Guns Germs and Steel

Wow, what a wild ride through about 13,000 years of human history. I understand there's a lot of controversy surrounding this book; I'll read about that later. But right now, I am liking how he put so many pieces together. Farming becomes better option than hunting/gathering due to climate, available animals are smart enough to not go extinct and nice enought to be domesticated, which leads to mass food production which leads to germs and cities. Cities lead to economic specialities and innovation. Constant lattitudes spread all of these things. Sheer number of cities, resources, non-peasant innovators leads to world domination. Sigh. Even though it's a sad story, it was still cool how he used a combination of history, archeology, evolutionary time-scales and molecular biology to make his case. His points about how technologies can actually be banished by a society also makes you think about our own future. Sometimes imagining yourself in the shoes of ancient peoples is almost as exciting as those of futures peoples. Now it's time to read from the opposition.

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