Guns, Germs and Steel:Old World vs. New World

First of fall, let's see how this book relates to my earlier post. The question I asked there was "Why did the Europeans take over the American continent, and not vice versa?".

Chapter 3 of Guns, Germs, and Steel, entitled "Collision at Cajamarca", contains the most fascinating first-hand account of the encounter between the Spaniards and the Incas, written by the Spaniards themselves. It describes how 168 armed Spaniards with no reinforcements were able to overtake an army of 80,000 of Incas and capture their leader. In and of itself, this historical event is of utmost significance, and I cannot believe how few mainstream history books actually contain the account of this encounter between conquistador Francisco Pizarro and the Inca emperor Atahuallpa. After this story, Diamond asks the most natural questions about the incident.

• How was it possible for the Spaniards to win such an uneven battle?
• Why were the Incas so naive as to be thrown off by the small band of isolated foreigners, (however armed they were)?
• Why did the Europeans have such an enormous advantage in this and many consequent encounters in the Americas?
• What historical factors made the difference between the civilizations so staggering?

Like I argued before, and Diamond confirms, the Native American civilizations were late to develop farming, cities, and writing systems. However, he digs deeper into the reasons. Here's some of the main ones:

• Slow domestication of plants:
• The domestication of plants in the Americas happened slower, because the plant cultures on the continent (corn and potatoes) were more difficult to domesticate, and provided less protein than the Eurasian counterparts of wheat and barley. The birthplace of agriculture, the Fertile Crescent of in Southwestern Asia was blessed with a package of domesticable plants that could be adopted and shared quickly between the peoples within the small region, and then spread further east and west.
  
• Slow domestication of animals:
• When the American continents were settled, human hunters exterminated all or almost all of the large mammals suitable for domestication. Such extermination of large mammals did not occur on the Eurasian continent because the wild animals co-evolved alongside humans, adapting sufficiently to the highly skilled hunters so as not to be completely wiped out. Thousands of years down the line, when those animals would have come in handy for domestication, they were not available in the Americas (e.g. the Aztecs had only turkey and dogs), while the Eurasians still had access to cows, goats, pigs and chickens and, later on, horses.
  
• Slow development of immunity to germs:
  
• The Eurasians' domesticated cattle was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the animals provided protein, shelter, clothing, fertilizer, etc. On the other hand, they were also a constant supply of new germs. The Americans had fewer deadly germs, partly because they had fewer domesticated animals. By the time the Europeans invaded the Americas, they brought with them a plethora of disease to which the American populations had no immunity.
  
• Orientation of the continents:
• Jared Diamond notices that the general orientation of the continental axes is east-west for Eurasia, and north-south for America. This seems to have paramount significance in the spread of agriculture. Similar latitudes have similar climates, and allow for adaptation of similar crops, while a north-south transfer of agriculture is much more difficult. Agriculture spread very rapidly in Eurasia from the Fertile Crescent to most of Europe, North Africa and India. However the Inca and the Maya/Aztecs had no contact with each other, isolated by a buffer of areas unsuitable for agriculture, unable to transfer domesticated crops, animals, germs, writing systems or useful technological inventions.

I believe these reasons provide the key answers on the issue of European dominance over the Americas. Jared Diamond's analysis is thorough, and his facts are well-researched, thus on this question I have nothing more to add.