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.

Jared Diamond is a professor at UCLA, a biologist by training, and a specialist in human physiology. He is trying to figure out how the Europeans developed advantages of military power, lethal microbes and advanced technologies in the first place. His quest was to uncover the roots of inequality.

The “Factors Underlying the Broadcast Pattern of History” chart shows the spreading and domesticating of plants and animals and the pros and cons of it on civilization. I agree with the author that when you have domesticated animals in the civilization food storage and surpluses; large dense, sedentary, stratified societies with political

Chapter 1: Up to the Starting Line – In this chapter Jared Diamond attempts to answer Yali’s question by explaining how and where some of the first human settlements were located and where the earliest signs of evolution are. Diamond explains how many settlements had a clear advantage over others due to where they were located. He then shows the advantage by stating “… the earliest human fossil in Europe, the earliest evidence of domesticated corn in Mexico, or the earliest evidence anywhere…” This shows how the advantages played out. Diamond then goes on to explain how certain civilizations needed to adapt differently to survive. Diamonds last point describes how many of the civilizations were colonized and how certain colonies developed much

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?"

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

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.

Many historians and politicians ponder over the reason why Europeans have much more wealth and power than other ethnicities. However, this question was abandoned and rarely brought up because there wasn’t enough evidence to have a clear answer. Yali, a local politician in New Guinea, asked a similar 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?” Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, believes that the differences in wealth and power between different groups of people is because of the environmental differences. An event that helped answer this question was when the Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro easily defeated the Incas despite having only a few men because of their geographical location, resulting advanced military technology, and writing.

At the beginning of the book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond, the question is posed by Yali, as to why people of European decent are rich and why people in New Guinea are poor. Throughout the book, Diamond explains that the geography is what made Europe better because it gave them guns, germs, and steel which enabled them to conquer other nations. Chapter three of this book entitled “Collision at Cajamarca” specifically examines the Spanish conquering of the Incan Empire in 1532. As Diamond tells, Inca emperor Huayna Capac and his heir were killed by a smallpox epidemic brought to the New World by Spanish settlers in Panama and Columbia. This sparked a civil war between half brothers Atahuallpa and Huascar.

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.

Jared Diamond starts off his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel with stating his attempt to answer Yali’s question, “Why is it that you white people developed much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own.” Diamond elaborates and brings to simpler terms how Yali’s question relates to many questions on the origins of humans, but more specifically, how Eurasians, the white people mentioned by Yali, came to successfully dominate the rest of the world. In the prologue, Diamond mainly drives his point of the “effects of continental environments on history over the past 13,000 years” as to what he believes is the main root to why Eurasians came to dominate so successfully. Alongside of continental environments,

In the prologue of Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond introduces readers to a question posed to him by Yali, a New Guinean politician. Yali inquired about the reason for different developmental rates of civilizations, and Diamond, who couldn’t explain at the time, began to search for the answer. Diamond links certain “power factors,” such as advanced weaponry, certain diseases, and metal tools, to the rate of advancement in civilizations. However, the causes for the creation and use of the “power factors” in some civilizations, but not others, remains an unsolved mystery. In the prologue, fittingly titled “Yali’s Question,” Diamond expresses his belief that throughout history, civilizations develop

When reading the title of Jared Diamond’s, “Guns, Germs, and Steels,” the readers must initially think how do these three connect? After starting the first few chapters they will realize that Diamond is referring to the proximate and ultimate factors in that lead to the advancement of society. When Diamond talks about proximate and ultimate factors, he is explaining the cause of European dominance in the world. The proximate factors are the one that directly led to the European dominance and the ultimate factors are the ones that let to proximate factors. I believe that this book is referring to the Homo sapiens revolutionizing through the years, through the Neolithic Revolution through agriculture and industrialization.

In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond explains why throughout history the people of Eurasia have politically and economically dominated the rest of the world. With an American’s perspective and his extensive study of geography, Diamond argues that the geography of Eurasia, not the assumed innate superiority of the Eurasian people, is responsible for Eurasian dominance. I agree with his thesis as a general statement about the development of civilizations, but I believe it is an incomplete view of history.

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