This write-up you see below is entirely based on what I've learnt from the book 'Guns, Germs, and Steel: Fates of Human Societies' authored by Jared Diamond.
When we look at World History as World History, we usually come across Eurasian History from Scandinavia in the North to Egypt in the South; Ireland (Sometimes all the way from Iceland) in the West to China in the East, but that's not all. There's more in the world. We usually ignore South East Asia and Far East in Asia; most of Africa; the whole of Americas (and Greenland if there is any history); Australasia, Oceania, and Polynesia. Why is this so? You might say that there isn't enough significant history. That's not true. It's not they who wrote history books over the last 25 centuries but we the Eurasians (I am an Indian). Why didn't they? They were not developed enough, which is precisely why the Maori (Australian Natives) or Malians could not invade England or France while the Vice versa happened. Guns, Germs and steel developed in Eurasia and these took over the rest of the world. WHY?
We need to understand the background. Homo Sapiens started out as mere naked (or may be not) Hunter-gatherers foraging for food, eating all that they find. It is clear that they originated from East Africa. Humans originated around 7 Million BC in Eastern Africa, reached Indo-China by around 1 Million BC, Central Europe around 500,000 BC. The migration retarded and eventually came to a halt at this point because of the Ice ages. People could not reach Russia due to low temperatures, minimal clothing and lack of apparatus to produce clothes. After the fall of the last Ice-Age, people migrated north and reached Russia (around 20,000 BC). From the eastern tip of the continent they entered Americas through the Bering Strait (which was frozen then). By 11,000 BC people were in Mesoamerica, and by 10,000 BC, they were in the Southern tip of South America. Antarctica was never colonized, and it still isn't.
Coming to Greenland, due to freezing temperatures, they could reach here only around 2000 BC.
We still have a large part of the world untouched, they are Far East, and South East Asia; Oceania, Australasia; and Polynesia and the Pacific. People first settled in South Asia and developed a proto-culture.
When humans reached the Americas and Oceania, many large mammals (similar to those in the Old World) died off leaving behind only some predators, and small animals. Having said that, we can proceed to how the fates were determined. For civilisation to develop, a proper social organisation must be fabricated, for which people must settle at some part of the world, which means that they should be able to satisfy their needs despite becoming stagnant. One of the most important resources is food. People started out as hunter-gatherers. If they had to settle at a specific place, they first had to have a reserve of food. It could be managed by storing or by producing food themselves. People from some parts of the world started practising agriculture, which was not a foreseen conscious decision.
When some men ate fruits and spit out the seeds or egested them, they observed new crops so it turned evident that crops could be grown manually. There were no plants 'fixed' to be grown as crops initially. Every plant grew in the forest while some of them seemed tastier and easier to grow. So by unconscious experimentation some wild plants came out of the wild and became crops. After some crops were cultivated, some had more desirable qualities than the others like taste, larger seeds, larger leaves, etc. As a result plants were artificially selected to survive on this planet. Due to climatic conditions, soil, and water supply, some wild plants had the abilities to grow into crops. There are very few places that had plants for growing into crops: The fertile crescent, China, Mesoamerica and Eastern USA. Some other places that had chances were Sahel, Ethiopia, New Guinea, Andes, and the Amazon. Due to topographic conditions, from the Fertile Crescent, food went Northwards to South Eastern Europe and Eastward to the Persian Gulf and subsequently, India. These areas were also highly habitable so there were people to practise agriculture. From China, food traveled East, West, and South thus filling Asia with food production.
Agriculture cannot be practised with good soil alone. Tools and more importantly animals are required. Yet, food production started in all the above mentioned areas but at later phases. Coming to animals, their domestication is similar to the practice of agriculture. Large omnivorous mammals or relatively smaller carnivorous animals were required for domestication. One of the most important qualities is their Social nature. Social animals which followed their leader tend to follow humans also, so a majority of animals were eliminated. Animals must also be peaceful or at least calm over their peer beasts. Size was also an important factor. Mighty animals like Rhinoceroses, elephants, and giraffes in Africa could not be domesticated. Due to such reasons, Alpaca, Llama and Vicunas could be domesticated in the Andes. Dromedary Camels across the Middle East, Bactrian Camels in Gobi, Reindeer in the extreme northern hemispheres were domesticated. The major domestic animals were however the goat, cow, pig, and sheep that were domesticated around 2000 KM around the fertile crescent. This qualified all the conditions and they could live in the surrounding 2000 Km. Another unique group of animals which only Eurasians had access to were horses, that originated from Siberia. Peoples from other continents could neither gain them nor select organisms to create such powerful creatures.
Unlike hunter-gatherers, who hunted down animals and ate them, the farmers used the wool, skin, milk, and horns of these. They used them for labour and ate them at the end raising the level of civilisation. There is another interesting factor that affected the growth of continents. While the Americas, and Africa were North-South Oriented, Eurasia is East-West oriented or horizontally oriented which means large sections of land fall near the same latitude, that is, they have similar climates. So, a given set of species of plants and animals can adapt a larger area, thus a larger portion gets domesticated. In Americas and Africa, within a small region there were varying terrains, and climates so crops and animals could not travel far and wide, due to which large human populations was confined to a small area and rest of the continent was sparse.
Now that the basic requirements are discussed, we need to see aspects of civilisation. We shall see how writing rose, systems of governance grew, social order was built, science and technology was expanded, and how diseases were born.
Though we usually associate diseases with death, they actually supported the rise of Eurasia in the Americas and Africa. Diseases killed Native Americans more in number than the swords, guns, and horses of the English, French, and Spanish. As better practitioners of agriculture and farming, Europeans were in direct contact both physically, and socially with animals. This relation developed earlier in Eurasia than in the other parts of the world. In Eurasia, areas were far more denser. So germs and microbes could easily get transferred to communes in and around human bodies. Men became disease-carrying vectors. Over time, these Eurasians also turned more-or-less resistant and immune to certain diseases. Once they set foot on foreign soil, the native population who were not resistant died adding to the supremacy of the Europeans.
One thing that the rest of the world did not know during imperial ages but Europe knew was writing. Though they could emboss things, we had tonnes of books, rich literature and intellect. Again, this was not a conscious move. Sumeria, one of the world's first civilisations in Mesopotamia for administrative purposes invented a form of art used as a kind of shorthand. Slowly this writing seeped into every section of the society. However as there was no need in other regions of Eurasia, there was art but no writing. Writing rose in several parts of Eurasia slowly but the the major breakthrough was the invention of the alphabet by the seafaring Phoenician peoples, who introduced it to Greece. The Greek alphabet was modified by the Romans. In other continents, there was no necessity, so no writing.
Coming to inventions, it is really hard to explain because, most of them happened by accident breaking the frontiers of the usual phrase 'Necessity is the mother of invention'.
The last subject is social organisation. First hunter-gatherers had no relation between one another. Slowly a symbiotic relationship developed building small bands of people. Bands developed into a tribe where each band was an integral unit. When food was foraged or hunted down people knew not where store all the food together so they developed a system in which they had a chief who took care of the people and resources. By this time agriculture had also started. However in the first chiefdoms, the chiefs were no more than responsible civilians. Once it became clear that the chiefs had more resources, they were exalted and turned despotic. As populations grew, new problems arose. When 20 people lived at a place, they had 190 different possible relations also meaning 190 chances of quarrel and fight. When 2000 people lived together, there were 1999000 chances of quarrel. As many people would be related to the two who quarrel the quarrel can be resolved but in large populations, less number of people are closely related. So conflicts are harder to resolve so a person or institution should be seen as supreme so power of chief rose and he became king and kingdoms were born with armies fighting marauders and resolving internal conflicts. Social eventually became complex. These changes occurred later in the Americas but by the time Europeans had entered America, Europe was in far more advanced stages.
Hence, the guns, germs, and steel of our continents beat those of the "primitive" ones (not really).
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