This might set some of you thinking and hopefully quibbling. Sorry it’s so long. Is This How the West Won? by Michael Balter Science 309: 248-249, [8 July] 2005. (first paragraph) Jared Diamond is a biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles; a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel (1). Now he is also the star of a three-part series, based on the book, that airs this month on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The series details Diamond’s influential yet controversial explanation for why the world is divided into haves and have-nots-the principal reason, he maintains, is geography: At the end of the last Ice Age, about 11,500 years ago, prehistoric hunter-gatherers living amongst the wild ancestors of today’s domesticated plants and animals-most notably the wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cattle native to the Near East-were ideally situated to invent farming and amass the agricultural surpluses that fueled the rise of civilization and technology. Meanwhile, the unfortunate inhabitants of geographic regions with few domesticable species-such as Africa and the New World-lagged behind in their development; even worse, they eventually fell victim to armies of (mostly European) colonizers whose technologically superior weaponry allowed them to subjugate entire continents. Adding to this onslaught of guns and steel, Diamond argues, were the ravages of deadly diseases that the invaders brought with them, such as smallpox, to which Europeans had developed some immunity (often through their long coexistence with domesticated animals) but which felled native peoples by the millions. Diamond’s thesis is one of the most widely discussed big ideas of recent years, and deservedly so. For one thing, it is an explicitly anti-racist explanation for social and economic inequalities on a global level, an explanation that dispenses with subtle and not-so-subtle assumptions about the inherent superiority of Europeans and their descendants. The havenots, Diamond counters, are simply those whose prehistoric ancestors were dealt an unlucky draw of the geographical cards. The book, a best-seller in both the original and paperback editions, is required reading in many university courses. It has stimulated considerable debate; for that reason alone a film version, which will undoubtedly reach an even wider audience than the book, seems justified. And it would be churlish to deny Diamond the star treatment he receives in the film, even if one repeated scene of the biologist cruising down a river in Papua New Guinea-while the narrator, actor Peter Coyote, tells us dramatically that Diamond is “on a quest” to understand the roots of power-seems just a bit too focused on the person rather than the ideas. More worrying, however, is the fact that during all of Diamond’s journeys-which take him across the globe by boat, train, airplane, and helicopter, with film crew in tow-the viewer is told only once (at the end of the first hour) that there are scholars who disagree with his thesis. Nor are any of these dissenters ever interviewed, even though a number of other experts and personalities appear in the film to bolster Diamond’s viewpoint. This imbalance is a disservice to television viewers, who are surely sophisticated enough to hear challenges to Diamond’s ideas without losing track of the plot line. The omission might not be so serious if Diamond had only recently presented his thesis, but over the eight years since the book was first published its tenets have been much debated. Indeed, it is usually assigned to university students precisely so that they can discuss the merits of Diamond’s arguments._________________
