Yali's Questions

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.

Yali’s question is “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?” In a broader sense, why did some things progress in some areas, but not in others?

Throughout Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond explains the importance of geography in the ways ancient civilizations grew and spread and how some areas were more advanced than others. He began his research when he was asked a question by a Papua New Guinea residence, Yali. Yali had asked Diamond “[w]hy you white man have so much cargo and we New Guineans have so little?” At that point Diamond had no answer and he was curious to find out why Eurasia had a head start in civilizing people meanwhile the other continents were behind. As a result, several differences were made between countries that did not have the same resources as those who were advanced. Some of the developing countries were poor and they had to rely on whatever was given to them through nature. When Diamond went to Papua New Guinea, he discovered that the residences of the island had the same routine as those in the ancient civilizations of Eurasia. They would often hunt for animals and used stone weapons instead of metal.

Knowledge isn’t all about what people know or how well they are in school. IQ tests test the intelligence of the person; however they test the pure thinking capacity rather than what people know. This means that intelligence comes from the entire cognitive thinking ability and not what they

1. Summarize Yali’s question. This requires mentioning race, intelligence, and development of technology.  Yali asks "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?" What Yali is asking is about the origins of inequality between countries and societies in the world.  He wants to know why people of European descent are rich and powerful while people like him lack wealth and power. He is questioning the issues of race and technology.  He wants to know if there is something "wrong" with non-white people that make them unable to be as advanced technology as white people.

Yali asks Professor Diamond "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?" Professor Diamond’s possible interpretation of this statement could be broken down as such: Why do Europeans create so many inventions and manufactured goods to bring elsewhere? This applies the concept that people of Eurasian origin tend to dominate the world in wealth and power.

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

2. Does writer acknowledge the counterargument to his position? How? Does he then concede any of the counterarguments points, or does he instead try to undercut them?

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.

In the book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies” by Jared Diamond, one of the World History Thinking Skills shown was Skill Two: Chronological Reasoning. A specific example of this skill is represented in the quote, “Besides permitting sedentary living and hence the accumulation of possessions, food production was decisive in the history of technology...it became possible...to develop economically specialized societies consisting of non-food-producing specialists feed by food-producing peasants” (250). Diamond reasons that transitioning from a nomadic hunter-gathers lifestyle to a food producing sedentary lifestyle led to the advancement of technology and thence a more centralized and well structured society; all of which

From the beginning of the book, Diamond focuses on answering Yali’s question. Yali is a New Guinean, who out of curiosity would ask Diamond questions, one of which was hard for Diamond to answer. That question was, "Why is it that you white people developed so much

Intelligence tests are inaccurate to measures true ability of a person because genes affect how a person responds to their surroundings, the tests cannot measure the person biological makeup or his true potential for being “smart”.

This book review is on Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. The book was very interesting but a lot of the information could have been cut because it’s a bit too long. Jared Diamond is a scientist, not a historian and he’s American. He upset many historians around the world by the way he bashes Europeans. However, he did win a Pulitzer Prize for the book so that says something.

I first read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel in the Fall 2003 based on a recommendation from a friend. Many chapters of the book are truly fascinating, but I had criticisms of the book back then and hold even more now. Chief among these is the preponderance of analysis devoted to Papua New Guinea, as opposed to, say, an explanation of the greatly disparate levels of wealth and development among Eurasian nations. I will therefore attempt to confine this review on the "meat and potatoes" of his book: the dramatic Spanish conquest of the Incas; the impact of continental geography on food production; and finally, the origins of the Eurasian development of guns, germs, and steel. In terms of structure, I will first summarize the

Preview of Main Points: in order to back up my argument, I’ve come up with three points to discuss: