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Critical Analysis of Diamond Essay

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Prologue Key Terms/Ideas: Yali’s question: Why did some parts of the world develop and change at a much faster rate than other parts of the world? Why did Europeans end up with all the guns, germs, and steel that enabled them to take over the world? Ultimate Factors: things that were in a place naturally, the environmental factors Proximate Factors: things that were derived or created because of the ultimate factors Key Arguments: The reason Jared Diamond wrote this book was to answer Yali’s question. Yali’s original question was, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” (14). The author took this question in a more general sense, wishing to …show more content…

Critical Analysis: Diamond seems really sure of himself. He doesn’t sound like he even tried to accept other people’s ideas before tearing them down to show that he is right. Diamond may be saying that he “doesn’t have all the answers”, but by the way he gives you the information, it sure sounds like he thinks he does. This is not a good sign, considering that this is only the prologue. Chapter 2 Key Terms/Ideas: Maori/Moriori Small Scale Example: The closest thing to an “experiment” to see why some cultures developed faster than others. The two groups were separated and then reunited after 1000 years, and while the Maori continued to grow, the Moriori remained hunter-gatherers. Polynesian Islands Medium Scale Example: The Maori/Moriori example is part of an even larger “experiment” of all the Polynesian islands. Various environmental (ultimate) factors on the different islands led to differences in the rates of development. Political Unit: Not necessarily the area of an island, but the area of a unified political group. There can be multiple per island or one for multiple islands. Key Arguments: Diamond knows that we can’t really experiment to find the answer to Yali’s question. So instead, he is showing us examples from history that will act as our

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