feed back on each other. As a

result, small changes at a lower level of organization can lead to emergent

changes at a higher level. A typical example is the effect of that one truck

driver’s braking response, in Hitler’s nearly fatal traffic accident of 1930, on

the lives of a hundred million people who were killed or wounded in World

War II. Although most biologists agree that biological systems are in the end

wholly determined by their physical properties and obey the laws of quantum

mechanics, the systems’ complexity means, for practical purposes, that that

deterministic causation does not translate into predictability. Knowledge of

quantum mechanics does not help one understand why introduced placental

predators have exterminated so many Australian marsupial species, or why

the Allied Powers rather than the Central Powers won World War I.

Each glacier, nebula, hurricane, human society, and biological species,

and even each individual and cell of a sexually reproducing species, is unique,

because it is influenced by so many variables and made up of so many

variable parts. In contrast, for any of the physicist’s elementary particles and

isotopes and of the chemist’s molecules, all individuals of the entity are

identical to each other. Hence physicists and chemists can formulate universal

deterministic laws at the macroscopic level, but biologists and historians can

formulate only statistical trends. With a very high probability of being correct,

I can predict that, of the next 1,000 babies born at the University of California

Medical Center, where I work, not fewer than 480 or more than 520 will be

boys. But I had no means of knowing in advance that my own two children

would be boys. Similarly, historians note that tribal societies may have been

more likely to develop into chiefdoms if the local population was sufficiently

large and dense and if there was potential for surplus food production than if

that was not the case. But each such local population has its own unique

features, with the result that chiefdoms did emerge in the highlands of

Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Madagascar, but not in those of New Guinea or

Guadalcanal.

Still another way of describing the complexity and unpredictability of

historical systems, despite their ultimate determinacy, is to note that long

chains of causation may separate final effects from ultimate causes lying

outside the domain of that field of science. For example, the dinosaurs may

have been exterminated by the impact of an asteroid whose orbit was

completely determined by the laws of classical mechanics. But if there had

been any paleontologists living 67 million years ago, they could not have

predicted the dinosaurs’ imminent demise, because asteroids belong to a field

of science otherwise remote from dinosaur biology. Similarly, the Little Ice

Age of A.D. 1300–1500 contributed to the extinction of the Greenland Norse,

but no historian, and probably not even a modern climatologist, could have

predicted the Little Ice Age.



THUS, THE DIFFICULTIES historians face in establishing cause-and-effect

relations in the history of human societies are broadly similar to the

difficulties facing astronomers, climatologists, ecologists, evolutionary

biologists, geologists, and paleontologists. To varying degrees, each of these

fields is plagued by the impossibility of performing replicated, controlled

experimental interventions, the complexity arising from enormous numbers of

variables, the resulting uniqueness of each system, the consequent

impossibility of formulating universal laws, and the difficulties of predicting

emergent properties and future behavior. Prediction in history, as in other

historical sciences, is most feasible on large spatial scales and over long

times, when the unique features of millions of small-scale brief events

become averaged out. Just as I could predict the sex ratio of the next 1,000

newborns but not the sexes of my own two children, the historian can

recognize factors that made inevitable the broad outcome of the collision

between American and Eurasian societies after 13,000 years of separate

developments, but not the outcome of the 1960 U.S. presidential election. The

details of which candidate said what during a single televised debate in

October 1960 could have given the electoral victory to Nixon instead of to

Kennedy, but no details of who said what could have blocked the European

conquest of Native Americans.

How can students of human history profit from the experience of

scientists in other historical sciences? A methodology that has proved useful

involves the comparative method and so-called natural experiments. While

neither astronomers studying galaxy formation nor human historians can

manipulate their systems in controlled laboratory experiments, they both can

take advantage of natural experiments, by comparing systems differing in the

presence or absence (or in the strong or weak effect) of some putative

causative factor. For example, epidemiologists, forbidden to feed large

amounts of salt to people experimentally, have still been able to identify

effects of high salt intake by comparing groups of humans who already differ

greatly in their salt intake; and cultural anthropologists, unable to provide

human groups experimentally with varying resource abundances for many

centuries, still study long-term effects of resource abundance on human

societies by comparing recent Polynesian populations living on islands

differing naturally in resource abundance. The student of human history can

draw on many more natural experiments than just comparisons among the

five inhabited continents. Comparisons can also utilize large islands that have

developed complex societies in a considerable degree of isolation (such as

Japan, Madagascar, Native American Hispaniola, New Guinea, Hawaii, and

many others), as well as societies on hundreds of smaller islands and regional

societies within each of the continents.

Natural experiments in any field, whether in ecology or human history,

are inherently open to potential methodological criticisms. Those include

confounding effects of natural variation in additional variables besides the one

of interest, as well as problems in inferring chains of causation from observed

correlations between variables. Such methodological problems have been

discussed in great detail for some of the historical sciences. In particular,

epidemiology, the science of drawing inferences about human diseases by

comparing groups of people (often by retrospective historical studies), has for

a long time successfully employed formalized procedures for dealing with

problems similar to those facing historians of human societies. Ecologists

have also devoted much attention to the problems of natural experiments, a

methodology to which they must resort in many cases where direct

experimental interventions to manipulate relevant ecological variables would

be immoral, illegal, or impossible. Evolutionary biologists have recently been

developing ever more sophisticated methods for drawing conclusions from

comparisons of different plants and animals of known evolutionary histories.

In short, I acknowledge that it is much more difficult to understand human

history than to understand problems in fields of science where history is

unimportant and where fewer individual variables operate. Nevertheless,

successful methodologies for analyzing historical problems have been worked

out in several fields. As a result, the histories of dinosaurs, nebulas, and

glaciers are generally acknowledged to belong to fields of science rather than

to the humanities. But introspection gives us far more insight into the ways of

other humans than into those of dinosaurs. I am thus optimistic that historical

studies of human societies can be pursued as scientifically as studies of

dinosaurs—and with profit to our own society today, by teaching us what

shaped the modern world, and what might shape our future.





WHO ARE THE JAPANESE ?

AMONG MODERN WORLD POWERS, THE MOST DISTINCTIVE IN their culture and

environment are the Japanese people. The origins of their language are among

the most disputed questions of linguistics: for not a single other one of the

world’s major languages are the affinities to other languages still in doubt.

Who are the Japanese, when and whence did they come to Japan, and how did

they evolve their unique speech? These questions are central to the self-image

of the Japanese, and to how they are viewed by other peoples. Japan’s rising

dominance and its sometimes touchy relations with its neighbors make it

more important than ever to strip away persistent myths and to find answers.

My minimal coverage of Japan in previous editions of Guns, Germs, and

Steel constituted the most important geographic lacuna of my book. New

information about Japanese genetics and language origins, accumulating since

the book’s first publication, now encourages me to test how Japan fits into my

overall framework.

The search for answers is difficult because the evidence is so conflicting.

On the one hand, the Japanese people are biologically undistinctive, being

very similar in their appearance and genes to other East Asians, especially to

Koreans. As the Japanese are fond of stressing, they are culturally and

biologically rather homogeneous: there is little difference among people from

different parts of Japan, except for a very different people called the Ainu on

Japan’s nothernmost island of Hokkaido. All these facts seem to suggest that

the Japanese reached Japan recently from the East Asian mainland and

displaced the Ainu, who represent the original inhabitants. But, if that were

true, you might expect the Japanese language to show obvious close affinities

to some East Asian mainland language, just as the English language is closely

related to other Germanic languages because Anglo-Saxons from the

continent took over England as recently as the 6th century A.D. How can we

resolve this contradiction between Japan’s presumably ancient language and

all that other evidence for recent origins?

Four conflicting theories, each of them popular in some countries and

unpopular in others, have been proposed. Most popular in Japan is the view

that the Japanese gradually evolved from ancient Ice Age people who

occupied Japan long before 20,000 B.C. Also widespread in Japan is the theory

that the Japanese are descended from horse-riding Central Asian nomads who

passed through Korea to conquer Japan in the 4th century A.D. but who were

emphatically not Koreans. A theory favored by many Western archaeologists

and Koreans, and unpopular in some circles in Japan, is that the Japanese are

descendants of immigrants from Korea who arrived with rice paddy

agriculture around 400 B.C. Finally, peoples named in these other three

theories could have mixed to form the modern Japanese.

When similar questions arise about the origins of other peoples, they can

be discussed dispassionately. That is not true of questions about Japanese

origins. It was a remarkable achievement that Japan, unlike so many other

non-European countries, preserved its political independence and culture

while emerging from isolation and creating an industrialized society in the

late 19th century. Now, the Japanese people are understandably concerned

about maintaining their traditions in the face of massive Western cultural

influence. They want to believe that their language and culture are so unique

as to have required uniquely complex developmental processes, unlike those

operating elsewhere in the world. To acknowledge that the Japanese language

is related to any other language seems to constitute a surrender of cultural

identity.

Until 1946, Japanese schools taught a myth of Japanese history based on

the earliest Japanese chronicles of A.D. 712 and 720. Those chronicles

describe how the sun goddess Amaterasu, born from the left eye of the creator

god Izanagi, sent her grandson Ninigi to earth on the Japanese island of

Kyushu to wed an earthly deity. Ninigi’s great-grandson Jimmu, aided by a

dazzling sacred bird that rendered his enemies helpless, became the first

emperor of Japan in 660 B.C. To fill the gap between 660 B.C. and the earliest

historically documented Japanese monarchs, the chronicles invented 13 other,

equally fictitious emperors.

Before the end of World War II, when Emperor Hirohito finally told the

Japanese people that he was not of divine descent, Japanese archaeologists

and historians had to make their interpretations conform to this account.

Although they have more freedom of interpretation today, constraints remain.

Japan’s most important archaeological monuments—the 158 gigantic kofun

tombs constructed between A.D. 300 and 686, and thought to contain the

remains of ancestral emperors and their families—are still the property of the

Imperial Household Agency. Excavation of the tombs is forbidden because it

would constitute desecration—and it might also shed undesired light on

where Japan’s imperial family really came from (e.g., perhaps Korea?).

Whereas archaeological deposits in the United States were left by peoples

(Native Americans) unrelated to most modern Americans, deposits in Japan,

no matter how ancient, are believed to have been left by ancestors of the

modern Japanese themselves. Hence archaeology in Japan is supported by

astronomically large budgets and draws public attention to a degree

inconceivable anywhere else in the world. Each year, Japanese archaeologists

excavate over 10,000 digs and employ up to 50,000 field workers. Twenty

times more Neolithic sites have thereby been discovered in Japan than in the

whole of China. Accounts of excavations appear almost daily on TV and on

the front page of Japan’s largest newspapers. Determined to prove that the

ancestors of the modern Japanese came to Japan in the remote past,

archaeologists reporting on the excavations emphasize how different Japan’s

ancient inhabitants were from contemporary peoples elsewhere, but how

similar they were to the Japanese today. For instance, an archaeologist

lecturing about a site 2,000 years old would draw attention to the garbage pits

into which the site’s inhabitants threw their raw garbage, illustrating that

Japanese at those distant times already practiced the cleanliness on which

their supposed descendants pride themselves today.

What makes it especially difficult to discuss Japanese archaeology

dispassionately is that Japanese interpretations of their past affect their present

behavior. Among East Asian peoples, who brought culture to whom, who is

culturally superior and who is a barbarian, and who has historic claims to

whose land? For instance, there is much archaeological evidence for

exchanges of people and material objects between Japan and Korea in the

period A.D. 300–700. The Japanese interpret this to mean that Japan conquered

Korea then and brought Korean slaves and artisans to Japan; the Korean

interpretation is instead that Korea conquered Japan, and that the founders of

the Japanese imperial family were Korean.

Hence when Japan sent troops to Korea and annexed it in 1910, Japanese

military leaders celebrated the annexation as “the restoration of the legitimate

arrangement of antiquity.” For the next 35 years, Japanese occupation forces

tried to eradicate Korean culture and to replace Korean with the Japanese

language in schools. Korean families that have lived in Japan for several

generations still find it difficult to acquire Japanese citizenship. “Nose tombs”

in Japan still contain the noses cut off of 20,000 Koreans and brought to Japan

as trophies of a 16th-century Japanese invasion of that country. Not

surprisingly, loathing of the Japanese is widespread in Korea, and contempt

for Koreans is widespread in Japan.

As just one example of how seemingly arcane archaeological disputes can

arouse passion, consider the best-known archaeological relic of pre-chronicle

Japan: the Eta-Funayama sword of the 5th century A.D., designated a national

treasure and held in the Tokyo National Museum. Inlaid in silver on the iron

sword is an inscription in Chinese characters, one of the oldest surviving

samples of writing in Japan, referring to a Great King and an official serving

him and a Korean scribe named Ch-oan. Several of the Chinese characters are

incomplete, rusted, or missing and must be guessed at. Japanese scholars

traditionally took the missing characters to mean that the king was the

Japanese emperor Mizuha-wake of the Beautiful Teeth named in the 8th-

century Japanese chronicles. In 1966, however, the Korean historian Kim

Sokhyong shocked Japanese scholars with the suggestion that the missing

name was actually King Kaero of Korea, and that the named official was one

of his Korean vassals who were then occupying parts of Japan. What really

was “the legitimate arrangement of antiquity”?

Today, Japan and Korea are both economic powerhouses, facing each

other across Tsushima Strait, and viewing each other through poisoned lenses

of false myths and real past atrocities. It bodes ill for the future of East Asia if

these two great peoples cannot find common ground. A correct understanding

of who the Japanese people really are, and how they diverged from the

closely related Korean people, will be essential to finding that common

ground.



STARTING POINTS FOR UNDERSTANDING JAPAN’S UNIQUE culture are its unique

geography and environment. At first, Japan might seem to be geographically

very similar to Britain, both being large archipelagoes flanking the Eurasian

continent on the east and the west respectively. But there are detailed

differences that prove important: Japan is somewhat larger and more distant.

Japan’s area of 146,000 square miles is half again greater than Britain’s, and

nearly equal to California’s. Britain lies only 22 miles from the French coast,

but Japan lies 110 miles from the closest point of the Asian mainland (South

Korea), and is 180 miles from mainland Russia and 460 miles from mainland

China.

Perhaps as a result, Britain throughout its history has been much more

closely enmeshed with mainland Europe than has Japan with mainland Asia.

For instance, since the time of Christ there have been four successful

invasions of Britain from the continent, but none of Japan (unless Korea

really did conquer pre-chronicle Japan). Conversely, British troops have

fought on the continent in every century since the Norman Conquest of A.D.

1066, whereas before the late 19th century mainland Asia was always free of

Japanese troops except for Korea during pre-chronicle times and the last

decade of the 16th century. Thus, details of geography have made Japan more

isolated and, therefore, even more distinctive culturally than Britain.

As for Japan’s climate, its rainfall, ranging up to 160 inches per year,

makes it the wettest temperate country in the world. Furthermore, in contrast

to the winter rains prevailing over much of Europe, Japan’s rains are

concentrated in the summer growing season. That combination of high

rainfall and summer rains gives Japan the highest plant productivity of any

nation in the temperate zones. Half of its farmland is devoted to labor-

intensive, high-yield, irrigated rice agriculture, facilitated by abundant rivers

flowing from the wet mountains onto sloping lowland plains. While 80

percent of Japan’s land area consists of mountains unsuitable for agriculture

and only 14 percent is farmland, per square mile of that farmland Japan

supports a population density eight times that of Britain’s. In fact, in

proportion to its available area of farmland, Japan is the most densely

populated major society in the world.

Japan’s high rainfall also ensures that its forest regenerates quickly after

logging. Despite thousand of years of dense human occupation, everyone’s

first impression of Japan is of its greenness, because more than 70 percent of

its land area is still covered by forest (compared with only 10 percent for

Britain). Conversely, all that forest means that there is no native grassland or

natural pasture. Traditionally, the sole animal raised on a large scale for food

in Japan has been the pig; sheep and goats have never been significant, and

cattle were raised for pulling plows and carts but not for food. Japanese-raised

beef remains a luxury food of the wealthy few, selling for up to $100 per

pound.

Japanese forest composition varies with latitude and altitude: evergreen

leafy forest in the south at low altitude, deciduous leafy forest in central

Japan, and coniferous forest in the north and at high altitude. For prehistoric

humans the most productive forest was the deciduous leafy forest because of

its abundance of edible nuts, such as walnuts, chestnuts, horse chestnuts,

acorns, and beechnuts. Like Japanese forests, Japanese waters are

outstandingly productive. The lakes, rivers, Inland Sea, Sea of Japan to the

west, and Pacific Ocean to the east teem with fish such as salmon, trout, tuna,

sardines, mackerel, herring, and cod. Today, Japan is the largest catcher,

importer, and consumer of fish in the world. Japanese waters are also rich in

clams and oysters and other shellfish, crabs and shrimp and crayfish, and

edible seaweeds. As we shall see, that high productivity of the land, fresh

water, and seas was a key to Japan’s prehistory.



BEFORE WE TURN TO THE EVIDENCE OF ARCHEOLOGY, let us consider the

evidence of Japanese origins from biology, linguistics, early portraits, and

recorded history. The conflicts between these four familiar types of evidence

are what make Japanese origins so controversial.

From southwest to northeast, the four main Japanese islands are Kyushu,

Shikoku, Honshu (the largest island), and Hokkaido. Until large-scale

Japanese immigration into Hokkaido in the late 19th century, that island (plus

northern Honshu) was inhabited in historic times mainly by Ainu, living as

hunter-gatherers with only limited agriculture, while the Japanese occupied

the other three islands. In their genes and skeletons as well as in external

appearance, the Japanese are very similar to other East Asians, including

North Chinese, East Siberians, and especially Koreans. Even my Japanese and

Korean friends say that they sometimes have difficulty guessing whether

someone is Japanese or Korean just by looking at his or her face.

As for the Ainu, their distinctive appearance has resulted in more being

written about the origins and relationships than about any other single people

on earth. Ainu men have a luxuriant beard and the most profuse body hair of

any people. That fact, coupled with some other inherited traits such as their

fingerprint patterns and their type of ear wax, has often led to their being

classified as Causcasoids (so-called white people) who somehow migrated

east through Eurasia and ended up in Japan. In their overall genetic makeup,

though, the Ainu are related to other East Asians, including the Japanese,

Koreans, and Okinawans. Perhaps their distinctive external appearance

involves relatively few genes that arose through sexual selection after they

migrated from mainland Asia and became isolated on the Japanese

archipelago. The distinctive appearance and hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the

Ainu, and the undistinctive appearance and the intensive agricultural lifestyle

of the Japanese, are frequently taken to suggest the straightforward

interpretation that the Ainu are descended from Japan’s original hunter-

gatherer inhabitants, and that the Japanese are more recent invaders from the

Asian mainland.

But this view is difficult to reconcile with the distinctiveness of the

Japanese language, which everyone agrees does not bear a detailed close

relation to any other language in the world (in the way that French is close to

Spanish). Insofar as anything can be said about its relationships, many

scholars consider it to be an isolate member of Asia’s Altaic language family,

which consists of Turkic languages, Mongolian languages, and the Tungus

languages of East Siberia. Korean is also often considered to be an isolated

member of this family, and within the family Japanese and Korean may be

more related to each other than to other Altaic languages. However, the

similarities between Japanese and Korean are confined to general

grammatical features and about 15 percent of their basic vocabulary, rather

than the detailed shared features of grammar and vocabulary that link French

to Spanish. If one accepts that Japanese and Koreans are indeed related,

however distantly, that sharing of 15 percent of their vocabulary suggests that

the two languages began to diverge from each other over 5,000 years ago,

rather than the mere 2,000 years or less during which French and Spanish

have been diverging. As for the Ainu language, its relationships are

thoroughly in doubt; it may not have any special relationship to Japanese.

After biology and language, our third type of evidence about Japanese

origins comes from ancient portraits. The earliest preserved likenesses of

Japan’s inhabitants are statues called haniwa, erected outside tombs around

1,500 years ago. Especially in their eye shapes, those statues unmistakably

depict East Asians, such as modern Japanese or Koreans. They do not

resemble the heavily bearded Ainu. If the Japanese did replace the Ainu over

Japan south of Hokkaido, that replacement must have occurred before A.D.

500. After the Japanese established trading posts on Hokkaido in 1615, they

proceeded to treat the Hokkaido Ainu much as white Americans treated

Native Americans. The Ainu were conquered, rounded up into reserves,

forced to work for trading posts, driven off land desired by Japanese farmers,

and killed when they revolted. When Japan annexed Hokkaido in 1869,

Japanese schoolteachers made determined efforts to expunge the Ainu culture

and language. Today, the language is virtually extinct, and probably no

purebred Ainu survives.

Our earliest written information about Japan comes from Chinese

chronicles, because China developed literacy long before it spread from China

to either Korea or Japan. From 108 B.C. until A.D. 313 China occupied a

settlement in North Korea and exchanged envoys with Japan. In the resulting

Chinese accounts of various peoples referred to as “Eastern Barbarians,”

Japan is described under the name of Wa, whose inhabitants were said to be

divided into over a hundred little states that fought a lot with each other. Only

a few Koreans of Japanese inscriptions before the year A.D. 700 have been

preserved, but extensive chronicles were written in A.D. 712 and 720 in Japan

and later in Korea. While these Japanese and Korean chronicles purport to

relate histories of earlier periods, they are full of obvious fabrications

designed to glorify and legitimize ruling families—such as the Japanese

account of their emperor’s descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu.

Nevertheless, the chronicles suffice to make clear that there was massive

influence of Korea itself, and of China via Korea, on Japan, leading to the

introduction of Buddhism, writing, metallurgy, other crafts, and bureaucratic

methods into Japan. The chronicles are also full of accounts of Koreans in

Japan and of Japanese in Korea—interpreted by Japanese or Korean

historians respectively as evidence of Japanese conquest of Korea or the

reverse.



WE HAVE THUS SEEN THAT THE ANCESTORS OF THE Japanese reached Japan

before they had writing, and that their biology would suggest a recent arrival

but their language seemingly suggests arrival at least 5,000 years ago. Let us

now turn to the evidence of archaeology in an attempt to solve this puzzle. We

shall see that ancient Japanese societies were among the most remarkable in

the world.

Shallow seas now surround much of Japan and coastal East Asia. Hence

those seas became dry land during the Ice Ages, when much ocean water was

locked up in glaciers and sea level lay at about 500 feet below its present

stand. At those times, Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido was

connected by a land bridge over what is now Sakhalin Island to the Russian

mainland; Japan’s southernmost island of Kyushu was connected by another

land bridge to South Korea over what is now Tsushima Strait; all of the main

Japanese islands were connected to one another; and much of the expanse of

what are now the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea consisted of land

extensions of mainland China. Hence it comes as no surprise that the

mammals walking out to Japan in those land bridge days included not only

the ancestors of modern Japan’s bears and monkeys but also ancient humans,

long before boats had been invented. Stone tools indicate human arrival as

early as half a million years ago. Ancient stone tools of northern Japan

resemble those of Siberia and northern China, but those of southern Japan

resemble those of Korea and southern China, suggesting that both the

northern and southern land bridges were used.

Ice Age Japan was not a great place to live. Even though most of Japan

escaped the glaciers that blanketed Britain and Canada, Japan was still cold,

dry, and extensively covered with conifer and birch forests offering little plant

food to humans. Those drawbacks make the precocity of the Ice Age Japanese

all the more impressive: around 30,000 years ago, they were among the

earliest people in the world to develop stone tools with edges ground to a

sharp edge instead of just chipped or flaked. In the archaeology of Britain,

edge-ground tools are considered a big cultural advance that separates the

Neolithic (New Stone Age) from the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), but they

don’t show up in Britain until agriculture’s arrival less than 7,000 years ago.

Around 13,000 years ago, as glaciers melted rapidly all over the world,

conditions in Japan changed spectacularly for the better, as far as humans

were concerned. Temperatures, rainfall, and humidity all increased, raising

plant productivity to the modern high levels for which Japan is preeminent

among temperate-zone countries. Deciduous leafy forests full of nut trees,

which had been confined to southern Japan during the Ice Ages, expanded

northward at the expense of coniferous forest, thereby replacing a forest type

that had been rather sterile for humans with a much more productive forest

type. The rise in sea level severed the land bridges, converted Japan from

being a piece of the Asian continent to being a big archipelago, turned what

had been a plain into rich shallow seas, and created thousands of miles of

productive new coastline with innumerable islands, bays, tidal flats, and

estuaries, all teeming with seafood.

The end of the Ice Age was accompanied by the first of the two most

decisive changes in Japanese history: the invention of pottery. For the first

time in human experience, people now had watertight containers readily

available in any desired shape. With their new ability to boil, steam, or

simmer food, they gained access to abundant food resources that had

previously been difficult to utilize: leafy vegetables, which would burn or

dehydrate if cooked over a fire; shellfish, which could now be opened easily;

and toxic or bitter, but otherwise nutritious, foods like acorns and horse

chestnuts, which could now have their toxins leached out by soaking. Soft

boiled foods could be fed to small children, permitting the kids to be weaned

earlier and their mothers to produce babies at shorter birth intervals. Toothless

old people, the repositories of information in a preliterate society, could now

be fed and live longer. All those momentous consequences of pottery

triggered a population explosion, causing Japan’s population to climb from an

estimated few thousand people to a quarter of a million.

Naturally, the Japanese were not the sole ancient people with pottery: it

was invented independently at many different times and places around the

ancient world. But the world’s oldest known pottery was made in Japan

12,700 years ago. When those radiocarbon dates were announced in 1960, not

even Japanese scientists could at first believe them. In the usual experience of

archaeologists, inventions are supposed to flow from mainlands to islands,

and small peripheral societies aren’t supposed to contribute revolutionary

advances to the rest of the world. Especially in the experience of Japanese

archaeologists, China is regarded as the source of cultural breakthroughs in

East Asia, such as agriculture, writing, metallurgy, and everything else of

significance. Today, nearly 40 years after those early dates for pottery in

Japan were measured, archaeologists are still reeling from the carbon 14

shock, as it is termed. Other early pottery has been found in China and in

eastern Russia (near Vladivostok). Asian archaeologists are racing to beat the

Japanese record. (In fact, I just heard rumors that the Chinese and Russians

are close to beating it.) But the Japanese still hold the world record, with

pottery thousands of years older than the oldest from the Fertile Crescent or

Europe.

The prejudice that islanders are supposed to learn from superior

continentals wasn’t the sole reason why record-breaking Japanese pottery

caused such a shock. In addition, those first Japanese potters were clearly

hunter-gatherers, and that also violated established views. Mostly, pottery is

owned by sedentary societies: what nomad wants to carry a collection of

heavy pots, as well as weapons and the baby, every time he or she shifts

camp? Hence hunter-gatherers usually don’t have pottery, because most

sedentary societies elsewhere in the world arose only with the adoption of

agriculture. But the Japanese environment is so productive that it was one of

the few locations where people could settle down and make pottery while still

living as hunter-gatherers. Pottery helped those Japanese hunter-gatherers to

exploit their environment’s rich food resources more than 10,000 years before

intensive agriculture reached Japan. In contrast, pottery wasn’t adopted in the

Fertile Crescent until about a thousand years after the adoption of agriculture.

Not surprisingly, ancient Japanese pottery was technologically simple by

today’s standards. It lacked glazes, was made by hand rather than on potters’

wheels, was baked in open fires rather than in kilns, and was fired at

relatively low temperatures. But, as time went on, it came to be made in an

incredible profusion of shapes that rate as great art by the standards of any

era. Much of it was decorated by rolling or pressing a cord on the clay while it

was still soft. Because the Japanese word for “cord marking” is jomon, the

term jomon is applied to the pottery itself, to the ancient Japanese people who

made it, and to that whole period in Japanese prehistory beginning with the

invention of pottery and ending only 10,000 years later.

The earliest Jomon pottery of 12,700 years ago comes from Kyushu, the

southernmost Japanese island. Thereafter, pottery spread north, reaching the

vicinity of modern Tokyo around 9,500 years ago and the northernmost island

of Hokkaido by 7,000 years ago. Pottery’s northward spread followed the

northward spread of deciduous forest rich in nuts, suggesting that the food

explosion was what permitted sedentary living and the pottery explosion.

Reinforcing that interpretation of a single invention of pottery in the south

and a spread from that one source, the style of the earliest Jomon pottery is

fairly uniform over the whole of Japan. With time, a few dozen regional styles

developed over the 1,500-mile length of the Japanese archipelago.



HOW DID JOMON PEOPLE MAKE THEIR LIVING? WE have abundant evidence

from the garbage that they left behind at hundreds of thousands of excavated

archaeological sites and huge shell mounds distributed all over Japan. It turns

out that they were hunters, gatherers, and fishing people enjoying a

remarkably diverse and well-balanced diet that modern nutritionists would

applaud.

One major food category was nuts, especially chestnuts and walnuts, plus

horse chestnuts and acorns leached free of their bitter poisons. Nuts could be

harvested in autumn in prodigious quantities and then stored for the winter in

underground storage pits up to six feet deep and six feet wide. Other plant

foods included berries, fruits, seeds, leaves, shoots, bulbs, and roots. In all,

archaeologists sifting through Jomon garbage have identified 64 species of

edible plants.

Then as now, Japan’s inhabitants were also among the world’s leading

consumers of seafood. Tuna were harpooned in the open ocean; porpoises

were driven into shallow water and clubbed or speared, just as they are in

Japan today; seals were killed on the beaches; seasonal runs of salmon were

exploited in the rivers; a wide variety of fish were netted, captured in weirs,

and caught on fishhooks carved out of deer antlers; and shellfish, crabs, and

seaweed were gathered in the intertidal zone or harvested by divers. Jomon

skeletons show a high incidence of what pathologists term auditory exostosis,

meaning abnormal bone growth in the ears as often observed in divers today.

Among land animals hunted, wild boar and deer were the commonest

prey, followed by mountain goat and bear. These game animals were caught

in pit traps, shot with bow and arrow, and run down with dogs. Pig bones

appeared in Jomon times on offshore islands where pigs do not occur

naturally, making one wonder whether Jomon people were starting to

experiment with pig domestication.

The most debated question about Jomon subsistence concerns the possible

contribution of agriculture. Jomon sites often contain remains of edible plants

that are native to Japan as wild species but are also grown as crops today,

including adzuki bean, mung bean, and barnyard millet. The remains from

Jomon times do not clearly show morphological features distinguishing the

crops from their wild ancestors, so we do not know whether these plants were

gathered in the wild or were being intentionally grown. Sites also have debris

of edible or useful plant species that are not native to Japan, and that must

have been introduced for their value from the Asian mainland, such as

buckwheat, melons, bottle gourd, hemp, and shiso or beefsteak plant (used for

seasoning). Around 1200 B.C., toward the end of the Jomon period, a few

grains of rice, barley, foxtail millet, and broomcorn millet, the staple cereals

of East Asia, began to appear. All of these tantalizing clues make it likely that

Jomon people were starting to practice some slash-and-burn agriculture, but it

was evidently in a casual way that made only a minor contribution to their

diet.

I don’t mean to leave the impression that every one of these foods that

I’ve mentioned was eaten everywhere throughout Jomon Japan. In the nut-

rich forests of northern Japan, nut storage pits were especially important,

along with seal hunting and sea fishing. In the nut-poor southwest, shellfish

assumed a greater role. But diversity still characterizes local Jomon diets and

even individual Jomon meals. For instance, as shown by preserved remains of

meals, Jomon people blended chestnut and walnut flour, pig and deer meat

and blood, and bird eggs in various proportions to produce either a high-

carbohydrate Mrs. Jomon’s cookie or a high-protein McJomonburger. Recent

Ainu hunter-gatherers kept a ceramic stewpot simmering constantly on the

fire and threw all types of foods together into it; their Jomon predecessors,

living at the same sites and eating the same foods, may have done the same.

I mentioned that their pottery (including heavy pieces up to three feet tall)

suggests Jomon hunter-gatherers to have been sedentary rather than nomadic.

Further evidence of fixed residence comes from their heavy stone tools,

remains of substantial semi-underground houses with signs of remodeling, big

village sites of a hundred or more dwellings, and cemeteries. All of these

features distinguish Jomon people from observed modern hunter-gatherers

who shift base every few weeks, build only shelters, and burden themselves

with few and easily portable possessions. This sedentary lifestyle was made

possible by the diversity of resource-rich habitats available to Jomon people

within a short distance of one central site: inland forests, rivers, seashores,

bays, and open oceans.

Jomon people lived at some of the highest population densities ever

estimated for hunter-gatherers, especially in central and northern Japan with

its nut-rich forests, salmon runs, and productive seas. Estimates of the total

population of Jomon Japan at its peak are 250,000—trivial of course

compared with modern Japan’s, but impressive for hunter-gatherers. Their

closest rivals in modern times would have been American Indians of the

Pacific Northwest coast and of California, subsisting similarly off of nut-rich

forests, salmon runs, and productive seas—a striking case of convergent

evolution of human societies.

With all this stress on what Jomon people did have, we need to be clear as

well about what they did not have. They had no intensive agriculture, and

only questionably any agriculture at all. Apart from dogs (and questionably

pigs), they had no domestic animals. They had no metal tools, no writing, and

no weaving. Jomon villages and cemeteries do not consist of a few richly

decorated houses and graves contrasting with numerous spartan ones but are

instead rather uniform—suggesting that there was little social stratification

into chiefs and commoners. The regional variation in pottery styles suggests

little progress toward political centralization and unification. All of these

negative features contrast with features of contemporary societies only a few

hundred miles distant from Jomon Japan in mainland China and Korea—and

with the changes that swept over Japan itself after 400 B.C.

Despite its distinctiveness even in East Asia at that time, Jomon Japan

was not a completely isolated universe. Distribution of pottery and of

obsidian (a very hard volcanic rock favored for stone tools) shows that Jomon

watercraft connected the Izu island chain stretching 180 miles south from

Tokyo. Pottery, obsidian, and fishhooks similarly testify to some Jomon trade

with Korea, Russia, and Okinawa—as does the arrival of the half-a-dozen

Asian mainland crops that I already mentioned. But archaeologists studying

Jomon Japan have found little evidence of direct imports from China, in

contrast to China’s big influence on subsequent Japanese history. Compared

with later eras, what is impressive about Jomon Japan is not that some contact

with the outside world did occur but that it had so little influence on Jomon

society. Jomon Japan was a conservative miniature universe that maintained

its isolation and changed surprisingly little over the course of 10,000 years—

an island of stability in a fragile, rapidly changing contemporary world.

To place the distinctiveness of Jomon Japan in a contemporary

perspective, let us remind ourselves of what human societies were like on the

Asian mainland a few hundred miles west of Japan in 400 B.C., just as the

Jomon lifestyle was about to come to an end. China consisted then of

kingdoms with rich elites and poorer commoners, living in walled towns, and

on the verge of political unification to become the world’s largest empire.

Beginning around 7500 B.C., China had developed intensive agriculture based

on millets in the north and rice in the south, and with domestic pigs, chickens,

and water buffalo. China had had writing for at least 900 years, and metal

tools for at least 1,500 years, and had just invented the world’s first cast-iron

production. Those Chinese developments were also spreading to Korea,

which had already had agriculture for several thousand years (including rice

since 2200 B.C.) and metal since 1000 B.C.

Given all of these developments going on for thousands of years just

across Tsushima Strait and the East China Sea from Japan, it seems at first

astonishing that Japan was still occupied in 400 B.C. by people who had some

trade with Korea but remained preliterate, stone-tool-using hunter-gatherers.

Throughout human history, centralized states with metal weapons and armies

supported by dense agricultural populations have swept away sparser

populations of stone-tool-using hunter-gatherers. How did Jomon Japan

survive so long?

To understand the answer to this paradox, we have to remember that, until

400 B.C., the frontier of Tsushima Strait separated not rich farmers from poor

hunter-gatherers but poor farmers from rich hunter-gatherers. China itself and

Jomon Japan were not in direct contact. Instead, Japan’s trade contacts, such

as they were, involved Korea. But rice had been domesticated in warm

southern China and spread only slowly northward to much cooler Korea,

because it took a long time to develop new, cold-resistant strains of rice. Early

rice agriculture in Korea used dry-field methods rather than irrigated paddies

and was not particularly productive. Hence early Korean agriculture could not

compete with Jomon hunting and gathering. Jomon people themselves would

have seen no advantage warranting adoption of Korean agriculture, insofar as

they were aware of its existence; and poor Korean farmers possessed no

advantages enabling them to force their way into Japan. As we shall see, the

advantages finally reversed suddenly and dramatically.

I ALREADY MENTIONED THAT THE INVENTION OF POTTERY in Kyushu around

12,700 years ago and the resulting Jomon population explosion were the first

of two decisive changes in Japanese history. The other decisive change, which

triggered a second population explosion, began around 400 B.C. with the

arrival of a new lifestyle (and people?) from South Korea. This second

transition poses in acute form our question about who the Japanese are. Does

the transition mark the replacement of Jomon people with immigrants from

Korea, ancestral to the modern Japanese? Or does it merely mark Japan’s

original Jomon inhabitants continuing to occupy Japan while learning

valuable new tricks?

The new lifestyle appeared first on the north coast of Japan’s

southwesternmost island of Kyushu, immediately across Tsushima Strait from

South Korea. The most important new elements were Japan’s first metal tools,

of iron, and its first undisputed full-scale agriculture. That agriculture came in

the form of irrigated rice fields, complete with canals, dams, banks, paddies,

and rice residues revealed by archaeological excavations. Archaeologists term

the new lifestyle “Yayoi,” after a district of Tokyo where in 1884 its

characteristic pottery was first recognized. Unlike Jomon pottery, Yayoi

pottery had shapes very similar to those of contemporary South Korean

pottery. Among the new Yayoi culture’s many other elements that were

unmistakably Korean but previously foreign to Japan were bronze objects,

weaving, glass beads, underground rice storage pits, the custom of burying

remains of dead people in jars, and Korean styles of tools and houses.

Although rice was the most important Yayoi crop, 27 other crops new to

Japan plus unquestionably domesticated pigs were grown as well. Yayoi

farmers may have practiced double-cropping, with paddies irrigated for rice

production in the summer, then the same fields drained for dry-land

cultivation of millets, barley, and wheat in the winter. Inevitably, this highly

productive system of intensive agriculture triggered an immediate population

explosion in Kyushu, where archaeologists have identified far more Yayoi

sites than Jomon sites, even though the Jomon period lasted 14 times longer.

In virtually no time, Yayoi farming jumped from Kyushu to the adjacent

main islands of Shikoku and Honshu, reaching the Tokyo area within 200

years and the northern tip of Honshu (1,000 miles from the first Yayoi

settlements on Kyushu) in another century. The earliest Yayoi sites on Kyushu

contained pots both in the new Yayoi styles and in the old Jomon styles, but

the latter dropped out as Yayoi culture and pottery spread north through

Honshu. However, some elements of Jomon culture did not vanish

completely. Yayoi farmers continued to use some Jomon types of chipped-

stone tools, which had already been completely replaced by metal tools in

Korea and China. Some Yayoi houses were in Korean styles, some in Jomon

styles. Particularly as Yayoi culture spread north of Tokyo, into cooler areas

where rice farming was less productive and where Jomon hunter-gatherers

had lived in the highest population densities, a mixed Yayoi/Jomon culture

arose, with fishhooks made of metal but in Jomon shapes, and with pots made

in modified Yayoi forms but with Jomon cord marking. After briefly

occupying the cold northern tip of Honshu, Yayoi farmers abandoned that

area, presumably because rice farming just could not compete there with the

Jomon hunter-gatherer lifestyle. For the next 2,000 years, northern Honshu

remained a frontier zone, beyond which the northernmost Japanese island of

Hokkaido and its Ainu hunter-gatherers were not even considered part of the

Japanese state until their annexation in the 19th century.

Yayoi iron tools were initially imported from Korea in enormous

quantities, until domestic Japanese iron smelting and production began after

several centuries. It also took several centuries for Yayoi Japan to exhibit the

first signs of social stratification, as reflected especially in cemeteries. After

about 100 B.C., separate parts of cemeteries began to be set aside for the

graves of what was evidently an emerging elite class, marked by luxury goods

imported from China, such as beautiful jade objects and bronze mirrors. As

the Yayoi population explosion continued, and as all the best swamps or

irrigable plains suitable for wet rice agriculture began to be filled up,

archaeological evidence for war became more and more frequent: mass

production of arrowheads, defensive moats surrounding the villages, and

buried skeletons pierced by projectile points. These hallmarks of war in Yayoi

Japan corroborate the earliest accounts of Japan in Chinese chronicles, which

describe the land of Wa and its hundred little political units fighting with one

another.

In the period from A.D. 300 to 700, both archaeological excavations and

frustratingly ambiguous accounts in later chronicles let us glimpse dimly the

emergence of a politically unified Japan. Before A.D. 300, elite tombs were

small and exhibited a regional diversity of styles. Beginning around A.D. 300,

increasingly enormous earth mound tombs termed kofun, in the shape of a

keyhole, were constructed in Honshu’s Kinai region and then appeared over

the whole former Yayoi culture area, from Kyushu to North Honshu. Why the

Kinai region? Perhaps because it contains some of Japan’s best agricultural

land, where super-expensive Kobe beef is raised today, and where Japan’s

ancient capital was located at Kyoto until the capital’s shift to Tokyo in 1868.

Kofun tombs are up to 1,500 feet long and over 100 feet high, making

them possibly the largest earth mound tombs in the ancient world. The

prodigious amount of labor required to construct them, and the uniformity of

their style over Japan, imply powerful rulers who commanded a huge labor

force and were in the process of achieving Japan’s political unification. Those

kofun that have been excavated contain lavish burial goods, but excavation of

all of the largest ones is still forbidden because they are believed to contain

the ancestors of the Japanese imperial line. This visible evidence of political

centralization that the kofun provide reinforces the accounts of Kofun era

Japanese emperors written down much later in Japanese and Korean

chronicles. Massive Korean influences on Japan during the Kofun era—

whether through Korean conquest of Japan (the Korean view) or Japanese

conquest of Korea (the Japanese view)—transmitted Buddhism, writing,

horse riding, and new ceramic and metallurgical techniques to Japan from the

Asian mainland.

Finally, with the completion of Japan’s first chronicle, in A.D. 712, partly

myth and partly rewritings of true events, Japan emerges into the full light of

history. As of 712, the people inhabiting Japan were at last unquestionably

Japanese, and their language (termed Old Japanese) was unquestionably

ancestral to modern Japanese. Japan’s Emperor Akihito, who reigns today, is

the 82nd direct descendant of the emperor under whom that first chronicle of

A.D. 712 was written. He is traditionally considered the 125th direct

descendant of the legendary first emperor, Jimmu, the great-great-great-

grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu.



JAPANESE CULTURE UNDERWENT far more radical change in the 700 years of

the Yayoi era than in the ten millennia of Jomon times. The contrast between

Jomon stability (alias conservatism) and radical Yayoi change is the most

striking feature of Japanese history. Obviously, something momentous

happened at 400 B.C. What was it? Were the Jomon people, the Yayoi people,

or a mixture of them the ancestors of the modern Japanese? Japan’s

population increased by the astonishing factor of 70 during Yayoi times: what

caused that change? A passionate debate has raged around three alternative

hypotheses.

One theory is that Jomon hunter-gatherers themselves gradually evolved

into the modern Japanese. Because they had already been living a settled

existence in villages for thousands of years, they may have been pre-adapted

to accepting agriculture. At the Yayoi transition, perhaps nothing more

happened than that Jomon society received cold-resistant rice seeds and

information about paddy irrigation from Korea, enabling people to produce

more food and increase their numbers. This theory appeals to some modern

Japanese, because it minimizes the unwelcome contribution of Korean genes

to the Japanese gene pool, and because it portrays the Japanese people as

uniquely Japanese for at least the last 12,000 years.

A second theory, unappealing to those Japanese who prefer the first

theory, argues instead that the Yayoi transition represents a massive influx of

immigrants from Korea, carrying Korean farming practices, culture, and

genes. Kyushu would have seemed a paradise to Korean rice farmers, because

it is warmer and swampier than Korea and hence a better place to grow rice.

According to one estimate, Yayoi Japan received several million immigrants

from Korea, utterly swamping out the genetic contribution of Jomon people

(thought to have numbered around 75,000 just before the Yayoi transition). If

so, modern Japanese are descendants of Korean immigrants who developed a

modified culture of their own over the last 2,000 years.

The last theory accepts the evidence for immigration from Korea but

denies that it was massive. Instead, highly productive agriculture enabled a

modest number of immigrant rice farmers to reproduce much faster than

Jomon hunter-gatherers and eventually to outnumber them. For instance,

suppose that a mere 5,000 Koreans had come to Kyushu, but that rice

agriculture had enabled them to feed babies and to increase their numbers at a

rate of 1 percent per year. That rate is much higher than observed for hunter-

gatherer populations but is easily attained by farmers: Kenya’s population is

now growing at 4.5 percent per year. In 700 years those 5,000 immigrants

would have left 5,000,000 descendants, again swamping out the Jomon

people. Like the second theory, this one considers modern Japanese to be

slightly modified Koreans but dispenses with the need for large-scale

immigration.

By comparison with similar transitions elsewhere in the world, the second

or third theory seems to me more plausible than the first theory. Over the last

12,000 years, agriculture arose at not more than nine places over the face of

the earth: China, the Fertile Crescent, and a few other places. Twelve

thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all

of us are farmers or else are fed by farmers. The spread of farming from those

few sites of origin usually did not occur as a result of the hunter-gatherers’

elsewhere adopting farming; hunter-gatherers tend to be conservative, as

Jomon people evidently were from 10,700 to 400 B.C. Instead, farming spread

mainly through farmers’ outbreeding hunters, developing more potent

technology, and then killing the hunters or driving them off of all lands

suitable for agriculture. In modern times, European farmers thereby replaced

western North American Indian hunters, Aboriginal Australians, and the San

people of South Africa. Stone-tool-using farmers similarly replaced hunters

prehistorically throughout Europe, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia. Compared

with the only modest advantage that farmers enjoyed over hunters in these

prehistoric expansions, Korean farmers of 400 B.C. would have enjoyed an

enormous advantage over Jomon hunters, because the Koreans already

possessed iron tools and a highly developed form of intensive agriculture.

Which of the three theories is correct for Japan? The only direct way to

answer this question is to compare Jomon and Yayoi skeletons and genes with

those of modern Japanese and Ainu. Measurements have now been made of

many series of skeletons. In addition, within recent years, molecular

geneticists have begun to extract DNA from ancient human skeletons and to

compare the genes of Japan’s ancient and modern populations. What one

finds is that Jomon and Yayoi skeletons are on the average readily

distinguishable. Jomon people tended to have shorter stature, relatively longer

forearms and lower legs, more wide-set eyes, shorter and wider faces, and

much more pronounced facial “topography” with strikingly raised brow

ridges, noses, and bridges of the nose. Yayoi people averaged an inch or two

taller, had close-set eyes, high and narrow faces, and flat brow ridges and

noses. Some skeletons of the Yayoi period were still Jomon-like in

appearance, but that is to be expected by almost any theory of the

Jomon/Yayoi transition. By the time of the Kofun period, all Japanese

skeletons except those of the Ainu formed a homogeneous group, resembling

modern Japanese and Koreans.

In all of these respects, Jomon skulls differ from those of modern

Japanese and are most similar to those of modern Ainu, while Yayoi skulls

most resemble those of modern Japanese. On the assumption that modern

Japanese people arose as a mixture of a Korean-like Yayoi population with an

Ainu-like Jomon population, geneticists have attempted to calculate the

relative contributions of the two gene pools. The resulting conclusion is that

the Korean/Yayoi contribution was generally dominant. The Ainu/Jomon

contribution was lowest in southwest Japan, where most Korean immigrants

would have arrived and Jomon populations were sparse, and relatively greater

in northern Japan, where forests were richer in nuts, Jomon population

densities were highest, and Yayoi rice agriculture was least successful.

Thus, immigrants from Korea really did make a big contribution to the

modern Japanese, though we cannot yet say whether that was because of

massive immigration or else modest immigration amplified by a high rate of

population increase. The Ainu are more nearly the descendants of Japan’s

ancient Jomon inhabitants, mixed with Korean genes of Yayoi colonists and

of the modern Japanese.

Given the overwhelming advantage that rice agriculture finally gave to

Korean farmers over Jomon hunters, one has to wonder why the farmers

achieved victory so suddenly, after making little headway in Japan for

thousands of years after farming reached Korea. I already mentioned that

early Korean farming was relatively unproductive and resulted only in poor

farmers outclassed by rich hunters. What finally tipped the balance to the

farmers and triggered the Yayoi transition was probably a combination of four

factors coming together: the development of irrigated rice agriculture, instead

of less productive dry-field rice agriculture; the continuing improvement of

rice strains adapted to a cool climate; the growth in Korea’s farming

population, putting pressure on Koreans to emigrate; and the development of

iron tools for efficiently mass-producing the wooden shovels, hoes, and other

tools needed for rice paddy agriculture. The fact that iron and intensive

farming reached Japan simultaneously is unlikely to be a coincidence.



I BEGAN THIS PIECE BY MENTIONING A TRANSPARENT interpretation for how the

distinctive-looking Ainu and the undistinctive-looking Japanese came to share

Japan. On the face of it, these facts would appear to suggest that the Ainu are

descended from Japan’s original inhabitants, and that the Japanese are

descended from more recent arrivals. We have now seen that the combined

evidence of archaeology, physical anthropology, and genetics supports this

view.

But I also mentioned at the outset a potent objection that causes most

people (especially the Japanese themselves) to seek other interpretations. If

the Japanese really are recent arrivals from Korea, you might expect the

Japanese and Korean languages to be very similar to each other. More

generally, if the Japanese people arose recently from some mixture, on the

island of Kyushu, of original Ainu-like Jomon inhabitants with Yayoi

invaders from Korea, the Japanese language might show close affinities to

both the Korean and the Ainu languages. Instead, Japanese and Ainu have no

demonstrable relationship, and the relationship between Japanese and Korean

is distant. How could this be so if the mixing occurred a mere 2,400 years

ago? I suggest the following resolution of this paradox: that the languages of

the Kyushu Jomon residents and of the Yayoi invaders were in fact unlikely to

have been very similar to the modern Ainu and Korean languages,

respectively.

Taking first the Ainu language, that language as we know it is the one that

was spoken in recent times by the Ainu on the northern Japanese island of

Hokkaido. Therefore, Hokkaido’s Jomon inhabitants also probably spoke an

Ainu-like language, but the Jomon inhabitants of Kyushu surely did not. From

the southern tip of Kyushu to the northern tip of Hokkaido, the Japanese

archipelago is nearly 1,500 miles long. We know that in Jomon times it

supported great regional diversity of subsistence techniques and of pottery

styles and was never unified politically. During the 10,000 years of Jomon

occupation, Jomon people would have evolved correspondingly great

linguistic diversity. Their languages may even have been already diverse over

12,000 years ago, if the northern and southern Jomon people arrived over land

bridges from Russia and Korea, respectively, as the archaeological evidence

seems to indicate.

In fact, many Japanese place-names on Hokkaido and northern Honshu

include the Ainu words for “river” ( nai or betsu) or cape ( shiri), but such

Ainu-like names do not occur farther south in Japan. This suggests that Yayoi

and Japanese pioneers adopted many local Jomon place-names, just as white

Americans did from Native Americans (think of “Massachusetts,”

“Mississippi,” and so on), but that Ainu was the Jomon language only of

northernmost Japan. The Jomon language of Kyushu may instead have shared

a common ancestor with the Austronesian language family, which includes

Polynesian and Indonesian languages and the Aboriginal languages of

Taiwan. As many linguists have pointed out, the Japanese language shows

some influence of Austronesian languages in the shared preference for so-

called open syllables (a consonant followed by a vowel, as in “Hi-ro-hi-to”).

Ancient Taiwanese were great seafarers whose descendants spread out far to

the south, east, and west; some of them may also have spread north, to

Kyushu.

That is, the modern Ainu language of Hokkaido is not a model for the

ancient Jomon language of Kyushu. By the same token, the modern Korean

language may be a poor model for the ancient Yayoi language of Korean

immigrants in 400 B.C. In the centuries before Korea became unified

politically in A.D. 676, it consisted of three kingdoms. The modern Korean

language is derived from the language of the kingdom of Silla, the kingdom

that emerged triumphant and unified Korea, but Silla was not the kingdom

that had had close contact with Japan in the preceding centuries. Early Korean

chronicles tell us that the different kingdoms had different languages. While

the languages of the kingdoms defeated by Silla are poorly known, the few

preserved words of one of those kingdoms (Koguryo) are much more similar

to the corresponding Old Japanese words than are the corresponding modern

Korean words. Korean languages may have been even more diverse in 400

B.C., before political unification had reached the stage of three kingdoms. I

suspect that the Korean language that was carried to Japan in 400 B.C., and

that evolved into modern Japanese, was quite different from the Silla

language that evolved into modern Korean. Hence we should not be surprised

that modern Japanese and Korean people resemble each other far more in

their appearance and genes than in their languages.

This conclusion is likely to be equally unpopular in Japan and in Korea,

because of the current mutual dislike of those two peoples. History gives them

good reason to dislike each other: especially, for Koreans to dislike Japanese.

Like Arabs and Jews, Koreans and Japanese are peoples joined by blood, yet

locked in traditional enmity. But enmity is mutually destructive, in East Asia

and in the Middle East. Reluctant as Japanese and Koreans are to admit it,

they are like twin brothers who shared their formative years. The political

future of East Asia depends in large part on their success in rediscovering

those ancient bonds between them.





2003 AFTERWORD: Guns, Germs, and Steel Today

G UNS, GERMS, AND STEEL (GGS) IS ABOUT WHY THE RISE OF complex human

societies unfolded differently on different continents over the last 13,000

years. I finished revising the manuscript in 1996, and it was published in

1997. Since then, I have been involved mostly in work on other projects,

especially on my next book about collapses of societies. Hence seven years’

distance in time and focus now separates me from GGS’s writing. How does

the book look in retrospect, and what has happened to change or extend its

conclusions since its publication? To my admittedly biased eye, the book’s

central message has survived well, and the most interesting developments

since its publication have involved four extensions of the story to the modern

world and to recent history.

My main conclusion was that societies developed differently on different

continents because of differences in continental environments, not in human

biology. Advanced technology, centralized political organization, and other

features of complex societies could emerge only in dense sedentary

populations capable of accumulating food surpluses—populations that

depended for their food on the rise of agriculture that began around 8,500 B.C.

But the domesticable wild plant and animal species essential for that rise of

agriculture were distributed very unevenly over the continents. The most

valuable domesticable wild species were concentrated in only nine small

areas of the globe, which thus became the earliest homelands of agriculture.

The original inhabitants of those homelands thereby gained a head start

toward developing guns, germs, and steel. The languages and genes of those

homeland inhabitants, as well as their livestock, crops, technologies, and

writing systems, became dominant in the ancient and modern world.

Discoveries in the last half-dozen years, by archaeologists, geneticists,

linguists, and other specialists, have enriched our understanding of this story,

without changing its main outlines. Let me mention three examples. One of

the biggest gaps in GGS’s geographic coverage involved Japan, about whose

prehistory I had little to say in 1996. Recent genetic evidence now suggests

that the modern Japanese people are the product of an agricultural expansion

similar to others discussed in GGS: an expansion of Korean farmers,

beginning around 400 B.C., into southwestern Japan and then advancing

northeast up the Japanese archipelago. The immigrants brought intensive rice

agriculture and metal tools, and they mixed with the original Japanese

population (related to the modern Ainu) to produce the modern Japanese,

much as expanding Fertile Crescent farmers mixed with Europe’s original

hunter/gatherer population to produce modern Europeans.

As another example, archaeologists originally assumed that Mexican

corn, beans, and squashes reached the southeastern United States by the most

direct route via northeastern Mexico and eastern Texas. But it is now

becoming clear that this route was too dry for farming; those crops instead

took a longer route, spreading from Mexico into the southwestern United

States to trigger the rise of Anasazi societies there, and then spreading east

from New Mexico and Colorado through river valleys of the Great Plains into

the southeastern United States.

As a final example, in Chapter 10 I contrasted the frequency of repeated

independent domestications and slow spreads of the same or related plants

along the Americas’ north/south axis with the predominantly single

domestications and rapid east/west spreads of Eurasian crops. Even more

examples of those two contrasting patterns have continued to turn up, but it

now appears that most or all of Eurasia’s Big Five domestic mammals also

underwent repeated independent domestications in different parts of Eurasia

—unlike Eurasia’s plants, but like the Americas’ plants.

These and other discoveries add details, which continue to fascinate me,

to our understanding of how agriculture’s rise triggered the rise of

agriculturally based complex societies in the ancient world. However, the

biggest advances building on GGS have involved extensions into areas that

were not the book’s main focus. Since publication, thousands of people have

written, phoned, e-mailed, or buttonholed me to tell me of parallels or

contrasts that they noticed between the ancient continental processes of GGS

and the modern or recent processes that they study. I’ll tell you about four of

these revelations: briefly, the illuminating example of New Zealand’s Musket

Wars; the perennial question “Why Europe, not China?” in more detail,

parallels between competition in the ancient world and in the modern business

world; and GGS’s relevance to why some societies today are rich while others

are poor.



IN 1996 I DEVOTED one brief paragraph (in Chapter 13) to a phenomenon in

19th-century New Zealand history termed the Musket Wars, as an illustration

of how powerful new technologies spread. The Musket Wars were a

complicated, poorly understood series of tribal wars among New Zealand’s

indigenous Maori people, between 1818 and the 1830s—wars by which

European guns spread among tribes that had previously fought one another

with stone and wooden weapons. Two books published since then have

increased our understanding of that chaotic period of New Zealand history,

placed it in a broader historical context, and made its relevance to GGS even

clearer.

In the early 1800s, European traders, missionaries, and whalers began to

visit New Zealand, which had been occupied 600 years previously by

Polynesian farmers and fishermen known as Maoris. The first European

visitors were concentrated at New Zealand’s northern end. Those northern

Maori tribes with the earliest access to Europeans thereby became the first

tribes to acquire muskets, which gave them a big military advantage over all

the other tribes lacking muskets. They used that advantage to settle scores

with neighboring tribes that were their traditional enemies. But they also used

muskets for a new type of warfare: long-distance raids against Maori tribes

hundreds of miles away, carried out in order to outdo rivals in acquiring

slaves and prestige.

At least as important as European muskets in making long-distance raids

feasible were European-introduced potatoes (originating in South America),

which yielded many more tons of food per acre or per farmer than did

traditional Maori agriculture based on sweet potatoes. The main limitation

that had previously prevented Maoris from undertaking long raids had been

the twin problems of feeding warriors away from home for a long time, and

feeding the at-home population of women and children dependent on the

would-be warriors to stay home and grow sweet potatoes. Potatoes solved that

bottleneck. Hence a less heroic term for the Musket Wars would be the Potato

Wars.

Whatever they are called, the Musket/Potato Wars proved very

destructive, killing about one-quarter of the original Maori population. The

highest body counts arose when a tribe with lots of muskets and potatoes

attacked a tribe with few or none. Of the tribes not among the first to acquire

muskets and potatoes, some were virtually exterminated before they could

acquire them, while others made determined efforts to acquire them and

thereby restore the previous military equilibrium. One episode in these wars

was the conquest and mass killing of Moriori tribes by Maori tribes, as

described in Chapter 2.

The Musket/Potato Wars illustrate the main process running through the

history of the last 10,000 years: human groups with guns, germs, and steel, or

with earlier technological and military advantages, spreading at the expense

of other groups, until either the latter groups became replaced or everyone

came to share the new advantages. Recent history furnishes innumerable

examples as Europeans expanded to other continents. In many places the non-

European locals never got a chance to acquire guns and ended up losing their

lives or their freedom. However, Japan did succeed in acquiring (actually,

reacquiring) guns, preserved its independence, and within 50 years used its

new guns to defeat a European power in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–5.

North American Plains Indians, South American Araucanian Indians, New

Zealand’s Maoris, and Ethiopians acquired guns and used them to hold off

European conquest for a long time, though they were ultimately defeated.

Today, Third World countries are doing their best to catch up with the First

World by acquiring the latter’s technological and agricultural advantages.

Such spreads of technology and agriculture, arising ultimately from

competition between human groups, must have happened at innumerable

other times and places over the past 10,000 years.

In that sense, there was nothing unusual about New Zealand’s

Musket/Potato Wars. While those wars were a purely local phenomenon

confined to New Zealand, they are of worldwide interest because they furnish

such a clear example, so narrowly confined in space and time, of so many

other similar local phenomena. Within about two decades following their

introduction to the northern end of New Zealand, muskets and potatoes had

spread 900 miles to the southern end of New Zealand. In the past, agriculture,

writing, and improved pre-gun weapons took much longer to spread much

greater distances, but the underlying social processes of population

replacement and competition were essentially the same. Now we are

wondering whether nuclear weapons will proliferate around the world by the

same often-violent process, from the eight countries that presently possess

them.



A SECOND AREA of active discussion since 1997 falls under a heading that

could be termed “Why Europe, not China?” Most of GGS concerned

differences between continents: i.e., the question of why some Eurasians

rather than Aboriginal Australians, sub-Saharan Africans, or Native

Americans were the ones to expand over the world within the past

millennium. However, I realized that many readers would also wonder “Why,

among Eurasians, was it Europeans rather than Chinese or some other group

that expanded?” I knew that my readers would not let me get away with

concluding GGS without saying anything about this obvious question.

Hence I briefly considered it in the book’s epilogue. I suggested that the

underlying reason behind Europe’s overtaking China was something deeper

than the proximate factors suggested by most historians (e.g., China’s

Confucianism vs. Europe’s Judeo-Christian tradition, the rise of western

science, the rise of European mercantilism and capitalism, Britain’s

deforestation coupled with its coal deposits, etc.). Behind these and other

proximate factors, I saw an “Optimal Fragmentation Principle”: ultimate

geographic factors that led to China becoming unified early and mostly

remaining unified thereafter, while Europe remained constantly fragmented.

Europe’s fragmentation did, and China’s unity didn’t, foster the advance of

technology, science, and capitalism by fostering competition between states

and providing innovators with alternative sources of support and havens from

persecution.

Historians have subsequently pointed out to me that Europe’s

fragmentation, China’s unity, and Europe’s and China’s relative strengths

were all more complex than depicted in my account. The geographic

boundaries of the political/social spheres that could usefully be grouped as

“Europe” or “China” fluctuated over the centuries. China led Europe in

technology at least until the 15th century and might do so again in the future,

in which case the question “Why Europe, not China?” might only refer to an

ephemeral phenomenon without deep explanation. Political fragmentation has

more complex effects than only providing a constructive forum for

competition: for instance, competition can be destructive as well as

constructive (think of World Wars I and II). Fragmentation itself is a

multifaceted rather than a monolithic concept: its effect on innovation

depends on factors such as the freedom with which ideas and people can

move across the boundaries between fragments, and whether the fragments

are distinct or just clones of each other. Whether fragmentation is “optimal”

may also vary with the measure of optimality used; a degree of political

fragmentation that is optimal for technological innovation may not be optimal

for economic productivity, political stability, or human happiness.

My sense is that a large majority of social scientists still favors proximate

explanations for the different courses of European and Chinese history. For

example, in a thoughtful recent essay Jack Goldstone stressed the importance

of Europe’s (especially Britain’s) “engine science,” meaning the applications

of science to the development of machines and engines. Goldstone wrote,

“Two problems faced all pre-industrial economies in regard to energy: amount

and concentration. The amount of mechanical energy available to any pre-

industrial economy was limited to water flows, animals or people who could

be fed, and wind that could be captured. In any geographically fixed area, this

amount was strictly limited.…It is difficult to overstate the advantage given to

the first economy or military/political power to devise a means to extract

useful work from the energy in fossil fuels…. [It was] the application of

steam power to spinning, to water and surface transport, to brick-making,

grain-threshing, iron-making, shoveling, construction, and all sorts of

manufacturing processes that transformed Britain’s economy…. It thus may

be that, far from a necessary development of European civilization, the rich

development of engine science was the chance outcome of specific, even if

highly contingent, circumstances that happened to arise in 17th- and 18th-

century Britain.” If this reasoning is correct, then a search for deep

geographic or ecological explanations will not be profitable.

The opposite minority view, similar to my view expressed in the epilogue

of GGS, has been argued in detail by Graeme Lang: “Differences between

Europe and China in ecology and geography helped to explain the very

different fates of science in the two regions. First, [rainfall] agriculture in

Europe provided no role for the state, which remained far from local

communities most of the time, and when the agricultural revolution in Europe

produced a growing agricultural surplus, this allowed the growth of relatively

autonomous towns along with urban institutions such as universities prior to

the rise of the centralized states in the late Middle Ages. [Irrigation and water-

control] agriculture in China, by contrast, favored the early development of

intrusive and coercive states in the major river valleys, while towns and their

institutions never achieved the degree of local autonomy found in Europe.

Second, the geography of China, unlike that of Europe, did not favor the

prolonged survival of independent states. Instead, China’s geography

facilitated eventual conquest and unification over a vast area, followed by

long periods of relative stability under imperial rule. The resulting state

system suppressed most of the conditions required for the emergence of

modern science…. The explanation outlined above is certainly

oversimplified. However, one of the advantages of this kind of account is that

it escapes the circularity which often creeps into explanations which do not go

deeper than social or cultural differences between Europe and China. Such

explanations can always be challenged with a further question: why were

Europe and China different with regard to those social or cultural factors?

Explanations rooted ultimately in geography and ecology, however, have

reached bedrock.”

It remains a challenge for historians to reconcile these different

approaches to answering the question “Why Europe, not China.” The answer

may have important consequences for how best to govern China and Europe

today. For example, from Lang’s and my perspective, the disaster of China’s

Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when a few misguided leaders

were able to close the school systems of the world’s largest country for five

years, may not be a unique one-time-only aberration, but may presage more

such disasters in the future unless China can introduce far more

decentralization into its political system. Conversely, Europe, in its rush

toward political and economic unity today, will have to devote much thought

to how to avoid dismantling the underlying reason behind its successes of the

last five centuries.



THE THIRD RECENT extension of GGS’s message to the modern world was to

me the most unexpected one. Soon after the book’s publication, it was

reviewed favorably by Bill Gates, and then I began receiving letters from

other business people and economists who pointed out possible parallels

between the histories of entire human societies discussed in GGS and the

histories of groups in the business world. This correspondence concerned the

following broad question: what is the best way to organize human groups,

organizations, and businesses so as to maximize productivity, creativity,

innovation, and wealth? Should your group have a centralized direction (in

the extreme, a dictator), or should there be diffuse leadership or even

anarchy? Should your collection of people be organized into a single group,

or broken down into a small or large number of groups? Should you maintain

open communication between your groups, or erect walls of secrecy between

them? Should you erect protectionist tariff walls against the outside, or should

you expose your business to free competition?

These questions arise at many different levels and for many types of

groups. They apply to the organization of entire countries: remember the

perennial arguments about whether the best form of government is a benign

dictatorship, a federal system, or an anarchical free-for-all. The same

questions arise about the organization of different companies within the same

industry. How can we account for the fact that Microsoft has been so

successful recently, while IBM, which was formerly successful, fell behind

but then drastically changed its organization and improved its success? How

can we explain the different successes of different industrial belts? When I

was a boy growing up in Boston, Route 128, the industrial belt around

Boston, led the world in scientific creativity and imagination. But Route 128

has fallen behind, and now Silicon Valley is the center of innovation. The

relations of businesses to one another in Silicon Valley and on Route 128 are

very different, possibly resulting in those different outcomes.

Of course, there are also the famous differences between the

productivities of the economies of whole countries, such as Japan, the United

States, France, and Germany. Actually, though, there are big differences

between the productivity and wealth of different business sectors even within

the same country. For example, the Korean steel industry is equal in

efficiency to ours, but all other Korean industries lag behind their American

counterparts. What is it about the different organization of these various

Korean industries that accounts for their differences in productivity within the

same country?

Obviously, answers to these questions about differences in organizational

success depend partly on the idiosyncrasies of individuals. For example, the

success of Microsoft has surely had something to do with the personal talents

of Bill Gates. Even with a superior corporate organization, Microsoft would

not be successful with an ineffectual leader. Nevertheless, one can still ask: all

other things being equal, or else in the long run, or else on the average, what

form of organization of human groups is best?

My comparison of the histories of China, the Indian subcontinent, and

Europe in the epilogue of GGS suggested an answer to this question as

applied to technological innovation in whole countries. As explained in the

preceding section, I inferred that competition between different political

entities spurred innovation in geographically fragmented Europe, and that the

lack of such competition held innovation back in unified China. Would that

mean that a higher degree of political fragmentation than Europe’s would be

even better? Probably not: India was geographically even more fragmented

than Europe, but less innovative technologically. This suggested to me the

Optimal Fragmentation Principle: innovation proceeds most rapidly in a

society with some optimal intermediate degree of fragmentation: a too-unified

society is at a disadvantage, and so is a too-fragmented society.

This inference rang a bell with Bill Lewis and other executives of

McKinsey Global Institute, a leading consulting firm based in Washington,

D.C., which carries out comparative studies of the economies of countries and

industries all over the world. The executives were so struck by the parallels

between their business experience and my historical inferences that they

presented a copy of GGS to each of the firm’s several hundred partners, and

they presented me with copies of their reports on the economies of the United

States, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Brazil, and other countries. They, too,

detected a key role of competition and group size in spurring innovation. Here

are some of the conclusions that I gleaned from conversations with McKinsey

executives and from their reports:

We Americans often fantasize that German and Japanese industries are

super-efficient, exceeding American industries in productivity. In reality,

that’s not true: on the average across all industries, America’s industrial

productivity is higher than that in either Japan or Germany. But those average

figures conceal big differences among the industries of each country, related

to differences in organization—and those differences are very instructive. Let

me give you two examples from McKinsey case studies on the German beer

industry and the Japanese food-processing industry.

Germans make wonderful beer. Every time that my wife and I fly to

Germany for a visit, we carry with us an empty suitcase, so we can fill it with

bottles of German beer to bring back to the United States and enjoy over the

following year. Yet the productivity of the German beer industry is only 43

percent that of the U.S. beer industry. Meanwhile, the German metalworking

and steel industries are equal in productivity to their American counterparts.

Since the Germans are evidently perfectly capable of organizing industries

well, why can’t they do so when it comes to beer?

It turns out that the German beer industry suffers from small-scale

production. There are a thousand tiny beer companies in Germany, shielded

from competition with one another because each German brewery has

virtually a local monopoly, and they are also shielded from competition with

imports. The United States has 67 major beer breweries, producing 23 billion

liters of beer per year. All of Germany’s 1,000 breweries combined produce

only half as much. Thus the average U.S. brewery produces 31 times more

beer than the average German brewery.

This fact results from local tastes and German government policies.

German beer drinkers are fiercely loyal to their local brand, so there are no

national brands in Germany analogous to our Budweiser, Miller, or Coors.

Instead, most German beer is consumed within 30 miles of the factory where

it is brewed. Therefore, the German beer industry cannot profit from

economies of scale. In the beer business, as in other businesses, production

costs decrease greatly with scale. The bigger the refrigerating unit for making

beer, and the longer the assembly line for filling bottles with beer, the lower

the cost of manufacturing beer. Those tiny German beer companies are

relatively inefficient. There’s no competition; there are just a thousand local

monopolies.

The local beer loyalties of individual German drinkers are reinforced by

German laws that make it hard for foreign beers to compete in the German

market. The German government has so-called beer purity laws that specify

exactly what can go into beer. Not surprisingly, those government purity

specifications are based on what German breweries put into beer, and not on

what American, French, and Swedish breweries like to put into beer. Because

of those laws, not much foreign beer gets exported to Germany, and because

of inefficiency and high prices much less of that wonderful German beer than

you would otherwise expect gets sold abroad. (Before you object that German

Löwenbräu beer is widely available in the United States, please read the label

on the next bottle of Löwenbräu that you drink here: it’s not produced in

Germany but in North America, under license, in big factories with North

American productivity and efficiencies of scale.)

The German soap industry and consumer electronics industry are

similarly inefficient; their companies are not exposed to competition with one

another, nor are they exposed to foreign competition, and so they do not

acquire the best practices of international industry. (When is the last time that

you bought an imported TV set made in Germany?) But those disadvantages

are not shared by the German metal and steel industries, in which big German

companies have to compete with one another and internationally, and thus are

forced to acquire the best international practices.

My other favorite example from the McKinsey reports concerns the

Japanese food-processing industry. We Americans tend to be paranoid about

Japanese efficiency, and it is indeed formidable in some industries—but not in

food-processing. The efficiency of the Japanese food-processing industry is a

miserable 32 percent that of ours. There are 67,000 food-processing

companies in Japan, compared to only 21,000 in the United States, which has

twice Japan’s population—so the average U.S. food-processing company is

six times bigger than its Japanese counterpart. Why does the Japanese food-

processing industry, like the German beer industry, consist of small

companies with local monopolies? Basically, the answer is the same two

reasons: local taste and government policies.

The Japanese are fanatics for fresh food. A container of milk in a U.S.

supermarket bears only one date: the expiration date. When my wife and I

visited a Tokyo supermarket with one of my wife’s Japanese cousins, we were

surprised to discover that in Japan a milk container bears three dates: the date

the milk was manufactured, the date it arrived at the supermarket, and the

expiration date. Milk production in Japan always starts at one minute past

midnight, so that the milk that goes to market in the morning can be labeled

as today’s milk. If the milk were produced at 11:59 P.M., the date on the

container would have to indicate that the milk was made yesterday, and no

Japanese consumer would buy it.

As a result, Japanese food-processing companies enjoy local monopolies.

A milk producer in northern Japan cannot hope to compete in southern Japan,

because transporting milk there would take an extra day or two, a fatal

disadvantage in the eyes of consumers. These local monopolies are reinforced

by the Japanese government, which obstructs the import of foreign processed

food by imposing a 10-day quarantine, among other restrictions. (Imagine

how Japanese consumers who shun food labeled as only one day old feel

about food 10 days old.) Hence Japanese food-producing companies are not

exposed to either domestic or foreign competition, and they don’t learn the

best international methods for producing food. Partly as a result, food prices

in Japan are very high: the best beef costs $200 a pound, while chicken costs

$25 a pound.

Some other Japanese industries are organized very differently from the

food processors. For instance, Japanese steel, metal, car, car parts, camera,

and consumer electronic companies compete fiercely and have higher

productivities than their U.S. counterparts. But the Japanese soap, beer, and

computer industries, like the Japanese food-processing industry, are not

exposed to competition, do not apply the best practices, and thus have lower

productivities than the corresponding industries in the United States. (If you

look around your house, you are likely to find that your TV set and camera,

and possibly also your car, are Japanese, but that your computer and soap are

not.)

Finally, let’s apply these lessons to comparing different industrial belts or

businesses within the United States. Since the publication of GGS, I’ve spent

much time talking with people from Silicon Valley and from Route 128, and

they tell me that these two industrial belts are quite different in terms of

corporate ethos. Silicon Valley consists of lots of companies that are fiercely

competitive with one another. Nevertheless, there is much collaboration—a

free flow of ideas, people, and information among companies. In contrast, I’m

told, the businesses of Route 128 are much more secretive and insulated from

one another, like Japanese milk-producing companies.

What about the contrast between Microsoft and IBM? Since GGS was

published, I’ve acquired friends at Microsoft and have learned about that

corporation’s distinctive organization. Microsoft has lots of units, each

comprised of 5 to 10 people, with free communication among units, and the

units are not micromanaged; they are allowed a great deal of freedom in

pursuing their own ideas. That unusual organization at Microsoft—which in

essence is broken into many competing semi-independent units—contrasts

with the organization at IBM, which until some years ago consisted of much

more insulated groups and resulted in IBM’s loss of competitive ability. Then

IBM acquired a new chief executive officer who changed things drastically:

IBM now has a more Microsoft-like organization, and I’m told that IBM’s

innovativeness has improved as a result.

All of this suggests that we may be able to extract a general principle

about group organization. If your goal is innovation and competitive ability,

you don’t want either excessive unity or excessive fragmentation. Instead,

you want your country, industry, industrial belt, or company to be broken up

into groups that compete with one another while maintaining relatively free

communication—like the U.S. federal government system, with its built-in

competition between our 50 states.



THE REMAINING EXTENSION of GGS has been into one of the central questions

of world economics: why are some countries (like the United States and

Switzerland) rich, while other countries (like Paraguay and Mali) are poor?

Per-capita gross national products (GNP) of the world’s richest countries are

more than 100 times those of the poorest countries. This is not just a

challenging theoretical question giving employment to economics professors,

but also one with important policy implications. If we could identify the

answers, then poor countries could concentrate on changing the things that

keep them poor and on adopting the things that make other countries rich.

Obviously, part of the answer depends on differences in human

institutions. The clearest evidence for this view comes from pairs of countries

that divide essentially the same environment but have very different

institutions and, associated with those institutions, different per-capita GNPs.

Four flagrant examples are the comparison of South Korea with North Korea,

the former West Germany with the former East Germany, the Dominican

Republic with Haiti, and Israel with its Arab neighbors. Among the many

“good institutions” often invoked to explain the greater wealth of the first-

named country of each of these pairs are effective rule of law, enforcement of

contracts, protection of private property rights, lack of corruption, low

frequency of assassinations, openness to trade and to flow of capital,

incentives for investment, and so on.

Undoubtedly, good institutions are indeed part of the answer to the

different wealths of nations. Many, perhaps most, economists go further and

believe that good institutions are overwhelmingly the most important

explanation. Many governments, agencies, and foundations base their

policies, foreign aid, and loans on this explanation, by making the

development of good institutions in poor countries their top priority.

But there is increasing recognition that this good-institutions view is

incomplete—not wrong, just incomplete—and that other important factors

need addressing if poor countries are to become rich. This recognition has its

own policy implications. One cannot just introduce good institutions to poor

countries like Paraguay and Mali and expect those countries to adopt the

institutions and achieve the per-capita GNPs of the United States and

Switzerland. The criticisms of the good-institutions view are of two main

types. One type recognizes the importance of other proximate variables

besides good institutions, such as public health, soil- and climate-imposed

limits on agricultural productivity, and environmental fragility. The other type

concerns the origin of good institutions.

According to the latter criticism, it is not enough to consider good

institutions as a proximate influence whose origins are of no further practical

interest. Good institutions are not a random variable that could have popped

up anywhere around the globe, in Denmark or in Somalia, with equal

probability. Instead, it seems to me that, in the past, good institutions always

arose because of a long chain of historical connections from ultimate causes

rooted in geography to the proximate dependent variables of the institutions.

We must understand that chain if we hope, now, to produce good institutions

quickly in countries lacking them.

At the time that I wrote GGS, I commented, “The nations rising to new

power [today] are still ones that were incorporated thousands of years ago

into the old centers of dominance based on food production, or that have been

repopulated by peoples from those centers…. The hand of history’s course at

8,000 B.C. lies heavily on us.” Two new papers by economists (Olsson and

Hibbs, and Bockstette, Chanda, and Putterman) have subjected this postulated

heavy hand of history to detailed tests. It turns out that countries in regions

with long histories of state societies or agriculture have higher per-capita GNP

than countries with short histories, even after other variables have been

controlled. The effect explains a large fraction of the variance in GNP. Even

just among countries with still-low or recently low GNPs, countries in regions

with long histories of state societies or agriculture, like South Korea, Japan,

and China, have higher growth rates than countries with short histories, such

as New Guinea and the Philippines, even though some of the countries with

short histories are much richer in natural resources.

There are many obvious reasons for these effects of history, such as that

long experience of state societies and agriculture implies experienced

administrators, experience with market economies, and so on. Statistically,

part of that ultimate effect of history proves to be mediated by the familiar

proximate causes of good institutions. But there is still a large effect of history

remaining after one controls for the usual measures of good institutions.

Hence there must be other mediating proximate mechanisms as well. Thus a

key problem will be to understand the detailed chain of causation from a long

history of state societies and agriculture to modern economic growth, in order

to help developing countries advance up that chain more quickly.

In short, the themes of GGS seem to me to be not only a driving force in

the ancient world but also a ripe area for study in the modern world.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

IT IS A PLEASURE FOR ME TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE CONTRIBUTIONS of many people

to this book. My teachers at Roxbury Latin School introduced me to the

fascination of history. My great debt to my many New Guinea friends will be

obvious from the frequency with which I cite their experiences. I owe an

equally great debt (and absolution from responsibility for my errors) to my

many scientist friends and professional colleagues, who patiently explained

the subtleties of their subjects and read my drafts. In particular, Peter

Bellwood, Kent Flannery, Patrick Kirch, and my wife, Marie Cohen, read the

whole manuscript, and Charles Heiser, Jr., David Keightley, Bruce Smith,

Richard Yarnell, and Daniel Zohary each read several chapters. Earlier

versions of several of the chapters appeared as articles in Discover magazine

and in Natural History magazine. The National Geographic Society, World

Wildlife Fund, and University of California at Los Angeles supported my

fieldwork on Pacific islands. I have been fortunate to have John Brockman

and Katinka Matson as my agents, Lori Iversen and Lori Rosen as my

research assistants and secretaries, Ellen Modecki as my illustrator, and as my

editors Donald Lamm at W. W. Norton, Neil Belton and Will Sulkin at

Jonathan Cape, Willi Köhler at Fischer, Marc Zabludoff and Mark Wheeler

and Polly Shulman at Discover, and Ellen Goldensohn and Alan Ternes at

Natural History.





FURTHER READINGS

THESE SUGGESTIONS ARE FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN READING further. Hence, in

addition to key books and papers, I have favored references that provide

comprehensive listings of the earlier literature. A journal title (in italics) is

followed by the volume number, followed after a colon by the first and last

page numbers, and then the year of publication in parentheses.

Prologue

Among references relevant to most chapters of this book is an enormous

compendium of human gene frequencies entitled The History and Geography

of Human Genes, by L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto

Piazza (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). This remarkable book

approximates a history of everything about everybody, because the authors

begin their accounts of each continent with a convenient summary of the

continent’s geography, ecology, and environment, followed by the prehistory,

history, languages, physical anthropology, and culture of its peoples. L. Luca

Cavalli-Sforza and Francisco Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diasporas

(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995), covers similar material but is

written for the general reader rather than for specialists.

Another convenient source is a series of five volumes entitled The

Illustrated History of Humankind, ed. Göran Burenhult (San Francisco:

HarperCollins, 1993–94). The five individual volumes in this series are

entitled, respectively, The First Humans, People of the Stone Age, Old World

Civilizations, New World and Pacific Civilizations, and Traditional Peoples

Today.

Several series of volumes published by Cambridge University Press

(Cambridge, England, various dates) provide histories of particular regions or

eras. One series consists of books entitled The Cambridge History of [X],

where X is variously Africa, Early Inner Asia, China, India, Iran, Islam,

Japan, Latin America, Poland, and Southeast Asia. Another series is The

Cambridge Encyclopedia of [X], where X is variously Africa, China, Japan,

Latin America and the Caribbean, Russia and the former Soviet Union,

Australia, the Middle East and North Africa, and India, Pakistan, and adjacent

countries. Still other series include The Cambridge Ancient History, The

Cambridge Medieval History, The Cambridge Modern History, The

Cambridge Economic History of Europe, and The Cambridge Economic

History of India.

Three encyclopedic accounts of the world’s languages are Barbara

Grimes, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 13th ed. (Dallas: Summer

Institute of Linguistics, 1996), Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World’s

Languages (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), and C. F. Voegelin

and F. M. Voegelin, Classification and Index of the World’s Languages (New

York: Elsevier, 1977).

Among large-scale comparative histories, Arnold Toynbee, A Study of

History, 12 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1934–54), stands out. An

excellent history of Eurasian civilization, especially western Eurasian

civilization, is William McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1991). The same author’s A World History (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1979), despite its title, also maintains a focus on western

Eurasian civilization, as does V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History,

rev. ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954). Another comparative history with

a focus on western Eurasia, C. D. Darlington, The Evolution of Man and

Society (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), is by a biologist who

recognizes some of the same links between continental history and

domestication that I discuss. Two books by Alfred Crosby are distinguished

studies of the European overseas expansion with emphasis on its

accompanying plants, animals, and germs: The Columbian Exchange:

Biological Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1972) and

Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Marvin Harris, Cannibals

and Kings: The Origins of Cultures (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), and

Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service, eds., Evolution and Culture (Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press, 1960), are comparative histories from the

perspective of cultural anthropologists. Ellen Semple, Influences of

Geographic Environment (New York: Holt, 1911), is an example of earlier

efforts to study geographic influences on human societies. Other important

historical studies are listed under further readings for the Epilogue. My book

The Third Chimpanzee (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), especially its

chapter 14, on the comparative histories of Eurasia and the Americas,

provided the starting point for my thinking about the present book.

The best-known or most notorious recent entrant into the debate about

group differences in intelligence is Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray,

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New

York: Free Press, 1994).

Chapter 1

Excellent books about early human evolution include Richard Klein, The

Human Career (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), Roger Lewin,

Bones of Contention (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), Paul Mellars

and Chris Stringer, eds., The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological

Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans (Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press, 1989), Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, Origins

Reconsidered (New York: Doubleday, 1992), D. Tab Rasmussen, ed., The

Origin and Evolution of Humans and Humanness (Boston: Jones and Bartlett,

1993), Matthew Nitecki and Doris Nitecki, eds., Origins of Anatomically

Modern Humans (New York: Plenum, 1994), and Chris Stringer and Robin

McKie, African Exodus (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996). Three popular books

dealing specifically with the Neanderthals are Christopher Stringer and Clive

Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals (New York: Thames and Hudson,

1993), Erik Trinkaus and Pat Shipman, The Neandertals (New York: Knopf,

1993), and Ian Tattersall, The Last Neanderthal (New York: Macmillan,

1995).

Genetic evidence of human origins is the subject of the two books by L.

Luca Cavalli-Sforza et al. already cited under the Prologue, and of chapter 1

of my book The Third Chimpanzee. Two technical papers with recent

advances in the genetic evidence are J. L. Mountain and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza,

“Inference of human evolution through cladistic analysis of nuclear DNA

restriction polymorphism,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

91:6515–19 (1994), and D. B. Goldstein et al., “Genetic absolute dating based

on microsatellites and the origin of modern humans,” ibid. 92:6723–27

(1995).

References to the human colonization of Australia, New Guinea, and the

Bismarck and Solomon Archipelagoes, and to extinctions of large animals

there, are listed under further readings for Chapter 15. In particular, Tim

Flannery, The Future Eaters (New York: Braziller, 1995), discusses those

subjects in clear, understandable terms and explains the problems with claims

of very recent survival of extinct big Australian mammals.

The standard text on Late Pleistocene and Recent extinctions of large

animals is Paul Martin and Richard Klein, eds., Quaternary Extinctions

(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984). More recent updates are Richard

Klein, “The impact of early people on the environment: The case of large

mammal extinctions,” pp. 13–34 in J. E. Jacobsen and J. Firor, Human Impact

on the Environment (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), and Anthony

Stuart, “Mammalian extinctions in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Eurasia

and North America,” Biological Reviews 66:453–62 (1991). David Steadman

summarizes recent evidence that extinction waves accompanied human

settlement of Pacific islands in his paper “Prehistoric extinctions of Pacific

island birds: Biodiversity meets zooarchaeology,” Science 267:1123–31

(1995).

Popular accounts of the settlement of the Americas, the accompanying

extinctions of large mammals, and the resulting controversies are Brian

Fagan, The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America (New York:

Thames and Hudson, 1987), and chapter 18 of my book The Third

Chimpanzee, both of which provide many other references. Ronald Carlisle,

ed., Americans before Columbus: Ice-Age Origins (Pittsburgh: University of

Pittsburgh, 1988), includes a chapter by J. M. Adovasio and his colleagues on

pre-Clovis evidence at the Meadowcroft site. Papers by C. Vance Haynes, Jr.,

an expert on the Clovis horizon and reported pre-Clovis sites, include

“Contributions of radiocarbon dating to the geochronology of the peopling of

the New World,” pp. 354–74 in R. E. Taylor, A. Long, and R. S. Kra, eds.,

Radiocarbon after Four Decades (New York: Springer, 1992), and “Clovis-

Folson geochronology and climate change,” pp. 219–36 in Olga Soffer and N.

D. Praslov, eds., From Kostenki to Clovis: Upper Paleolithic Paleo-Indian

Adaptations (New York: Plenum, 1993). Pre-Clovis claims for the Pedra

Furada site are argued by N. Guidon and G. Delibrias, “Carbon-14 dates point

to man in the Americas 32,000 years ago,” Nature 321:769–71 (1986), and

David Meltzer et al., “On a Pleistocene human occupation at Pedra Furada,

Brazil,” Antiquity 68:695–714 (1994). Other publications relevant to the pre-

Clovis debate include T. D. Dillehay et al., “Earliest hunters and gatherers of

South America,” Journal of World Prehistory 6:145–204 (1992), T. D.

Dillehay, Monte Verde: A Late Pleistocene Site in Chile (Washington, D.C.;

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), T. D. Dillehay and D. J. Meltzer, eds.,

The First Americans: Search and Research (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1991),

Thomas Lynch, “Glacial-age man in South America?—a critical review,”

American Antiquity 55:12–36 (1990), John Hoffecker et al., “The colonization

of Beringia and the peopling of the New World,” Science 259:46–53 (1993),

and A. C. Roosevelt et al., “Paleoindian cave dwellers in the Amazon: The

peopling of the Americas,” Science 272:373–84 (1996).

Chapter 2

Two outstanding books explicitly concerned with cultural differences

among Polynesian islands are Patrick Kirch, The Evolution of the Polynesian

Chiefdoms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), and the same

author’s The Wet and the Dry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Much of Peter Bellwood’s The Polynesians, rev. ed. (London: Thames and

Hudson, 1987), also deals with this problem. Notable books dealing with

specific Polynesian islands include Michael King, Moriori (Auckland:

Penguin, 1989), on the Chatham Islands, Patrick Kirch, Feathered Gods and

Fishhooks (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), on Hawaii, Patrick

Kirch and Marshall Sahlins, Anahulu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1992), also on Hawaii, Jo Anne Van Tilburg, Easter Island (Washington,

D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), and Paul Bahn and John Flenley,

Easter Island, Earth Island (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992).

Chapter 3

My account of Pizarro’s capture of Atahuallpa combines the eyewitness

accounts by Francisco Pizarro’s brothers Hernando Pizarro and Pedro Pizarro

and by Pizarro’s companions Miguel de Estete, Cristóbal de Mena, Ruiz de

Arce, and Francisco de Xerez. The accounts by Hernando Pizarro, Miguel de

Estete, and Francisco de Xerez have been translated by Clements Markham,

Reports on the Discovery of Peru, Hakluyt Society, 1st ser., vol. 47 (New

York, 1872); Pedro Pizarro’s account, by Philip Means, Relation of the

Discovery and Conquest of the Kingdoms of Peru (New York: Cortés Society,

1921); and Cristóbal de Mena’s account, by Joseph Sinclair, The Conquest of

Peru, as Recorded by a Member of the Pizarro Expedition (New York, 1929).

The account by Ruiz de Arce was reprinted in Boletín de la Real Academia de

Historia (Madrid) 102:327–84 (1933). John Hemming’s excellent The

Conquest of the Incas (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970) gives a

full account of the capture and indeed of the whole conquest, with an

extensive bibliography. A 19th-century account of the conquest, William H.

Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Peru (New York, 1847), is still highly

readable and ranks among the classics of historical writing. Corresponding

modern and classic 19th-century accounts of the Spanish conquest of the

Aztecs are, respectively, Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and

the Fall of Old Mexico (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), and William

Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (New York, 1843). Contemporary

eyewitness accounts of the conquest of the Aztecs were written by Cortés

himself (reprinted as Hernando Cortés, Five Letters of Cortés to the Emperor

[New York: Norton, 1969]) and by many of Cortés’s companions (reprinted in

Patricia de Fuentes, ed., The Conquistadors [Norman: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1993]).

Chapters 4–10

References for these seven chapters on food production will be combined,

since many of the references apply to more than one of them.

Five important sources, all of them excellent and fact-filled, address the

question how food production evolved from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle:

Kent Flannery, “The origins of agriculture,” Annual Reviews of Anthropology

2:271–310 (1973); Jack Harlan, Crops and Man, 2nd ed. (Madison, Wis.:

American Society of Agronomy, 1992); Richard MacNeish, The Origins of

Agriculture and Settled Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992);

David Rindos, The Origins of Agriculture: An Evolutionary Perspective (San

Diego: Academic Press, 1984); and Bruce Smith, The Emergence of

Agriculture (New York: Scientific American Library, 1995). Notable older

references about food production in general include two multi-author

volumes: Peter Ucko and G. W. Dimbleby, eds., The Domestication and

Exploitation of Plants and Animals (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), and Charles

Reed, ed., Origins of Agriculture (The Hague: Mouton, 1977). Carl Sauer,

Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (New York: American Geographical

Society, 1952), is a classic early comparison of Old World and New World

food production, while Erich Isaac, Geography of Domestication (Englewood

Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), addresses the questions of where, when,

and how regarding plant and animal domestication.

Among references specifically about plant domestication, Daniel Zohary

and Maria Hopf, Domestication of Plants in the Old World, 2nd ed. (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1993), stands out. It provides the most detailed

account of plant domestication available for any part of the world. For each

significant crop grown in western Eurasia, the book summarizes

archaeological and genetic evidence about its domestication and subsequent

spread.

Among important multi-author books on plant domestication are C.

Wesley Cowan and Patty Jo Watson, eds., The Origins of Agriculture

(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), David Harris and

Gordon Hillman, eds., Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant

Exploitation (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), and C. Barigozzi, ed., The

Origin and Domestication of Cultivated Plants (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1986).

Two engaging popular accounts of plant domestication by Charles Heiser, Jr.,

are Seed to Civilization: The Story of Food, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1990), and Of Plants and People (Norman: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1985). J. Smartt and N. W. Simmonds, ed., Evolution of

Crop Plants, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1995), is the standard reference

volume summarizing information about all of the world’s major crops and

many minor ones. Three excellent papers describe the changes that evolve

automatically in wild plants under human cultivation: Mark Blumler and

Roger Byrne, “The ecological genetics of domestication and the origins of

agriculture,” Current Anthropology 32:23–54 (1991); Charles Heiser, Jr.,

“Aspects of unconscious selection and the evolution of domesticated plants,”

Euphytica 37:77–81 (1988); and Daniel Zohary, “Modes of evolution in

plants under domestication,” in W. F. Grant, ed., Plant Biosystematics

(Montreal: Academic Press, 1984). Mark Blumler, “Independent inventionism

and recent genetic evidence on plant domestication,” Economic Botany

46:98–111 (1992), evaluates the evidence for multiple domestications of the

same wild plant species, as opposed to single origins followed by spread.

Among writings of general interest in connection with animal

domestication, the standard encyclopedic reference work to the world’s wild

mammals is Ronald Nowak, ed., Walker’s Mammals of the World, 5th ed.

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Juliet Clutton-Brock,

Domesticated Animals from Early Times (London: British Museum [Natural

History], 1981), gives an excellent summary of all important domesticated

mammals. I. L. Mason, ed., Evolution of Domesticated Animals (London:

Longman, 1984), is a multi-author volume discussing each significant

domesticated animal individually. Simon Davis, The Archaeology of Animals

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), provides an excellent account of

what can be learned from mammal bones in archaeological sites. Juliet

Clutton-Brock, ed., The Walking Larder (London: Unwin-Hyman, 1989),

presents 31 papers about how humans have domesticated, herded, hunted, and

been hunted by animals around the world. A comprehensive book in German

about domesticated animals is Wolf Herre and Manfred Röhrs, Haustiere

zoologisch gesehen (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1990). Stephen Budiansky, The

Covenant of the Wild (New York: William Morrow, 1992), is a popular

account of how animal domestication evolved automatically from

relationships between humans and animals. An important paper on how

domestic animals became used for plowing, transport, wool, and milk is

Andrew Sheratt, “Plough and pastoralism: Aspects of the secondary products

revolution,” pp. 261–305 in Ian Hodder et al., eds., Pattern of the Past

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

Accounts of food production in particular areas of the world include a

deliciously detailed mini-encyclopedia of Roman agricultural practices, Pliny,

Natural History, vols. 17–19 (Latin text side-by-side with English translation

in the Loeb Classical Library edition [Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1961]); Albert Ammerman and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, The Neolithic Transition

and the Genetics of Populations in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1984), analyzing the spread of food production from the Fertile

Crescent westward across Europe; Graeme Barker, Prehistoric Farming in

Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), and Alasdair

Whittle, Neolithic Europe: A Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1985), for Europe; Donald Henry, From Foraging to Agriculture: The

Levant at the End of the Ice Age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 1989), for the lands bordering the eastern shore of the Mediterranean;

and D. E. Yen, “Domestication: Lessons from New Guinea,” pp. 558–69 in

Andrew Pawley, ed., Man and a Half (Auckland: Polynesian Society, 1991),

for New Guinea. Edward Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), describes the animals,

plants, and other things imported into China during the T’ang dynasty.

The following are accounts of plant domestication and crops in specific

parts of the world. For Europe and the Fertile Crescent: Willem van Zeist et

al., eds., Progress in Old World Palaeoethnobotany (Rotterdam: Balkema,

1991), and Jane Renfrew, Paleoethnobotany (London: Methuen, 1973). For

the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley, and for the Indian subcontinent

in general: Steven Weber, Plants and Harappan Subsistence (New Delhi:

American Institute of Indian Studies, 1991). For New World crops: Charles

Heiser, Jr., “New perspectives on the origin and evolution of New World

domesticated plants: Summary,” Economic Botany 44(3 suppl.): 111–16

(1990), and the same author’s “Origins of some cultivated New World

plants,” Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics 10:309–26 (1979). For a

Mexican site that may document the transition from hunting-gathering to

early agriculture in Mesoamerica: Kent Flannery, ed., Guilá Naquitz (New

York: Academic Press, 1986). For an account of crops grown in the Andes

during Inca times, and their potential uses today: National Research Council,

Lost Crops of the Incas (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989).

For plant domestication in the eastern and / or southwestern United States:

Bruce Smith, “Origins of agriculture in eastern North America,” Science

246:1566–71 (1989); William Keegan, ed., Emergent Horticultural

Economies of the Eastern Woodlands (Carbondale: Southern Illinois

University, 1987); Richard Ford, ed., Prehistoric Food Production in North

America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology,

1985); and R. G. Matson, The Origins of Southwestern Agriculture (Tucson:

University of Arizona Press, 1991). Bruce Smith, “The origins of agriculture

in the Americas,” Evolutionary Anthropology 3:174–84 (1995), discusses the

revisionist view, based on accelerator mass spectrometry dating of very small

plant samples, that the origins of agriculture in the Americas were much more

recent than previously believed.

The following are accounts of animal domestication and livestock in

specific parts of the world. For central and eastern Europe: S. Bökönyi,

History of Domestic Mammals in Central and Eastern Europe (Budapest:

Akadémiai Kiadó, 1974). For Africa: Andrew Smith, Pastoralism in Africa

(London: Hurst, 1992). For the Andes: Elizabeth Wing, “Domestication of

Andean mammals,” pp. 246–64 in F. Vuilleumier and M. Monasterio, eds.,

High Altitude Tropical Biogeography (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1986).

References on specific important crops include the following. Thomas

Sodestrom et al., eds., Grass Systematics and Evolution (Washington, D.C.:

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987), is a comprehensive multi-author account

of grasses, the plant group that gave rise to our cereals, now the world’s most

important crops. Hugh Iltis, “From teosinte to maize: The catastrophic sexual

transmutation,” Science 222:886–94 (1983), gives an account of the drastic

changes in reproductive biology involved in the evolution of corn from

teosinte, its wild ancestor. Yan Wenming, “China’s earliest rice agricultural

remains,” Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association Bulletin 10:118–26 (1991),

discusses early rice domestication in South China. Two books by Charles

Heiser, Jr., are popular accounts of particular crops: The Sunflower (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1976) and The Gourd Book (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1979).

Many papers or books are devoted to accounts of particular domesticated

animal species. R. T. Loftus et al., “Evidence for two independent

domestications of cattle,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

U.S.A. 91:2757–61 (1994), uses evidence from mitochondrial DNA to

demonstrate that cattle were domesticated independently in western Eurasia

and in the Indian subcontinent. For horses: Juliet Clutton-Brock, Horse Power

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), Richard Meadow and Hans-

Peter Uerpmann, eds., Equids in the Ancient World (Wiesbaden: Reichert,

1986), Matthew J. Kust, Man and Horse in History (Alexandria, Va.: Plutarch

Press, 1983), and Robin Law, The Horse in West African History (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1980). For pigs: Colin Groves, Ancestors for the

Pigs: Taxonomy and Phylogeny of the Genus Sus (Technical Bulletin no. 3,

Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian

National University [1981]). For llamas: Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus, and

Robert Reynolds, The Flocks of the Wamani (San Diego: Academic Press,

1989). For dogs: Stanley Olsen, Origins of the Domestic Dog (Tucson:

University of Arizona Press, 1985). John Varner and Jeannette Varner, Dogs

of the Conquest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983), describes the

Spaniards’ use of dogs as military weapons to kill Indians during the Spanish

conquests of the Americas. Clive Spinnage, The Natural History of Antelopes

(New York: Facts on File, 1986), gives an account of the biology of antelopes,

and hence a starting point for trying to understand why none of these

seemingly obvious candidates for domestication was actually domesticated.

Derek Goodwin, Domestic Birds (London: Museum Press, 1965), summarizes

the bird species that have been domesticated, and R. A. Donkin, The Muscovy

Duck Cairina moschata domestica (Rotterdam: Balkema, 1989), discusses one

of the sole two bird species domesticated in the New World.

Finally, the complexities of calibrating radiocarbon dates are discussed by

G. W. Pearson, “How to cope with calibration,” Antiquity 61:98–103 (1987),

R. E. Taylor, eds., Radiocarbon after Four Decades: An Interdisciplinary

Perspective (New York: Springer, 1992), M. Stuiver et al., “Calibration,”

Radiocarbon 35:1–244 (1993), S. Bowman, “Using radiocarbon: An update,”

Antiquity 68:838–43 (1994), and R. E. Taylor, M. Stuiver, and C. Vance

Haynes, Jr., “Calibration of the Late Pleistocene radiocarbon time scale:

Clovis and Folsom age estimates,” Antiquity vol. 70 (1996).

Chapter 11

For a gripping account of the impact of disease on a human population,

nothing can match Thucydides’ account of the plague of Athens, in book 2 of

his Peloponnesian War (available in many translations).

Three classic accounts of disease in history are Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice,

and History (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), Geddes Smith, A Plague on Us

(New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1941), and William McNeill, Plagues and

Peoples (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976). The last book, written by a

distinguished historian rather than by a physician, has been especially

influential in bringing historians to recognize the impacts of disease, as have

been the two books by Alfred Crosby listed under the further readings for the

Prologue.

Friedrich Vogel and Arno Motulsky, Human Genetics, 2nd ed. (Berlin:

Springer, 1986), the standard textbook on human genetics, is a convenient

reference for natural selection of human populations by disease, and for the

development of genetic resistance against specific diseases. Roy Anderson

and Robert May, Infectious Diseases of Humans (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1992), is a clear mathematical treatment of disease dynamics,

transmission, and epidemiology. MacFarlane Burnet, Natural History of

Infectious Disease (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), is a

classic by a distinguished medical researcher, while Arno Karlen, Man and

Microbes (New York: Putnam, 1995), is a recent popular account.

Books and articles specifically concerned with the evolution of human

infectious diseases include Aidan Cockburn, Infectious Diseases: Their

Evolution and Eradication (Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, 1967); the same

author’s “Where did our infectious diseases come from?” pp. 103–13 in

Health and Disease in Tribal Societies, CIBA Foundation Symposium, no. 49

(Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1977); George Williams and Randolph Nesse, “The

dawn of Darwinian medicine,” Quarterly Reviews of Biology 66:1–62 (1991);

and Paul Ewald, Evolution of Infectious Disease (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1994).

Francis Black, “Infectious diseases in primitive societies,” Science

187:515–18 (1975), discusses the differences between endemic and acute

diseases in their impact on, and maintenance in, small isolated societies.

Frank Fenner, “Myxoma virus and Oryctolagus cuniculus: Two colonizing

species,” pp. 485–501 in H. G. Baker and G. L. Stebbins, eds., Genetics of

Colonizing Species (New York: Academic Press, 1965), describes the spread

and evolution of Myxoma virus among Australian rabbits. Peter Panum,

Observations Made during the Epidemic of Measles on the Faroe Islands in

the Year 1846 (New York: American Public Health Association, 1940),

illustrates how the arrival of an acute epidemic disease in an isolated

nonresistant population quickly kills or immunizes the whole population.

Francis Black, “Measles endemicity in insular populations: Critical

community size and its evolutionary implication,” Journal of Theoretical

Biology 11:207–11 (1966), uses such measles epidemics to calculate the

minimum size of population required to maintain measles. Andrew Dobson,

“The population biology of parasite-induced changes in host behavior,”

Quarterly Reviews of Biology 63:139–65 (1988), discusses how parasites

enhance their own transmission by changing the behavior of their host. Aidan

Cockburn and Eve Cockburn, eds., Mummies, Diseases, and Ancient Cultures

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), illustrates what can be

learned from mummies about past impacts of diseases.

As for accounts of disease impacts on previously unexposed populations,

Henry Dobyns, Their Number Became Thinned (Knoxville: University of

Tennessee Press, 1983), marshals evidence for the view that European-

introduced diseases killed up to 95 percent of all Native Americans.

Subsequent books or articles arguing that controversial thesis include John

Verano and Douglas Ubelaker, eds., Disease and Demography in the

Americas (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992); Ann

Ramenofsky, Vectors of Death (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico

Press, 1987); Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987); and Dean Snow,

“Microchronology and demographic evidence relating to the size of the pre-

Columbian North American Indian population,” Science 268:1601–4 (1995).

Two accounts of depopulation caused by European-introduced diseases

among Hawaii’s Polynesian population are David Stannard, Before the

Horror: The Population of Hawaii on the Eve of Western Contact (Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press, 1989), and O. A. Bushnell, The Gifts of

Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii

Press, 1993). The near-extermination of the Sadlermiut Eskimos by a

dysentery epidemic in the winter of 1902–3 is described by Susan Rowley,

“The Sadlermiut: Mysterious or misunderstood?” pp. 361–84 in David





Morrison and Jean-Luc Pilon, eds., Threads of Arctic Prehistory (Hull:

Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994). The reverse phenomenon, of

European deaths due to diseases encountered overseas, is discussed by Philip

Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in

the 19th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Among accounts of specific diseases, Stephen Morse, ed., Emerging

Viruses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), contains many valuable

chapters on “new” viral diseases of humans; so does Mary Wilson et al., eds.,

Disease in Evolution, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 740

(New York, 1995). References for other diseases include the following. For

bubonic plague: Colin McEvedy, “Bubonic plague,” Scientific American

258(2): 118–23 (1988). For cholera: Norman Longmate, King Cholera

(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966). For influenza: Edwin Kilbourne,

Influenza (New York: Plenum, 1987), and Robert Webster et al., “Evolution

and ecology of influenza A viruses,” Microbiological Reviews 56:152–79

(1992). For Lyme disease: Alan Barbour and Durland Fish, “The biological

and social phenomenon of Lyme disease,” Science 260:1610–16 (1993), and

Allan Steere, “Lyme disease: A growing threat to urban populations,”

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 91:2378–83 (1994).

For the evolutionary relationships of human malarial parasites: Thomas

McCutchan et al., “Evolutionary relatedness of Plasmodium species as

determined by the structure of DNA,” Science 225:808–11 (1984), and A. P.

Waters et al., “Plasmodium falciparum appears to have arisen as a result of

lateral transfer between avian and human hosts,” Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences 88:3140–44 (1991). For the evolutionary relationships

of measles virus: E. Norrby et al., “Is rinderpest virus the archevirus of the

Morbillivirus genus?” Intervirology 23:228–32 (1985), and Keith Murray et

al., “A morbillivirus that caused fatal disease in horses and humans,” Science

268:94–97 (1995). For pertussis, also known as whooping cough: R. Gross et

al., “Genetics of pertussis toxin,” Molecular Microbiology 3:119–24 (1989).

For smallpox: Donald Hopkins, Princes and Peasants: Smallpox in History

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); F. Vogel and M. R.

Chakravartti, “ABO blood groups and smallpox in a rural population of West

Bengal and Bihar (India),” Human Genetics 3:166–80 (1966); and my article

“A pox upon our genes,” Natural History 99(2): 26–30 (1990). For

monkeypox, a disease related to smallpox: Zden k Je ek and Frank Fenner,

Human Monkeypox (Basel: Karger, 1988). For syphilis: Claude Quétel,

History of Syphilis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). For

tuberculosis: Guy Youmans, Tuberculosis (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1979). For

the claim that human tuberculosis was present in Native Americans before

Columbus’s arrival: in favor, Wilmar Salo et al., “Identification of

Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA in a pre-Columbian Peruvian mummy,”

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 91:2091–94 (1994);

opposed, William Stead et al., “When did Mycobacterium tuberculosis

infection first occur in the New World?” American Journal of Respiratory

Critical Care Medicine 151:1267–68 (1995).

Chapter 12

Books providing general accounts of writing and of particular writing

systems include David Diringer, Writing (London: Thames and Hudson,

1982), I. J. Gelb, A Study of Writing, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1963), Geoffrey Sampson, Writing Systems (Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1985), John DeFrancis, Visible Speech (Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press, 1989), Wayne Senner, ed., The Origins of Writing

(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), and J. T. Hooker, ed., Reading

the Past (London: British Museum Press, 1990). A comprehensive account of

significant writing systems, with plates depicting texts in each system, is

David Diringer, The Alphabet, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (London: Hutchinson, 1968).

Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1977), and Robert Logan, The Alphabet Effect (New York:

Morrow, 1986), discuss the impact of literacy in general and of the alphabet in

particular. Uses of early writing are discussed by Nicholas Postgate et al.,

“The evidence for early writing: Utilitarian or ceremonial?” Antiquity 69:459–

80 (1995).

Exciting accounts of decipherments of previously illegible scripts are

given by Maurice Pope, The Story of Decipherment (London: Thames and

Hudson, 1975), Michael Coe, Breaking the Maya Code (New York: Thames

and Hudson, 1992), John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Yves Duhoux, Thomas

Palaima, and John Bennet, eds., Problems in Decipherment (Louvain-la-

Neuve: Peeters, 1989), and John Justeson and Terrence Kaufman, “A

decipherment of epi-Olmec hieroglyphic writing,” Science 259:1703–11

(1993).

Denise Schmandt-Besserat’s two-volume Before Writing (Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1992) presents her controversial reconstruction of

the origins of Sumerian writing from clay tokens over the course of nearly

5,000 years. Hans Nissen et al., eds., Archaic Bookkeeping (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1994), describes Mesopotamian tablets that

represent the earliest stages of cuneiform itself. Joseph Naveh, Early History

of the Alphabet (Leiden: Brill, 1982), traces the emergence of alphabets in the

eastern Mediterranean region. The remarkable Ugaritic alphabet is the subject

of Gernot Windfuhr, “The cuneiform signs of Ugarit,” Journal of Near

Eastern Studies 29:48–51 (1970). Joyce Marcus, Mesoamerican Writing

Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), and Elizabeth Boone and

Walter Mignolo, Writing without Words (Durham: Duke University Press,

1994), describe the development and uses of Mesoamerican writing systems.

William Boltz, The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing

System (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1994), and the same author’s

“Early Chinese writing,” World Archaeology 17:420–36 (1986), do the same

for China. Finally, Janet Klausner, Sequoyah’s Gift (New York: HarperCollins,

1993), is an account readable by children, but equally interesting to adults, of

Sequoyah’s development of the Cherokee syllabary.

Chapter 13

The standard detailed history of technology is the eight-volume A History

of Technology, by Charles Singer et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954–84).

One-volume histories are Donald Cardwell, The Fontana History of

Technology (London: Fontana Press, 1994), Arnold Pacey, Technology in

World Civilization (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), and Trevor Williams, The

History of Invention (New York: Facts on File, 1987). R. A. Buchanan, The

Power of the Machine (London: Penguin Books, 1994), is a short history of

technology focusing on the centuries since A.D. 1700. Joel Mokyr, The Lever

of Riches (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), discusses why the rate

of development of technology has varied with time and place. George Basalla,

The Evolution of Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1988), presents an evolutionary view of technological change. Everett Rogers,

Diffusion of Innovations, 3rd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1983), summarizes

modern research on the transfer of innovations, including the QWERTY

keyboard. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1994), dissects the relative contributions of blueprint

copying, idea diffusion (by espionage), and independent invention to the

Soviet atomic bomb.

Preeminent among regional accounts of technology is the series Science

and Civilization in China, by Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press), of which 5 volumes in 16 parts have appeared since 1954,

with a dozen more parts on the way. Ahmad al-Hassan and Donald Hill,

Islamic Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), and K.

D. White, Greek and Roman Technology (London: Thames and Hudson,

1984), summarize technology’s history for those cultures.

Two conspicuous examples of somewhat isolated societies adopting and

then abandoning technologies potentially useful in competition with other

societies involve Japan’s abandonment of firearms, after their adoption in A.D.

1543, and China’s abandonment of its large oceangoing fleets after A.D. 1433.

The former case is described by Noel Perrin, Giving Up the Gun (Boston:

Hall, 1979), and the latter by Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas

(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994). An essay entitled “The disappearance

of useful arts,” pp. 190–210 in W. H. B. Rivers, Psychology and Ethnology

(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926), gives similar examples among Pacific

islanders.

Articles on the history of technology will be found in the quarterly journal

Technology and Culture, published by the Society for the History of

Technology since 1959. John Staudenmaier, Technology’s Storytellers

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), analyzes the papers in its first twenty years.

Specific fields providing material for those interested in the history of

technology include electric power, textiles, and metallurgy. Thomas Hughes,

Networks of Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983),

discusses the social, economic, political, and technical factors in the

electrification of Western society from 1880 to 1930. Dava Sobel, Longitude

(New York: Walker, 1995), describes the development of John Harrison’s

chronometers that solved the problem of determining longitude at sea. E. J.

W. Barber, Prehistoric Textiles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991),

sets out the history of cloth in Eurasia from its beginnings more than 9,000

years ago. Accounts of the history of metallurgy over wide regions or even

over the world include Robert Maddin, The Beginning of the Use of Metals

and Alloys (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), Theodore Wertime and James

Muhly, eds., The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1980), R. D. Penhallurick, Tin in Antiquity (London: Institute of

Metals, 1986), James Muhly, “Copper and Tin,” Transactions of the

Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 43:155–535 (1973), and Alan

Franklin, Jacqueline Olin, and Theodore Wertime, The Search for Ancient Tin

(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978). Accounts of

metallurgy for local regions include R. F. Tylecote, The Early History of

Metallurgy in Europe (London: Longman, 1987), and Donald Wagner, Iron

and Steel in Ancient China (Leiden: Brill, 1993).

Chapter 14

The fourfold classification of human societies into bands, tribes,

chiefdoms, and states owes much to two books by Elman Service: Primitive

Social Organization (New York: Random House, 1962) and Origins of the

State and Civilization (New York: Norton, 1975). A related classification of

societies, using different terminology, is Morton Fried, The Evolution of

Political Society (New York: Random House, 1967). Three important review

articles on the evolution of states and societies are Kent Flannery, “The

cultural evolution of civilizations,” Annual Review of Ecology and

Systematics 3:399–426 (1972), the same author’s “Prehistoric social

evolution,” pp. 1–26 in Carol and Melvin Ember, eds., Research Frontiers in

Anthropology (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1995), and Henry Wright,

“Recent research on the origin of the state,” Annual Review of Anthropology

6:379–97 (1977). Robert Carneiro, “A theory of the origin of the state,”

Science 169:733–38 (1970), argues that states arise through warfare under

conditions in which land is ecologically limiting. Karl Wittfogel, Oriental

Despotism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), relates state origins to

large-scale irrigation and hydraulic management. Three essays in On the

Evolution of Complex Societies, by William Sanders, Henry Wright, and

Robert Adams (Malibu: Undena, 1984), present differing views of state

origins, while Robert Adams, The Evolution of Urban Society (Chicago:

Aldine, 1966), contrasts state origins in Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica.

Among studies of the evolution of societies in specific parts of the world,

sources for Mesopotamia include Robert Adams, Heartland of Cities

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), and J. N. Postgate, Early

Mesopotamia (London: Routledge, 1992); for Mesoamerica, Richard Blanton

et al., Ancient Mesoamerica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),

and Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery, Zapotec Civilization (London: Thames

and Hudson, 1996); for the Andes, Richard Burger, Chavin and the Origins of

Andean Civilization (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992), and Jonathan

Haas et al., eds., The Origins and Development of the Andean State

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); for American chiefdoms,

Robert Drennan and Carlos Uribe, eds., Chiefdoms in the Americas (Lanham,

Md.: University Press of America, 1987); for Polynesian societies, the books

cited under Chapter 2; and for the Zulu state, Donald Morris, The Washing of

the Spears (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966).

Chapter 15

Books covering the prehistory of both Australia and New Guinea include

Alan Thorne and Robert Raymond, Man on the Rim: The Peopling of the

Pacific (North Ryde: Angus and Robertson, 1989), J. Peter White and James

O’Connell, A Prehistory of Australia, New Guinea, and Sahul (Sydney:

Academic Press, 1982), Jim Allen et al., eds., Sunda and Sahul (London:

Academic Press, 1977), M. A. Smith et al., eds., Sahul in Review (Canberra:

Australian National University, 1993), and Tim Flannery, The Future Eaters

(New York: Braziller, 1995). The first and third of these books discuss the

prehistory of island Southeast Asia as well. A recent account of the history of

Australia itself is Josephine Flood, Archaeology of the Dreamtime, rev. ed.

(Sydney: Collins, 1989). Some additional key papers on Australian prehistory

are Rhys Jones, “The fifth continent: Problems concerning the human

colonization of Australia,” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 8:445–66 (1979),

Richard Roberts et al., “Thermoluminescence dating of a 50,000-year-old

human occupation site in northern Australia,” Nature 345:153–56 (1990), and

Jim Allen and Simon Holdaway, “The contamination of Pleistocene

radiocarbon determinations in Australia,” Antiquity 69:101–12 (1995). Robert

Attenborough and Michael Alpers, eds., Human Biology in Papua New

Guinea (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), summarizes New Guinea

archaeology as well as languages and genetics.

As for the prehistory of Northern Melanesia (the Bismarck and Solomon

Archipelagoes, northeast and east of New Guinea), discussion will be found

in the above-cited books by Thorne and Raymond, Flannery, and Allen et al.

Papers pushing back the dates for the earliest occupation of Northern

Melanesia include Stephen Wickler and Matthew Spriggs, “Pleistocene

human occupation of the Solomon Islands, Melanesia,” Antiquity 62:703–6

(1988), Jim Allen et al., “Pleistocene dates for the human occupation of New

Ireland, Northern Melanesia,” Nature 331:707–9 (1988), Jim Allen et al.,

“Human Pleistocene adaptations in the tropical island Pacific: Recent

evidence from New Ireland, a Greater Australian outlier,” Antiquity 63:548–

61 (1989), and Christina Pavlides and Chris Gosden, “35,000-year-old sites in

the rainforests of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea,” Antiquity 68:604–

10 (1994). References to the Austronesian expansion around the coast of New

Guinea will be found under further readings for Chapter 17.

Two books on the history of Australia after European colonization are

Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (New York: Knopf, 1987), and Michael

Cannon, The Exploration of Australia (Sydney: Reader’s Digest, 1987).

Aboriginal Australians themselves are the subject of Richard Broome,

Aboriginal Australians (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1982), and Henry

Reynolds, Frontier (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987). An incredibly detailed

history of New Guinea, from the earliest written records until 1902, is the

three-volume work by Arthur Wichmann, Entdeckungsgeschichte von Neu-

Guinea (Leiden: Brill, 1909–12). A shorter and more readable account is

Gavin Souter, New Guinea: The Last Unknown (Sydney: Angus and

Robertson, 1964). Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, First Contact (New

York: Viking, 1987), movingly describes the first encounters of highland New

Guineans with Europeans.

For detailed accounts of New Guinea’s Papuan (i.e., non-Austronesian)

languages, see Stephen Wurm, Papuan Languages of Oceania (Tübingen:

Guntet Narr, 1982), and William Foley, The Papuan Languages of New

Guinea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and of Australian

languages, see Stephen Wurm, Languages of Australia and Tasmania (The

Hague: Mouton, 1972), and R. M. W. Dixon, The Languages of Australia

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

An entrance into the literature on plant domestication and origins of food

production in New Guinea can be found in Jack Golson, “Bulmer phase II:

Early agriculture in the New Guinea highlands,” pp. 484–91 in Andrew

Pawley, ed., Man and a Half (Auckland: Polynesian Society, 1991), and D. E.

Yen, “Polynesian cultigens and cultivars: The question of origin,” pp. 67–95

in Paul Cox and Sandra Banack, eds., Islands, Plants, and Polynesians

(Portland: Dioscorides Press, 1991).

Numerous articles and books are devoted to the fascinating problem of

why trading visits of Indonesians and of Torres Strait islanders to Australia

produced only limited cultural change. C. C. Macknight, “Macassans and

Aborigines,” Oceania 42:283–321 (1972), discusses the Macassan visits,

while D. Walker, ed., Bridge and Barrier: The Natural and Cultural History

of Torres Strait (Canberra: Australian National University, 1972), discusses

connections at Torres Strait. Both connections are also discussed in the above-

cited books by Flood, White and O’Connell, and Allen et al.

Early eyewitness accounts of the Tasmanians are reprinted in N. J. B.

Plomley, The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines 1802 (Hobart:

Blubber Head Press, 1983), N. J. B. Plomley, Friendly Mission: The

Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829–1834

(Hobart: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1966), and Edward

Duyker, The Discovery of Tasmania: Journal Extracts from the Expeditions of

Abel Janszoon Tasman and Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, 1642 and 1772

(Hobart: St. David’s Park Publishing, 1992). Papers debating the effects of

isolation on Tasmanian society include Rhys Jones, “The Tasmanian

Paradox,” pp. 189–284 in R. V. S. Wright, ed., Stone Tools as Cultural

Markers (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1977); Rhys

Jones, “Why did the Tasmanians stop eating fish?” pp. 11–48 in R. Gould,

ed., Explorations in Ethnoarchaeology (Albuquerque: University of New

Mexico Press, 1978); D. R. Horton, “Tasmanian adaptation,” Mankind 12:28–

34 (1979); I. Walters, “Why did the Tasmanians stop eating fish?: A

theoretical consideration,” Artefact 6:71–77 (1981); and Rhys Jones,

“Tasmanian Archaeology,” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 24:423–46

(1995). Results of Robin Sim’s archaeological excavations on Flinders Island

are described in her article “Prehistoric human occupation on the King and

Furneaux Island regions, Bass Strait,” pp. 358–74 in Marjorie Sullivan et al.,

eds., Archaeology in the North (Darwin: North Australia Research Unit,

1994).

Chapters 16 and 17

Relevant readings cited under previous chapters include those on East

Asian food production (Chapters 4–10), Chinese writing (Chapter 12),

Chinese technology (Chapter 13), and New Guinea and the Bismarcks and

Solomons in general (Chapter 15). James Matisoff, “Sino-Tibetan linguistics:

Present state and future prospects,” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 20:469–

504 (1991), reviews Sino-Tibetan languages and their wider relationships.

Takeru Akazawa and Emoke Szathmáry, eds., Prehistoric Mongoloid

Dispersals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), and Dennis Etler,

“Recent developments in the study of human biology in China: A review,”

Human Biology 64:567–85 (1992), discuss evidence of Chinese or East Asian

relationships and dispersal. Alan Thorne and Robert Raymond, Man on the

Rim (North Ryde: Angus and Robertson, 1989), describes the archaeology,

history, and culture of Pacific peoples, including East Asians and Pacific

islanders. Adrian Hill and Susan Serjeantson, eds., The Colonization of the

Pacific: A Genetic Trail (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), interprets the

genetics of Pacific islanders, Aboriginal Australians, and New Guineans in

terms of their inferred colonization routes and histories. Evidence based on

tooth structure is interpreted by Christy Turner III, “Late Pleistocene and

Holocene population history of East Asia based on dental variation,”

American Journal of Physical Anthropology 73:305–21 (1987), and “Teeth

and prehistory in Asia,” Scientific American 260 (2):88–96 (1989).

Among regional accounts of archaeology, China is covered by Kwangchih

Chang, The Archaeology of Ancient China, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1987), David Keightley, ed., The Origins of Chinese

Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), and David

Keightley, “Archaeology and mentality: The making of China,”

Representations 18:91–128 (1987). Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese

Past (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), examines China’s history

since its political unification. Convenient archaeological accounts of

Southeast Asia include Charles Higham, The Archaeology of Mainland

Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); for Korea,

Sarah Nelson, The Archaeology of Korea (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1993); for Indonesia, the Philippines, and tropical Southeast Asia, Peter

Bellwood, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago (Sydney: Academic

Press, 1985); for peninsular Malaysia, Peter Bellwood, “Cultural and

biological differentiation in Peninsular Malaysia: The last 10,000 years,”

Asian Perspectives 32:37–60 (1993); for the Indian subcontinent, Bridget and

Raymond Allchin, The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1982); for Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific

with special emphasis on Lapita, a series of five articles in Antiquity 63:547–

626 (1989) and Patrick Kirch, The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic

World (London: Basil Blackwell, 1996); and for the Austronesian expansion

as a whole, Andrew Pawley and Malcolm Ross, “Austronesian historical

linguistics and culture history,” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 22:425–59

(1993), and Peter Bellwood et al., The Austronesians: Comparative and

Historical Perspectives (Canberra: Australian National University, 1995).

Geoffrey Irwin, The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonization of the

Pacific (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), is an account of

Polynesian voyaging, navigation, and colonization. The dating of the

settlement of New Zealand and eastern Polynesia is debated by Atholl

Anderson, “The chronology of colonisation in New Zealand,” Antiquity

65:767–95 (1991), and “Current approaches in East Polynesian colonisation

research,” Journal of the Polynesian Society 104:110–32 (1995), and Patrick

Kirch and Joanna Ellison, “Palaeoenvironmental evidence for human

colonization of remote Oceanic islands,” Antiquity 68:310–21 (1994).

Chapter 18

Many relevant further readings for this chapter will be found listed under

those for other chapters: under Chapter 3 for the conquests of the Incas and

Aztecs, Chapters 4–10 for plant and animal domestication, Chapter 11 for

infectious diseases, Chapter 12 for writing, Chapter 13 for technology,

Chapter 14 for political institutions, and Chapter 16 for China. Convenient

worldwide comparisons of dates for the onset of food production will be

found in Bruce Smith, The Emergence of Agriculture (New York: Scientific

American Library, 1995).

Some discussions of the historical trajectories summarized in Table 18.1,

other than references given under previous chapters, are as follows. For

England: Timothy Darvill, Prehistoric Britain (London: Batsford, 1987). For

the Andes: Jonathan Haas et al., The Origins and Development of the Andean

State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Michael Moseley, The

Incas and Their Ancestors (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992); and

Richard Burger, Chavin and the Origins of Andean Civilization (New York:

Thames and Hudson, 1992). For Amazonia: Anna Roosevelt, Parmana (New

York: Academic Press, 1980), and Anna Roosevelt et al., “Eighth millennium

pottery from a prehistoric shell midden in the Brazilian Amazon,” Science

254:1621–24 (1991). For Mesoamerica: Michael Coe, Mexico, 3rd ed. (New

York: Thames and Hudson, 1984), and Michael Coe, The Maya, 3rd ed. (New

York: Thames and Hudson, 1984). For the eastern United States: Vincas

Steponaitis, “Prehistoric archaeology in the southeastern United States, 1970–

1985,” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 15:363–404 (1986); Bruce Smith,

“The archaeology of the southeastern United States: From Dalton to de Soto,

10,500–500 B.P.,” Advances in World Archaeology 5:1–92 (1986); William

Keegan, ed., Emergent Horticultural Economies of the Eastern Woodlands

(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1987); Bruce Smith, “Origins of

agriculture in eastern North America,” Science 246:1566–71 (1989); Bruce

Smith, The Mississippian Emergence (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian

Institution Press, 1990); and Judith Bense, Archaeology of the Southeastern

United States (San Diego: Academic Press, 1994). A compact reference on

Native Americans of North America is Philip Kopper, The Smithsonian Book

of North American Indians before the Coming of the Europeans (Washington,

D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986). Bruce Smith, “The origins of

agriculture in the Americas,” Evolutionary Anthropology 3:174–84 (1995),

discusses the controversy over early versus late dates for the onset of New

World food production.

Anyone inclined to believe that New World food production and societies

were limited by the culture or psychology of Native Americans themselves,

rather than by limitations of the wild species available to them for

domestication, should consult three accounts of the transformation of Great

Plains Indian societies by the arrival of the horse: Frank Row, The Indian and

the Horse (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), John Ewers, The

Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains (Norman: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1958), and Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The

Comanches: Lords of the South Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma

Press, 1986).

Among discussions of the spread of language families in relation to the

rise of food production, a classic account for Europe is Albert Ammerman

and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, The Neolithic Transition and the Genetics of

Populations in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), while

Peter Bellwood, “The Austronesian dispersal and the origin of languages,”

Scientific American 265(1): 88–93 (1991), does the same for the Austronesian

realm. Studies citing examples from around the world are the two books by L.

L. Cavalli-Sforza et al. and the book by Merritt Ruhlen cited as further

readings for the Prologue. Two books with diametrically opposed

interpretations of the Indo-European expansion provide entrances into that

controversial literature: Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language: The

Puzzle of Indo-European Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1987), and J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans (London: Thames

and Hudson, 1989). Sources on the Russian expansion across Siberia are

George Lantzeff and Richard Pierce, Eastward to Empire (Montreal: McGill-

Queens University Press, 1973), and W. Bruce Lincoln, The Conquest of a

Continent (New York: Random House, 1994).

As for Native American languages, the majority view that recognizes

many separate language families is exemplified by Lyle Campbell and

Marianne Mithun, The Languages of Native America (Austin: University of

Texas, 1979). The opposing view, lumping all Native American languages

other than Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene languages into the Amerind family, is

presented by Joseph Greenberg, Language in the Americas (Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 1987), and Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World’s

Languages, vol. 1 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).

Standard accounts of the origin and spread of the wheel for transport in

Eurasia are M. A. Littauer and J. H. Crouwel, Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden

Animals in the Ancient Near East (Leiden: Brill, 1979), and Stuart Piggott,

The Earliest Wheeled Transport (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983).

Books on the rise and demise of the Norse colonies in Greenland and

America include Finn Gad, The History of Greenland, vol. 1 (Montreal:

McGill-Queens University Press, 1971), G. J. Marcus, The Conquest of the

North Atlantic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), Gwyn Jones, The

Norse Atlantic Saga, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), and

Christopher Morris and D. James Rackham, eds., Norse and Later Settlement

and Subsistence in the North Atlantic (Glasgow: University of Glasgow,

1992). Two volumes by Samuel Eliot Morison provide masterly accounts of

early European voyaging to the New World: The European Discovery of

America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500–1600 (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1971) and The European Discovery of America: The

Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492–1616 (New York: Oxford University Press,

1974). The beginnings of Europe’s overseas expansion are treated by Felipe

Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonization from

the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 (London: Macmillan

Education, 1987). Not to be missed is Columbus’s own day-by-day account of

history’s most famous voyage, reprinted as Oliver Dunn and James Kelley, Jr.,

The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America, 1492–1493

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989).

As an antidote to this book’s mostly dispassionate account of how peoples

conquered or slaughtered other peoples, read the classic account of the

destruction of the Yahi tribelet of northern California and the emergence of

Ishi, its solitary survivor: Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1961). The disappearance of native languages

in the Americas and elsewhere is the subject of Robert Robins and Eugenius

Uhlenbeck, Endangered Languages (Providence: Berg, 1991), Joshua

Fishman, Reversing Language Shift (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1991),

and Michael Krauss, “The world’s languages in crisis,” Language 68:4–10

(1992).

Chapter 19

Books on the archaeology, prehistory, and history of the African continent

include Roland Oliver and Brian Fagan, Africa in the Iron Age (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1975), Roland Oliver and J. D. Fage, A Short

History of Africa, 5th ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), J. D. Fage, A

History of Africa (London: Hutchinson, 1978), Roland Oliver, The African

Experience (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), Thurstan Shaw et al.,

eds., The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals, and Towns (New York:

Routledge, 1993), and David Phillipson, African Archaeology, 2nd ed.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Correlations between

linguistic and archaeological evidence of Africa’s past are summarized by

Christopher Ehret and Merrick Posnansky, eds., The Archaeological and

Linguistic Reconstruction of African History (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1982). The role of disease is discussed by Gerald Hartwig

and K. David Patterson, eds., Disease in African History (Durham: Duke

University Press, 1978).

As for food production, many of the listed further readings for Chapters

4–10 discuss Africa. Also of note are Christopher Ehret, “On the antiquity of

agriculture in Ethiopia,” Journal of African History 20:161–77 (1979); J.

Desmond Clark and Steven Brandt, eds., From Hunters to Farmers: The

Causes and Consequences of Food Production in Africa (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1984); Art Hansen and Della McMillan, eds.,

Food in Sub-Saharan Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Rienner, 1986); Fred Wendorf

et al., “Saharan exploitation of plants 8,000 years B.P.,” Nature 359:721–24

(1992); Andrew Smith, Pastoralism in Africa (London: Hurst, 1992); and

Andrew Smith, “Origin and spread of pastoralism in Africa,” Annual Reviews

of Anthropology 21:125–41 (1992).

For information about Madagascar, two starting points are Robert Dewar

and Henry Wright, “The culture history of Madagascar,” Journal of World

Prehistory 7:417–66 (1993), and Pierre Verin, The History of Civilization in

North Madagascar (Rotterdam: Balkema, 1986). A detailed study of the

linguistic evidence about the source for the colonization of Madagascar is

Otto Dahl, Migration from Kalimantan to Madagascar (Oslo: Norwegian

University Press, 1991). Possible musical evidence for Indonesian contact

with East Africa is described by A. M. Jones, Africa and Indonesia: The

Evidence of the Xylophone and Other Musical and Cultural Factors (Leiden:

Brill, 1971). Important evidence about the early settlement of Madagascar

comes from dated bones of now extinct animals as summarized by Robert

Dewar, “Extinctions in Madagascar: The loss of the subfossil fauna,” pp.

574–93 in Paul Martin and Richard Klein, eds., Quaternary Extinctions

(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984). A tantalizing subsequent fossil

discovery is reported by R. D. E. MacPhee and David Burney, “Dating of

modified femora of extinct dwarf Hippopotamus from Southern Madagascar,”

Journal of Archaeological Science 18:695–706 (1991). The onset of human

colonization is assessed from paleobotanical evidence by David Burney,

“Late Holocene vegetational change in Central Madagascar,” Quaternary

Research 28:130–43 (1987).

Epilogue

Links between environmental degradation and the decline of civilization

in Greece are explored by Tjeerd van Andel et al., “Five thousand years of

land use and abuse in the southern Argolid,” Hesperia 55:103–28 (1986),

Tjeerd van Andel and Curtis Runnels, Beyond the Acropolis: A Rural Greek

Past (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), and Curtis Runnels,

“Environmental degradation in ancient Greece,” Scientific American 272(3):

72–75 (1995). Patricia Fall et al., “Fossil hyrax middens from the Middle

East: A record of paleovegetation and human disturbance,” pp. 408–27 in

Julio Betancourt et al., eds., Packrat Middens (Tucson: University of Arizona

Press, 1990), does the same for the decline of Petra, as does Robert Adams,

Heartland of Cities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), for

Mesopotamia.

A stimulating interpretation of the differences between the histories of

China, India, Islam, and Europe is provided by E. L. Jones, The European

Miracle, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Louise

Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas (New York: Simon and Schuster,

1994), describes the power struggle that led to the suspension of China’s

treasure fleets. The further readings for Chapters 16 and 17 provide other

references for early Chinese history.

The impact of Central Asian nomadic pastoralists on Eurasia’s complex

civilizations of settled farmers is discussed by Bennett Bronson, “The role of

barbarians in the fall of states,” pp. 196–218 in Norman Yoffee and George

Cowgill, eds., The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations (Tucson:

University of Arizona Press, 1988).

The possible relevance of chaos theory to history is discussed by Michael

Shermer in the paper “Exorcising Laplace’s demon: Chaos and antichaos,

history and metahistory,” History and Theory 34:59–83 (1995). Shermer’s

paper also provides a bibliography for the triumph of the QWERTY keyboard,

as does Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 3rd ed. (New York: Free

Press, 1983).

An eyewitness account of the traffic accident that nearly killed Hitler in

1930 will be found in the memoirs of Otto Wagener, a passenger in Hitler’s

car. Those memoirs have been edited by Henry Turner, Jr., as a book, Hitler:

Memoirs of a Confidant (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). Turner

goes on to speculate on what might have happened if Hitler had died in 1930,

in his chapter “Hitler’s impact on history,” in David Wetzel, ed., German

History: Ideas, Institutions, and Individuals (New York: Praeger, 1996).

The many distinguished books by historians interested in problems of

long-term history include Sidney Hook, The Hero in History (Boston: Beacon

Press, 1943), Patrick Gardiner, ed., Theories of History (New York: Free

Press, 1959), Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism (New York:

Harper and Row, 1979), Fernand Braudel, On History (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1980), Peter Novick, That Noble Dream (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1988), and Henry Hobhouse, Forces of Change

(London: Sedgewick and Jackson, 1989).

Several writings by the biologist Ernst Mayr discuss the differences

between historical and nonhistorical sciences, with particular reference to the

contrast between biology and physics, but much of what Mayr says is also

applicable to human history. His views will be found in his Evolution and the

Diversity of Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), chap. 25, and

in Towards a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1988), chaps. 1–2.

The methods by which epidemiologists reach cause-and-effect

conclusions about human diseases, without resorting to laboratory

experiments on people, are discussed in standard epidemiology texts, such as

A. M. Lilienfeld and D. E. Lilienfeld, Foundations of Epidemiology, 3rd ed.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Uses of natural experiments are

considered from the viewpoint of an ecologist in my chapter “Overview:

Laboratory experiments, field experiments, and natural experiments,” pp. 3–

22 in Jared Diamond and Ted Case, eds., Community Ecology (New York:

Harper and Row; 1986). Paul Harvey and Mark Pagel, The Comparative

Method in Evolutionary Biology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),

analyzes how to extract conclusions by comparing species.

2003 Afterword

Two articles and one book summarize discoveries of the last half-dozen

years about domestication of plants and animals, spreads of language

families, and the relation of the spreads of language families to food

production: Jared Diamond, “Evolution, consequences and the future of plant

and animal domestication,” Nature 418:34–41 (2002); Jared Diamond and

Peter Bellwood, “The first agricultural expansions: archaeology, languages,

and people,” Science, in press; and Peter Bellwood and Colin Renfrew,

Examining the Language/Farming Dispersal Hypothesis (Cambridge:

McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2002). Those two articles

and that book give references to the detailed recent literature. A recent book-

length account of the role of agricultural expansion in the origins of the

modern Japanese people is Mark Hudson’s Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in

the Japanese Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999).

For a detailed account of New Zealand’s Musket Wars, see the book by

R.D. Crosby, The Musket Wars: a History of Inter-Iwi Conflict 1806–45

(Auckland: Reed, 1999). Those wars are summarized much more briefly but

placed in a larger context in two books by James Belich: The New Zealand

Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Auckland: Penguin,

1986) and Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders (Auckland:

Penguin, 1996).

Two recent efforts by social scientists to identify proximate causes behind

Europe’s and China’s divergence include an article by Jack Goldstone,

“Efflorescences and economic growth in world history: rethinking the ‘rise of

the West’ and the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of World History 13:323–89

(2002), and a book by Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China,

Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2000). The opposite approach, the search for ultimate

causes, is exemplified by a recent article by Graeme Lang, “State systems and

the origins of modern science: a comparison of Europe and China,” East-West

Dialog 2:16–30 (1997), and by a book by David Cosandey, Le Secret de

I’Occident (Paris: Arléa, 1997). Those articles by Goldstone and by Lang are

the sources of my quotations above.

The two papers analyzing the connection between economic indicators of

modern wealth or growth rate, on the one hand, and long history of state

societies or agriculture, on the other hand, are: Ola Olsson and Douglas

Hibbs, “Biogeography and long-term economic development,” in press in

European Economic Review; and Valerie Bockstette, Areendam Chanda, and

Louis Putterman, “States and markets: the advantage of an early start,”

Journal of Economic Growth 7:351–73 (2002).





CREDITS

Chapter 12: J. Beckett/K. Perkins, American Museum of Natural History.

Negative 2A17202.

Chapter 12: Courtesy of V.I.P. Publishing.

Chapter 12: Courtesy of Myoung Soon Kim and Christie Kim.

Chapter 12: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Chapter 13: Heracleion Museum, Hellenic Republic Ministry of Culture.

BETWEEN PP. 92 AND 93

Plates 1 and 8. Irven DeVore, Anthro-Photo.

Plates 2–5. Courtesy of the author.

Plate 6. P. McLanahan, American Museum of Natural History. Negative

337549.

Plate 7. Richard Gould, American Museum of Natural History. Negative

332911.

Plate 9. J. W. Beattie, American Museum of Natural History. Negative 12.

Plate 10. Bogoras, American Museum of Natural History. Negative 2975.

Plate 11. AP/Wide World Photos.

Plate 12. Judith Ferster, Anthro-Photo.

Plate 13. R. H. Beck, American Museum of Natural History. Negative

107814.

Plate 14. Dan Hrdy, Anthro-Photo.

Plate 15. Rodman Wanamaker, American Museum of Natural History.

Negative 316824.

Plate 16. Marjorie Shostak, Anthro-Photo.

BETWEEN PP. 278 AND 279

Plate 17. Boris Malkin, Anthro-Photo.

Plate 18. Napoleon Chagnon, Anthro-Photo.

Plate 19. Kirschner, American Museum of Natural History. Negative

235230.

Plates 20, 22, 24, 30, and 32. AP/Wide World Photos.

Plate 21. Gladstone, Anthro-Photo.

Plate 23. Above, AP/Wide World Photos. Below, W. B., American

Museum of Natural History. Negative 2A13829.

Plate 25. Marjorie Shostak, Anthro-Photo.

Plate 26. Irven DeVore, Anthro-Photo.

Plate 27. Steve Winn, Anthro-Photo.

Plate 28. J.B. Thorpe, American Museum of Natural History. Negative

336181.

Plates 29 and 31. J. F. E. Bloss, Anthro-Photo.





INDEX

Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your

device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations, maps, and tables.

Aboriginal Australians:

band societies of, 256, 285

in coastal and river areas, 149, 297

cultural diffusion barriers for, 298, 300–303, 391

current underclass status of, 306

in desert environment, 284, 297

Eurasian diseases and, 205, 304, 307

European conquest of, 98, 297, 305–7, 374, 429

evolutionary ancestry of, 288–89, 302–3

as hunter-gatherers, 98, 108, 149, 285, 295, 296–98, 301

languages of, 289, 303, 314

plant management practices of, 102–3, 149, 296, 297

population size of, 284, 286, 297, 298, 300, 306

racist theories on, 286–88, 307

rock paintings of, 283, 285

technological innovation and, 241, 242, 247, 298–303

villages constructed by, 149, 298

watercraft developed by, 285

weapons used by, 299, 303

wild foods of, 284, 296–98

accelerator mass spectrometry, 92

acorns, 110, 111, 113, 123

Africa, 361–85

Asian links with, 362, 363, 365

Bantu expansion in, 98, 128, 157, 370–71, 377–82, 379 , 391

diffusion barriers in, 227, 228, 250–52, 383–84

diseases in, 189, 196, 200, 205, 381

domesticated animals in, 94, 156, 156, 157, 168, 179, 373, 390

early crops of, 120–21 , 122, 128, 371–75, 372

European conquest of, 179–80, 381, 382–85

five population groups in, 362–65

human evolution in, 35–37, 38, 40, 49, 362, 382

languages of, 314, 362, 365–70, 367 , 374, 375–76

nomadic bands in, 256

non-animal protein sources in, 122

North, Eurasian culture related to, 155

north–south axis of, 179, 181, 251, 383–84

population levels in, 252, 383

racial oppression in, 179–80

spread of food production in, 94, 128, 173, 179, 181

state formation in, 278–79, 280

technological receptivity of societies in, 242

Afroasiatic language family, 366, 368, 376, 378

agave, 121 , 122

agriculture, see crop cultivation; plants

AIDS, 189, 191, 192, 196, 200

Ainu, 159, 164, 341, 411–12, 416–18, 423, 430–31, 432, 434

airplanes, 197, 232, 235

Akihito, Emperor of Japan, 427

Alexander of Macedon, 269, 279, 394, 403, 404

almonds, 109, 113, 123–24

alpacas, 153 , 154, 155, 161 , 171, 204

alphabets, 183, 207–8, 216–18, 220, 225, 226, 244, 248, 309, 319, 352, 385

Altaic Language family, 417

amaranths, 173, 181

Amazonian cultures, 96 , 120–21, 195, 255, 256, 359

American colonies, unification of, 278

Americas:

animal extinctions in, 46, 156, 168, 204, 340, 390

barriers to cultural diffusion in, 170–73, 251, 351–52, 355, 391

current population level of, 359

diseases brought to, 195, 201–3, 342

domestic animals in, 74, 137, 152, 171, 204, 251, 340, 349

historical trajectory of key developments in, 345–55, 347

human presence in, 35, 38, 44–49, 65

modern band societies in, 256

native peoples of, see Native Americans

Norse voyages to, 355–57, 356

north–south axis of, 169, 180, 182, 251, 351, 434

onset of food production in, 92, 94, 95, 96, 347–48, 347, 349–50

population density of, 252

population replacement in, 339, 358–59

spread of food production inhibited in, 170–73, 351–52, 434

technology diffusion in, 244, 251

Americas, European conquest of, 65–78

Atahuallpa’s capture and, 66–72, 74–75, 339

centralized political structure and, 76, 358

horses used in, 74

infectious diseases and, 74–75, 189, 202, 340, 358–59

literacy as factor in, 76–78

maritime technology for, 75–76, 357

progress of, 358–59

weaponry in, 72, 74, 358

amygdalin, 109, 113

Anasazi societies, 434

Andaman Islanders, 318

Andes:

crops of, 94, 96 , 122, 171, 178, 180, 351, 359

survival of Native American population in, 359

animal extinctions:

in Americas, 46, 156, 168, 204, 340, 390

in Australia/New Guinea, 41–43, 46, 156, 168, 292, 295, 390

breeding programs for prevention of, 162

climatic theory of, 46

of domestic mammals’ ancestors, 153 , 168

food production intensified after, 105–6

in Polynesia, 58

animals:

latitude-related climate adaptations of, 177

taming vs. domestication of, 154, 158–59

territorial behavior of, 167

animals, domestic, 151–68

animal extinctions and, 43, 46, 390

crop production enhanced by, 84–85, 94, 122, 315, 341

earliest, 35, 136, 346–47

evolutionary alterations in, 154–55

human diseases and, 82–83 , 87–88, 157, 187–89, 198–200, 199 , 205, 316, 340, 342

initial sites for domestication of, 94–98, 96 , 135–36, 137, 315–16, 373, 434

for land transport, 86–87, 237

as military advantage, 74, 87, 343

morphology of wild species vs., 91, 154–55

number of potential candidates for, 43, 127

as pets, 157, 158–59, 160, 188, 198

as power source, 340, 343

regional differences in, 151–68, 340

as source of fibers, 86, 122, 154, 158, 163–64

wildlife decline as motive for, 105–6

wild mammals’ suitability for, 126–27

see also mammals

anisakiasis, 190

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), 151, 162, 168

annual plants, 115, 131, 134

Antarctica, 44, 255

antelope, 161, 165–66, 167

apes, human evolution from, 36, 196

apples, 110, 112, 116, 119, 128–29, 146, 149–50, 178

apricots, 116, 178

Arafura Sea, 285, 290

architecture, public, 258 , 262, 263, 267

Aristotle, 271

arrowroot, 296

Asia:

China’s language families in, 310–14, 312 , 313

expansion to Australia/New Guinea from, 40–42, 50–51, 288

initial human presence in, 36, 39

prehistoric coastline of, 287 , 289

asses, North African, 165

Atahuallpa, 66–72, 73, 74–76, 77, 82, 202, 339

atoll types, 57

atomic bomb, 215, 232

aurochs, 154, 157, 160

Australia:

Aboriginals of, see Aboriginal Australians

desert environment in, 283–84, 297

domesticates imported to, 181, 252, 295, 306, 391

environmental limits on food production in, 171, 295–96

European conquest of, 285, 305–7, 359

geological/climatic conditions in, 290, 295–96, 298, 336

mineral resources of, 286

Murray-Darling river system of, 290, 297

New Guinea’s separation from, 285, 286, 287, 289–90, 303

population size of, 252, 306

rabbit eradication efforts in, 201

sheep raised in, 188

Australia/New Guinea:

geographic isolation of, 246, 252

human presence in, 38, 40–44, 48, 50–51, 285, 288, 295

large-animal extinctions in, 41–43, 46, 156, 168, 292, 295, 390

mineral resources of, 231, 286

separation of, 285, 287 , 289–90

stone tools used in, 231

Australopithecus africanus, 36

Austroasiatic language group, 311, 314, 318–19, 330–31, 337, 354, 368, 376, 377, 431–32

Austronesian expansion, 322–38

crops spread by, 330, 335–36

linguistic evidence of, 236, 258 , 322–25, 323 , 328–31, 366, 368

to Madagascar, 326, 362, 365–66, 373, 376–77

to New Guinea, 294–95, 304, 305, 322, 331–36

pottery developments of, 325, 326, 331, 333–35, 336

routes of, 98, 300–301, 304, 325–26, 327 , 328, 331, 332, 336–37, 373, 377

watercraft for, 326–28, 337

automobiles, invention of, 232, 233

axis orientations, 169–83, 170, 250, 251, 315, 351, 383–84

of Africa, 179, 181, 251, 383–84

of Americas, 169, 180, 182, 251, 351

of Eurasia, 169, 176–79, 315, 351, 383–84

latitude-related climate conditions and, 176–79, 384

technological diffusion and, 182–83

Aztec Empire, 345

Spanish conquest of, 201, 340, 358

tribute collected by, 280

warrior religious ideology of, 270

Bali, as part of prehistoric Asia, 288

Bali cattle, 154

Balkans, Fertile Crescent food production spread to, 180

bamboo rafts, 289

bananas, 113, 116, 117, 121, 122, 127, 142, 178, 291, 292, 305, 330, 372, 375, 384

band societies, 195, 254–59, 266, 274–76

banteng, 154, 154 , 157, 161

Bantu:

food production spread by, 128, 179, 182, 378, 381–82, 384

geographic origins of, 369

iron metallurgy of, 378–80

languages of, 314, 354 , 369–70, 377, 378

subequatorial-African expansion of, 98, 157, 370–71, 377–82, 379

bark beaters, 326

barley:

domestication of, 115, 118, 131–32

as founder crop, 120 , 134, 136, 140, 175

nutritive value of, 120, 133, 145

spread of, 315, 318

Bar-Yosef, Ofer, 140

beans, 105, 113, 120, 120, 121 , 145, 172, 173, 180, 181, 351, 434

bears, 159, 164

beer industry, 441–42

bees, 152

beets, 117

Bering land bridge, 38, 41, 44, 45

berries, 109, 110, 111, 112, 123, 124, 146

birds, domesticated, 152, 158, 198, 199 , 373

birth intervals, 85

Bismarck, Otto von, 403

bison, 157, 158, 160, 161

bitter vetch, 136

Black Death (bubonic plague), 188–89, 190, 194, 197, 203, 316, 342

Blackfoot Indians, 81, 82

black pepper, 178

blueberries, 109, 112, 123, 146

blueprint copying:

new writing systems developed through, 215–18

technological diffusion by, 245

Blumler, Mark, 134, 135 , 147

bogong moth, 297

bone tools, 39, 86

bonobos, 36, 259

boomerangs, 299

Borneo:

Austronesian influence in, 322, 326, 327, 330, 333, 366

hunter-gatherer reversion in, 338

as part of prehistoric Asia, 287 , 288

Böttger, Johann, 245

bows and arrows, 247, 285, 299, 303, 343

Brahms, Johannes, 256

brain size:

of domestic vs. wild animals, 154

human, 36, 37, 39

brain structure, language skills and, 39

breadfruit, 122, 142, 330

Britain, Roman authority withdrawn from, 268

broadcast seeding, 122, 341

bronze, 248, 315, 317, 318

bubonic plague (Black Death), 188–89, 190, 194, 197, 203, 316, 342

buffalo:

African, 157, 164, 374, 383

see also water buffalo

bureaucrats, 85–86, 258, 262–63, 268, 269

burial practices, 38, 39, 315

Burke, Robert, 284, 307

business world, organization in, 439–44

cabbage, 113, 117

Cajamarca, Atahuallpa captured at, 66–72, 74

calibrated radiocarbon dates, 35 n, 92

California, University of, at Davis, 110

camels, 152, 153, 156, 159, 161, 374

canal technology, 149, 242, 243, 297, 316

Candia, Pedro de, 68

cannibalism:

disease transmitted through, 190, 199

protein deficiency linked to, 143

canoes, 247, 301, 326–28, 337

capitalism, 239, 437

carbon 14/carbon 12 ratios, 91, 92

see also radiocarbon dating

Carlyle, Thomas, 403

carnivores, unsuitability of as domesticates, 162–63

cashews, 123

cassava (manioc), 121 , 122, 127, 171

cassowary, 142, 158

cast-iron production, 243, 315–16

cats, 152, 167, 198, 373–74

cattle (cows), 93–94, 135, 136, 153, 154, 160, 161 , 162, 179, 198, 199, 341, 373, 374, 384

cavalry, foot soldiers routed by, 74

cave paintings, 39, 47, 50

centralized societies:

in chiefdoms, 262–63, 264, 267

economy controlled by, 268

information flow limited in, 262, 267–68

public order maintained under, 265–66

religious support for efforts of, 266, 344

technological advancement under, 240

cereals:

Australian paucity of, 296

domestication of, 106, 107, 118, 120, 121

as founder crops, 136, 137, 140

nutritive value of, 120, 122, 127, 133

productive yields from, 131–32

sites for onset of cultivation of, 128, 371, 378

technologies developed for farming of, 106–7, 298

tropical climates and, 143

Chalcuchima, 77

charcoal residues, radiocarbon dating of, 91–92

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 66, 71, 72

Chatham Islands:

Austronesian expansion to, 337

hunter-gatherers in, 54, 338

Maori conquest of Moriori settlements on, 52–56

cheetahs, 159, 163

chenopods, 173, 180, 181

Cherokee confederacy, 278

Cherokee language, writing system developed for, 218–20, 219

cherries, 116, 119

chicken pox, 307

chickens, domestication of, 152, 178, 291, 374

chickpeas, 93, 120 , 136

chiefdoms, 257, 258 , 262–65, 266, 267–69, 270, 278–79, 280, 346–47

chili peppers, 172, 173, 180, 181

Chimbu tribe, 241

chimpanzees, 36, 259

China:

agricultural techniques developed in, 119, 178

Austronesian expansion from, 326, 328

crops cultivated in, 120–21, 122, 132, 178, 297, 315, 429, 438

cultural exchanges in, 315–16

cultural expansion from, 178, 311–14, 319, 418, 424

developmental lead lost by, 393–94, 395–401, 437–39, 440

domestic animals of, 152, 178, 315–16

earliest evidence of human presence in, 309

environmental/climatic variety in, 309, 315, 395

ethnic attitudes in, 317–18

genetic diversity in, 309

geographical connectedness of, 397–400, 399, 439

gunpowder developed in, 236, 243, 316

innovations vs. conservatism in, 242–43, 247, 395–97

linguistic history of, 309–14, 318, 324, 330–31, 354, 397, 402

New Guinea immigrants from, 321

non-animal protein sources in, 122

North vs. South, 309, 315, 316–17

political unity of, 309, 318, 324, 396–98, 437–39, 440

pottery from, 243, 244, 245

printing development in, 231, 243, 248

as site of food production origins, 94, 95, 96, 182, 315–16, 395

writing system of, 208, 209, 210, 213, 220, 222, 222 , 225, 226–27, 248, 309, 316, 317, 319, 352,

397, 402

China, People’s Republic of:

Cultural Revolution in, 439

population of, 267, 309

cholera, 188–89, 191–92, 194, 197, 205, 342

cities:

infectious diseases spread in, 197

villages vs., 267

citrus fruit, 178

clans, 260

climate:

animal extinctions and, 43, 46

of Australia vs. New Guinea, 290

biodiversity linked to, 134

cold, 39, 43–44, 45, 357

crop diffusion and, 176–79, 182

of drought cycles, 295–96

latitude-related features of, 176–79

Mediterranean, 131, 133–36, 133 , 177, 384

plant habitats expanded by global changes in, 106

seasonal variation in, 290, 295–96, 371

technological innovation vs., 240

Clovis hunters, 44–49, 348

coffee cultivation, 178, 241, 372

cold climates, human survival in, 39, 43–44, 45, 357

Colledge, Susan, 139

Columbus, Christopher, 65, 76, 189, 202, 203, 205, 321, 339, 395, 396

communal decision process, 261, 275

condors, 162

conflict resolution, societal systems for, 254–55, 257 , 260–61, 269, 274–75

conquest:

diseases spread by, 74–75, 189, 201–4, 342, 358

literacy as factor in, 76–78, 206–7

religious justification for, 67, 69–70, 71, 86, 255, 267, 270, 344, 402

state amalgamation through, 277, 278–80

suicidal fighting in support of, 270

tribute gained from, 280

continental differences in cultural development, 433

axis orientation, 169, 170 , 171, 176–83, 383–84

diffusion factors in, 390–91

domestication potential in, 390

environmental adaptation and, 50–51

geographical connectedness and, 397–400, 399

initial settlement dates and, 49–50

mutability of, 400–401

role of idiosyncracy in, 401–3

total area and population size in, 391–92

Cook, James, 205

Cooke, William, 235

copper metallurgy, 248, 343, 380

corn:

for animal feed, 162

cultivation of, 120 , 121 , 127, 142

diffusion of, 105, 145, 180–81, 351–52, 375

domestication of, 112, 132, 137, 178

nutritive value of, 120, 133, 145, 341

wild ancestors of, 109, 132

Cortés, Hernán, 72, 76, 77, 87, 201, 340

cotton, 86, 114, 121, 122, 173, 181

cotton gin, 232, 235

cowpeas, 120 , 122

cows, (cattle), 93–94, 135, 136, 153, 154, 160, 161 , 162, 179, 198, 199, 341, 373, 374, 384

crafts specialists, 261, 263

Cro-Magnons, 39–40

crop cultivation:

in Africa, 371–75, 372

in altitude range over short distance, 134–35

continental diffusion of, 171–83, 341, 434

in diverse Polynesian environments, 59

domestic animals used in, 84–85, 94, 122, 315–16, 341–42

eight founder crops of, 136

for fibers, 113, 122

of former weeds, 119

of fruit and nut trees, 118–19, 123, 149–50

in Japan, 415, 425–26, 429

latitude-related climate features and, 176–77

linguistic evidence of, 375

by Native Americans vs. Eurasians, 340–42, 434

natural selection and, 111–13, 114–15, 117

nutritive value and, 119–20, 122, 143, 341

for oils, 113–14

preemptive domestication and, 171–73

reproductive biology and, 116

storage factors and, 118, 131

tools and technologies for, 84–85, 106–7, 122, 150, 341–42

twelve leading species for, 127, 131

Cuban Missile Crisis, 268

cucumber, 121, 178

Cuitláhuac, 75, 202

cult houses, 262

cumin, 178

cuneiform, 208, 209–13, 212, 222, 224, 226–27, 229

Custer, George, 72

cycad nuts, 297

Cyril, Saint, 216

Cyrillic alphabets, 216

Daimler, Gottfried, 233

Darwin, Charles, 117, 124

dates (fruit), 118, 128

dating, radiocarbon, 47, 91–93

deer, 165–66, 167, 200

desert environment, 283–84

determinatives, 211

Dingiswayo, 278–79, 280

dingos, 295, 300–301

diphtheria, 203

diseases, infectious:

domestic animals in spread of, 82–83 , 87–88, 157, 187–89, 198–200, 199 , 204–5, 316, 340, 342

epidemics of, 193–205, 342

European conquests furthered by, 74–75, 189, 201–4, 342, 358

food production related to development of, 82–83, 187

four evolutionary stages of, 198–201

genetic defenses against, 192–93

germ transmission strategies and, 190–92, 193, 201

immune defenses against, 192–93, 196, 304, 342, 381

population and, 194–97

sexual transmission of, 188, 191

symptoms of bodily responses to, 191–93

of tropical climates, 75, 189, 205, 342–43

dodo, extinction of, 42

dogs, 136, 146, 152, 155, 158, 160, 163, 166, 204, 295, 373

infectious diseases and, 191, 198, 199

Domestication of Plants in the Old World (Zohary and Hopf), 174

dominance hierarchy, 166, 167

donkeys, 154, 161, 165, 374

drought cycles, 295–96

ducks, 152, 199, 204

dugout canoes, 301, 326–28

dysentery, 195, 304

eagles, 158–59

Easter Island:

giant statues of, 63

writing system of, 213, 221

eastern United States, Native American groups in:

early crops domesticated by, 94, 96 , 120–21, 122, 144–45, 172

indigenous biota vs. imported additions cultivated by, 141, 144–47, 149–50

east–west axes, continental diffusion along, 169, 170, 171, 176–79, 315, 351, 383–84

economy:

centralized control of, 268, 275

of non-food-producers, 256–58, 261, 268, 273, 280

of rich vs. poor nations, 444–46

redistributive, 258, 263–64, 265, 275

productivity in, 440, 441–43

Edison, Thomas, 231, 233, 234, 235

eel fisheries, 298

eggplants, 113

Egypt, ancient:

food production in, 97, 171, 174, 374, 375, 384

hieroglyphs of, 208, 209, 210 , 213, 217, 221, 222–23, 223, 225, 226, 385

Ehret, Christopher, 375

eland, 160–61, 165–66

electric lighting, 234–35, 237, 238

elephants, 154, 159, 163, 383

elk (red deer), 160, 161, 165

English Channel, 41

English language, geographic history of, 370

ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation), 296

equids, 165

Eskimos:

Arctic survival skills of, 357

in band societies, 256

Eurasian colonization and, 355

European diseases contracted by, 358

technologies abandoned by, 247

Eta-Funayama sword, 414

Ethiopia:

crops of, 120–21, 122, 174, 178, 372, 376

food production begun in, 94, 96 , 97, 375

guns acquired in, 436

writing system in, 218, 385

ethnic diversity, political incorporation of, 308–9

ethnobiology, 137–40

Eurasia:

defined, 155

diseases from, 189, 197, 204

east-west axis of, 169, 176–79, 315, 351, 383–84, 434

European dominance of, 393–401

food production in Americas vs., 339–42, 434

historical trajectory of key developments in, 345–55, 346

language expansions of, 87, 352, 354 , 359

large-animal extinctions in, 44

large-mammal domestication in, 151–68, 434

population density of, 252

as site for technological innovation, 231, 250–53, 343–44

spread of food production in, 171, 173, 175, 182, 183, 434

technological diffusion in, 244, 245, 246, 248, 250–51

Europe:

Cro-Magnon dominance in, 39, 40

Eurasia dominated by, 393–401

genetic immunities evolved in, 193

infectious diseases from, 74–75, 189

initial human presence in, 36, 48

language replacements from, 314

literate tradition in, 76–78, 345

maritime technology of, 75–76, 344

New World conquered by, 65–78, 189, 339, 340, 358–59

onset of food production in, 96 , 97, 98–99, 104, 434

Pacific conquests of, 338

political/geographic fragmentation of, 396–400, 399, 437–39, 440–41

pottery making in, 98

tropical diseases of colonists from, 189, 205, 304, 343

Fayu bands, 254–55, 256, 258, 277

ferrets, 152, 167

Fertile Crescent (Near East) (Southwestern Asia):

climate of, 131, 133–34

crops of, 118–19, 120–21, 128, 129

developmental lead lost by, 393–95, 400

diffusion process for food package from, 171, 172–80, 174, 182, 375, 376

domesticates spread from, 95, 97, 98

elements of food production package in, 136

environmental and biotic advantages for food production onset in, 129–38

evolution and social organization in, 260, 262

hunter-gatherer decline in, 137

mammal domesticates in, 135–36, 137

map of, 130

natural biodiversity of, 133–36

pottery from, 244

sequence of crop development in, 118–19

as site for food production’s origin, 93, 94–95, 96, 315, 429

technological spread from, 175

topographical variety in, 134–35

fertilizer, 84, 197

fiber production, 86, 114, 121 , 122

figs, 118, 128

Fiji Islands:

European diseases in, 75, 205

guns introduced in, 73

Finnish language, 216

fire:

early human use of, 37

for land management, 297

firearms, see guns

firestick farming, 297

fish, diseases from, 190

fish farms, 197, 297–98

fishing skills, 38–39, 242

Flannery, Tim, 50–51

flax, 86, 114, 115, 121 , 122, 127, 136, 175

food-processing industry, 442–43

food production:

archaeological evidence of, 90–94

combination of local flora needed for, 129–50

continental axis orientations in spread of, 169, 171, 176–83

defined, 82

dense population supported through, 84–85, 107–8, 187, 196, 273–75, 415

diffusion of, 169–83

east–west axis of Eurasian diffusion for, 169, 176–79, 315, 351, 384

evolution of epidemic diseases related to, 82–83, 187–88, 196, 342

geographic differences in history of, 89–90, 94–99, 95 , 390–91

hunting-gathering competition with, 54, 82, 142, 147–48, 350

from indigenous biota vs. imported additions, 141–47

local ethnobiological knowledge in, 139–41

military advantages and, 82–88

non-food-producing specialists enabled by, 85–86, 250, 273

nutrition levels in, 107, 293

onset of, 89–99, 149–50, 169–70, 250, 291, 315

population replacements concurrent with onset of, 97–99, 330, 336, 337

in pre-Columbian America vs. Eurasia, 339–42

sedentary lifestyle, 85, 196, 250, 274

state control of, 267

surplus management for, 85–86, 273

technological developments linked to onset of, 106–7, 250–51, 252, 343–44, 349

writing development and, 226–27

Foré, 138, 199, 259–60

founder domesticates, 95–97, 96, 136

fruit:

onset of cultivation of, 128–29

seed dispersal by, 110–11

seedless mutations of, 113, 116

fur animals, 152

Galton, Francis, 159, 162

Gama, Vasco da, 377, 382, 395

gasoline, extraction of, 236

Gates, Bill, 439, 440

gaur, 154, 154, 157, 161

gazelles, 137, 159, 166

geese, 152

geographic determinism, 392

Germany:

beer industry in, 441–42

unification of, 278

germination, natural inhibitors of, 115–16

germs, evolution of, 87–88, 198–201

see also diseases, infectious

giraffes, 159, 374, 383

glass, 231, 235

glottochronology, 376

goats, 135, 136, 153 , 154, 159, 161 , 166, 179, 374, 384

Goering, Heinrich, 361

Goering, Hermann, 361

Goldstone, Jack, 438

gonorrhea, 205

goosefoot, 120 , 145, 172

gorillas, 36, 162, 163, 259

gourds, 121

government:

communal decision process used for, 261, 275

spread of religion linked with, 255–56

grafting, 119, 150

Grand Canyon, 46

grapes, 110, 113, 116, 118, 128–29, 146

grasses, 291

early cultivation of, 119, 120, 140

worldwide survey of, 119, 120 , 147

see also cereals

Great Leap Forward, 39, 39–40, 51

Greek alphabet, 208, 217, 218, 225–26

Greenberg, Joseph, 353, 366, 368, 369

Greenland, Norse settlement in, 355–56, 357, 391

grizzly bears, 159, 164

groundnuts, 120 , 122

guanaco, 153

guinea fowl, 373

guinea pigs, 152, 154, 171, 180, 204

gunpowder, 216, 236, 242, 243, 316

guns, 73, 231, 238, 244–47, 299, 329, 435–36

Gutenberg, Johannes, 231, 248–49

Halmahera, 323 , 327, 331, 332

han’gu˘l alphabet, 220–21, 221, 319

haniwa statues, 417

Hannibal, 154, 383

harquebuses, 73

Harris, David, 139

haus tamburan, 262

Hawaii:

chiefdoms of, 262–65, 266, 268, 279

epidemic disease in, 205

food production in, 338

isolation of, 227

political unification of, 62–63, 64, 279

hemp, 86, 114, 121 , 122

Henry, Joseph, 235

hepatitis, 304

herd animals, social characteristics of, 165–67

herders:

seasonal movement of, 259

in sub-Saharan Africa, 94, 97–98, 108, 157, 380

hereditary social position, 262, 263, 267, 269

hieroglyphs, 208, 209, 210, 215, 217, 221, 222, 223, 225

Hillman, Gordon, 139

Hirohito, Emperor of Japan, 413

hippopotamus, 164, 374, 383

history, as science, 392, 403–9

Hitler, Adolf, 398, 403, 406

Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) language family, 310–11, 314, 318, 330, 354

Hobbes, Thomas, 100

Hokkaido, 412, 416, 418, 421, 431

Homo erectus, 36–37, 323

Homo habilis, 36

Homo sapiens, 37–38

honeybees, 152

Honshu, 416, 426, 434

hookworms, 191, 193, 196

Hopewell culture, 146

Hopf, Maria, 173, 174

horses:

in Africa, 179, 384

in Americas, 156, 341, 343

domestication of, 153 , 154, 157, 161 , 165, 374

Eurasian diffusion of, 87, 251

for long-distance transport, 87

military use of, 74, 87, 157–58, 343

motor vehicles vs., 233, 234

social dominance in bands of, 166

Huascar, 75, 202

Huayna Capac, Emperor of Incas, 75, 202

humans:

biological evolution of, 36–40

geographical colonization patterns of, 36–51

hunter-gatherers:

African herders vs., 98, 108, 157

in band societies, 256, 259

in chiefdoms, 263, 273

disease vulnerability of, 195

end of, 82, 108

ethnobiological knowledge of, 137–39

farmers reverted to, 54, 104–5

food producers’ conquest and replacement of, 98, 108, 330, 336, 337

food production in competition with, 107–8, 142, 147–48, 350

in 1492 Eurasia vs. Americas, 341, 344

in Japan, 164–65, 416, 417, 420–21, 424, 426, 428

landscape management practiced by, 102–3

in modern New Guinea, 142, 292

nutritional status of, 107

population densities of, 44–45, 54, 84–85, 196

sedentary societies of, 86, 131, 137, 139, 423, 428

of Southeast Asia, 318

hunting skills:

animal extinctions and, 41–43, 46, 168

of protohumans, 38–39, 42

Huygens, Christiaan, 234

hydraulic management, 271–72

IBM, 440, 444

Ice Ages, 35

land bridges during, 38, 40–41, 285, 287, 418–19, 431

idea diffusion:

of porcelain technology, 245

writing systems developed through, 215, 218–23

immune system, 192–93, 196

Inca Empire:

animals of, 164

disease epidemics and, 74–75, 358

geographic isolation of, 227, 251

incandescent light bulb, 234–35

Incas, European conquest of:

Atahuallpa’s capture and, 66–72, 74–75

cavalry vs. foot soldiers in conquest of, 74–76

centralized political organization and, 76, 345

literacy as aid to, 76–78

military equipment of, 74–76

India, 441

Chinese influence on, 310

crops cultivated in, 120, 120–21

domesticates from, 178

food production spread to, 173, 175, 182

sea trade routes with, 377

Indo-European languages, regional expansion of, 87, 310, 352–53, 354, 359

Indonesia, 310, 353, 354 , 359

agricultural crops of, 305, 375

Austronesian expansion and, 98, 295, 300, 304, 322, 323–24, 328, 333, 335, 377

colonization of, 41, 50–51

New Guinean cultural influence from, 295

population of, 321

western New Guinea controlled by, 305, 320–22

Industrial Revolution, 117–18, 344

Indus Valley, food production’s development in, 96, 97, 171, 182

influenza, 87, 188–89, 191, 192, 194, 199, 203, 205, 307, 316, 342

information, government control of, 257, 267–68

insects:

diseases transmitted by, 190, 199, 200

domesticated, 152

Irian Jaya, 305

iron metallurgy, 248, 315–16, 317, 346–47 , 378–80

irrigation systems, 197, 264, 271–72, 341

Islam, 242–43, 245

cultural diffusion of, geographic factors in, 246

incendiary weapons in wars of, 236

Iyau, 266

Japan:

agriculture in, 422, 425–26, 429, 434

Ainu in, 159, 164, 341, 411–12, 416–18, 423, 430–31, 432, 434

archaeology of, 413–14, 418–19

Chinese influence on, 310, 318, 418, 424

cultural isolation of, 246–47, 412, 415, 424–25, 428

enmity toward Koreans in, 414, 432

food-processing industry in, 442–43

food production in, 415–16, 419, 420–22, 430

geography of, 414–16

guns abandoned and reacquired in, 246–47, 299, 436

hunter-gatherer lifestyle in, 104–5, 416, 417, 420–21, 424, 426, 428, 430

Ice Ages in, 412, 418–19, 431

Jomon culture in, 419–25, 428, 429–30, 431–32

Kofun period in, 427, 429

Korean immigration into, 411, 425–26, 428–30, 432, 434

Korean trade with, 413–14, 418, 424, 425

mythic history of, 412–13

political and cultural independence of, 412

population density in, 415, 423, 425, 428

pottery from, 244, 319, 419–21, 423, 425

transistor technology acquired by, 238, 245

warfare in, 426–27

writing systems of, 208, 237, 319, 414

Yayoi culture in, 425–27, 428, 429–30, 432

Japanese language, 411, 412, 417, 431–32

Japanese people:

genetic homogeneity of, 411, 429

Koreans as ancestors of, 411, 428–31

origins of, conflicting theories of, 412, 431

Java:

Asian mainland joined to, 287 , 288

Austronesian expansion to, 322, 326, 327

Java man, 36, 323

jewelry, earliest evidence of, 39

jicama, 121

Job’s tears, 143

Jordan Valley, plants selected for domestication in, 140

Kamehameha I, King of Hawaii, 62–63

kangaroos, 142, 156, 295, 297

Kennedy, John F., 268

Khoisan peoples:

Bantu encroachment on, 179, 370, 378–82

genetic background of, 362–65

as hunter-gatherers vs. herders, 97, 108, 157, 380–81

language family of, 314, 366, 368–69, 370, 376

no crops domesticated by, 179, 373, 376, 384

white decimation of, 75, 179–80, 205, 381

Kingdon, Jonathan, 50–51

Kirikiri, 254

Kislev, Mordechai, 140

kleptocracies, four sustaining strategies for, 265–67

knotweed, 120 , 145

koalas, 162

kofun, tombs, 413, 427

kola nuts, 373, 375

konohiki, 263, 268

Korea:

Chinese influence in, 310, 318, 418, 424

enmity toward Japanese in, 414, 432

immigration to Japan from, 411, 425–26, 428–30, 432, 434

Japanese trade with, 413–14, 418, 424, 425

steel industry in, 440

Korean hemorrhagic fever, 191

Korean language, 431–32

kuru (laughing sickness), 190, 199

Kyushu, 416, 418, 421, 425, 431

labor force:

diversity of, 61

seasonal shifts in, 273

technological innovation related to size of, 239

Lang, Graeme, 438–39

Langley, Samuel, 235

languages:

for address of royalty, 269

African diversity of, 365–70, 367 , 374, 375–76

anatomical basis for, 39

ancestral vs. modern, 329

of Australia/New Guinea vs. Asia, 289

of Austronesian family, 311, 314, 318, 330, 337, 354 , 376, 377

of China and Southeast Asia, 309–14, 312, 313 , 317–18

click sounds in, 369

cultural history deduced from, 329

Eurasian movements of, 87, 352, 354 , 359

of Native Americans, 314, 352–53, 359

political connectedness reflected in, 397

replacements of, 311–14, 317–18

writing systems modified for differences in, 207, 216–17

Lapita pottery, 333–35, 336

Lascaux Cave, 39

Lassa fever, 200

latitude, climate features related to, 176–79

laughing sickness (kuru), 190, 199

leather, 86

leeks, 119

legumes, 118, 119

lentils, 115, 119, 120 , 136

leprosy, 196

lettuce, 117, 118, 119

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 225

Lewis, Bill, 441

Lilienthal, Otto, 235

lima beans, 113, 120, 172, 181

Linearbandkeramik culture, 84

Linear B writing system, 208, 216, 224–25, 230

lions, 163, 164

Liszt, Franz, 256

literacy, see writing systems

llamas, 153, 154, 155, 161, 171, 180, 204, 251, 351

logograms, 208, 224–25, 226

Los Angeles public schools, ethnic diversity in, 308

luxury goods, 258 , 263

Lyme disease, 200

macadamia nuts, 123, 296, 307

Macassans, Australian Aboriginal contact with, 301

Madagascar, Austronesian expansion to, 326, 362, 365–66, 373, 376–77

Malai Islet, 334

malaria, 188–89, 192, 193, 203, 205, 259

altitudinal ceiling for, 305

European susceptibility to, 304, 306, 342, 343

immunity to, 336, 381

transmission of, 190, 197

Malayo-Polynesian language group, 322, 323, 324–25, 328, 330

Malay Peninsula, Austronesian expansion to, 322, 323, 327 , 328, 330

mammals:

aquatic, 152

extinctions of, 46, 153, 168, 204, 340, 390

large species of, 41, 46

as milk sources, 84

small, as domesticates, 152, 159

mammals, large, domesticated, 151–68

African paucity of, 373–74, 383, 384

aquatic, 152

captive breeding suitability of, 163

continental diffusion of, 171, 179, 180

diet requirements of, 162–63

domestication dates for, 137, 159, 161

fourteen ancient species of, 153–54 , 154, 155–57, 159, 340

growth rates of, 163

modern efforts at developing, 157, 160–61

rapid acceptance of Eurasian species of, 157

size of, 154

social characteristics of, 166–67

suitability criteria for, 126–27, 151, 159–68, 383

temperament as factor in, 164–66

unequal global distribution of candidates for, 136, 155–57, 168, 340, 373–74, 390, 393

Manco, 74

Mandan Indians, 203, 358

Mandarin, 309, 310

Manhattan Project, 232

manioc (cassava), 121 , 122, 127, 171

manure, 84, 340, 342

Maori:

British defeat of, 86

Moriori conquered by, 52–56

muskets adopted by, 244–45, 390–91, 435–36

New Zealand colonized by, 45, 50

maritime technology:

of Austronesian expansion, 300, 326–28

Eurasian origins of, 231

of European expansion, 75–76, 344

marsupials, extinct, 292, 295

Marx, Karl, 265

Matthew, Saint, 168

Maya societies:

barriers to cultural diffusion from, 251

writing system developed by, 208, 213, 225

maygrass, 121, 145

McKinsey Global Institute, 441, 442

Meadowcroft rock shelter, 47, 48

measles, 87, 188–89, 194–95, 198, 199, 203, 205, 307, 342

Mediterranean region:

climate typified by, 131, 133–36, 133 , 177, 384

earliest evidence of watercraft in, 41

megafauna, extinctions of, 41–43, 46, 156, 168, 204, 340

melons, 111, 113, 121 , 175

Mena, Cristóbal de, 76

Merina state, 279

Mesoamerica:

barriers to cultural diffusion from, 251, 351–52

diffusion to and from South America in, 171, 173, 180

domestic animals in, 137, 152, 171, 204

early crops of, 96, 120–21 , 122, 172, 434

languages of, 353

non-animal protein sources in, 122

as site of food production’s origin, 94, 96

social organization begun in, 262

technological advances in, 237, 355

writing systems developed in, 183, 208, 209, 212–13, 214, 221, 225, 226–27, 345, 352

metallurgy, 175, 244, 248, 251, 315–16, 337, 343, 346, 346–47, 348

Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mein) language family, 310–11, 314, 318, 330, 354

Microsoft, 440, 444

military:

Eurasian technological advantages in, 342

food supplies for, 86

ideology of patriotic suicide in, 270

religious motivation of, 67, 69–70, 71, 86, 255, 267, 270, 344

milk production, 84, 154, 175

millets, 120 , 122, 178, 298, 315, 371, 372, 374, 378

missionaries, 255, 274

mithan, 154

Mobotu Sese Seko, 265

Mongol Empire, 352

Mongoloids, 309

monkey viruses, 189, 196, 199, 200

monoculture fields, 122

Monte Verde site, 48

Montezuma, 75, 77

moose, 160, 161

Moriori society, Maori conquest of, 52–56

Morse, Samuel, 235

mosquitoes, 190, 197, 199, 381

moths:

as food, 297

natural selection for industrial melanism in, 117

motor vehicles, invention of, 233

Mtetwa chiefdom, 278, 280

mumps, 194, 196, 203

Muralug Island, 302

murder, among band and tribal societies, 254–55, 266

Murray-Darling river system, 290, 297

Muscovy ducks, 152, 204

mushrooms, 109, 138

muskets, 244–45, 390–91, 435–36

musk ox, 160

mustard seeds, 114, 140

myxomatosis, 200–201

Namibia, colonial history of, 361–62

Native Americans:

crops cultivated by, 105, 341, 434

cultural diversity of, 308

disease epidemics among, 74–75, 189, 191, 194, 195, 201–3, 342, 358

domestic animals of, 158, 204, 340, 341

of Eastern U.S., 94, 96, 120–21 , 122, 141, 144–47, 149–50, 172

Eurasian food production vs., 339–42, 434

European conquest of, 65–78, 81–82, 189, 202, 314, 339–60, 429

geographic/ecological isolation of, 171–73, 227, 228, 246–47, 352, 391

guns acquired by, 436

as hunter-gatherers, 81, 98, 108, 263, 341, 348, 349–50, 352

independent inventions of, 237, 244, 352, 354

innovation vs. tradition among, 242

languages of, 314, 352–53, 359

of Mississippi Valley, 202, 227

population levels of, 203, 204, 359

technological disadvantages of, 343–44

of West Indies, 204, 358

writing systems of, 208, 209, 212–13, 214, 218–20, 219, 225, 228, 345

see also specific Native American groups

natural selection:

for disease immunity, 192–93

human crop cultivation vs., 111–13, 115, 117, 124–25

Nature, 47

Navajo, 158, 242, 341

Neanderthals, 38, 39, 43

Near East, see Fertile Crescent

Negritos, 318, 324, 368

Newcomen, Thomas, 234

New Guinea:

Australia separated from, 285, 286, 287 , 289–90

Austronesian expansion to, 294–95, 304, 305, 322, 331–36

diverse languages of, 289, 309–10, 323, 331–32

domestic animals in, 143, 291, 293, 295, 302

early crops of, 120–21 , 122, 142

environmental conditions in, 141, 290, 293

European presence in, 286, 295, 303–5

food production in, 141–44, 286, 290–93, 295, 305

geographic barriers to cultural diffusion in, 293–94, 391

giant marsupials exterminated on, 292

indigenous biota vs. imported additions cultivated in, 143–44

indigenous fauna of, 141, 143, 290

Indonesian province of, 305, 320–22

initial human presence in, 41–44, 141, 288

intertribal warfare in, 294

onset of food production in, 94, 95 , 96 , 291, 293

political fragmentation in, 294

population density of, 286, 292, 293

Torres Strait population from, 301–3

see also Australia/New Guinea

New Guinea, modern:

art of, 292

band societies of, 254–55, 256, 258–59, 286

Chinese immigrants as, 321

diseases of, 196, 199, 304

eastern vs. western, 305

ethnic tensions among, 320–22

ethnobiological expertise of, 138, 140, 142, 144

European colonization among, 286

evolutionary ancestry of, 288–89, 318, 321–22, 331

highland agriculture vs. lowland subsistence for, 142–44, 292, 302, 321

innovative vs. conservative cultures in, 241–42

languages of, 259, 289, 294

Native Australians vs., 285–86, 290

pets kept by, 158, 160

population distribution in, 292, 293–94

stone tools of, 37, 286

tribal groups of, 138, 199, 259–62, 266, 286, 293

New Zealand:

Austronesian expansion to, 337

geological diversity of, 57

Maori ancestors in, 45, 53

mineral resources of, 57, 63, 64

Musket Wars in, 244–45, 390–91, 435–36

Niger-Congo language family, 366, 368–70, 373, 375, 376

Nilo-Saharan language family, 366, 368, 376, 378

Ninan Cuyuchi, 75

Norse, North Atlantic expansion efforts of, 355–57, 356, 391

North Africa, Eurasian culture related to, 155

north–south continental axes, 169, 171, 179–83, 251, 351, 383–84

nuts, 109, 110, 113, 123, 142, 146, 373, 419, 430

oak trees, 110, 113, 123, 146

oats, 119, 178

oca, 121, 122

ogham alphabet, 217, 220–21

olives, 110, 114, 118, 128

onagers, 165

On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 124

Optimal Fragmentation Principle, 437, 440–41

oranges, 113, 116

Otto, Nikolaus, 233

Pacific Northwest, hunter-gather chiefdoms in, 263

papermaking techniques, 243, 245, 248, 316

Papin, Denis, 234

Papuan languages, 289, 332

Patagonia, Clovis hunter-gatherer expansion to, 44

patent law, 233, 239

patriotism, conquest furthered by, 270

peaches, 116, 178

peanuts, 120, 171, 375

pears, 119

peas, 91, 110, 112, 114, 115, 118, 120 , 122, 136, 175, 176

pecans, 110, 123, 146

peccaries, 151, 157

Pedra Furada, cave paintings at, 47

pertussis (whooping cough), 191, 194, 199, 203

petroleum products, 236–37

pets, 157, 158–59, 160, 188, 198

Phaistos disk, 229–30, 230 , 235, 243, 248–49

Philippines:

Austronesian expansion to, 98, 323–24, 328, 333, 335

crops brought to, 143

food production’s spread from, 171

languages of, 314, 318, 322, 323–24, 328, 329, 368

phonemes, 208, 209

phonograph, invention of, 233

pigs:

domestication of, 135, 136, 153, 154, 157, 159, 161 , 291, 295, 316, 373, 415

human diseases and, 190, 204

pineapples, 116

Pizarro, Francisco, 66–73, 74–77, 82, 87, 202, 339, 344

Pizarro, Hernando, 67, 68, 77

Pizarro, Juan, 68

Pizarro, Pedro, 67

plague, bubonic (Black Death), 188–89, 190, 194, 197, 203, 316, 342

plants:

atmospheric carbon absorbed by, 91

dioecious species of, 116

reproductive processes of, 116, 132–33

self-fertilization of, 116, 119

plants, domestication of, 109–50

alterations undergone through, 91, 110–18, 131–32, 141

in China, 315

defined, 109

earliest known dates for, 35, 94–95, 96 , 346–47, 347–48

hermaphroditic selfers and, 132–33

initial sites for, 93, 94–98, 96 , 244, 291, 373, 375, 433–34

interspecific hybrids, 133

in Japan, 415

local ethnobiological knowledge employed in, 137–39

modern lack of major additions to, 127–28

natural selection process vs., 111–13, 114–15, 117, 124–25

in New Guinea, 291

nutritional yield and, 84, 119–20, 133, 137, 144, 145, 341

preemptive domestication and, 171–73

prehistoric climate change and, 106

regional potential for required variety of, 128–50, 383, 393

single vs. multiple instances of, 172, 175, 181, 434

size increases in, 112

variations in ease of, 118–24, 132

wild mutants in, 114–16, 124, 171–72

plants, wild:

almonds, 109, 113

of Australia, 296

berries, 109, 111

bitterness of, 109, 112–13

cereals, 106–7, 131, 132

domestication potential of, 126–28, 131–33

food production’s onset based on entire regional assortment of, 128–31

germination inhibition in, 114–15

grass species, 134, 135 , 147

local ethnobiological knowledge of, 137–40

number of species of, 127

poisonous, 109, 112–13, 138

Plato, 265

Pleistocene Era, end of, 35

plow animals, 84–85, 122, 315, 341–42

plums, 116, 119, 146

pneumonia, 188

polio, 196

political systems:

centralized, 76, 240, 262–68, 344, 433

ethnic diversity encompassed by, 308–9

of Eurasian societies vs. Native Americans, 344–45

of Inca Empire, 76, 345

of kleptocracies, 265–67

Polynesian diversity of, 60–63

population density and, 60–61, 62, 274

in sedentary societies, 85–86

Spanish conquests enabled by, 76

spread of religion linked with, 255–56

technological advancement and, 240, 437–39

units of, 60

writing development linked to, 224–27

see also social organization

Polynesian islands:

Austronesian expansion to, 322

chiefdoms in, 262–65, 266, 267, 269, 279

domestic animals on, 58, 143

human adaptation to diverse environments in, 54–64, 338

languages of, 314, 323, 329

metallurgy and writing absent on, 338

seafaring expertise developed on, 322

spread of food production to, 171, 179

technologies abandoned on, 247, 299

Polynesian islands, environmental variations in:

agricultural development influenced by, 59, 106

in climate, 56

economic specialization and, 61–63

geological types of, 56

isolation and, 58, 60, 62

marine resources of, 57

material culture and, 62

political organization and, 60–63

in size, 57

subsistence practices and, 58–60

in terrain fragmentation, 57–58, 60

pomegranates, 118

poppy cultivation, 96–97, 114, 174, 178

population density:

agricultural productivity vs., 59, 85, 293

bidirectional links of food production with, 84–85, 107–8, 187, 196, 273–75

defeated peoples’ fates tied to, 279

epidemic diseases linked with, 82–83, 194–95, 196–97

labor force diversity and, 61

political organization affected by, 60, 62, 274

of Polynesian environments, 60–61

for sedentary society vs. nomadic peoples, 85

societal complexity related to, 272–75

population growth, 44–45, 55

population size:

for epidemic diseases, 194–97

social organization and, 255–56, 258, 260, 262, 267, 272–80, 433

technological development linked to, 246, 250, 251, 252, 355, 391–92, 433

porcelain, 243, 245

potatoes, 113, 121 , 122, 127, 178, 180, 435–36

sweet, 121, 122, 127, 143–44, 147, 171, 291–92, 305, 435–36

pottery:

in Africa, 251–52, 384–85

of Austronesian expansion, 325, 326, 331, 333–35, 336

from conquering cultures, 98

first appearances of, 244, 250, 319, 346–47

furnace technology for, 248

in Japan, 244, 319, 419–21, 423, 425

Polynesian abandonment of, 247, 299

porcelain, 243, 244, 245

power sources, mechanical, 343–44

preemptive domestication, 171–73, 175

priests, 86, 225, 266, 269

printing methods, 230–31, 243, 248–49

protein sources:

animals as, 136, 143

deficiencies in, 143

non-animal, 120, 136, 143, 145, 341

Proto-Indo-Europeans, 329

protolanguages, 329

public works, 264, 266, 267, 273

pulses, 120, 120 , 121, 127, 136, 143

Punan, 338

Pygmies, 314, 318, 324, 362–65, 368, 370, 373, 376, 378, 380

quince, 178

quinoa, 120 , 122

quipu, 345

Quizo Yupanqui, 74

QWERTY keyboards, 237–38, 401–2

rabbits, 152, 159, 198, 200–201

rabies, 191

radiocarbon dating, 35 n, 47, 91–93

radishes, 119

ragweed, 145

rainfall, crop diffusion and, 182, 183

Recent Era, 35

red deer (elk), 160, 161, 165

redistributive economy, 257, 263–64, 265, 275

reindeer, 153, 154, 166, 167, 341

religion:

conquest justified by, 67, 69–70, 71, 86, 255, 267, 270, 344, 402

kleptocracies supported by, 257 , 266

spread of government linked with, 255–56

state leaders elevated by, 269

technological innovation and, 240

tribal supernatural beliefs institutionalized as, 266

resource supply, technological innovation vs., 240

rhinoceros, 162, 167, 374, 383

rice cultivation, 120, 120 , 127, 133, 143, 145, 315, 317, 318, 373, 415, 430, 434

rinderpest, 198

rock paintings, 283, 285

rodents, 152, 197, 200

Roman alphabet, 216, 218, 226

Roman Empire:

food production in, 178

geographic range of, 352, 398

root crops, 121, 122, 127, 142, 143

Rothschild, Lord Walter, 165

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 271, 277

rubella, 191, 194

Russia, Imperial, ethnic diversity incorporated in, 308–9

Russian language, 216, 352–53, 354

Russo-Japanese War, 436

rye, 119

sago palm tree, 142, 259, 292

Sahara, African food production begun in, 374

Sahel zone:

crops of, 120–21, 132, 179, 371, 384

east–west crop diffusion in, 179

metallurgy from, 378

onset of food production in, 94, 96

salmonella, 190

samurai, 246–47

San people, 75, 365

see also Khoisan peoples

Savage, Charlie, 73

Savery, Thomas, 234

schistosomes, 191, 197

science, history as, 392, 403–9

sea transport, see maritime technology; watercraft

sedentary societies, 85

disease transmission in, 196

hunter-gatherers as, 86, 131, 137, 139, 423, 428

population density and, 85

state control and, 274

technological innovation fostered in, 249–50

seeds:

broadcast sowing of, 122, 341

of cereals, 131–32

competitive pressure of farming environment for, 118

crop cultivation for, 113, 131

mutant, 114–16

natural dispersal and germination of, 110–11, 112–13

in pods, 114

Sejong, King of Korea, 220

selfers, 132–33

Semang Negritos, 318, 324, 368

Semitic languages, 217, 367

sense organs, of domestic vs. wild animals, 154

Sepik River, 262

Sequoyah, 218–20, 219, 223

sesame seeds, 114, 178

sheep, 135, 153, 154, 157, 158, 159, 161, 166, 167–68, 174, 179, 188, 341, 374, 384

Shikoku, 416, 426

Siberia, hunter-gatherers in, 98, 341, 344, 355

sickness, earliest evidence of care during, 38

silk production, 152, 245

Sino-Tibetan language family, 310, 314, 315, 317, 318, 354

skull development, human, 37

slash-and-burn agriculture, 292, 294, 302

slavery, 196, 202, 239, 258 , 261, 263, 268, 280, 362

sleeping sickness, 190, 192

smallpox, 74–75, 87, 191, 194

among Aboriginal Australians, 307

domestic animals related to, 188–89, 199

first appearance of, 196, 316

in Hawaii, 208

immunity to, 342

modern control of, 304

Native Americans killed by, 191, 202, 203, 340, 358

as Plague of Antoninus, 197

transmission of, 191, 342

social contract, 271

social organization:

amalgamation of, 276–80

in bands, 195, 254–59, 266, 274–76

in business world, 439–44

in chiefdoms, 257, 258 , 262–65, 267–69, 271, 278–79, 280, 346–47

conflict resolution methods related to size of, 254–55, 260–61, 274–75, 434

disintegration of, 270, 276

food production linked to, 272–75, 434

four categories of, 256–69, 257 , 258

hereditary status in, 262, 263–64, 267–68, 269

of Native Americans vs. Eurasians, 344–45

population size and, 255–56, 257 , 260, 262, 267, 272, 433

as state, 256–80

technological innovation vs., 239

of tribes, 257 , 258, 259–62, 266

wealth distribution and, 261, 263, 265–67

sorghum, 120, 122, 127, 128, 179, 371, 374, 378

Soto, Hernando de, 68, 202

South Africa, food production’s spread inhibited in, 171

South America:

crops of, 122

domestic animals from, 204

sites of food production’s origin in, 94, 96

Southeast Asia:

Austronesian expansion from, see Austronesian expansion

Chinese language families in, 311, 312 , 313 , 314

human ancestors in, 36, 289

prehistoric coastline of, 287 , 289

repopulation of, 310, 318

Southwest Asia, see Fertile Crescent

soybeans, 120, 120 , 127

squashes:

as containers, 145

domestication of, 105, 113, 117, 121 , 145, 172, 173

spread of, 145–46, 173, 180, 181, 352, 434

Stalin, Joseph, 215

state societies, 257, 267–70, 446

in Americas vs. Eurasia, 344–45, 346–47

archaeological evidence of, 267

bureaucrats in, 258 , 263, 268, 269

conditions for formation of, 270–80

military advantages of, 270, 344

multiple ethnicities in, 269–70, 308–9

percentage of globe occupied by, 255, 272

religion in support of, 269, 344

suicidal patriotism and, 270

steam power, 231, 232, 234, 344

steel:

African manufacture of, 380

Eurasian development of, 231

Native Americans conquered with, 72, 74

stone tools:

of Aboriginal Australians, 285

archaeological identification of, 47

of Clovis hunters, 44

earliest use of, 36, 37–38, 249

for farming, 292, 298

in modern societies, 36, 37, 231, 242, 286

standardization of, 39

from volcanic stone, 57, 63

strawberries, 109, 110, 111, 112, 118, 123, 124, 146

street lighting, gas vs. electricity for, 237, 238

sugarcane, 120 , 127, 142, 291

Sumatra, Asian mainland joined to, 287

Sumerian cuneiform, 208, 209–13, 212 , 221, 222, 224, 226–27

sumpweed, 145

sunflowers, 114, 115, 117, 145, 146, 180

supernatural beliefs, religious institutionalization of, 266

supersonic transport, 237

sushi, 190

sweet potatoes, 121 , 122, 127, 143–44, 147, 171, 291–92, 305, 435–36

swords, 73, 246–47, 343

syllabaries, 208, 211, 217, 218–20, 219, 223, 226, 249

syphilis, 191, 201, 203, 205, 208, 307, 342

Tahiti, unification of, 279

Tai-Kadai language group, 311, 314, 330, 336

Taiwan:

Asian mainland connected with, 287

Austronesian expansion begun in, 325–26, 328–29, 330

languages of, 323 , 325, 328, 329

Ta-p’en-k’eng culture on, 325–26

tamarind trees, 301

tannins, 123

Tanzania, languages of, 369

taro, 121, 122, 142, 143, 178, 291, 330, 373

Tasmania:

cultural isolation of, 242, 246, 300

dogs adopted on, 158

first human presence in, 288

technological innovation abandoned in, 247, 300

taxation, 86, 257, 263, 265, 267

technological advances, 229–53, 436–37

applications found after discoveries of, 232–33, 234

autocatalytic tendencies of, 247–49

commercial motivations for, 233–34

cumulative development of, 235

food production linked to, 250–51, 252, 298, 343–44, 349

geographic/ecological factors and, 182–83, 245–47, 251, 252, 400

heroic view of, 231, 234

intercontinental differences in, 250–53, 343–44

local invention vs. diffusion of, 244, 247–48, 349

moderate political connectedness as optimal condition for, 400

necessity as impetus for, 232–34

population size and, 246, 250, 252, 300, 355, 391–92, 433

technological advances, societal receptivity for, 148, 234–35

diffusion conditions for, 244–47, 250, 396–97

economic motives for, 237, 239, 249

historical reversals in, 246–47, 298–300, 396–97, 400

ideological atmosphere for, 239

perceived advantage and, 238

perceived need as motive for, 232–34

prestige considerations in, 237

in single societies or continents, 148, 241–43

standard explanations for, 239–41

trial-and-error examples of, 236

vested interests in opposition to, 238

teff, 120, 372

telegraph, 235

Tell Abu Hureyra, evidence of selection in plants gathered at, 139, 141

temples, 262, 263, 267, 269

teosinte, 132

territorial behavior, 167

Third Chimpanzee, The (Diamond), 39

tobacco, 181, 301

Tolstoy, Leo, 151, 168

Tonga, isolation of, 227

tools:

bones used in, 39, 86

for crop production, 84–85, 106–7, 341–42

metal, 346, 346–47 , 348, 426, 430, 434

natural resources for, 57, 63

see also stone tools

Torres Strait, islands of, 286, 301–3

trade routes:

diseases transmitted along, 197, 342–43

of Indian Ocean, 377, 384

transistor technology, 238, 245, 400

trees:

annual growth rings of, 92

fruit, 114, 118–19, 150, 175

oak, 110, 113, 123, 146

sago palm, 142, 259, 292

tribal organization, 257 , 258, 259–62, 266

tribute, 258, 262, 263, 265, 267, 280

trichinosis, 190

tropical rain forests, latitude limitations for, 177

trypanosome diseases, 157, 179, 204, 384

tsetse flies, 157, 179, 190, 384

tuber crops, 121, 122, 127

tuberculosis, 188–89, 193, 194, 199 , 203, 204, 205, 307, 342

turkeys, 137, 152, 180, 204

turnips, 119

Tutankhamen, 113

typewriter keyboards, letter sequence designed for, 237–38, 401–2

typhoid, 205, 307

typhus, 190, 200, 203, 307, 342

Ulfilas, 216

United States:

beer industry in, 441–42

ethnic diversity of, 308

food-processing industry in, 443

technological innovation in, 440, 444

upright posture, 36

vaccination, 192

Valverde, Vicente de, 69–70

Veddoid Negritos, 318

venereal diseases, 191

vicuña, 163–64

Vietnam, languages spoken in, 311, 322

village life, 35, 346–47

violence, government curbs on, 265–66

volcanic islands, 57, 63

war:

diseases transmitted by, 189

horses used in, 72, 74, 87, 157–58, 233, 343

societal amalgamation fostered by, 276–80

technological advancement affected by, 240, 244–45

Washington, George, 265

water buffalo, 153, 154, 157, 161, 315

watercraft:

for Austronesian expansion, 325–28, 337

canoes, 247, 301, 326–28, 337

cultural reversals of, 247

earliest evidence of, 41, 44, 285

Eurasian vs. Native American, 344

for transatlantic crossing, 357

watermelons, 113, 121, 174

water power, 343–44

Watts, James, 231, 234

wealth distribution:

in chiefdoms, 263

for elite vs. general population, 265–67

in smaller social organizations, 261

weaponry:

of Aboriginal Australians, 299, 303

boomerang, 299

bows and arrows, 247, 286, 299, 303, 343

cultural attitudes about, 246–47

elite monopoly on, 265

European advantage in, 343

guns, 73, 231, 238, 244–47, 299, 329

incendiary, 236

multipiece construction for, 39

muskets, 244–45

of Native Americans, 72, 73

of steel, 73, 343

swords, 73, 246, 343

technology diffusion of, 238, 244–45, 246–47

weaving, 158, 242, 250

wheat:

diffusion of, 315, 318

domestication of, 93, 115, 117, 118, 120, 128, 131–32, 140

ease of germination of, 115

einkorn, 128, 133, 136, 174

emmer, 93, 133, 134, 136, 140

nutritive value of, 120, 133, 136, 144, 145

worldwide production of, 127, 142

Wheatstone, Charles, 235

wheels, 175, 182–83, 237, 244, 251, 343, 344, 352, 354

Whitney, Eli, 232, 235

whooping cough (pertussis), 191, 194, 199, 203

wild boar, 153

wild foods, decline in availability of, 105–6

Wills, William, 284, 307

wind power, 343

wolves, 152, 155, 160, 166

wool, 122, 154, 158, 164

Wright brothers, 231, 235

writing systems, 64, 206–28

accounting records as stimulus for, 209, 218, 345

alphabetic, 183, 208, 216–18, 221, 224, 225–26, 244, 248, 309, 319, 352, 385

blueprint copying and modification of, 215, 216–18

expressive limitations of, 224–26

geographic and ecological barriers to spread of, 226–28, 385

idea diffusion as source for development of, 215, 218–23

independent invention of, 208–13, 210 , 221, 226, 244

language differences and, 207, 216–17

in Mesoamerica vs. Eurasia, 345

as military advantage, 76–78, 206–7

on Phaistos disk, 229–31, 230

phonetic principle employed in, 211, 224, 401

power of information transmittal through, 76–78, 206–7, 345

printing technology and, 229–31, 248–49

sites of origin of, 207, 226–27, 244, 346–47

sociopolitical organization linked to early use of, 224–26

spread of, 175, 183, 207–8, 337, 385

state societies and, 269, 345

three basic strategies used in, 207–8, 212

in western Eurasia vs. China, 317

Wu Li, 222

Xhosa, 381

Yahi Indians, 358–59

yak, 153, 154, 155, 157, 161

Yali, 35, 37, 248, 389–92

yams, 121, 122, 142, 178, 291, 292, 297, 330, 373, 375

yaws, 196

yellow fever, 196, 203, 205, 343

yucca, 121 , 122

Yumbri, 337

Zaire, kleptocratic practices in, 265

zebras, 151, 157, 160, 165, 374, 383

Zhou Dynasty, 311, 317

Zohary, Daniel, 173, 174

zoos, breeding programs at, 162, 163

Zulu state, 278–79, 280

*Throughout this book, dates for about the last 15,000 years will be quoted as so-called calibrated radiocarbon dates, rather than as conventional, uncalibrated radiocarbon dates. The difference between the two types of dates will be explained in Chapter 5. Calibrated dates are the ones believed to

correspond more closely to actual calendar dates. Readers accustomed to uncalibrated dates will need to bear this distinction in mind whenever they find me quoting apparently erroneous dates that are older

than the ones with which they are familiar. For example, the date of the Clovis archaeological horizon in North America is usually quoted as around 9000 B.C. (11,000 years ago), but I quote it instead as

around 11,000 B.C. (13,000 years ago), because the date usually quoted is uncalibrated.

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