Guns Germs And Steel Summary

Yali met Jared Diamond on a beach over 30 years ago in New Guinea and Yali’s question was “Why you white man have so much cargo and we New Guineans have so

The reason Pizarro succeeded was he had originally gained the trust of Atahualpa and then captured him and used his advanced weaponry to conquer the Incans

1. Yali's question; "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 the historical book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” by Jared Diamond, Diamond attempts to provide an understanding to the inequality in modern times. He attempted to provide this understanding by stepping 13,000 years back and figuring out why each continent had a different history from one another. Diamond first got inspired to discover the reasons for this inequality in New Guinea, where he was studying bird evolution. In the prologue, he explained how it was one simple question from his friend Yali, a local politician of New Guinea, that aroused his curiosity and pushed him to write this book. While on a walk with his friend, Diamond was asked, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black

In Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, he starts the prologue off by introducing the reader a question, Yali's question, “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 the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond set’s out to answer Yali's question by touching on a few main categories, such as food production, writing, technology, government, and religion.

In Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, Diamond’s explains that Europeans progressed faster than Native Americans technologically. Since the beginnings of time Europeans advanced faster than Native Americans, but why? To begin with, the Eurasian land mass had more species of large animals to domesticate. In addition, Eurasia had more varieties of grains for large scale farming. Finally, Eurasia was more accessible for trade between civilizations.

Jared Diamond delves deep into humanity’s history in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel in attempt to answer a question imposed upon him by Yali, a New Guinean politician. Diamond weaves together many theories and historical examples, such as the Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro’s defeat of the Incas, to explain why humans have developed at vastly differing rates. Yali asked a question that had stumped historians for decades and Diamond dissects and reassembles the phrasing often. In order to give his most complete answer, the author takes a look at both post 1500s inequalities, and differing rates of development throughout human times. The examination of Pizarro’s defeat of the large Inca force came first at the battlefield and continued

In the book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, the author was trying to conceive the explanations behind the idea that why did other societies dominated others and why those dominated could not dominate the other society. In the beginning of the book, the author, Jared Diamond, revisit his past experiences in New Guinea. There, Diamond meets a friend, Yali, who asks him a question of why did the whites had been successful and arrived with large quantities of cargo compared to the local people in New Guinea. From there, the author writes his book to explain Yali’s question. In each of the chapters, the author then uses events and facts to support his answer for Yali’s question. Diamond wasn’t trying to teach the reader history but also to point out that

Yali’s question, based on Professor Diamond, asks, why is it that countries arising from people of caucasian descent had gained immense power and industrial development while the people of New Guinea and other “black” countries had gained little material development or global power and influence?

“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?” (Diamond, 14). This is the question that Jared Diamond seeks to answer in his manuscript Guns, Germs, and Steel. This question was asked by a man known as Yali during Diamond’s time in New Guinea. This question “concerned only the contrasting lifestyles of New Guineans and of European whites, it can be extended to a larger set of contrasts within the modern world,” (Diamond 15). What we can take from Yali’s question is this: why did sophisticated societies begin where they did and how did they do so? Why was it that Europeans conquered the Americas, and not that Native Americans conquered Europe? Why were

Jared Diamond has done much research in New Guinea.  His friend, local New Guinean; Yali, asked why whites had been so successful compared to the locals.  Diamond, while looking into Yali’s question, wants to prove that the differences in success have nothing to do with racial intelligence, but rather environmental differences. He starts with saying that stone people "are on the average probably more intelligent, not less intelligent, than industrialized peoples." He says the New Guineans may not be technologically smart like Europeans, but they are a lot fitter than any European put in their environment. He traces back these differences in the folds of history.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. Print.

The chapter elaborates on many environmental factors that could have impacted the difference noted in the culture and way of living for these two groups of people. The chapter continues with various examples supporting this thesis.

Yali's question is how and why the whites were able to so greatly surpass the New Guineans. He asked Jared Diamond to supply him with an answer as to why his people, the New Guineans, differed so greatly from the white colonialists. New Guineans were viewed as primitive in the Europeans eyes since they still used tools of stone, whereas the whites had been utilizing metal for thousands of years. Along with openly despising the natives, the whites had imposed their government on the once politically absent villages. In addition, they brought many material goods that New Guineans could easily see had worth, these goods were referred to as “cargo” and are key components to Yali’s question as well as an example of the differences between the two cultures. Upon seeing the great amount of imports, Yali questioned as to why the whites had been able to gather such things and the blacks haven’t. The two races are equal in intellect, but the whites were the ones who colonized New Guinea and introduced its inhabitants to the then ‘modern’ way of things. The whites had also developed a much greater living standard that had encompassed more advances than the blacks, making the target of Yali’s question to find out why. In summary, Yali’s question focuses on the differences between races and how one can greatly affect another.

Guns, Germs, and Steel. This is the title of Jared Diamond’s incredibly powerful book. This title refers to how farming societies were able to take over populations of different locations, regardless of the fact that they did not have equal numbers. Diamond begins with the presentation of a question from a New Guinean politician: why were Europeans able to conquer so many other societies around the world? Despite uprooting some controversy among different scientists, Diamond writes to defend his belief that the answer to this question involves multiple different factors. Whereas some people believe that the success of a society is based on genetics, Diamond focuses on how it is immunity