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Why did white men conquer the world? — Transcript

by Elephants in Rooms - Ken LaCorte · 3,392 words · 553 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00How did Europeans conquer the world? I
0:03hear a lot of talk and complaints about
0:04colonialization, but why didn't Africa
0:07or the Americas colonialized Europe
0:10instead of the other way around? Here's
0:12a crazy example. In 1532,
0:15Francisco Pizarro and fewer than 200
0:18Spanish conquistadors marched into
0:20modern-day Peru. They faced an Inca
0:23Empire with an army of 80,000 warriors
0:26with millions of residents. Using
0:28cannons, horses, and steel, the
0:30Spaniards attacked in a way the crowd
0:32had never seen. Within hours, they had
0:34slaughtered 7,000 Inca and captured the
0:37emperor Atahualpa without losing a
0:39single man. Within a generation, the
0:42entire empire fell. This wasn't a
0:44one-time fluke. The pattern repeated
0:47itself on multiple continents. One side
0:49had steel, swords, guns, horses,
0:52ocean-going ships, writing system, and
0:54centralized kingdoms. The other side had
0:56stone and wooden weapons, no writing, no
0:59metal tools, and fragmented political
1:01structures. Why? I'm Ken Lacorte. I do
1:05my best here to look at uncomfortable
1:06topics and give you a balanced overview.
1:09It's not about judging, it's trying to
1:11understand reality best we can.
1:14For my videos, I usually compile
1:15information from hundreds of sources,
1:17but this one is different. I took it
1:19from one, a wonderful book by Jared
1:22Diamond called Guns, Germs, and Steel.
1:25It's possibly the best book I've ever
1:26read and it reshaped how I view the
1:28world. I hope I do it justice. He
1:31tackled the central question, why did
1:33Eurasia, the regions of Europe, Asia,
1:35and North Africa become so successful?
1:38And he argues that it's not about
1:40intelligence or genetics, but geography.
1:43In this video, we'll look at a
1:45geographic lottery that determined which
1:47societies would dominate. We'll see how
1:49some areas hit the plant and animal
1:51jackpot and how the resulting surplus
1:54builds empires. Finally, we'll look at
1:56the invisible weapon that killed more
1:58people than guns and swords combined.
2:01So, to understand how some tribes won
2:03the geographic lottery, we need to
2:05rewind the clock to about 11,000 BC. At
2:08that point, humans everywhere were
2:10remarkably similar. They were Homo
2:13sapiens who had basically had the same
2:14brains, the same cognitive abilities,
2:16and the same potential.
2:18Yeah, there were minor differences like
2:20skin color, body type, or adaptations to
2:22local climates, but a baby born in
2:24Europe had no built-in advantage over a
2:26baby born in Australia or the Americas
2:28or Africa.
2:30Everyone was a hunter-gatherer following
2:32game, gathering plants, and living in
2:34small bands of people who moved with the
2:36seasons.
2:37So, if everyone started at roughly the
2:39same place, how did things diverge so
2:41dramatically?
2:43So, look, I did a video recently on
2:44Africa why it's still behind much of the
2:46world despite billions of dollars of
2:48help. And a lot of the comments were
2:50just like, well, they simply have lower
2:52IQs and they'll never catch up. But
2:54modern IQ tests measure abstract
2:56reasoning, literacy, and mathematical
2:58concepts taught in schools. They were
3:00designed by academics in countries to
3:02predict success in industrialized
3:04education systems. Diamond spent years
3:06working in New Guinea and one thing that
3:08struck him immediately was that people
3:10there were exceptionally observant,
3:12inventive, and mentally sharp. Survival
3:14demanded it. You had to know which
3:16plants were poisonous, how to read the
3:17weather, how to track animals, and
3:19mistakes would get you killed. If you
3:21gave a New Guinean farmer an IQ test
3:24designed for an American suburb, he'd
3:26bomb. He'd never seen the references or
3:28types of problems that it assumes. But
3:30if you gave a Harvard graduate a New
3:32Guinea IQ test and made him track an
3:34animal through the forest or navigate
3:36without a GPS, he'd probably be toast,
3:38too. Diamond's conclusions were clear
3:40and persuasive. Geography determines
3:43which societies can develop agriculture
3:45and agriculture determines everything
3:47that comes after. The societies that
3:49figured out agricultures got a massive
3:52head start by thousands of years. By the
3:54time the Europeans crossed the Atlantic
3:56with guns and steel, they had a
3:575,000-year advantage. But why couldn't
4:00hunter-gatherers just catch up and
4:02develop their own complex civilizations?
4:04Because nomads, they have to stay
4:06mobile. They follow herds and track
4:08seasonal plants. If food moves, they
4:11move.
4:12And that mobility, it it creates brutal
4:14constraints. What is essentially that
4:16everyone is in food gathering mode.
4:18Calories are tough to come by and they
4:20take a tribe's time and effort. And when
4:22you're constantly on the move, you can't
4:24accumulate possessions. You can't store
4:26food long-term. Everything you own has
4:29to be carried on your back. That means
4:30no heavy pottery or tools or building
4:32materials. A nomadic mother, she can
4:35only carry one child while she's also
4:37gathering food and hauling possessions.
4:39So, hunter-gatherer women spaced births
4:41out about 4 years apart. Settled farmer
4:43spaced births out about every 2 years.
4:46That's half the population growth rate
4:48right there. Over centuries, that
4:50difference compounds into massive
4:52population gaps. Or think about
4:54injuries. If you break your leg in a
4:56settled farming village, you heal. You
4:58break your leg as a nomad and you're a
5:00burden that the band can't afford.
5:03Either they leave you behind or the
5:04whole group slows down and risk
5:05starvation. The same goes for the
5:07elderly or the sick. And forget about
5:09developing more complex technology that
5:11requires time to tinker, experiment,
5:14fail. It just doesn't work. It's time
5:17you don't have when you're spending
5:18every day searching for food. So, the
5:20first societies to stop moving were the
5:22first to start building. Agriculture
5:25allowed people to settle down and stay
5:27in one place, to accumulate surplus
5:30food, and that surplus food changed
5:32everything. Now, you might be thinking,
5:35okay, so why didn't everyone just figure
5:37out agriculture at the same time? How
5:39hard can it be to plant some seeds? As
5:41it turns out, it's really hard. But
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7:23today. Okay, so back to planting food
7:26and building civilizations. So,
7:28agriculture just didn't happen
7:29everywhere at once. It happened in a
7:31handful of specific places.
7:34And those places shared something
7:35important. They all hit the plant and
7:37animal jackpot. Most wild plants are
7:40garbage for farming. They're inedible,
7:42poisonous, or so low in calories that
7:44they're just not worth the effort to
7:46cultivate. Out of the hundreds of
7:48thousands of plant species on Earth,
7:50only a few dozen ever made good crops.
7:53And the Fertile Crescent had a whole
7:55bunch of them. The region, stretching
7:57from modern-day Egypt through Israel,
7:59Lebanon, Syria, and down into Iraq and
8:01Iran, it held wild wheat, barley, peas,
8:05and lentils growing naturally. And those
8:07weren't finicky plants. They had large
8:08seeds, predictable growth cycles, and
8:10they could be replanted easily. China
8:13got pretty lucky, too. They had rice and
8:15millet. They were both solid crops that
8:17could support dense populations. The
8:19Americas eventually developed corn, but
8:21wild corn, called teosinte, was
8:23basically useless. It's scraggly grass
8:26with tiny kernels and it took Native
8:28Americans 3,000 years of selective
8:31breeding to turn it into something that
8:33resembled modern corn. Think about that
8:35for a second. While one group of humans
8:37spent thousands of years slowly
8:38improving a single crop, people in the
8:41Fertile Crescent were already building
8:42cities.
8:44Sub-Saharan Africa had sorghum and yams.
8:47They were decent crops, but Africa had
8:49fewer plant species to choose from
8:50overall. And the Sahara Desert created a
8:53massive barrier that slowed the spread
8:55of agriculture and information from the
8:57Fertile Crescent. Australia essentially
9:00got nothing that could be farmed. Here's
9:02how lopsided this lottery was. 33 of the
9:05world's 56 most valuable wild grasses
9:08grew in the Fertile Crescent. That's why
9:11agriculture started there first. They
9:13had the raw materials. But plants are
9:15only half the story. Animals matter just
9:17as much, maybe more. And similar to
9:19plants, there are lots of species, but
9:22only a few are easy to grow. Throughout
9:24all of human history, only about 14
9:27large mammal species have ever been
9:29successfully domesticated. And there are
9:32strict requirements for why some animals
9:33can be tamed and others can't. It has to
9:35go fast and breed in captivity. It needs
9:38a common enough disposition so it won't
9:40kill you. And it needs to live in a
9:41social hierarchy that humans can
9:43exploit. Basically, the animal has to
9:45recognize a pecking order and you need
9:47to be able to slot yourself at the top.
9:49Again, Eurasia hit the jackpot. Sheep,
9:53goats, pigs, cattle, horses, donkeys,
9:55camels. That's seven of the big 14
9:58species right there. The Americas had
10:00llamas and alpacas. That's it. And only
10:03in South America. North America, Africa,
10:06and Australia, zero. And it's not like
10:08people didn't try. Native Americans
10:10desperately wanted to domesticate bison.
10:13Africans tried with zebras and antelope,
10:15but it just didn't work. So, why
10:17couldn't they domesticate bison? I mean,
10:19they don't seem all that different from
10:20cattle, but they are. When cattle are
10:22threatened, they bunch together. It's a
10:24defensive strategy that makes them
10:26manageable. Bison panic and stampede.
10:29Try to pen them in, and they'll trample
10:30you or each other. Zebras?
10:33They look like nice stripy horses, but
10:35they're vicious. They bite, and they
10:37don't let go. They can kick hard enough
10:39to kill a lion. Even in modern times,
10:42with all our knowledge and tools, we
10:44still can't domesticate zebras on a
10:46broad scale. Horses are skittish, but
10:48they're trainable. Zebras, they just
10:51aren't wired that way. So, this wasn't a
10:53failure of effort or ingenuity. It was
10:55biology. It was luck. Some animals can
10:58be domesticated, most can't. And
11:00geography shaped one more crucial
11:02advantage as well. Eurasia runs
11:05east-west, and you can travel 5,000 mi
11:08from Portugal to China and stay in
11:10roughly the same latitude. That means
11:12the same climate, the same growing
11:14season, and the same day length.
11:16Wheat domesticated in the Fertile
11:18Crescent could be spread to Europe,
11:19India, and China. Farmers didn't have to
11:21reinvent agriculture, but they could
11:23take what worked in one place and plant
11:26it somewhere else. Africa and the
11:28Americas, they run north-south.
11:30You know, try taking corn from Mexico
11:32and plant it in Canada. It just doesn't
11:34work. They have different growing
11:36seasons and climates. Crops hit a
11:38different climate zone barrier, and they
11:39stop spreading. Africa has the same
11:41problem, especially with the Sahara
11:43Desert cutting it right in half. It
11:45means thousands of years of lost
11:47agriculture knowledge that never spread.
11:50So, while Eurasian farmers were swapping
11:52seeds and sharing innovations across an
11:54entire continent, American and African
11:56farmers, they were stuck starting from
11:58scratch.
11:59It's a geographic orientation problem,
12:02and it's massive. Okay, so, once
12:04agriculture takes hold, everything
12:06changes because now there's a food
12:08surplus. And that surplus, it builds
12:11empires. When 20 farmers can feed 100
12:14people, that changes everything. When
12:16they could, then for the first time in
12:18their history, not everyone needed to
12:20spend their day hunting for food and
12:22gathering plants. Surplus gives you
12:24extra calories and extra time. It
12:27creates specialists. In a
12:28hunter-gatherer band, everyone hunts and
12:31gathers. There's no room for a guy who
12:33sits around thinking about better ways
12:34to make tools. But once you have
12:36agriculture, you can afford to have
12:38people who don't produce food. In fact,
12:40one of the first things you need when
12:42you have a surplus food is a way to
12:43store it, something permanent. Then you
12:45want guys to guard the food from animals
12:47or other tribes. Someone needs to
12:49organize and decide how and when to
12:52distribute the food. And the basics of
12:54government start to emerge. Later in
12:56development, professional armies conquer
12:58their neighbors, and those conquests
13:00bring in more land, more resources, more
13:01people. Civilization grows. And here's
13:05where political structure becomes
13:06crucial. Innovation spread. Eurasia was
13:09fragmented in a way that actually helped
13:11ideas spread. It wasn't one giant
13:14unified empire, but competing kingdoms
13:16and city-states and feudal territories
13:18connected by trade and migration. When
13:20one kingdom invented something useful,
13:22like better plows, bronze weapons, or
13:25gunpowder, that knowledge didn't stay
13:26contained, it spread in multiple ways.
13:29Essentially, it was adapt or die.
13:32Merchants carried innovations along
13:34routes connecting competing kingdoms.
13:36Craftsmen and inventors, they moved
13:38between territories bringing their
13:39knowledge with them. And with important
13:41technology, you either adapted or
13:44someone took you over with it. And the
13:46east-west axis of Eurasia meant those
13:48innovations could travel thousands of
13:49miles without hitting climate barriers.
13:52Gunpowder invented in China reached
13:54Europe. Steel-making techniques
13:56developed in the Middle East spread to
13:58India and Europe. The Americas didn't
13:59have that same political structure or
14:01connectivity, so innovation stayed
14:03local. The Maya developed writing, but
14:05it never spread to the Inca or the
14:07Aztecs. Each civilization was
14:09reinventing the wheel, sometimes
14:10literally. But China had the problem of
14:13too much unity. When China's emperor
14:15decided to halt oceanic exploration in
14:17the 1400s, that decision stuck for the
14:20entire huge empire.
14:22In Europe, when one kingdom stopped
14:24exploring, others continued. Spain's
14:27rivals couldn't afford to let Spain
14:28monopolize the New World. And
14:30technology, well, it kind of builds on
14:32itself. So, Eurasia moved from stone
14:35tools to copper to bronze to iron. So,
14:37when Cortez arrived in the Americas in
14:39the 1500s, the Aztecs were still in the
14:42Stone Age, literally. I mean, they had
14:44obsidian blades, which weren't terrible,
14:47but against steel swords, it wasn't even
14:49close. But it wasn't because the Aztecs
14:51were dumb or lazy, it was because they
14:53started late. They didn't have the
14:565,000-year head start the Eurasia had.
14:59The Fertile Crescent got agriculture
15:00around 8500 BC. Mesoamerica didn't get
15:04it until around 3500 BC. 5,000 years.
15:08Now, put it in modern terms so that we
15:10can see how impossible this gap was to
15:12overcome. Imagine us here in the United
15:14States being attacked by a civilization
15:17just 100 years younger than us. Think of
15:191926 US Army attacking modern-day
15:22America. It it it would be almost
15:24laughable, and it wouldn't be a fight.
15:26Now, do the reverse. Try to imagine a
15:28society advanced 5,000 more years into
15:31the future attacking us, and how our
15:33military would fare against that or
15:35anything. I mean, I can't even fathom
15:37what that might look like. That's the
15:39situation that the Incas and the Native
15:41Americans and the Africans faced when
15:43Europeans arrived. They were fighting
15:45enemies that were millennia ahead of
15:47them. But the most fearsome thing the
15:48Europeans brought to the Americas wasn't
15:51guns or steel swords or horses. It was
15:54germs. Europe's invisible and
15:56unintentional weapon. And the
15:58devastation was almost unimaginable.
16:00Scholars generally agree that over 90%
16:02of the indigenous population of the
16:04Americas died from disease after
16:06European contact. If you lived in a
16:08village of a 100 people, within a
16:10generation, only a handful of you would
16:12still be alive. Smallpox killed more
16:15Native Americans than all of the
16:16European weapons combined, by a
16:18landslide. And some empires collapsed
16:21before the Europeans even showed up. The
16:22Inca emperor, Huayna Capac, he died of
16:25smallpox in 1527 without ever seeing a
16:28Spaniard. The disease traveled faster
16:30than the conquistadors did, spreading
16:32through trade routes and wiping out
16:34populations before Europeans ever
16:36arrived to conquer them. By the time
16:38Pizarro marched into Peru, the Inca
16:40Empire was already in chaos. A smallpox
16:43epidemic had killed the previous emperor
16:45and sparked a civil war over succession.
16:47But why didn't it work the other way
16:49around? Why didn't Native American
16:51diseases wipe out the Europeans? Why was
16:53it a one-way street? Europeans brought
16:56smallpox, measles, flu, typhus, plague,
16:58tuberculosis, and more. The Europeans,
17:00the only thing they got from the natives
17:02was syphilis. The exchange wasn't even
17:04close, and the answer goes back to those
17:06domesticated animals. Those sheep, pigs,
17:09cows, and other animals, they weren't
17:11just food and labor. They were also
17:13disease factories. Eurasians lived
17:15intimately with their domesticated
17:16animals for thousands of years. They
17:19slept in the same structures, handled
17:21them daily. They breathed the same air.
17:23And diseases often leap from animal to
17:25humans. Smallpox jumped from cattle. Flu
17:28more from diseases in pigs and ducks.
17:31Measles came from cattle and sheep. It
17:33goes on and on. Native Americans had
17:35fewer domesticated animals and never
17:37lived in close quarters with them, so
17:38they never developed these diseases. But
17:41animals alone weren't enough to create
17:42some killer epidemics. You also needed
17:45something else. Lots of people, like
17:47cities. Diseases like measles, smallpox,
17:50and tuberculosis are what they call
17:51crowd diseases. They need large, dense
17:54populations to survive and keep
17:56progressing. Measles, for instance, it
17:58needs at least 500,000 people to keep
18:00circulating. And if the population is
18:02smaller than that, the disease burns
18:04through everyone, and then it dies out
18:06as well. So, hunter-gatherers, they
18:08didn't get those. A band of 50 people
18:10moving through the forest, it's it's
18:12just not enough bodies for measles to
18:13survive. But agriculture created the
18:15population density, and thousands of
18:18people packed together were the perfect
18:20breeding ground. And the diseases were
18:22brutal over centuries and centuries.
18:24They killed millions of people across
18:26Europe, Asia, and North Africa for
18:27thousands of years. But here's the thing
18:29about epidemic diseases. If you survive
18:32them once, you're often immune for life.
18:35Your body develops antibodies, and
18:36sometimes those are passed down. Over
18:38thousands of years, Eurasians developed
18:40genetic resistance, not complete
18:42immunity, but enough that the diseases
18:44were manageable. The Americas didn't
18:46have any kind of protection like that.
18:48So, when the Europeans arrived with all
18:50of these invisible plagues, Native
18:52Americans had zero defenses. The
18:54geographic lottery didn't just determine
18:56who had steels and guns, it determined
18:58germs as well. And that turned out to be
19:01the deadliest weapon of all. So, I
19:03started asking why the Europeans had
19:05taken over the world, but that certainly
19:07doesn't mean it's going to last forever.
19:09I mean, geography isn't destiny forever.
19:11And the advantages have shifted. Modern
19:13technology, it spreads globally in in in
19:16months, not thousands of years. But
19:18understanding this history matters, and
19:20it explains the world we inherited. It
19:22also helps explain why Africa is in
19:24compared to the rest of the world now. I
19:26mean, the world has given billions of
19:28dollars to the continent, and and to
19:29many it seems like the problems are
19:31still there. And I ask a tough question.
19:34Is it a lost cause?
19:36But as always, there's a twist to these
19:38things, and it's a fascinating video. I
19:41learned a lot from it. I'm Ken LaCourt.
19:43I did my best to give you these
19:45arguments straight. It's a terrific
19:46book. Thank you for watching, and see
19:49you next time.

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