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Why have certain events taken place in history, from victories and defeats to the rise of nations and the fall of others?

Are historical events a group of random developments that have been subject to certain circumstances and circumstantial individual will power, or have they been the result of laws within which history has developed devoid of accidents and purely personal factors?

A certain scientific approach assumes that nothing takes place outside the realm of a set of firm regulations that have shaped history in accordance with the laws of the environment. This may not be surprising, but the argument that the environment drives history is undoubtedly something new.

In the previous issue, we discussed a theory by Jared Diamond, in which he explains human evolution based on continental differences in the environment.

However, how has history practically developed? Why, for example, within the continent of Eurasia, were European societies and not those of the Fertile Crescent, able to colonize the United States and Australia, take the lead in technology, and become politically and economically dominant in the modern world? This has been the development despite the Fertile Crescent being the cradle of Western civilization, where almost all major innovations that have changed the course of history arose – namely animal domestication, plant domestication, writing, metallurgy, as well as the invention of the wheel and the rise of states.

Diamond says that “a historian who had lived at any time between 8500 B.C. and 1450 A.D., and who had tried then to predict future historical trajectories, would surely have labeled Europe’s eventual dominance as the least likely outcome, because Europe was the most backward of those three Old World regions for most of those 10,000 years.” He adds that “from 8500 B.C. until the rise of Greece and then Italy after 500 B.C., almost all major innovations in western Eurasia arose in or near the Fertile Crescent.”

According to Diamond until the proliferation of water mills after around 900 A.D., Europe contributed nothing of significance to the technology and civilization of the Old World. Even from 1000 A.D. to 1450, “the flow of science and technology was predominantly into Europe from the Islamic societies stretching from India to North Africa.”

But when the Fertile Crescent lost its leading role in the domestication of wild plants and animals, it lost all compelling geographic advantages. Consequently, great empires started to emerge in the West. Since the rise of the Fertile Crescent states in the fourth millennium B.C., “the center of power initially remained in the Fertile Crescent, rotating between the empires of Babylon, the Hittites, Assyria and Persia.” However, with the Greek conquest of all advanced societies from the East of Greece to India under Alexander the Great in the late fourth century B.C., power finally settled in the West and further shifted with the emergence of Italy. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the center of power was again transferred to Western and Northern Europe and the areas of the Fertile Crescent were transformed into deserts.

Consequently, Fertile Crescent and Eastern Mediterranean societies faced the challenges of an ecologically fragile environment. On the other hand, Europe enjoyed a more robust environment with higher rainfall, which made it succeed for 7,000 years in food production.

The “Guns, Germs and Steel” influence is recounted in the story of the Spanish invasion of the Inca (in Peru today) in 1532. The story tells of how the Inca emperor Atahuallpa was humiliated, his people assaulted and his treasures stolen in daily operations that lasted 18 months. The operations ended with Pizarro, a Spanish conquistador, acquiring enough gold to fill a room 22 x 17x8 cubic feet. Pizarro then executed the emperor.

There were more than 80,000 Inca soldiers. Overthrowing the emperor did not take more than a few minutes, during which thousands of citizens were killed. The Spanish force was made up of only 168 soldiers, including 62 horsemen and 106 infantries carrying guns, steel swords and spears. Three elements were never seen by the Inca before; domesticated horses, guns, and steel weapons. It was a brutal war, but the Spaniards saw it as a “grace of God.”

At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, a John Millais painting depicts this historical event. The painting shows the emperor of Inca sitting proudly in his howdah, while Spanish soldiers capture him and insult his women. At the center of the painting, one can see a Christian monk raising the cross in one hand and holding the bible in the other.

Historical documents show that diseases introduced by the Europeans on the American Continent - including smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus and the bubonic plague - killed at least 95% of Native Americans during the invasions.

By the turn of the 18th century, guns had replaced swords and lances. Only then could the Natives of the New World, like the Red Indians, face the white men, temporarily once they owned horses, domesticated them and acquired guns and other weapons.

However, the balance of power remained inclined toward the European colonizers. The reason lies in one of three edges of the evil trinity - “Guns, Germs and Steel”, the canon.

2008 - ISSUE 75