Summary Of Guns, Germs And Steel By Jared Diamond

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.

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.

8. Summarize Diamond’s thesis. This requires you to first understand Yali’s question, and outline how Diamond proposes to answer this question. Diamond thesis is that people are wrong if they say that this is because of culture or anything like that, instead, Diamond wants to look at geographical factors.  He will argue that accidents of geography are what made the Europeans rich and powerful.

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 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 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

This example supports Diamond’s argument because it correlates with his thesis that people became a certain way due to arbitrary circumstantial happenings. The occurrence of diseases from animals to human beings happened by chance in Eurasia, and not in other places such as Australia. The conditions just happened to be right in Eurasia for germs to develop, since there were more domesticable plants and animals there. Additionally, the spread of diseases was much quicker across that continent compared to any other. I chose this example because diseases played a big determining factor in whether a conquest would be successful or not.

As Professor Diamond walked along the side of the beach he came upon a politician named Yali who was preparing his people in New Guinea for self-government. Yali and Professor Diamond talked each about their jobs and soon Yali started quizzing Professor Diamond and asking him many questions but only one had really made Diamond think leaving him without an answer. “ Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea , but we black people had little much cargo of our own,” asked politician Yali. After thinking about the question for a while, Diamond saw that the true question was much more broad and universal than Yali's initial question. He reworded the question as follows: "Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are rather than in some other way?”

A few sections in Guns, Germs, and Steel most clearly illustrate Diamond’s thesis and supporting evidence. To begin, the chart on page 87 detailing the “chains of causation” clearly illustrates Diamond’s theory that the Eurasian East/West axis allowed for plant and animal diversity, thus allowing for the growth and development of complex societies that could conquer the rest of the world. Next, the chart at the bottom of page 162 clearly shows that Eurasia had the most domesticateable mammals, proving that the people of Eurasia had more animals that could be used for farming, labor, and food. Last, the chart at the bottom of page 207 lists the most deadly Eurasian diseases, including measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox, in order to prove that these and other diseases, which devastated native populations worldwide, were spread from Eurasian animals to humans. While the rest of the book is very informative, the bulk of Diamond’s claim is effectively summarized on the above

Diamond argues that civilization arose from regions that were susceptible the domestication of both plants and large mammals to plow fields. This combination vastly increased food production, which in turn supported larger populations. From there, it's the standard political economy story about the positive feedback loop of prosperity and social complexity favoring the evolution of more complex forms of social organization, specialization, increased technical innovation, etc. This is the Guns and Steel part of the story.

Jared Diamond has done extensive field work in New Guinea.  His indigenous New Guinean politician friend Yali asked why whites had been so successful and arrived with so much "cargo" compared to the locals.  Diamond rephrases this question: why did white Eurasians dominate over other cultures by means of superior guns, population-destroying germs, steel, and food-producing capability?  Diamond’s main thesis is that this occurred not because of racial differences in intelligence, etc. but rather because of environmental differences.  He wishes to play down Eurocentric thinking and racist explanations because they are loathsome and wrong.

Starts out with V and B going to a ramshackle house, after entering and going upstairs, they meet the Light Lord (though he does not tell them his name). It is very dark, but the LL explains that he needs them to pick up something. They initially decline, but upon hearing that they must steal something from the Ruined Jedi Temple on Coruscant, they immediately take up the job. End scene.

In conclusion, each one of these factors were required to transform Eurasia into the most advanced region of the world. Missing one of these factors could result in a failure to advance. Diamond’s central argument is Eurasia became the most advanced society, he studies other regions and civilizations in depth, as well as their advantages and obstacles, which presents him as unbiased. Diamond presents factual texts and then relates it back to the region and the environment. In the book, Diamond provides pictures, graphs, charts, and maps as evidence at the beginning and ends of the chapters. At several moments. Diamond makes references vis other sources within the chapters. As a result, by exploring exceedingly different regions and civilizations

I almost one hundred percent agree with the book Guns, Germs, and Steel. I believe that countries did grow and become stronger by geographical advantages. If the Europeans wouldn’t have had the mild weather, the easily tamed animals, and steel they would have never been able to thrive like they did. If they were an area that had a cold or even a hot climate they wouldn’t have been able to produce crops. If they weren’t able to harvest annual produce they would have starved and wouldn’t have had anything to trade. If they didn’t have food their people would become very weak and eventually die. How can you take over other countries and cultures if your civilization is dying and starving to death? Exactly, you can’t, if your country was starving and weak if would get taken over by stronger forces. Furthermore, if