Study Questions for Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, Chapter 8
1) Write down the chapter thesis (pg. 131).
"Only the lack of suitable wild plants
might then explain why food production did not evolve in some areas"
(131).
Why is this important to his overall argument?
Recall from the 2nd QS:
~What thesis is Diamond attempting to prove?
Different physical environments
caused significant variation in the adaptation of human societies.
Throughout the book, Diamond makes the case that significant differences
in the adaptation of human societies were the result of differences in the
physical environment, not in the people of those societies. The lack, or availability, of
plants suitable for domestication and food production is a consequence of
environmental differences, not human differences.
Additional information:
Small % of world's 200,000 plants domesticated, ony a few hundred.
Twelve domesticated plant "species account for 80% of modern world's
annual tonnage of all crops" (132).
Cereals (members of the grass family): wheat, corn, rice,
barley, sorghum
Pulse (members of the legume family): soybeans
Sugar sources: sugar cane, sugar beet
Fruit: banana
2) Briefly describe his "comparative" approach. What
is he trying to show?
To answer the question, What was the potential of an entire local flora for
domestication? Diamond will compare the available wild flora of 3 centers of
domestication to see if the Fertile Crescent's environment and flora had clear
advantages over New Guinea and the eastern US. He is doing this to
establish that environmental differences, not cultural differences, caused
the differences in domestication.
2a) Be sure to write down and think about the last
sentence of the major section that concludes on pg. 134.
"Did the flora and environment of the Fertile
Crescent have clear advantages over those of
New Guinea and the eastern United States?"
3) What is the advantage of a Mediterranean climate?
The mild wet winter and long, hot, dry summers select for annuals. Annual
plants devote energy to produce large, edible seeds that can be stored.
Also, the annuals do not waste energy in the production of woody stems.
4) What were the advantages of the F.C.'s natural cereal flora?
Wild annuals, the ancestors of domesticates, were abundant and productive:1
ton of seeds/hectare; 50 kcal of edible energy/1kcal of work.
Wild annuals required few changes to make them cultivable.
F. C.'s flora had a high % of hermaphroditic "selfers" (See
p. 121-122 for an explanation). This means that plants fertilized
themselves and the changes in the plant created by human selection would not be
interrupted by cross-pollination. This is also the case for vegetatively
propagated plants.
5) How does the F.C.'s wheat and barley stack up against the
In contrast to wheat and barley's rapid domestication, New World corn
required millenia of selection to dramatically change the ancestor species', Teosinte, physiology and
reproductive biology. Teosinte was a low productivity plant with few,
small seeds, which had hard seed covers.
6) List the other areas of the world that had Mediterranean climates.
California, Chile, South Africa, SW Australia, Mediterranean.
7) What were the 5 advantages that the F.C's Mediterranean climate had
over other areas with a similar environment?
~FC is the largest Mediterranean climate region, and, therefore had a
high diversity of wild plant and animal species.
~FC is the Mediterranean climate zone with the greatest climatic
variation. This favored the evolution of a high % of annuals. In
combination with high species diversity this created the highest diversity of
annuals in all Mediterranean climate regions. 32 of the 56 largest-seeded
grasses are from FC.
~FC has wide range of altitudes and topographies which led to the
evolution of a high diversity of wild plants, which were potential
domesticates. High climatic diversity over small distances allowed
staggered harvest seasons and rapid diffusion of different domesticates.
~Goat, sheep, and cow were domesticated in different parts of FC and
transferred readily and rapidly within FC. Other Mediterranean climate
regions had few or no potential animal domesticates.
~FC may have faced little competition from hunter-gatherer
lifestyle. The HG to farming food production strategy was rapid: ~3000
years.
8) What's "ethnobiology"?
The study of "peoples' knowledge of the wild plants and animals in
their environment."
9) Is it possible that hunters and gatherers who never made the
transition to agriculture (or did so slowly through shifting agriculture) were
just not aware of the agricultural potential of their natural environment? No. What does ethnobiology tell us? Generally,
"peoples are walking encyclopedias of natural history". They
have comprehensive knowledge of the distribution, biological characteristics,
and potential uses of local wild plants and animals. Increased dependence
on domesticates causes peoples to lose their traditional knowledge of plants
and animals. And why is this
important to Diamond's argument? Because he is stressing the role of
environmental differences. Establishing that all peoples have
comprehensive knowledge of their local flora and fauna, leads us to conclude
that envoronmental differences caused the differing regional histories of plant
and animal domestication. By the
way, this is our first encounter with a concept that anthropologists sometimes
call "local knowledge." Local knowledge often refers to those
knowledge systems of colonized peoples; by and large these systems are not only
sophisticated, but are often "appropriated" in various ways by the
colonizers.
10) What is the "critical" fact mentioned on pg. 147.
"[I]ndigenous crops from different parts of the globe were not equally
productive."
11) OK, write a single paragraph that starts with this topic sentence:
"When compared to the natural suite of the Fertile Crescent's
biological organisms, both the New Guinea and eastern North America possessed
some decisive disadvantages in their suites of domesticable plants and
animals." New Guinea, with its wet climate, had a lack of
domesticable cereal crops. There were no native large seeded
grasses. Instead domestication was focused on tree and root crops
(bananas, taro, and nut tree). NG had no large domesticable mammal
species. This led to low protein diets. Root crops had a low yield
at high elevations. Introduction of the sweet potato changed this and
caused a population explosion and high population density.
The eastern US had a dearth of potential domesticates. Peoples of this
region initially domesticated 4 plants (squash, sunflower, sumpweed, and
goosefoot) that were only a small portion of the diet. These
and later domesticates provided great nutrition but small seeds. But there are
still problems because small
seeds are hard to collect. Sumpweed causes hay fever.
With the introduction of corn and beans from Mesoamerica, farming became more
productive.
NG and EUS had a deficiency of potential domesticated plants and animals
with which to develop agriculture. They did not have cultural
deficiencies.
We are not reading the next chapter. It deals with a similar
dynamic, but focuses on animals instead of plants. Using your intuitive
prowess, guess the thesis of Chapter 9. You can find help on pg. 131-2.
FC had wild animal species that were suitable for domestication. The other
regions did not.