Week 2 - Guns, Germs, and Steel

Diamond, Jared. 1999. Guns, Germs, and Steel. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York; p. 114 - 130.


"This tea is quite bitter, with a strange almondy taste... no, you couldn't have!  Curse you Miss Peacock in the dining hall!"

Similarly to Michael Pollan's, Botany of Desire, Jared Diamond discusses the mechanism of plant domestication in Guns, Germs, and Steel.  Historically, many of the plants we know grow and use were poisonous or untasty.  Diamond begins his argument with the question of how then, were such plants 'changed' to become the plants we use in everyday life (114)?  Interestingly, Diamond takes his argument in a slightly different direction than Pollan.  Where Pollan mentions that domestication and coevolution
(xiii - xxv) are driven both consciously and (mostly) unconsciously on the human's part (even in todays world, where we have genetic engineering, etc.), Diamond argues that the origin of domestication of plants (and animals) by humans was for the most part a fluke.  Mutations in the plants and animals made them more approachable or available and humans unwittingly took advantage of these mutants (118).

Diamond continues to say that today's domestication is 'controlled', that the human is completely on top of things.  Reducing the boundaries between domestication and wilderness until the whole planet is a genetic playground for humans - where nothing is uncontrolled.  Which in a way is true, we do (more and more) monitor aspects of the wilderness (such as protecting endangered species - species who by natural selection seem to be falling out of favor and decreasing in fitness) and climate.

Mounted head.  Fintry, BC.




It might be some kind of 'chronological bias', but this reading did not impress/impact me to the extent that Botany of Desire did.  The reading became very repetitive - not only was it very similar to Pollan's writing, but I guess there's only so much you can write about domesticating the almond in a unique fashion (and Diamond overdid it).

What did intrigue me in this reading was Diamond's view that agriculture as we know it started out in the latrines of the people 10, 000 years ago.  The seeds of plants the people would eat (obviously were the ones that they preferred) survived their journey through the digestive tract  - and so the first evidence of gathered and selected plants (that are now crops) were in these peoples latrines (117, 119).  What a charming thought, agriculture is believed to be a milestone in human culture/development.  As so many people in Biology like to say, "Shit happens".  Yes, yes does - and it did back then too.