Guns Germs And Steel Summary

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

The transition to farming was a turning point in human history since people who remained hunter/gatherers couldn’t produce food as quickly as farmers, and couldn’t produce food that could be stored for a long period of time. Instead of roaming to search different locations for food, farming allowed them to drop seeds in soil that grow next to their

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

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

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.

Diamond argues against the possibility of change in climate killing the mammals as he states “Critic respond with a counter theory: perhaps the giants succumbed instead to a change in climate, such a severe drought on the already chronically dry Australian continent. …

Guns, Germs, and Steel is a Pulitzer Prize winning transdisciplinary nonfiction book by Jared Diamond. In the book, Diamond discusses how certain societies are able flourish and succeed and how other societies are not. He attributes this success to their geography, food production, how they domesticated animals, their use of steel, and immunity to germs. To him, these findings are the reason why certain societies succeed and others do not.

In the former part, through showing how diversely Polynesians exploited the natural resources of different Pacific islands Diamond argues two questions: how geography can cause differences among human societies that have a common starting point, and how such features of civilization are resulted from intensive food production. Then, the later part comes the heart of the book---The Rise and Spread of Food Production, in which chapter Diamond addresses the questions of ultimate causation of contemporary human inequalities. In short, Diamond proposes that the more domestication of plant and animal, the more food, and then the denser human populations. The resulting food surpluses and the animal-based means of transporting those surpluses contribute to the development of settled, complex, and technologically innovative societies in Eurasia. However, MCneil thinks that to some extent, Diamond’s views are misguided. Though he accedes that during the early stage of human history when technical skills and organizational coordination were still undeveloped, human societies were indeed closely constrained by the local availability of food, he argues that as time goes by, many factors made the course of human history increasingly autonomous, for example, our greater capacities to reshape the environments to suit our purposes, the multiple of inventions, and the adoption of more effective

In the book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond, Part One talks about what happened on the continents before 11,000 B.C, geography on the Polynesian Islands, and more importantly what happened in Cajamarca to the Inca emperor Atahuallpa when he was captured by the Spaniards. Jared Diamond will explain what happened at Cajamarca and why it was important or more specifically a turning point between different societies. However, he didn’t go into detail about other battles because he feels as if the advancement in technology was clearly shown better in Cajamarca.

Beginning his scientific career in physiology, then expanding into evolutionary biology and biogeography Jared Diamond is the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel. On July 1972, Mr. Diamond visited New Guinea where he studied bird evolution along a beach. He met a local New Guinean named Yali, who would ask Diamond a question, which would take him twenty-five years to try to find an answer. Yali’s questions, "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 attempt to answer Yali’s question through following the first civilizations. Diamond discusses why some societies were able to develop writing, agriculture, change from framers to gathers while other societies stayed the same.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, dives into the past, examining historical developments of societies compared to each other in the form of time, resources, and environment. Diamond summarizes the book in one sentence: “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among themselves” (Diamond 25). Diamond explains that dominance over others reflects the environment in which the people lived, not the people themselves. He backs this explanation with evidence from history in many different areas of history.

The historical book Gun, Germs, and Steel written by Jared Diamond explains a variety of different themes as to why the world came to be as it is today. The differences in technology and advances differing between other countries. Why is Eurasia more advanced and innovated than other continents like, the Americas? Why didn’t every country develop to an equal pace in advancement? Diamond’s major theme is that environmental differences influenced the differences in the world’s society’s not different human intellectuals. He illustrates how agriculture, geography, and diseases influenced these changes.

Jared Diamond’s theory of global differences in his book entitled “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is the result of geography and climate and not human differences such as race and culture. Jared Diamond is a biology professor at the University of California. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. While studying birds in Papua New Guinea he was asked the question of “Why you white men have so much cargo and us New Guineans have so little.”

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)

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