ABSTRACT
Jared Diamond summarized his key argument in Guns, Germs, and Steel in one sentence: "History followed different courses for different people because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves". Diamond intended his work to explore "ultimate" rather than "proximate" causes of Western dominance- that is, the foundational causes, not the immediate causes. Jared Diamond takes a ftific approach to the study of history in Guns, Germs, and Steel, and uses archaeological and environmental evidence from the physical world to build his argument. In his 1972 book The Colombian Exchange, the American historian Alfred Crosby reflected on the process of intercontinental exchange between the Old World and the New. Crosby's account of the meeting of the Old and New Worlds has similarities to Diamond's. The focus of Crosby's argument is only partly on how Europeans came to dominate the world.
