Guns and Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society by Jared Diamond

Diamond believes that the main reason why people were able to create such a great civilization in Middle East is because they had over produced food so people were able to specialize in labor and produce military, leaders, architects, art and such. But why New Guineans were not able to do the same?

Throughout the book “Stuffed and Starved”, Raj Patel, the author, makes connections between the current state of the world food system, and the Malthusian and Rhodes dilemmas, the first, proposing that the world population is growing exponentially, but the resources to feed this growing population are finite, whereas the second suggests that hunger leads to unrest, hence as long as people are kept fed, they won't revolt. Patel sections the system and points out to the defects at all levels—starting from the fundamental unit—the seed, going broader touching upon redistributors, consumers, corporations, and, above all, governments and policies. The five major areas Patel criticizes I would like to emphasize are: prevalent selection of desirable

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

In Raj Patel’s novel Stuffed and Starved, Patel goes through every aspect of the food production process by taking the experiences of all the people involved in food production from around the world. Patel concludes by eventually blaming both big corporations and governments for their critical role in undermining local, cultural, and sustainable foodways and in so doing causing the key food-related problems of today such as starvation and obesity. In this book of facts and serious crime, Patel's Stuffed and Starved is a general but available analysis of global food struggles that has a goal of enlightening and motivating the general Western public that there is something critically wrong with our food system.

In this chapter, Jared Diamond recalls the greatest collision in modern history. Atahualpa’s, Incan emperor, capture by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro was known as the biggest population shift in modern history. When he Europeans colonized the Americas, Native Americans were nearly wiped out as the biggest population shift occurred. As Diamond depicts the story, he includes eyewitness writings to describe the fight at Cajamarca. The Spaniards were able to win the fight due to weapons, and not to anything other considering they had fewer soldiers than the Incans. Steel swords and chainmail armor played a colossal part in the defeat of Native Americans. The sight of horses confused many Native Americans, as they had never seen one. The

In Chapter 15, “Yali’s People,” of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, the author explains that although Native Australians showed a head start with some early technology, they were soon conquered by Europe. Diamond goes on to explain why and how Australia and New Guinea became to be seen as “backward” states. Diamond explains that although there was a rise in population due to the development of agriculture, they were unable to progress as much as Europeans due to biological and geographical factors.

In Chapter 15, “Yali’s People,” of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, the author explains that although Native Australians showed a head start with some early technology, they were soon conquered by Europe. Diamond goes on to explain why and how Australia and New Guinea became to be seen as “backward” states. Diamond explains that although there was a rise in population due to the development of agriculture, they were unable to progress as much as Europeans due to biological and geographical factors.

Subject: Reflects how these collapse of historical societies features manifest themselves in American society to gain better idea of what our future holds.

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond is an outstanding book about how different societies changed developmentally through time. Diamond tells readers about how many societies developed faster than others and how wealth and power spread throughout different regions of the continents. Wealth was spread unevenly because many societies had less technological advances or developed after another society. Diamond uses a question and answer approach to answers questions about society and the changes many of the societies went through during the Neolithic revolution. Diamond provides a realistic explanation of the development of different societies and different

Thesis: Michael Pollan overlooks the many benefits of the current system of food production, which allows us to produce more food on less land than pre-industrial agriculture. His proposal that the nation switch to a local produce model is not economically feasible for the United States.

Chapter 1: The starting point from which Diamond answers Yali’s question is 11,000 BC, the beginning of village life, 13,000 years ago. Diamond summarizes human history up to that point, starting with humans’ evolution from monkeys 7 million years ago and the Homo erectus 2.5 million years ago, all restricted to Africa and spread from there. The Great Leap Forward corresponds with the first known inhabitants of Eurasia and Australia/New Guinea. Human colonization of new continents and islands links to the extinction of many species, known as the overkill hypothesis or as some believe the climate hypothesis. Humans continued to spread to lands like Siberia and the Americas via Berlin Strait/Berlin Land Bridge leading to Alaska. Although the conditions of each continent were vastly different, someone could not have guessed that Eurasia would be the one to develop the quickest.

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)

Out of the whole article about collapsion of Western civilization, titled "How Western civilisation could collapse" written by "Rachel Nuwer," there's a sentence that I want to reflect on. That sentence is: "One of the most important lessons from Rome’s fall is that complexity has a cost" (Tainter) [1]. A complex society takes good efforts from individuals to lead the society to a prosperous way. As we see in today's world, or specifically, Western countries, there are uncountable programs that governments do that requires so much money; however, no government has that much money to spend, therefore, they build up an enormous national debt that needs to be paid off but it never does. In this situation, as the money is being spent(the money that was never received but borrowed from the Fed) and is not being paid back, money loses its worth and gets to a point that it doesn't mean anymore, so the whole economy crashes, and another Great Depression, or even worse, would begin. Moreover, Western countries, such as the United States lead the world so their collapsion has a gigantic impact on other countries. As we have seen in the past, US Market crash affects other countries. For example, in the case of US Housing market crash, Mark Landler says: "The collapse of the housing

1. 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?” Ultimately, Yali queries why a single race seemingly has an overpowering influence on the evolution and advancements of that specific bodies’ society. It is why Yali acknowledges the “cargo” in his thought provoking question, which can be concluded as the advanced technology the white Europeans had that Yali’s race, the New Guineans, obviously did not. Yali can clearly see that the “cargo” has worth to it, believing it is a luxury the white Europeans seemed to create. Although Yali’s race is awfully intelligent by Diamond’s standards, Yali wonders if his race’s intelligence was inferior to that of the white Europeans. Did the New Guinean race have any disturbance that wouldn’t lead them to making the “cargo” or advanced technology of the white Europeans? In essence, Yali questions the how and why the white Europeans were able to so tremendously exceed the development of the New Guineans.

Without the rise of agriculture, numerous societies may not have been able to feed their people, and therefore may have died out before reaching modern times. The rise of agriculture not only increased the life expectancy of societies, it also increased the volume of food produced, necessitating the development of food storage.