Guns, Germs, and Steel Diamond’s theory of advantages geography can explain how power came to certain groups of people. For mighty weapons such as rapiers made of fine steel, populations need specialists. In order for a population to have specialists, there needs to be a large supply of food. In order to produce a large quantity of food, powerful animals are needed to help plow the land. These people need to live in a region where the climate allows for calorie rich foods. They also need to be in a region where there are powerful animals that can be domesticated. Through contact with farm animals, people begin developing immunities to deadly diseases. And so these civilizations have the chance to rapidly develop and evolve into dominating states and countries.
The first people were known as Hunters and Gathers. These people were nomadic, following game from place to place in seasonal trends. The groups were rather small due to the limited food supply. Hunting has never been a productive way of finding food. Game needs to be tracked down which requires stealth and endurance. Gathering of food though is generally more productive. The problem is that it is much more physically intensive and does not provide enough calories to sustain large populations. In order for large populations to flourish, people need to farm. Farming is what set humanity on its course to modern civilization. The first place that shows signs of early farming is in the Fertile Crescent which is the modern day Middle East. Wheat and barley were the first crops to be farmed and they would have a profound impact on humans. These ideas of farming then spread outwards from the Fertile Crescent in East and West directions. Along the latitudinal lines of the globe, climates and geography are quite similar. Therefore it is much easier for an idea and even for people to move from one region to another that shares similar characteristics. When moving from North to South, people will experience major changes in climate, and geography. These changes can be so profound that they may isolate people. These ideas of farming and domestication of animals spread to Europe, but were not able to cross the vast oceans. In Europe, towns and small cities began to emerge due to larger populations of people. People lived alongside their farms and in doing so, were in close proximity to farm animals such as cattle, and sheep etc. It is now understood that all the killer diseases of humans come from farm animals. Because Europeans were in such constant contact to these animals, they built up certain immunities against these deadly diseases. Places in this world where people did do not have domesticated farm animals, would not have had these immunities, nor would they have had such deadly diseases. In exchange for not having farm animals they would not have had the food supply to sustain large populations. Because they did not have large enough populations, specialists could not have evolved. Without specialists, civilizations would not have had things such as steel creation, and gun powder. And thus they would not have had the means to conquer other civilizations for extensive amounts of time.
So when the Europeans came to these civilizations, their diseases and their steel would decimate the people. The Europeans did not conquer because they were simply more intelligent or were a superior race, but because they just happen to have an advantage in the geography where their civilizations first began.