Just before moving away to Comicsland, I had to finish up Guns, Germs, and Steel to give it back to Todd after borrowing it for something like nine months. The whole argument of this book is that the course of human history is basically an accident of geography. Essentially, Jared Diamond fills thousands of pages making a very thorough argument that the only reason Europeans got to kick everybody else’s ass is that crops, livestock and ideas can diffuse really easily throughout the gigantic landmass of Eurasia. He say the grasses that grow naturally in the Middle East (like wheat and barley) helped with a food production head start there, too. Also, the big docile animals in Eurasia didn’t die out as soon as people showed up (as they did in Australia and the Americas), partially because they got a chance to evolve with us as we were just becoming homo sapiens. Seemingly the African animals were on to us from the beginning, and have never trusted our species.

Diamond mentions in the last chapter that had African knights been able to domesticate rhinos and hippos, they would have mowed down sissy European horses and stomped all over the Mediterranean and who knows where else. That def put an image in my head. This was a bottom-up drawing, and the rhino wound up pretty tiny compared to its knight, but I still think it’s cool enough to show youse. As soon as I stopped drawing it, I also thought about how awesome these two would look in full armor, but that’s another story. Rhinoceroses already look like they’re wearing armor anyhow. Maybe Todd will draw them in proportion and with lots of metal plates and leather and muscles and stuff. You hear me Todd? That’s a mission!