As Jared Diamond states multiple times it comes down to “geographic luck.”-Guns,Germs and Steel. The main parts were climate and how hot it was. Livestock how the animals shaped out. Personally I think the biggest one is diseas. “Climate and access to natural resources and farmable animals are what matters most.”-Jared Diamond. Trainable livestock that listens to you helps you heard and have food to live. also the terrain people had to go threw took a toll on their environment too. Germs and diseases spread very fast in the native americans life. Population decreased as they spread through populated villages. According to Jared Diamond “livestock also plays a significant role in a civilization's ability to become rich and powerful.” Without this places like New Guinea can not advance to become powerful and rich. This is why I think location is such a big part because it depends on it to be able to live a destained
In this part he explains how the increase in food production enabled people to increase in population and create specialized jobs while the domestication of animals helped them with the production of tools, animal labor during farming (pulling wagons) and war (horses used for battle), warmth (leather and wool), transportation, food (meat and milk), and fertilizer. Then he explains the decision of people to move to farming. This decision was influenced by different factors in different parts of the world such a decrease in wild games’ population, more domestic plants, development of technologies for food producing, and human population vs food production. Then he explains how the environmental advantages such as biological, ecological, and geographical diversity allowed for a variety of crops. For example, the plants in the Fertile Crescent were self-pollinating which allowed an increase in crop production. He further explains how geography contributed to the domestication of animals. He states that “the wild ancestors of 13 of the Ancient Fourteen… were confined to Eurasia,” (Diamond 161) which shows the geographic advantage Eurasians had since most of the ancient 14 domestic animals were in Eurasia. Additionally, Eurasia had the least amount of extinction in the last 40,000 years along with more readily domestic animals who has a faster growth rate, diet, no problem breeding in captivity, and etc. Another geographical advantage Eurasians had was the axes of the continents. Since Eurasia has west-east axes, it was easier for Eurasians to transport food production such as crops due to the same latitude which resulted in the same climate, same day length and diseases. However, Africa and the Americas has a north-south axes which made transportation of food production difficult due to
Guns, Germs, and Steel, written by Jared Diamond, is the result of a question posed to Diamond over twenty-five years ago. The question was this, “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?” (Diamond, p 14). The goal of the book then is to understand why some civilizations flourished and why some did not. In the end the book is successful, but of course it is not without its flaws. Such a large question cannot have one single answer that will be correct for every civilization, but Diamond’s answer does provide an overarching theme that most civilizations fall under.
Jared Diamond discusses the reasons why geographical and environmental factors lead to a more rapid progression of certain civilizations throughout history. The book Guns, Germs and Steel portrays an argument that due to some societies’ access to an area witch contains sufficient amounts of wildlife and climates that are easily inhabitable, these societies developed into more advanced ways of living much easier and also earlier than societies who lacked these geographical attributes. These beneficial geographical attributes promoted the growth of technological improvements in weapons, religion, and farming.
There are many cultures in the history of human kind, each very diverse and unique in its own way. There are many factors which lead to their diversity and uniqueness, such as the different interaction factors with other cultures. However, one of the most important factors of all is the geographical conditions in which the culture had to develop to. Geography can affect a culture greatly in many different ways. Geography provided the environment, resources, and the location crucial to the development of a culture. The most important factor of all is the resources which helps the culture to develop drastically.
Why Eurasia was able to develop faster and dominate over other continents has been a highly debated question amongst historians. Jared Diamond argues in Guns, Germs, and Steel that geographical environments and ecological profiles rather than biological distinctions caused Eurasia’s fast development. He begins his argument with the premise of a “starting line” (Diamond 35) to compare historical developments in 11,000 BC. Eurasia does not begin to pull away developmentally from the other continents until 8,000 BC with the emergence of domesticated plants and animals. This domestication transformed Eurasia from hunter-gatherers to farmer-herders and allowed them to settle and become sedentary. Diamond argues that the ultimate factors of
Jared Diamond’s theory of landmass helps explain why the Europeans were much more successful with their diverse crops, plants and animals. Their soil and weather made it a lot easier to grow diverse crops and plants thus leading to a wider range of animals. The wider range of animals helped the Europeans domesticate the animals for trade and to reproduce the animals for a greater food
Domestication is a very useful skill that has remained the same for many years. Animals can be used for meat, milk, wool, etc. They are also used as farming tools and transportation. Certain animals much better suited to domestication than others; Jared Diamond calls this the “anna Karenina principle’ (Class Lecture).
In his work, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (W. W. Norton, New York, NY, 1997) Jared Diamond attempts to explain why human history has carried out the way it has, he often refers to accounts from history to support his argument. Accounts that will be deemed adequate will discuss specific groups of people, at a specified period of time. Diamond suggests that guns, germs, and steel are three contributing factors for why the world is in its current state. It is not difficult to recognize while reading, that the book spends a large amount of time talking about germs and much less text discussing guns and steel. In “Guns, Germs, and Steel” Diamond does adequately account for the historical development of guns and steel, in the way he accounts for the role of germs in the history of human societies. It is no debate that germs played a massive role in many important events in history, but guns came late, were not very effective at first, and steel production was most important militarily.
The “Factors Underlying the Broadcast Pattern of History” chart shows the spreading and domesticating of plants and animals and the pros and cons of it on civilization. I agree with the author that when you have domesticated animals in the civilization food storage and surpluses; large dense, sedentary, stratified societies with political
There are animals that just can not be domesticated because they are they are the opposite of that. Sheep,goat,cow and pigs came from Southwest Asia. Cow also came from India and North America. Also Horse came from Ukraine. All of the domesticated animals came from different places so that made some civilizations work easier because it depends where they live and they may have that animal.
How they domesticated wild animals and plants for milk, food, clothing, and more, and the benefits of domestication over the hunter-gathering culture. More food meant more calories for humans meaning more work. More work meant higher crop yields which meant more population density which meant more people could work, and the cycle continued over and over again. The reason food production was so successful in Europe was because the continent lies east to west creating a similar climate for food to grow. Europe also has more open fields compared to Africa, the Americas, and Australia, where there were deserts, jungles, and drastically different climates. The conversion from the hunter-gatherer society to the domestication of wild animals and farming society was gradually and took many years and there are still hunter-gatherer societies today.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond, attempts to explain why history progressed differently for people from various geographical regions. Diamond introduces his book by pointing out that history followed different courses for different people because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among people themselves. Through his convincing explanation for how civilizations were created and evolved throughout the course of history, he argues that environmental factors gave some societies advantages over others, allowing them to conquer the disadvantaged societies. While I agree with Diamond’s argument that the orientation of continental axis, availability of potential
Throughout history, the circumstances that people were born into were not equal. While some people were born on hospitable lands where people and animals could flourish, others were born on desolate and isolated lands that proved unsuitable for livestock. These uncontrollable circumstances as well as others, such as climate, created the different types of lifestyles that people have adopted. Through the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond illustrates the five themes of world history by explaining how a chain of effects starting from the first people interacting with their given environments and resources led to how they live in the present. While for the world it may seem apparent that one group of people seems to have the upper hand in the social hierarchy, Diamond shows his view that, in actuality, it only became this way because of the conditions that different groups of people had to cope with in the past.
Imported domesticates are typically rapidly accepted when appropriate to the locale, domestication arose rapidly where appropriate species were available, and grizzly bear, hippo, zebra, and African buffalo cannot be tamed