GG&S, Chapters 1-3Billy ChenJared Diamond chose the collision of the Incan emperor Atahuallpa and his men with the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro as the perfect example of just how the factors in the title of the book, as well as some others I will soon explain, affect the interactions between complex and simplistic societies. The collision showcases everything that had caused the great and rapid downfall of the American natives to European, mostly Spanish, settlers. The Spanish Harquebusses, Diseases, and metallurgy are the obvious factors that Diamond describes with detail in his book. However, there are other very important factors that only receive a passive mention throughout the third chapter. I will go into detail on these as well as recount Diamond's explanation of his book's namesake in an analyzation of why the collision at Cajamarca is the perfect model of nearly all human wars of conquest.

Firstly, I must explain why I will focus almost entirely on the third chapter and mostly ignore the other two. The prompt asks for the defense of the Cajamarca collision as a model for other human collisions. Only the third chapter concerns Cajamarca. The first two are dedicated two a crash course on proto-human history, and an example of genetically similar peoples evolving into different societies based on environmental influences alone, respectively. While the other two do have examples of collisions (which, non-coincidently, follow the Cajamarca model,) they are not as great of an example as Cajamarca. However, the reasoning for focusing on Chapter Three is not just because the prompt asks me to, it is because the prompt asked the right question. Cajamarca is simply the best example, and it would be correct for Diamond to focus on it, thus making it correct to defend it. 168 Spaniards had managed to decimate 80,000 Incans, capture their emperor, demand and receive the largest ransom in history for his freedom, and then proceed to execute him anyway. Truly, every aspect that allows a complex and technologically dominant society to destroy an inferior one was with the conquistadors that day. Now, we will examine just what those factors are.

The first set of reasonings for the domination of the Spanish are the explicit factors found in the title. Guns and Germs and Steel, which are specific to the Spanish, can be easily applied as a metaphor for Superior Weaponry and Armed organization, Deadly diseases developed through tight urban environments, and superior material and technological development. Complex societies develop these when sustained agriculture leads to surplus of food supplies. Surplus allows a select, but growing number to become soldiers, craftsmen/scholars, and governing officials. At this point, societies begin to realize and take advantage of more advanced natural resources such as metals, which allow rapid technological advancement of societies. These technologies enable the natural desire for exploration which leads to the discovery of other nations and the establishment of trade routes, which lead to language and spread of ideas and inventions. The buildings blocks for Technological and societal dominance are set, any society lacking one or more of these blocks will almost never advance to the next one.Eurasia had managed to acquire all of these factors fairly early on, and it was evident in the Spanish conquistadors, just as the lack of which was evident in the Incans. Horses allowed the Spanish to "easily outride Indian sentries before the sentries had the time to warn Indian troops behind them," this tactical advantage as well as writing, which in the Americas was "confined to small elites among some peoples of modern Mexico and neighboring areas far to the north of the Inca Empire," had allowed Pizarro his first set of distinct advantages; While he himself was illiterate, the use of writing to record and spread knowledge of the New world had given him an understanding of the weaknesses of the Incans, while the lack of writing had kept the Incans in the dark, even as the Spanish destroyed empires just a hundred miles to the North. This had also allowed many miscommunications among the Inca, one of which had caused Atahuallpa to march defiantly into the single greatest trap and military defeat ever to occur in the Americas. The Spanish had also possessed far superior armor and weaponry. There is too much credit given to the Spanish harquebusses, which took up to 45 seconds to reload, and were jokingly inaccurate, of which Pizarro had "only a dozen of them." The real advantage of the Spanish lied within their melee and Armor. Incans had long used clubs and paddles, sometimes lined with sharpened volcanic glass, to batter their enemies. Blunt weapons are weak against steel, and obsidian, while incredibly sharp, shatters like the glass that it is. The conquistadors, on the other hand, wielded steel swords that cut straight through the woven fabric armor of the Incans, who neglected to use even leather. These are the basic technological dominants that played a major role in Spanish victory. However, other factors affected this victory just as much, if not more than technologies, and we will look into those now. (Disease was excluded from this paragraph for that precise reason.)

Firstly, we will look into situational circumstances, of which none are purely coincidental, as reasons to the Incan defeat, mirrored in so many other fallen societies around the world. The Incas had been weakened by many different unfortunate events. European diseases such as smallpox and plague had been spreading throughout the Americas, destroying up to "an estimated 95% of the Pre-Columbian Native American population." Epidemics had swept through the Incan empire before the Spanish even set foot on Incan soil. This is, in fact, the reason that Atahuallpa was in Cajamarca in the first place, he had "just won decisive battles in a civil war that left the Incas divided and vulnerable." This civil war was between him and his half brother Huascar, after smallpox had killed the short-lived emperor Huayna Capac and his designated heir. This division was noticed by Pizarro and his men and exploited. In many cases, the ability to exploit a weakness is the beginning of an attempt of conquest, such as the Yom-Kippur Wars, the Ottomans refusal to industrialize, and even Rome's over expansion. Finally, this section contains perhaps the only factor of societal collision that Cajamarca does not have. That is, the lack of societal organization and experience (with particular regards to war,) that some fallen societies have exhibited. However, the next section will demonstrate how these factors managed to play out almost negligibly or even against the Incas.

The sheer scale of the Incan failure at Cajamarca raises a question; "even with the advanced technologies and development of the Spaniards, wouldn't it still remain impossible for the Spanish to achieve what they had done? Which is, to route an army outnumbering them 476:1, while managing not to sustain a single casualty? One would assume that 476 experienced fighters armed even with bare hands could manage to easily dismount, disarm, and kill a Spanish horseman, no matter how hard his armor and sword." The answer to this question brings us to our next, and final discussion on the topic of Cajamarca; an army's reaction to a new threat on the effect of its ability to neutralize that threat. The Incans had failed in receiving the Spanish in the way they should have in order to defeat them. Many had mistaken them "for their returning god Viracocha," many other American Indian societies had failed in the same manner. Thusly, they were unaware of their real intentions to either force Christianity upon the Incans, or do the regular Spanish drill. Referencing the lack of written language discussed earlier, this could have been avoided if communication between Central American societies had warned the Incans of Spanish plunder. Referencing again, miscommunications had also led Atahuallpa to assume that the Spanish had little mal-intent, and that they could be subdued easily if they did. So he marched into an obvious trap practically unarmed. Still worse was the reception of the Spanish during battle, the Incas had never seen horses, or heard gunfire, or fought against steel armor. While it would have been entirely possible for an army the size of the Incan's to defeat a mere 168 Conquistadors, armed as they were, the psychological effects of fighting entirely unprepared against what they must have thought to be gods lead the Inca to failure, and eventual extinction. This fall of all political organization and military experience to fear and ignorance is mirrored in countless encounters, particularly in America.

To sum this all up, Jared Diamond chose the Cajamarca collision as his future model for all inter-societal encounters within his book due to the amazing extent of possible factors for defeat that the Incans exhibited. Cajamarca covers nearly every single possible factor that will need to be reference later in this book. The only thing it's missing is that the Incans were an established empire, unlike many of the "savages" conquered in the Poly and Micronesian islands. This is excusable however, as it can be assumed that the rest of the book does not concern much to how encounters play out but rather why these encounters favor one side to another, automatically setting the focus on later, already partially developed societies, as divisions between developed and undeveloped societies and the consequences of such situations were already discussed in the prologue. Too long, didn't read?; everything that could have possibly gone wrong for the Incans went wrong during the collision at Cajamarca, and it allows the author to demonstrate these factors in a general, almost complete manner. That is why Jared Diamond chose this specific collision.