Risky Business

In 1997, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies made its dramatic appearance and won the Pulitzer Prize the following year. It was a blockbuster history book, and bookstores continue to stock large quantities. But it was not written by a historian.

Trained as an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, and geographer, Diamond had zeroed in on a single question: Why were there such disparities in technology among human groups? His answer — the luck of the draw in geography — was a surprise at the time. Diamond argued that groups most proximate to a broad diversity of plant and animal species (as well as water sources) had the most opportunities to marshal the few food sources biologically capable of being domesticated. Such groups were also more immune to disease because of their proximity to livestock, the main source of contagion. Since Eurasian peoples won this lottery, they were the ones who ultimately...