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Pizarro Chapter Summary

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b. Pizarro’s capture of Atahuallpa reveals that the Europeans had advanced weaponry in the form of steel. Steel birthed swords, spears, and lances that proved to be fatal when weighed against their primitive counterparts. The inhabitants of the New World favored stones and clubs, as shown when the Incas attempted to rebel, and were of no match combating the sharp tools belonging to the Europeans. Guns, though not as accessible during Pizarro’s time, and horses also came to aid them in their conquest. In addition to quality arms, the Spanish brought infectious disease. Sickness spread like a wildfire amongst the natives lacking immunity and weakened their forces. On top of guns, germs, and steel, factors like centralized political organization, …show more content…

The societal levels of organization clearly identify the transitioning of institutions from: bands, small nomadic herds of people, to tribes, a stable village of hundreds, to chiefdoms, when centralized governments prevail, and states, large productive societies. Stages will find that as they move up the ladder, progress is indirectly related to food production. Food production goes hand-in-hand with our ever increasing population and is responsible for turning bands into states. The domestication of plants and animals lead to complex societies where sedentary living and dense populations encouraged germs, with the interaction of farm species, and technological innovations, in the form of guns and steel. j. He claims that human history can be understood like any other science and goes out of his way to say that “natural experiments” in any field will be subjected to criticism. Not much different from the sciences, people can conduct historical studies by comparing groups of people like epidemiologists do. Diamond remains optimistic on the future of historical studies on human societies and believes that the level of impact it carries is just as immense – that it will, without a doubt, be with the (social) sciences in due

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