National Geographic Documentary: Guns, Germs and Steel

Basic information about the book: Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Clicking on the above link and reading it might qualify for some as active research, so for those who are intent on sticking more closely to the principle of passive research, allow me to summarize what I discerned from watching the documentary (not I have not read the book, nor have I closely read the wikipedia page):

So basically the idea is geography was the deciding factor on who would be the haves and have-nots in the world. Geography (location, climate, chance and time) ultimately determined which groups of people would be able to grow and sustain human populations large enough to create diversified and specialized economies.

It seems obvious enough, right? Well just in case it doesn't seem obvious enough, here are the mechanics that they go about proving largely by looking at  series of small walls:

This was first achieved by agrarian societies around the ancient fertile crescent in mesopotamia where the grass-grains wheat and barely were first able to be harvest, stored and eventually cultivated-- a haphazard product that resulted in a paradigm shift for the development of Western civilization. Steady crops led to enough grain surpluses to feed and domesticate livestock, which in turn, were used to fertilize and help plow crops. Readily accessible meat (and dairy) resulted in healthier and larger populations. 

This phenomenon was reproducible over time by people anywhere within the same latitude, where growing conditions would be similar, and because of the land mass that branched out both East and West from the initial location, these crops, animals and practices spread and civilizations boomed on the Eurasian continent over the course of millennia. 

One initial drawback with the domestication of animals was the spread of animal diseases to humans through a series of genetic mutations of viruses transmitted through various species. That's what you get for sleeping among the pigs.... However, natural selection at work, the humans who survived initial illness over generations had stronger immunity or at least some resistance to the same diseases. This later worked in their favor when encountering/conquering "New World" civilizations. The civilizations that had developed in the new world had no immunity to these diseases because they had no domesticated animals in closed quarters through which to experience them. So the initial exposure to the pathogens swept through the large populations and millions of indigenous peoples in the Americas were wiped out by the spread before they ever saw the handful of foreigners who carried it to the continents. 

In the end, geography determined the spread of agriculture. Agriculture enabled populations to grow based on location, inadvertently giving them genetic fortification while it also allowed those populations to diversify and specialize in the development of economic goods, particularly tools and weaponry. At some point, these agrarian societies ended up with such a surplus they began to operate out of greed, not need. 

The course of human history being what it was, Western Europeans prospered most because they were in the right place at the right time. They inherited technologies early on (agriculture, animal domestication and metallurgy) which enabled them to develop and hone skills over the course of centuries in light of their ever growing, ever diversifying and specializing human populations. Then they set out to conquer, colonize and modernize -- a process that is still ongoing, and we who read this blog reap the benefits of the havoc wreaked on decimated if not extinct populations of less geographically fortunate people.

Analysis: Overall, a rather compelling explanation of "how things came to be" without the "Old World" mindset of superior and inferior beings. Complaints against the theory are that it is too simple, but that doesn't make it any less true, especially as a new framework in which to re-examine history and explain the world's contemporary disparity between developed and post-colonial regions.