How was it that Europeans discovered the New World and not Africans or Chinese? Sometimes the simplest, most obvious question provokes the best answer.
When the UCLA biologist Jared Diamond visited the tropical island of New Guinea several years ago, a native man named Yali asked him why it was that whites ruled the world. Jared Diamond didn’t have an answer right off but over 20 years later he came up with a book-length explanation that covers the last 13,000 years of human history.
It’s not about biology or racial superiority. Europeans and Asians came to control most of the world rather than Africans, Native Americans or New Guineans because of geography, climate, good grains, plants, animals, lots of settled-down people, and a good amount of luck. In the end, Jared Diamond says, the fate of human society comes down to “Guns, Germs and Steel.”
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel.