He doesn’t dismiss them, they’re just not the focus of his book. In the epilogue, he explicitly recognises that his analysis leaves unanswered many important questions about cultural and individual idiosyncrasies. However, while environmental factors are certainly the focus of his book, Diamond never claims they are the only factors. Sometimes critics claim that Diamond oversimplifies and uses environmental factors to explain everything. In some versions of this argument, I think Diamond’s critics mischaracterise his argument, or at least they understood it in a different way from me. Diamond is too simplistic and ignores the role of human agency I can only comment on the coherence and persuasiveness of the points raised. I am not a historian, anthropologist, or epidemiologist and am not able to personally judge the factual accuracy of the criticisms I have found.Please let me know if you have found other points raised that have not been summarised here. While I have spent a few hours online seeking out such criticism, I am sure I have missed some. My aim in summarising the key criticisms of Guns, Germs and Steel is to save you time.

In this post, I intend to summarise, in what is hopefully a fair and balanced way, the main criticisms I’ve found and some responses to that criticism. They tell the historians “you’re missing the point” or “that doesn’t invalidate his general thesis”. Even after reading those criticisms, many people continue to defend Diamond. There are many criticisms of Jared Diamond’s book, Guns Germs and Steel (read my summary here) online, often by historians.

Guns germs steel