Guns, Germs, And Steel By Jared Diamond

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

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.

C.S. Lewis one said “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny”. Facing hardships and breaking free from their normal world allows the hero inside of people to come out. Many stories document this journey of a hero through the Hero’s Journey Archetype. In the short story “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, a man named Rainsford stumbles upon an island where humans are hunted by a crazed man. The hero’s journey archetype is implemented throughout Rainsford’s experiences in the story. Richard Connell used the Hero’s Journey Archetype to structure the plot and develop the theme that with clever thinking and the use of past experiences, one can succeed at anything.

"Battleground America," written by Jill Lepore, provides a strong history of guns and the way they have changed in the eyes of the American through the years. She proves her point with strong evidence throughout her article, sprinkling it with opinion and argument that is strongly supported. She presents her argument to convince her audience that the open availability of guns allows citizens to undeservingly purchase them by displaying the credibility in her sources, using negative connotations in her speech, and the strength and objectivity only a strong logos appeal can provide.

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.

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.

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.”

One of the most significant mile-stones in the human race is agriculture. Ten-thousand years ago, the practice of farming, cultivating land and soil to produce crops, and domesticating and rearing animals to produce food, wool and other products, opened a door for the beginning of civilization. In the article, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race”, written by Jared Diamond, Diamond contradicts the fact that human history has been a long tale of progress. He argues that agriculture is the reason that the human race is cursed with social and sexual inequality, disease, and despotism. Diamond uses many examples to prove his statement.

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

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.

Jared Diamond is a professor of Geography at UCLA and a world traveler. He believes that in the past 13,000 years of human history, agriculture has lead humans to conquer, develop and prosper and therefore cause the rise of civilizations. In 1972 he was in New Guinea when he met a local named Yali who asked him a simple question that took years for Diamond to answer. Yali said “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [goods] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own”. [Work cited 7] Diamond was profoundly puzzled and couldn’t answer right away. In fact it took him many years to come up with what he thinks is the right answer. ‘Yali’s question’ plays a central role in Professor Diamond’s enquiry into ‘a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years’, leading him into a wide-ranging discussion of the history of human evolution and diversity through a study of migration, socio-economic and cultural adaptation to environmental conditions, and technological diffusion. (Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, p. 22-23)

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.