Guns Germs And Steel Summary

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.

Chapter 10: DIfferences in axis orientation affect the diffusion of both inventions and food production. America’s major axis is north-south while Eurasia’s is east-west. According to Diamond a continent with an east-west axis has an advantage over one with a north-south axis. This, in theory, means that a crop developed somewhere can spread East to West but will have difficulty spreading from North to South.

Why do the origins of every major civilization lead to European conquest and settlement? How did Europe somehow gain the upper hand so early in history? Gun, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies delivers a clear theory as to why the Europeans were able to conquer almost the entire world in less then one millennium.

In the book Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond who is a biophysics scientist and a psychologist, set out on a journey to find out the reason behind great achievements and conquest of the Europeans. What is the secret of success of Europeans? His hypothesis was very original and at first looked very simple, it was guns, germs and steel. The journey of Diamond took over 30 years and helped him answer the main questions of human history and what is it that separates humans today from "rich and poor" and from "haves and have not’s." To do this he had to go back when everyone was equal.

1) According to Jared Diamond, the factor that allowed Europeans to develop the forces necessary to conquer vast portions of the world was the geography of the land Europeans lived on.

8. Summarize Diamond’s thesis. This requires you to first understand Yali’s question, and outline how Diamond proposes to answer this question. Diamond thesis is that people are wrong if they say that this is because of culture or anything like that, instead, Diamond wants to look at geographical factors.  He will argue that accidents of geography are what made the Europeans rich and powerful.

Yali’s question puzzles over why the white people have become more successful than others. Diamond states that Eurasian societies were set to dominate from before 3000 B.C. He wants to know why other races are unable to be as advanced with technology and power.

The argument begins with a brief summarization of Diamond’s theory. The main point being that the distribution of wealth or success to countries or continents is decided geographically. And within the geographic category is the importance of farming and domestication of animals. Diamond says Eurasia’s advancement happened because of their

For one the continent contained the largest amount of wild mammals. Another reason is that Eurasia has had the least extinction in the last

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

The published work I selected for this essay was Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. His work delves into the discussion of the development of European, Asian, and North African societies (using the landmass as a whole termed Eurasia) over history, and using the three mentioned lexemes in the novel’s title to explain the most important aspects of societal development- militant technological advancements, ecosystems/ecophysiology, and geopolitics, respectively. Diamond argues that contrary to popular belief, biology is not the generally accepted factor that determined the global cultural hierarchy. Diamond refutes the biological

Human cultures and societies have developed at various rates and achieved different levels of progress over thousands of years, resulting in some societies being labeled as more advanced than others. More advanced societies experienced complex technologies, evident in their tools and innovations, and more refined cultural structures such as social class and government systems. Other societies experienced slower rates of development as they maintained rudimentary lifestyles with simple technologies and social structures. Examining and comparing the varying levels of progress and development achieved by different human societies across the world raises the question of how certain societies developed at a higher rate than others. Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist, and William McNeill, a historian, seek to explain this variation in development with each offering different perspectives. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond chronicles the history of human development through a biogeographical lens and proposes that environmental and biological factors are the main influences on the development of human societies. Diamond’s ideas, however, do not go unchallenged as McNeill presents in his article “History Upside Down”, that anthropological factors pertaining to human cognition are also crucial in explaining how human societies have developed. Although both authors examine human societal development through different lenses, Diamond’s ideas on geographic location and

Main Idea: In Chapter 10, Diamond discusses, why agriculture spread more quickly in Eurasia. He goes on to explain how “axis orientations affected the rate of speed of crops and livestock, and possibly the writing, wheels, and other inventions.”

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