This passage is taken from a book titled Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (© 1997 Jared Diamond).
- Where do innovations actually
- come from? For all societies
- except the few past ones that
- were completely isolated, much or
- most new technology is not
- invented locally but is instead
- borrowed from other societies.
- The relative importance of local
- invention and of borrowing
- depends mainly on two factors:
- the ease of invention of the
- particular technology, and the
- proximity of the particular society
- to other societies.
- Some inventions arose
- straightforwardly from a handling
- of natural raw materials. Such
- inventions developed on many
- independent occasions in world
- history, at different places and
- times. One example is plant
- domestication, with at least nine
- independent origins. Another is
- pottery, which may have arisen
- from observations of the behavior
- of clay, a very widespread natural
- material, when dried or heated.
- Pottery appeared in Japan around
- 14,000 years ago, in the Fertile
- Crescent and China by around
- 10,000 years ago, and in
- Amazonia, Africa’s Sahel zone,
- the U.S. Southeast, and
- Mexico thereafter.
- An example of a much more
- difficult invention is writing,
- which does not suggest itself
- by observation of any natural
- material. It had only a few
- independent origins, and the
- alphabet arose apparently only
- once in world history. Other
- difficult inventions include the
- water wheel, magnetic compass,
- and windmill, all of which were
- invented only once or twice in the
- Old World and never in the New
- World. Such complex inventions
- were usually acquired by
- borrowing, because they spread
- more rapidly than they could be
- independently invented locally.
- A clear example is the wheel,
- which is first attested around
- 3400 B.C near the Black Sea,
- and then turns up within the next
- few centuries over much of
- Europe and Asia. All those early
- Old World wheels are of a
- peculiar design: a solid wooden
- circle constructed of three planks
- fastened together, rather than a
- rim with spokes. In contrast, the
- sole wheels of Native American
- societies (depicted on Mexican
- ceramic vessels) consisted of a
- single piece, suggesting a second
- independent invention of the
- wheel—as one would expect from
- other evidence for the isolation
- of New World from Old World
- civilizations.
- No one thinks that that same
- peculiar Old World wheel design
- appeared repeatedly by chance at
- many separate sites of the
- Old World within a few centuries
- of each other, after 7 million years
- of wheel-less human history.
- Instead, the utility of the wheel
- surely caused it to diffuse rapidly
- east and west over the Old World
- from its sole site of invention.
- Other examples of complex
- technologies that diffused east
- and west in the ancient Old
- World, from a single West Asian
- source, included door locks,
- pulleys, rotary querns, windmills
- —and the alphabet. A New World
- example of technological
- diffusion is metallurgy, which
- spread from the Andes via
- Panama to Mesoamerica.
- When a widely useful invention
- does crop up in one society, it
- then tends to spread in either of
- two ways. One way is that other
- societies see or learn of the
- invention, are receptive to it,
- and adopt it. The second is that
- societies lacking the invention
- find themselves at a disadvantage
- vis-à-vis the inventing society,
- and they become overwhelmed
- and replaced if the disadvantage
- is sufficiently great.
- A simple example is the spread of
- muskets among New Zealand’s
- Maori tribes. One tribe, the
- Nagapuhi, adopted muskets from
- European traders around 1818.
- Over the course of the next 15
- years, New Zealand was
- convulsed by the so-called Musket
- Wars, as musketless tribes either
- acquired muskets or were
- subjugated by tribes already
- armed with them. The outcome
- was that musket technology had
- spread throughout the whole of
- New Zealand by 1833: all
- surviving Maori tribes now had
- muskets.