The earliest crops, such as wheat, barley and peas, which were domesticated
around 10,000 years ago, evolved from wild ancestors that occurred naturally
in Eurasia, particularly around the Fertile Crescent in the modern Middle East.
These had many advantages; they were already edible, gave high yields in the
wild, were easily grown merely by sowing or planting, were easily stored and
were self-pollinating (Diamond, 1998:92). These crops were then more easily
diffused from East to West across Eurasia. Across Eurasia the climate and
growing season are similar, but they change significantly, heading south into
Africa. Further diffusion from Eurasia was also hindered by the Sahara to Sub-
Saharan Africa and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to the Americas.
Possession of domesticated livestock was also important: such animals fed
more people through meat and milk, and by pulling ploughs and providing
manure for fertilizer helped raise agricultural yields. Large animals were the
main means of land transport, including the horse in Eurasia and the camel or
llama in North Africa and Arabia and the Andes. Infectious diseases like small-
pox,measles and flu originated as human diseases from mutations of similar
germs that had affected animals. It was the availability of domesticable plants
and animals that ultimately explained why urbanization,literacy and steel
weapons developed earlier in Eurasia.
The Diamond thesis is based on the premise that the areas that urbanized
after 11,000 BCE were still the most urbanized around 1500 CE and this gave
them the guns,germs and steel to engage in conquest and launch modern
economic growth, so becoming today’s developed countries. There is a funda-
mental problem with the Diamond thesis. There is little evidence that urbaniza-
tion rates were significantly higher in Western Europe in 1500 than elsewhere.
The Diamond thesis assumes a process of emerging urbanization being locked
in by 11,000 BCE and continuing ever since,whereas in fact there has been a
‘reversal of incomes’ between 1500 and 1995. The most urbanized civiliza-
tions in 1500 (the Mughals in India, Aztecs and Incas in America) were among
the richest,while those in North America, New Zealand and Australia were
less developed. By 1995 the situation had reversed.
Looking at more specific data shows there were examples of high levels of
urbanization and big cities in the now-developing world (not expected, given
the Diamond thesis). China had many cities larger than any European city
before London in the eighteenth century. It has been estimated that 22 per cent
of Japan’s population in the eighteenth century lived in cities and only 10–15
per cent in Western Europe (Pomeranz, 2000; Hobson, 2004). In mid-seven-
teenth-century India Agra, Delhi, and Lahore had populations of 500,000+ and
urbanization in cities of 5,000+ reached 15 per cent of the population of the
sub-continent. Even earlier, in 1500 the East had larger cities, including
Istanbul with 700,000 inhabitants, Cairo 250,000, Calicut 500,000, and
Angkor had declined from its peak of 150,000. Paris then had a population of
150,000 (Frank 1998). Ferguson writes elegantly that Western Europe in 1411
‘would have struck you as a miserable backwater, recuperating from the
ravages of the Black Death ... bad sanitation ... incessant war ... internecine
The Great Divergence since 1750 157