GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

CHAPTER 1
UP TO THE STARTING
LINE
ASUITABLE STARTING POINT FROM WHICH TO COMPARE
. historical developments on the different continents is around
11,000 B.C.* This date corresponds approximately to the beginnings of
village life in a few parts of the world, the first undisputed peopling of the
Americas, the end of the Pleistocene Era and last Ice Age, and the start of
what geologists term the Recent Era. Plant and animal domestication
began in at least one part of the world within a few thousand years of that
date. As of then, did the people of some continents already have a head
start or a clear advantage over peoples of other continents?
If so, perhaps that head start, amplified over the last 13,000 years, pro-
*Throughout this book, dates for about the last 15,000 years will be quoted as socalled
calibrated radiocarbon dates, rather than as conventional, uncalibrated radiocarbon
dates. The difference between the two types of dates will be explained in Chapter
5. Calibrated dates are the ones believed to correspond more closely to actual calendar
dates. Readers accustomed to uncalibrated dates will need to bear this distinction in
mind whenever they find me quoting apparently erroneous dates that are older than the
ones with which they are familiar. For example, the date of the Clovis archaeological
horizon in North America is usually quoted as around 9000 B.C. (11,000 years ago),
but I quote it instead as around 11,000 B.C. (13,000 years ago), because the date usually
quoted is uncalibrated.