Humans lived as hunter-gatherers for 5 million years, then we (unconsciously) developed agriculture about 13,000 years age. Were we better off? The farmers overwhelmed the hunter-gatherers. How come? The fundamentally egalitarian hunter-gatherers were replaced everywhere by hierarchical societies supported by religion and complex political organization. Was agriculture a bad deal for the vast scores of individuals who supported those few in charge? And why did Europeans overwhelm indigenous peoples all over the planet?
Jared Diamond offers a series of stunning answers to these and a wealth of other questions about human societies in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies. That title is also his short answer to who won and why. His richer answer looks to the antecedents of guns, germs and steel: wild plants and animals suitable for domestication; the axes of the continents (east-west or north-south); and the differing areas and isolation of the different continents.
Jared Diamond's findings offer a wealth of implications, among them a definitive refutation of racism. Biology and geography (not superior humans) determined who domesticated animals and plants, who developed what technology and who could survive the diseases that evolved alongside domesticated animals. It doesn't have to do with who's smart, either. In fact, Jared Diamond offers convincing evidence that hunter-gatherers, as represented by people he studied in New Guinea, may well be "smarter" than those in the West. (Not all individuals survive to reproduce and there's no TV in New Guinea to dumb-down or numb-down their kids.)
Maybe the best part of sedentary agriculture's lifestyle is that routine murders, common among hunter-gatherers, went down. Government monopolized force. But with increased personal safety came the loss of more egalitarian hunter-gatherer social relationships, declining nutrition, a shorter life span for those who survived childhood and the loss of the prior, more varied, life experience.
Jared Diamond applies what he's learned about the past to humanity's future. He is certain that his question is the world's question: How are we going to cope with our current human population explosion which we must consider in combination with today's enormously destructive technology? We can ignore what's going on, struggle through a terrible time when scarce resources fuel monumental conflicts made all the more horrific by advanced technology and, in the end, survive as we did 50,000 years ago. Or we can learn from our mistakes and survive as civilized society. The answer, according to Jared Diamond, is up for grabs. And we'll know in 40 to 80 years.
Will our children and grandchildren have a world worth living in? We'll know, all too soon, the ultimate fate of human societies.