Guns, Germs, And Steel By Jared Diamond

In this chapter, Jared Diamond recalls the greatest collision in modern history. Atahualpa’s, Incan emperor, capture by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro was known as the biggest population shift in modern history. When he Europeans colonized the Americas, Native Americans were nearly wiped out as the biggest population shift occurred. As Diamond depicts the story, he includes eyewitness writings to describe the fight at Cajamarca. The Spaniards were able to win the fight due to weapons, and not to anything other considering they had fewer soldiers than the Incans. Steel swords and chainmail armor played a colossal part in the defeat of Native Americans. The sight of horses confused many Native Americans, as they had never seen one. The

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

The transition from the traditional hunter gatherer societies, in to an agriculture based living system, has allowed humans to increase their population size, putting strains on the Earth’s environment. Agriculture has also brought along with it a decrease in women’s roles in the community, while also bringing about a class system where the wealthy rule, and were the weak and poor obey. As humans began to domesticate more plants and animals, they settled in permanent areas. The Change from hunter gatherer benefited few, but had dire consequences for the earth and groups with in it. One such consequence was the population increase, which has lead to major issues throughout history, and one that has ties to current global issues.

Assessing how environmental and geographical factors, such as location and availability of resources have affected and continue to affect the development, distribution, and diffusion of the human race over time is intriguing. There are several examples of how society’s start and why. One example is the site of ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of the world’s first civilizations. Diffusion is the movement of things and ideas from one culture to another. When diffusion occurs, the form of a trait such as tea drinking may move from one society to another but not its original cultural meaning. Two significant

From the early prehistoric society until now, we often heard the word “adaptation”, which means the process of changing something or changing our behavior to deal with new situations. The ways people adjust their natural environment varies according to time, place, and tribe. Foraging is common way of adaptation that people uses for most of human history; however because of the population pressure, some people adopt agriculture to fulfill their need. This essay, will discuss the positive and negative aspects of life in hunting and gathering societies compared to the agricultural societies based on Martin Harris’ article “Murders in Eden” and Jared Diamond’s article “The Worst Mistake in the History of Human Race.”

Out of the five themes of geography, Guns, Germs and Steel shows place, movement and human/environment interaction. The theme of place in this book has to do with the physical characteristics of a place, the climate, bodies of water, vegetation, land formations, and animal life. These are some of the main focuses of my book, especially with it having a strong emphasis on “geographical luck” the different environments that the book talks about are all based around what’s inside the place of the book. Early man wouldn’t have thrived as greatly if they were in a harsh environment or place. The next theme is movement, another important theme in the book. Movement has to do with people communicating, trading, even sharing ideas. In the book, it

Diamond addresses many things about how interacting or being near different animals can cause different diseases that typically spreads to humans. Germs can be passed on from animals to humans when then can be passed on to other humans. All humans have different types of effects to these germs. Diamond says, “In an epidemic those people with genes for resistance to that particular microbe are more likely to survive than are people lacking such genes” (Diamond 201). Some people can be more immune to some diseases due to being more genetically resistant to the particular disease, but, there are others who are not immune to the diseases which can lead to death quickly. Those that are not immune to the disease can be wiped out causing them to die and not be able to create their own family. This can affect the way on how the individual differs in the way the germs effect them. Diamond says, “The rapid spread of microbes, and the rapid course of symptoms, mean that everybody in a local human population is quickly infected and soon thereafter is either dead or else recovered and immune” (Diamond 203). Generally, humans with weak immune systems usually die off without having a family and then, there are others that are immune to diseases. But if one person is exposed to the disease, many others are then exposed to it because of it spreading to others rapidly.

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.

health. Hunter-gatherers have a varied diet, however, early farmers gained poor nutrition and cheap calories. In addition, farmers ran the risk of starvation due to the dependence on crops. Diamond states that agriculture encouraged the creation of civilizations, which then led to the spread of infectious diseases and parasites that can seriously jeopardize our health. Social inequality between deep class divisions came out of agriculture as well. According to research on skeletons from ancient times, royals had better diets than the commoners due to the fact that they were a few inches taller and had better teeth than them. Thus, Jared Diamond supports his claim that agriculture was a terrible mistake made in human history due to inequality, bad health, and a difference in lifestyles between hunter-gatherers and

Diamond explains that our worst mistake was the transition from hunter-gathers to farmers. Diamond believes that humans were better off chasing our food rather than planting it due to the consequences that followed after such a dramatic change of life. His reasoning expands further out than one might think of about this subject. He talks about the social changes that were created when agriculture began. Diamond spews empowering points that leave a reader pondering if he is correct. People are only sure of how the world is now but the possibilities are endless on what our world could have been if agriculture had not begun.

In his book, The Cross and the Switchblade, David Wilkerson explains how his ministry started. Over 15 million people have read his book which was published in 1962 through The Berkley Publishing Group, and in 1969, his book became a Hollywood motion picture that reached over 50 million people. Wilkerson did not stop at this book. In fact, he continued to write over 30 more books. (Worldchallenge.org, 2014, pg. 1) With that said, The Cross and the Switchblade 's thesis statement is that the Holy Spirit is in charge.

One of the greatest revolutions in the history of homo sapiens was the adoption of agriculture, which changed the face of communities at every level of class. Though this change was built upon new ideas and allowed us to provide more food for more people, was it in fact a positive change at the time? Today in 2017, we can all look around and see where the agricultural revolution has gotten us in the long run, but authors such as Yuval Noah Harari (2011) claim that during the infancy of the agricultural revolution, life for the average citizen was often a worse one than that of the common forager. A change in food production created many other changes, such as permanent human settlement, biologically unconventional labor, and a larger population density. This paper explores the pros and cons of the agricultural society and the hunter-gatherer society

Secondly, a factor of the environment which assisted in the advancement of Eurasia was the immunity to diseases. With the domestication of animals, came several diseases. When raising livestock people interact with animals more than if they were hunting the animal. The animals have to be cleaned, fes and cooperated on a daily basis. The interaction between animals and humans, allows germs to evolve in order to spread onto a human host. Most lethal diseases come from animals or other living things. “(Think of AIDS, an explosively spreading human disease that appears to have evolved from a virus resident in wild African monkeys.)” (Diamond, pg. 197) Additionally, leprosy came from dogs, syphilis originated in sheep, and smallpox originally was

The movement of disease started with movement of diseases from animals to humans, and then those diseases became exclusively human-borne diseases. The movement of diseases followed closely the movement of humans. The propagation of the different diseases depended on new hosts without immunity, so if an infected person came into contact with a group of people who have not been exposed to that particular disease, the disease was able to spread among those people (Diamond). As the newly infected people traveled around, new infections occurred. In this case, the movement of both human hosts of the bacteria or viruses served as a form of population control. As long as the population of an area did not exceed its carrying capacity and did not grow faster than the environment could recover, then humans could interact with the environment in a sustainable manner. Disease spread from Europe to the Americas when the Europeans came first as explorers, then as conquerors. The Europeans brought with them smallpox, syphilis, and other diseases (Diamond). These diseases decimated the populations of the indigenous peoples, making it easier for the conquistadors to conquer them (Discovery Channel 03.07.04). A reason why the Europeans

She was a writer, a politician and the winner of the Nobel Prize of literature in 1991. Spring, the city where she was born, was a complex and rigid small mining town where only black Africans worked in the gold mines, with nothing on their side, and a lot of disadvantages.