Why Didn't Native Americans Conquer Europe?

Why did history turn out the way it did? Why did the Old World conquer the New World and not the other way around?

Jared Diamond tries to answer these questions and more in his talk Why Did Human History Unfold Differently On Different Continents For The Last 13,000 Years.

Diamond begins by noting that "many, or even most" people feel that there is a biological reason for this disparity. As a biologist, Diamond doesn't buy this argument - saying that there is no empirical information to show that one group is more intelligent or likely to conquer than another.

Diamond's strategy is to evaluate each country as it was 13,000 years ago, incorporating history and economics to come to an answer.

A Geographic Comparative Advantage

Looking at Africa and America shows an interesting geographic difference from Europe. The Eurasian continent has its long axis running east-to-west, while both America and Africa run north-to-south - and this, Diamond states, is the key.

Diamond notes that Europe was much more inclined to form a centralized government - and thus fund intercontinental exploration, because of this fact.

But how?

It comes down to the domestication of animals, plants, and the implications of a long east-west axis. Diamond says in his article:

" the animal has to have a diet that humans can supply; a rapid growth rate; a willingness to breed in captivity; a tractable disposition; a social structure involving submissive behavior towards dominant animals and humans; and lack of a tendency to panic when fenced in."

This, naturally, leaves few candidates for domestication. For example, while there are many large mammals in Africa, their domestication is far too difficult. Diamond even says that had African cavalry responded to European invasion riding rhinos and hippos, history may have been completely different.

This scarcity of domestic animals is a part of what led to Europe's success - in addition to domesticating many animals and plants in Europe, the long east-west axis meant that these organisms could be easily transported to other places in Europe without climate changes or a change in the amount of daylight. This led to a surplus of food, and thus a change from the traditional hunter-gatherer role in the other parts of the world. This also led to the European resistance to infectious diseases that ravaged much of North America.

Technological Innovation

The other main factor leading to Europe's rise is the ability to innovate. Diamond looks at Australia to explain why Europe has such an advantage.

Tasmania, at one time, was connected to mainland Australia via a land bridge running south. Due to rising sea levels, this bridge eventually disappeared, leaving a small group of isolated people on the island.

What is interesting is that these isolated people ended up abandoning bone tools and fishing techniques that had been used on the mainland, leading to very hard winters.

Why would a group of people endanger themselves?

Tasmania's isolation helps us to see what led Europe into the Iron Age before any other geographical region.

Diamond argues that having a large population of interconnected ideas and cultures leads to a higher probability of both adopting new technology and maintaining old technology. Because of Tasmania's small population, ideas that had been thought of on the mainland were lost due to a lack of these traits. Thus Europe was able to form new weapons and armor to withstand the comparatively primitive weapons of other peoples.

Implications for Today

The question "Why didn't Native Americans conquer Europe?" could be rephrased today as "why isn't North Korea a world superpower?" The broader ideas behind why Europe became the power it was are all based on economics - namely scarcity and comparative advantage - and can be applied to problems today.

We know that North Korea isn't a world superpower because it isolates itself from the global economy, and thus misses out on China's efficiency to manufacture and America's efficiency to grow food. By trying to be self-sufficient, there is an inherent misallocation of resources. Add that to a corrupt governmental system and we have our answer.

In a global economy, each country is now much more able to survive and innovate, as geographic barriers become almost meaningless. With the ability to travel anywhere in a span of 24 hours, there is no longer asymmetrical information leading to disparities in technology, nor is there a lack in food or resources in a free economy. Though each country will hold its comparative advantage and continue to strive to innovate, today's disparities in power come from things like government corruption and isolationism.