Guns Germs and Steel Chapter 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.

The first consideration Diamond discusses is that just because something happened and that it would have happened anyway, it does not make the act good or just. The second consideration is that the most powerful region, in this case, western Europe, should not be the only one talked about because ideas and practices that are now or were at that time integrated into their culture were not necessarily developed by them, but by other culture that imported their beliefs into European culture. The third

Prologue: Yali’s question for word for word was “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?” Yali is asking about the inequalities of the world, he is wondering why his people have little to nothing, and the Europeans have so much money and power. He wants to know if there is something “wrong” with people like him.

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.

Many geographers have attempted creating a unified theory explaining why cultures advance much more readily than others. Very few have actually reached mainstream society and even fewer seem reasonable. However, Jared Diamond shines where most do not. His book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, proposes an idea that has long been established called environmental determinism. Most view environmental determinism as a racist theory attributing a peoples’ intelligence only to their oppressive climates and geographical barriers. Diamond instead has created a theory that applies environmental determinism to only a peoples’ technology—not the people themselves. This has given researchers valuable tools that allow them to explain why some nations have

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

In the novel Guns Germs and Steel, an American biologist named Jared Diamond is attempting to answer a question from a New Guinean politician named Yali, in July 1972. Yali asked him: (1)“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people hat little cargo of our own?” For over thirty years, Diamond was investigating our inferred history for clues, to answer Yali’s question. He published a scientific opinion that explains how geography is to blame for the dispersal of power, as few societies and civilizations inhabiting in the Middle East had access to resources, such as the seeds of highly nutritious crops alike wheat and barley, and useful livestock such as cow and sheep, which others

1. Summarize Yali’s question. This requires mentioning race, intelligence, and development of technology.  Yali asks "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?" What Yali is asking is about the origins of inequality between countries and societies in the world.  He wants to know why people of European descent are rich and powerful while people like him lack wealth and power. He is questioning the issues of race and technology.  He wants to know if there is something "wrong" with non-white people that make them unable to be as advanced technology as white people.

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

Yali’s question is: “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 the book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies” by Jared Diamond, one of the World History Thinking Skills shown was Skill Two: Chronological Reasoning. A specific example of this skill is represented in the quote, “Besides permitting sedentary living and hence the accumulation of possessions, food production was decisive in the history of technology...it became possible...to develop economically specialized societies consisting of non-food-producing specialists feed by food-producing peasants” (250). Diamond reasons that transitioning from a nomadic hunter-gathers lifestyle to a food producing sedentary lifestyle led to the advancement of technology and thence a more centralized and well structured society; all of which

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

Going from gatherer to farming occurred gradually, the decision was made by the availability of game and gatherables, and the pressures of population to how much is going to be grown

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