Guns Germs And Steel Analysis

Diamond describes the early parts of human history in a broad scope towards the beginning of the book. He focuses on both the evolution and spread of human beings, arguing that some civilizations had a head start over other ones because of when the period of human evolution took place. He explains how different environments shaped human history through an a example of how populations which inhabited the Polynesian islands developed differently due to the different environments and then by telling the stories about what happened as populations with better geographical advantages encountered more disadvantaged populations in the Americas. Diamond explains the many factors that influenced the historical progression of different societies. Diamond argues how food production was very much a primary factor in the advancement of each society. Societies

Eventually, after much deliberation, I decided that there is really only one argument of his that I can form a solid argument against. At one point in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond asserts that a factor in the inability to produce excess food in the Americas and Australia was a lack of large mammals. He lists fourteen animals, among which are the cow and the sheep, as the most influential animals of human history. Only one of which, the alpaca, is found in the Americas. Jared Diamond’s entire argument in this instance is that because Europeans were around these animals and could domesticate them, their society could grow at a more rapid rate. I find this argument to be somewhat farfetched, as if the existence of cows in North and South America could have allowed the Native American societies there to develop a complex society rivaling those of Europe and Asia. But what about other species of animal that were in America? Diamond lists the yak even though it exists only in areas around Nepal. Surely the advantages of the yak are about that of the buffalo in North America? What makes them superior? Is it because they were domesticated, and if so, what is it that they did better than the buffalo? Buffalo were abundant in North America when Native societies were prominent, and American Indian societies hunted and used nearly all of their bodies. Buffalo were very large, providing a lump sum of meat along with sturdy bones for tool making. Another argument Diamond makes is that the outcome at Cajamarca may have been different had the Native Americans been able to charge the Spanish with cavalry. However, the numbers would still be the same, and surely if tens of thousands of Natives could not overcome a few dozen Spaniards, what difference would horses make? The answer is most likely a miniscule one. Despite all of his rather interesting and credible

Despite this professional tone, Diamond never really becomes overwhelmingly boring because of brief anecdotes at throughout the chapters or by directly addressing the audience at times with rhetorical questions. He tends to be incredibly generalizing at times with many of his explanations until he gets into minutiae later on, but it's understandable considering that "Guns, Germs, and Steel" compacts the last ten thousand years of human history into a few hundred pages. One would expect him to structure the book chronologically, but the nature of the question Diamond is trying to answer leads to it depending largely on explaining causes and effects in reverse. Take his explanation of the advantages of farming for example. He emphasizes first the impacts that successful farming of crops and domestic animals allowed, then explains why people began to farm crops in the first place two chapters later and domesticated animals five chapters later. Overall, this leads to a fairly effective strategy of pulling readers in more and more, offering how one factor leads to one particular event or development which causes the audience to demand an explanation as to how or why that factor arose and why it allowed for one result over another, creating a constant but pleasing cycle of asking questions and having them

During the Neolithic Revolution, as civilizations changed from hunters and gatherers to farmers, a social stability was created. Due to geography and the great natural advantage of the land, the domestication of animals and development of agriculture led to great changes in society. In the geographical area of Eurasia, the land was spread far from east to west which allowed for trading and sharing of crops, animals, and ideas. In the Americas, due to the more north to south layout with climate zones and geographical boundaries, it was hard to trade and to share ideas and such. This led to the Eurasians diverse and dense population to be more immune to the germs that over time, led to the wipeout of the Americas populations. In the beginning of the book, Diamond presents a question from a politician and friend, Yali. The question asked why Europeans had the ability to conquer other societies around the world. Throughout his book, Diamond goes

According To, “Guns,Germs,and Steel” by Jared Diamond,was written to discuss what led to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. Jared Mason Diamond was born September 10,1937.He wrote this article to answer Yali’s Question “ Why Is It That You White People Have So Much Cargo And We Black People Have So Little?” This article is was published in March 1997. He is a professor of geography and physiology at the University Of California,Los Angeles. Diamond was on an mission to answer Yalis Question. He wanted to know why was there such diffusion based on their ethnicity and living area.I agree that these major aspects led to the unequal distribution of wealth and power over the world. Jared Diamond believed that diffusion,trade,disease,

The beginning of the book explains to the reader how geography and environmental factors impacted the initial formation of societies, and goes on to illustrate how food production comes into play in creating larger societies that were capable of supporting a larger population. Life on each continent were also compared, as a way for the readers to understand how developmentally different they were. Throughout the book, the information Diamond provides allows readers to steadily build knowledge as he did during his travels, understanding the process of answering Yali ’s question. In the epilogue, these different aspects were evaluated and linked together, ultimately creating a conclusive and logical answer to the posed

Beginning his scientific career in physiology, then expanding into evolutionary biology and biogeography Jared Diamond is the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel. On July 1972, Mr. Diamond visited New Guinea where he studied bird evolution along a beach. He met a local New Guinean named Yali, who would ask Diamond a question, which would take him twenty-five years to try to find an answer. Yali’s questions, "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?.” Guns, Germs, and Steel attempt to answer Yali’s question through following the first civilizations. Diamond discusses why some societies were able to develop writing, agriculture, change from framers to gathers while other societies stayed the same.

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

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond is a thought-provoking book that looks for an explanation as to why some societies are more substantially successful than others. Diamond explains, this is a study of history’s “haves” and “have nots.” The author makes many compelling arguments that indicates the difference between human societies is not because of differences with the intelligence of different people, but the differences in their environments. Diamond argues Eurasia has always been more materially successful because the Eurasian land mass and environment has obvious natural advantages. He supports his argument by explaining three major points,there were more varieties of grains for large scale farming, more species of large animals could

Book Review on Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs and Steel Why is it that Europeans ended up conquering so much of the world? Or as Yali puts it in the far beginning of the book, 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? Despite all the contrary evidence from anthropology and human biology, many persist in attributing the differing political and economic successes of the worlds peoples to historical contingency. On the other hand though, the author sees the fundamental causes as environmental, resting ultimately on ecological differences between the continents and as he well puts it on page 25 Authors are regularly asked by journalists to summarize a long

Farming, I learned, has an enormous impact on the growth of civilization. So much so, that Diamond spends seven chapters on the control food had over how successful a certain region became. Animals are integral to the success of human beings and that is why the shift from hunting-gathering to farming and domestication

Tris finds Christina and a comatose Uriah. Christina informs Tris of Tobias's arrest for his involvement with Nita's group.

In the prologue, “Yali’s Question”, the author Jared Diamond is determined to answer the puzzling question his New Guinean friend, Yali, poses. Yali was curious to know why some areas of the world developed industrial cities with steel tools while other areas remained hunter-gatherer societies with crude stone tools. Even though Europe was one nation that rose to world power, Jared Diamond believes that discussing this topic does not mean that it will revolve around Europeans. He says, “In fact, most of this book will deal with peoples other than Europeans. Rather than focus solely in interactions between Europeans and non-Europeans, we shall also examine interactions between different non-European peoples...”. Each continent advanced

The author; Jared Diamond made a very convincing point that Eurasia was the most dominant region in the world rather than any other regions in the world. Factors like Eurasia had east and west axis, more domesticated animals and plants, and with easier geography and climate environment to adapt to. The location of many regions heavily depend on the location in which they are in, making some areas easier to survive in. The questions could be easily answered by the thesis with many example to prove them true. The Polynesians were the islands on the Pacific Ocean between the Americas and Japan. The Maoris were farmers were farmers in New Zealand with more land and more resources than the Morioris. The Morioris lived in the Chatham Islands with

In the book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. The Fates of Human Societies, it explain how the world came to be, answering the question of “why wasn’t there any New World diseases that wiped out the Europeans” or “why some societies are still primitive.” According to Diamond, agriculture and domestication allowed humans to have social stability and to specialize. He also explains that a major factor for this global imbalance was the presence of mega-fauna. The Americas’ and Australia’s mega-fauna died out millions of years before humans had the chance to domesticate them. Another critical component was that Eurasia’s continent is spread out east to west while the Americas were spread north to south. By having a horizontal axis, the Eurasian