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Guns Germs And Steel Analysis

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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 …show more content…

Both tribes were ethnically Polynesian and biologically similar but each lived on a different island. The societies developed in isolation. The Maori came from a warlike, agricultural society and their island was densely populated while the Moriori were a less organized hunter-gatherer society. The Maori came to dominate over the Moriori because they were more technologically advanced and developed. The Moriori were unable to develop like the Maori because they were not able to become an agricultural society because they had brought a crop to the island that was unable to survive on their land. The inability for the crop to survive on their land forced the Moriori to be strictly hunter-gatherers. This example Diamond gives not only supports his claim that environmental factors have a greater effect on a society than biology but also supports his claim that a society must be able to domesticate plants and animals in order to develop. In essence, the ability to produce more food would then lead to the production of more people. Food surpluses, Diamond argues, were necessary for the development of a settled, sedentary …show more content…

Diamond’s organization of ultimate factors leading to proximate factors is beneficial and helps a non-historian better understand how Eurasia came to dominate and develop faster than the other continents. I agree with Diamond that the development of Eurasia was not due to biological factors since there was a starting point where all humans came from. One of Diamond’s arguments is on the distribution of potentially domesticable species. Even McNeill claims this theory to be interesting and widely accepted. In this theory, Diamond states the requirements necessary for animals to be domesticated (for example, the ability to rapidly grow, breed well in captivity, and have a suitable disposition), and the requirements for plants to be domesticated (for example, climate and abundant native plants). Diamond’s book is helpful in understanding history and does a commendable job in its organizational structure by laying out in each paragraph his arguments and claims. However, in class discussion some holes were brought to surface within his theory that were not well explained or understood. For example, Diamond bases his argument on the ability to domesticate certain animals off of the attitudes of current domestic animals. He states that Zebras are nasty biters, grow to be angrier as they grow older, and even gives a current example of zebras injuring

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