Summary Of Guns, Germs And Steel By Jared Diamond

According to page 103, “The people of areas with a head start on food production thereby gained a head start on the path leading towards guns, germs and steel.”

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.

About 5,000 years ago the farmers and gatherers who had dominated the previous 5,000 years began to gather and form into small urban communities. Starting in river valleys with water for farming, cities began to rise, marking the beginning of civilization. These cities became opportunities for industry and huge buildings. With the accumulation of people emerged more developed religions and social ranks. Because of the marketing and records needed these civilizations developed different writing. Various traditions and trades emerged, giving these societies distinct and recognizable cultures. The long distance trade and developments in the technological and industrial societies, as well as social and cultural change are what mark the rise of

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

One of the most significant mile-stones in the human race is agriculture. Ten-thousand years ago, the practice of farming, cultivating land and soil to produce crops, and domesticating and rearing animals to produce food, wool and other products, opened a door for the beginning of civilization. In the article, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race”, written by Jared Diamond, Diamond contradicts the fact that human history has been a long tale of progress. He argues that agriculture is the reason that the human race is cursed with social and sexual inequality, disease, and despotism. Diamond uses many examples to prove his statement.

Political, economic, and social conditions have often led to turning points that have changed the course of history for nations and people. The Paleolithic Era and Neolithic Revolution was a turning point that changed the orbit of history for mankind. In Documents 1, 2, and 4, they explain life before the Neolithic Revolution and what changed during the period and provide an analysis of results of the revolution. They introduce food supply and settlement, and civilization and trade.

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

When reading the title of Jared Diamond’s, “Guns, Germs, and Steels,” the readers must initially think how do these three connect? After starting the first few chapters they will realize that Diamond is referring to the proximate and ultimate factors in that lead to the advancement of society. When Diamond talks about proximate and ultimate factors, he is explaining the cause of European dominance in the world. The proximate factors are the one that directly led to the European dominance and the ultimate factors are the ones that let to proximate factors. I believe that this book is referring to the Homo sapiens revolutionizing through the years, through the Neolithic Revolution through agriculture and industrialization.

Jared Diamond's bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel (GG&S) is an attempt to explain why some parts of the world are currently powerful and prosperous while others are poor. Diamond is both a physiologist and a linguist who spends a good deal of his time living with hunter gathers in Papua New Guinea. As a researcher and as a human being, he is convinced that all people have the same potential. Hunter gatherers are just as intelligent, resourceful, and diligent as anybody else. Yet material "success" isn't equally distributed across the globe. Civilization sprung up in relatively few places and spread in a defined pattern. I should emphasize that Diamond doesn't equate material

The ongoing argument concerning the rise of civilization is centered almost wholly around the domestication of plants and animals. The prevailing view of V. Gordon Childe’s principle “that social structure and organization were bent to the demands of technology.” (Childe 1954:23-4), is now directly challenged by what archaeologist Klaus Schmidt is determining from the excavation of Gobekli Tepe; “that far from causing sedentism, agriculture actually responded to it.” (James

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond discusses the impact geographical location has on the evolution of a society and why some societies are able to invent ways to improve upon quality and quantity of life while others have continued to live the same way for hundreds or thousands of years without change. In relation to the growth and improvement of the United States of America, Diamond’s novel helps to understand why, at the time of colonization, this country started off less modernized than countries in Europe or Asia. In the prologue of his novel, Diamond asks the questions “Why did wealth and power become distributed as they are now, rather than in some other way?” (pg 15) and “Why did human development proceed at such different rates

In the book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. The Fates of Human Societies, it explain how the world came to be, answering the question of “why wasn’t there any New World diseases that wiped out the Europeans” or “why some societies are still primitive.” According to Diamond, agriculture and domestication allowed humans to have social stability and to specialize. He also explains that a major factor for this global imbalance was the presence of mega-fauna. The Americas’ and Australia’s mega-fauna died out millions of years before humans had the chance to domesticate them. Another critical component was that Eurasia’s continent is spread out east to west while the Americas were spread north to south. By having a horizontal axis, the Eurasian

Immediately after reading the prologue of guns, germs, and steel I was able to comprehend the intended message that the author created. As the book went from chapter to chapter it was understandable that the author strongly believed that one society can excel farther than another based on that society's geography. The author used charts and diagrams to introduce different beliefs and concepts to explain his hypothesis. Some major themes from the beginning to the end of the book that contributed to the author’s belief was that geography worked as a disadvantage for some societies causing unuseful agriculture, failed societies caused by geography led to the unsuccessful development of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and communities with lots

The revolutionizing transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture was a central shift in the way homo sapiens lived that occurred twelve thousand years ago. Consequently, several factors contributed to this astonishing modification of life including increasing population size, favorable environments such as the Nile River in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture allowed for mass production of food in order for the sustainability of the increasing population size, but with agriculture also came specialization and the division of labor ultimately leading to moral inequality.