1. What is Yali's question? Restate the question in Professor Diamond’s words or your own. 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. 2. How does Pizarro’s capture of Atahuallpa explain why Europeans colonized the New World instead of Native Americans colonizing Europe? The Native Americans respected Atahuallpa as a sun god. However, when he was …show more content…
How did axis orientations of continents affect the success or non-success of human beings in various areas of the world? Differences in axis orientation affected the diffusion of both food production and inventions by altering the rate that crops and livestock spread. The major axis of the Americas is north-south, while the major axis of Eurasia is east-west. According to Diamond, a continent with a long east-west axis has an advantage over a continent with a long north-south axis. A crop that has developed in one place can spread east to west rather easily, but it would have difficulty spreading north to south because some areas are more ecologically suitable for the origins of food production. 6. How does the role of germs figure in answering Yali’s question? Diamond refers to the dispute that once societies began to change from hunters and gathers to food producers and farmers that people would begin to build homes to live in that were stable. The regions where food manufacturing took place became denser in population. Societies then began to domesticate animals so they could be used in moving cargo, plowing fields, and doing any substantial work. However, the animals carried germs and bacteria which led to people becoming ill. The weaker individuals died, while the stronger ones persisted. This overall relates to Yali’s question in answering the role that germs …show more content…
He’s telling us that the history can be "scientific" if it is analyzed correctly. Diamond is attempting to debate that historians should use what he calls "natural experiments." He believes that there are several "experiments" where there are two or more places that are pretty similar in many ways but which then turned out differently. Diamond debates that historians can use these; they can look at what was different and what was similar and how the differences led to the differences in the
The author rephrased the question as: “Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents?”
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.
Introduction What does Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition reveal about the early European attitudes towards the native population of the Americas? Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition is the first book written by a European between 1527 and 1536 about the making of the Americas. The book is Álvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca’s account of what happened to him as he explores the Americas, in search of wealth (gold) and empire in the sixteen century. The journey started with six hundreds men, and ended with only four survivors: Cabeza de Vaca, an African (who was later held as slave), and two other Europeans. But what does the deadly journey in Cabeza de Vaca’s Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition teaches the reader about the attitudes of the European towards the Indian?
2. The people of the Eastern Hemisphere developed long-distance trade more extensively than did the societies of the Western Hemisphere becuase the Western Hemisphere did not develop the extensive long-distance trade as did the East.
Eurasia has a predominately East-West axis. This means that much of the landmass shares similar climates, hours of sun, diseases, and crops. This is important for many reasons. It was easy for people of East Eurasia to migrate to West Eurasia and vice-versa. Technology could diffuse faster, crops were basically universal across the mega-continent, and livestock could be moved far because of similar climates. This was very beneficial towards the advancement of the Eurasian people.
Areas would have to keep up with the competition or they would be taken out by neighboring nomads like the mongols. Asia realized that they had the geological advantage and used this to grow crops that other areas were not able to. It was so much of an advantage that Europeans went all the way to America or the new world to grow crops like sugarcane so they could make money and sell it were they came from were it was hard to make. It happened because if you could not keep up with the neighboring areas you taken over or you would be paying tribute to others until you ran out of things to give
Yali’s question is the pioneer and reason for Jared Diamond’s literary work Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. The book becomes the answer to this inquiry started by the curious mind of Yali, a New Guinean politician who had come across Jared Diamond in 1972. In their conversation, Yali had simply asked 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?” The white peoples’ large amount of cargo represents large amounts of wealth and power concentrated in only the more developed countries of the modern world, and the black peoples’ little cargo applies to
Why Eurasia was able to develop faster and dominate over other continents has been a highly debated question amongst historians. Jared Diamond argues in Guns, Germs, and Steel that geographical environments and ecological profiles rather than biological distinctions caused Eurasia’s fast development. He begins his argument with the premise of a “starting line” (Diamond 35) to compare historical developments in 11,000 BC. Eurasia does not begin to pull away developmentally from the other continents until 8,000 BC with the emergence of domesticated plants and animals. This domestication transformed Eurasia from hunter-gatherers to farmer-herders and allowed them to settle and become sedentary. Diamond argues that the ultimate factors of
The author; Jared Diamond made a very convincing point that Eurasia was the most dominant region in the world rather than any other regions in the world. Factors like Eurasia had east and west axis, more domesticated animals and plants, and with easier geography and climate environment to adapt to. The location of many regions heavily depend on the location in which they are in, making some areas easier to survive in. The questions could be easily answered by the thesis with many example to prove them true. The Polynesians were the islands on the Pacific Ocean between the Americas and Japan. The Maoris were farmers were farmers in New Zealand with more land and more resources than the Morioris. The Morioris lived in the Chatham Islands with
The Columbian Exchange of crops between the Old World and the New World is significant in the progression of human history. This event is important because the introduction of the native New World plants eventually changed the economy of the entire world. “Native New World plants such as tobacco, maize, beans, tomatoes, and especially the lowly potato eventually revolutionized the international economy as well as the European diet, feeding the rapid population growth of the Old World” (Kennedy and Cohen 14; Ch. 1). Many of the crops grown around the world today originated in the Americas. New World foodstuff also helped Africa overcome chronic food
The two continents in the Western Hemisphere that were introduced to me in this course were North America and South America. Both continents have their differences as well as their similarities in the human geography (culture, political systems, social systems, economic systems, and people) and the physical geography (physical characteristics of the Earth). These two continents have their similarities because of their location. They are both in the same hemisphere and they are also very close to each other. Still, they differ in numerous aspects.
The two continents provide a very different insight into the development of agriculture. America with its slow alterations, for example the gathering that continued and the consistency of crops remaining in their natural habitat until much later for example the May grass. South West Asia reveals a different approach where although still gradual development the use of tools and grinders support the discovery of cultivation and domestication leading this continent towards villages and eventually civilizations with trade and travel as its force for change as early humans emulated and adapted.
Secondly, a factor of the environment which assisted in the advancement of Eurasia was the immunity to diseases. With the domestication of animals, came several diseases. When raising livestock people interact with animals more than if they were hunting the animal. The animals have to be cleaned, fes and cooperated on a daily basis. The interaction between animals and humans, allows germs to evolve in order to spread onto a human host. Most lethal diseases come from animals or other living things. “(Think of AIDS, an explosively spreading human disease that appears to have evolved from a virus resident in wild African monkeys.)” (Diamond, pg. 197) Additionally, leprosy came from dogs, syphilis originated in sheep, and smallpox originally was
The Earth continents are all different in some way. The most important are their physical differences. Most of them are wider from north to south than they are from east to west, so their “major-axis” is the north-south axis. Also, the differences in shapes and sizes of the continents results in big differences between their civilizations.
Geography affects agriculture because they needed the right climate to grow certain crops and the climate is determined by the geography. Most crops need a warm and dry climate to grow and that is determined by the country’s latitude and longitude. Having to the right climate and crops is critical for the crops and their own survival. They would want crops like wheat and barley because they are quick and easy to grow and harvest and they are high in nutrients. They would not want crops like sago because it is low in nutrients, it’s a lot of time and energy to harvest, and it takes years to grow to full size.Wheat and barley will only grow in a dry climate like in Eurasia so the Eurasians already had an advantage on the rest of the world because they had the best circumstances for grow crops. The people of Papua New Guinea had a disadvantage