Mapping History Through the Lens of Guns, Germs, and Steel

Longstanding patterns of conquest and colonization throughout the world owe more to the luck of geography and germs than to any inherent qualities of either the conquered or their colonizers.

That’s the convincing and compelling argument that Jared Diamond makes in his Pulitzer Prize-winning

Guns, Germs, and Steel

, the best-selling science book on Amazon.com for five years running.  Diamond, something of a science superstar, will speak on this same topic when he visits the University of Cincinnati on

Wednesday, April 14

.  He will speak at

4 p.m.

in Corbett Auditorium, located in the College-Conservatory of Music.  His speech is free and open to the public.

Guns, Germs, and Steel – soon to be the topic of a television documentary series produced by the National Geographic Society – is a concise, conversant journey into the why behind the rise and fall of civilizations:  Why did Europeans and Asians conquer the indigenous peoples of Africa, the New World, Australia, and the South Pacific, instead of the other way around?

Diamond’s engaging and profound reply proposes that nothing more than a geographical “luck of the draw” led to the patterns of success and expansion by some groups at the expense of others.  In brief, some members of the human race – because of their prehistoric geographic location – got an astonishing head start in terms of developing agricultural diversity, resistance to pestilence, and complex societies and weaponry.  Later patterns of conquest and settlement are owing to this head start rather than to any claim to inherent superiority or greater intelligence.  In exploring his thesis, Diamond touches on the humankind’s failure to ever domesticate the zebra, the slow spread and genetic adaptation of corn to new climates as well as germs’ role as the most successful military general of all time.

Diamond, currently a faculty member at the University of California-Los Angeles, is the winner of the National Medal of Science, the U.S. Government’s highest civilian award to a scientist; the Tyler Prize for Environmental Science, often considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for that field; and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.  He is also the author of The Third Chimpanzee, an account of the evolutions of our distinctly human traits from our animal antecedents, and Why Is Sex Fun?, an evolutionary study of the distinctive features of human sexuality.  In all, his books have been translated into 28 languages.  At present, he is completing another major work on environmental collapses of past societies and risks to present ones; why human groups succeed or fail to anticipate and/or solve environmental problems; and the often-misunderstood role of corporations (their constructive potential as well as their negative impacts).  

A capacity crowd of UC faculty, students and staff as well as community members is expected for his Cincinnati lecture.  A live Webcast of the lecture will be available on university work stations to UC faculty, staff and students with e-mails that end in the suffix “uc.edu.”  To view that Webcast, go to http://streaming.uc.edu/advanced/diamond.php  Anyone wanting to view the Webcast will need to use Windows Media Player 9.  For more information on accessing the Webcast, go to www.streaming.uc.edu