Guns Germs And Steel Summary

Chapter 3: Pizzaro’s capture of Atahuallapa explains why the Europeans colonized the New World instead of the Native AMericans colonizing Europe because the Spanish haas swords, shields and rode horses; luxuries the Incas didn’t have. This also relates to the Native Americans and Europeans because the Europeans also had technological benefits over the Native Americans.

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

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

“Ender did not hesitate. He stepped on the head of the snake and crushed it under his foot. It writhed and twisted under him and in response he twisted and ground it deeper into the stone floor… And in the mirror he saw a face that he easily recognized. It was Peter.” (117)

Diamond goes into incredible detail, especially in his chapter “The Lethal Gift of Livestock” of his proposed history of germs in relation to humans. He considers the difference in domesticated animals in the old world and new world, attributes their power to the downfall of the Incan and Aztec empires when he writes, “...the most advanced native societies of North America...their destruction was accomplished largely by germs alone.”(373-373, Diamond) It is fact that populations

In the book, Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, the author asks many questions about histories of the world. These question are questions that lie in the main question Jared Diamond is trying to answer. In the Prologue, the author discussed about his personal experience in New Guinea where a local politician asked him the major 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). When further exploring the meaning of this question it could represent why major civilizations developed and advanced so much faster technologically and economically but other civilizations like New Guineans are behind in these advancements. Which could explain

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

Guns, Germs, and Steel starts off with an interesting conversation in the Prologue between the author, Jared Diamond, and a friend he made in New Guinea, a politician named Yali. Yali raises the question that why the rest of the world has so much of what he refers to as “cargo”, or in a broad sense technology, compared to his homeland of New Guinea which becomes the central focus for the entire book. The first chapter begins with the origins of humans and what Diamond calls the “Great Leap Forward” where the first tools, writings and paintings began to appear, as well as watercraft in aboriginal Australia and New Guinea. Then discussing the Ice Ages, leading up to the recent era and extinction of many large animals globally as humans began to spread out. Next Diamond uses the example of The Maoris and the Morioris in the Chatham Islands in 1835 and how one culture and civilization is able to overrun another due to geography, resources, and many other things and how that can lead

1.Jared Diamond states that the environment of a race determines whether or not it’s going to survive.

To begin with, the Eurasian land mass had much larger animals. These large animals could be domesticated and bred for a virtually never ending meat supply. To add, some of these animals produced milk which also is a key to human development. In the Americas large animals were a rare sight and many species were separated from civilizations. Also, a majority of large animal “species went extinct in North and South America at the end of the Pleistocene” (106). Some species in Eurasia also went extinct, but the extinctions were not as noticeable due to the fact that there was not as many natural barriers separating animals and humans. Eurasia not only had larger animals than the Americas, Eurasia also had better farming.

This chapter focuses on the meeting of the two societies and discusses the causes of one having a greater dominance over the other. The Europeans led to dominance and beat with factors such as horses, guns, steel weapons, ships, diseases, and politics. Referring to the title, these guns, germs, and steels that the Europeans possessed helped them overcome and defeat the Incas, however it is because of the ultimate factors they had. The Europeans unlike the Incas had a lot of domesticated plants and animals, and it could be considered an agricultural revolution. They also lived in a better area, which helped them develop the proximate factors. Raising plants and animals were the \ most important factors of the civilizational differences of the past and present. Food production, industries, and cities arose. Food production had led to the industrialization and the “cargoes”

The beneficial continental circumstances enjoyed by Eurasians first appears in vegetation. The Fertile Crescent was endowed with diverse, abundant, and highly productive cereals and pulses such as wheat, barley, and pea that yielded both starch and protein. These food staples were domesticated very quickly and with little effort by Eurasians, whose newfound farms gave rise to specialization and division of labor. Conversely, in the Americas, the sole cereal crop of corn took many more thousands of years of domesticated refinement to prove useful to humans. Mr. Diamond also places great emphasis on the geographic East-West orientation of Eurasia. A plant growing at a given latitude can grow at that latitude the world over. Thus, Eurasia's East-West orientation was highly conducive to the rapid spread (by trade) of productive domesticated grains across the continent. Conversely, the Americas, Africa, and Australia were impaired by their North-South orientation, which dictated that domesticated plants from people of one latitude were of little use to their neighbors to the North and South. Compounding the effect, the trade of agricultural technology in Eurasia ultimately led to trade in other things, such as technological advances, including writing and language