Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

This book explores the question of why some regions of the world developed and expanded faster than others.

• The continent of Eurasia had a significant advantage relative to others, that being a east-west principal axis. Longitudinaly, lengths of days and general climate vary slightly, allowing for propogation of domesticable plants, which later enabled trade. Continents with north-south axes (Africa, the Americas) saw climate differences and varying lengths of days, making it difficult for abundandant crops to spread
• Eurasia had the largest abundance of nutritionally rich cereals (wheat and barley) and pulses (peas, lentils, chickpeas), which have great protein contents and are simple to farm
• Eurasia had the most choice in large domesticable animals (cow, sheep, horses), in part due to the abundance of nutritional fauna
  • Certain criteria have to be met for an animal to be domesticable. For example, in Africa there exist zebras, quite similar to horses. Yet, zebras are assholes and bite humans. Humans also attempted to domesticate gazelles, but in confined areas gazelles start wil’in out to the point of death
• Agriculture allowed populations to flourish, due to the sedentary lifestyle one could have children roughly every 2 years. In nomadic hunter gatherer societies one had to wait until the previous child could walk (roughly 4 years) before having another, as the mother could only handle a single child at once while on the move. This was enforced via lactational amenorrhea, abstinence, infanticide, or abortion
• Domesticated crops and animals led to farms, farms led to the abundance of food and larger populations, leading to more potential for specialization, followed by technological developments such as writing, transport (the wheel), and guns
• Densely populated areas also proved fertile ground for viral development. Over generations, those living in dense regions developed immunity to certain viruses, however when this viruses were exposed to a group for the first time, the group would be decimated. This is how much of the Americas were conquered by the Europeans
• In short, advantages arose due to luck of the draw in terms of the environment that people resided in, it had nothing to do with the colour of their skin