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

In fact, starting on this topic raises the first big question, why did older civilizations not conquer the world? Of course, Eurasians had to be superior in some aspects in order for this area and culture to thrive today. By pondering this question were are faced with yet another-

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.

While a landmass’s orientation determines its basic resources and geographical advantages, the large societies that this constructs produce the technology. Diamond surmises that increased food production leads to populous nations. He notes that, “more consumable calories means more people” (Diamond 87). Because the United States obtains food though both trade and agriculture, it has always had an excellent chance to become large and urban. The larger civilization, the easier conquest becomes. In his chapter titled How China Became Chinese, Jared Diamond explains that China has, “steamrolled,” neighboring nations so often because they had a, “head start in food production” (Diamond 332). The United States subjugated their Native American neighbors using the same assets—both livestock and plants. These large societies have always required a government and

In “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” by Jared Diamond, Diamond starts to question why Europeans generally are so ahead than other countries and civilizations. Diamond wonders if any of this has to do because of race. Throughout his book, Diamond tries to answer 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?” (Diamond 14). This question can be answered by numerous factors that had affected many civilizations that put Europe on the top. One key factor was diseases. Diseases had either helped or hurt civilizations and it had impacted the fate of human society. Diseases have caused many civilizations to either become stronger or weaker. The most

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

I also oppose Diamond’s theory on geography, because he does not visualize the opportunities of the people who inhabited unique or unsuitable territories. (3)The Inca people of South America, for example, resided in their ancient territories for thousands of years, because they found it their “Sacred Land,” because it was where their son of the sun, Manco Capac, found it appropriate to inhabit. Since they had such a great empire, they undoubtedly could have migrated to any foreign land they desired, as they had the skills to construct rafts and labor-transportation technologies. They did not migrate, however, because their lord found it necessary to have sacrifices of people only in the ancient temples near their homeland. As soon as they met a team of European explorers with their superior technology, they were flabbergasted when their entire empire was conquered. They could have had contact with the world by migrating, so they might

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

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

Diamond deduced that Europeans were only able to conquer the world because they possessed the agents of conquest: steel, germs and guns. Diamond believes that geographical inequality is the sole cause for the discrepancy in development between western nations and the impoverished regions. The development of productive farming enabled certain civilizations to develop specialized skills such as writing, trade and politics. As a result, most of technology that developed from these endeavors spread evenly through Europe and Asia. Isolated regions and islands such as the Inca and Papua New Guinea were left unexposed to these advancements.

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)

Just like I stated before, in 11,000 BCE, everyone was just about hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gathering used as an economic system is pretty much extinct and will be next decades and centuries to come. Diamond argues that food production was the cause for the Eurasia people to develop the guns, germs, and steel that took over the rest of the world. When there is a lot of food being grown and produced in an area, there will be more people to increase that population. Agriculture developed in different parts of the world and most of the places were not very fertile at all and some places never heard of farming and herding. Diamonds asks several questions as in why the herding techniques start to develop during different times in different places and why it took so long to spread to other areas, so we compare the fertile Mediterranean climates. New Guinea had some limitations such as no domestic large animals, no protein foods, and no cereal crops like large-seeded wild grasses. Eurasia's size, population, and orientation makes them have an advantage as to why they are more dominant than other

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