I recently read Guns, Germs, and Steel and it was great. He talks about the development of mankind from thousands of years ago, and the effect geography and luck had on human development.

One classic great section was covering the period around the year 1300 when something like 20 Spainards were taking over the Inca empire of 80,000 people. The Spainards had guns, horses, and they infected the Indians with germs but still, they were completly outnumbered — how did they do it? The author (Jared Diamond) asks the question

How come in 1300 the Incas were not sailing to Europe and invading Spain instead?

Great question — seems reasonable enough and definitely one I’ve never heard asked before!

He goes on to describe the evolution of people in S. America, and show how, for example, written language was slow to develop since it was hard to travel though the continent and spread knowledge. And because there was no written language, the Incas didn’t know that a few years before Panama had been invaded and they couldn’t learn any lessons from the problems in Panama. In S. America they also didn’t really have any large, domesticatable animals so the horses were a suprise on the battle field.

In contrast, at this time Europeans had a well developed written language, and adventurers (or invaders as the case may be) could read about previous missions. Europe was lucky to be near the Middle East, which had a number of crops and large animals that could be domesticated.

He also describes why the Europeans had germs that killed the Incas, and while the Incas didn’t have potent germs themselves.

Great book, mandatory reading!