The Book, Germs, Guns, And Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies,

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.

The geographical advantages of Eurasia allowed civilizations to develop productive agriculture, and domesticated animals as a result the Europeans had food surplus, developed immunity to epidemic diseases, and forged steel. These inherited advantages allowed them to decimate other civilizations and appropriate their resources making them even more powerful.

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.

Livestock and agriculture grown in Europe became important as the Columbian Exchange slowly overtook the Americas. Water and wind were harnessed for power on farms, and domesticated animals were a crucial element of farm life also. Pigs and sheep were the main source of meat and leather. Mules pulled

Multiple large-scale transformations were generated by Europe. For example, one major transformation that the European empires caused would collapse Native American societies as they were. Yet another of these transformations would be the introduction as it were of trade. Europeans were capable of exchanging plants and animals which facetted the creation of better crops in the Americas. With a large amount of plantation workers in the Americas, Europe was able to link with America and Europe to form the cotton and Sugar 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

In his work, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (W. W. Norton, New York, NY, 1997) Jared Diamond attempts to explain why human history has carried out the way it has, he often refers to accounts from history to support his argument. Accounts that will be deemed adequate will discuss specific groups of people, at a specified period of time. Diamond suggests that guns, germs, and steel are three contributing factors for why the world is in its current state. It is not difficult to recognize while reading, that the book spends a large amount of time talking about germs and much less text discussing guns and steel. In “Guns, Germs, and Steel” Diamond does adequately account for the historical development of guns and steel, in the way he accounts for the role of germs in the history of human societies. It is no debate that germs played a massive role in many important events in history, but guns came late, were not very effective at first, and steel production was most important militarily.

Entry Ten - Page Numbers 88-90 - Court Martials At the conclusion of chapter five, a trial is held for the insubordination that Tjaden and Kropp showed against Himmelstoss earlier in the chapter. Lieutenant Bertink presides over the trails and hears the testimony of Paul, his friends, and Himmelstoss. He then sentences Tjaden to three days open arrest and Kropp is handed down one-day open arrest. Paul considers these punishments reasonable, and Paul feels that open arrest is very humane.

In the video “Guns, Germs and Steel: Episode 3.” The overall summary of the episode is how Europe dominated Africa, how they fought through diseases and land wars with local tribes. During this adventure major diseases spread across Africa, affecting Europeans and Africans, causing thousands to die. The main two diseases were smallpox and Malaria, for example in the video it stated that, “It was believed Smallpox originated in the tropical region of Africa, Africans were certainly similar with the disease, they had even developed methods of immunity for life.” This was the advantage they had over the europeans, they were able to protect themselves from Smallpox; avoiding such a dramatic incline their population. Not only did they develop immunization to Smallpox, they tried to fight off Malaria. For example in the video it says, “Native Africans had also developed antibodies against one of the most virulent diseases on the earth, Malaria.” This was because they settled and live in high or dry locations, away from wet and humid areas, which is where mosquitos are generally found, hence why thousands of Europeans died to this disease due to living by rivers and swamps. However, Malaria isn’t the most common disease in Africa now, the most common disease is “Pneumonia and Other Lower Respiratory Tract Infections….Pneumonia alone is responsible for 90% of all lower respiratory tract infections and is one of the most deadly diseases in

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.

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.

Diamond's account has an interesting twist, though. Most epidemic diseases are zoonotic, that is, they are incubated in domestic animals. Crowding facilitates the spread of disease. Peoples who spent thousands of years living near each other and their animals developed resistance to many communicable diseases. Groups who weren't subject to these pressures did not develop the same resistance. When Europeans came to the Americas after centuries of urban life, their diseases decimated the indigenous populations. The guns and steel also facilitated the conquest, but Diamond thinks the germs were the key factor.

Yes, if there is a lot of resources around it can support a large group of people instead of a small group of gatherers

There are many reasons as to why the Europeans were able to make empires far away from their homelands. The first reason being that Europeans were near the Americas unlike their opponents (Asia) in which were father away. The Europeans were determined to gain more land, enlarge the religion of Christianity, and expand the economy by gaining more territory. Every European had their own reasoning for wanting to expand therefore, everyone had their own motives. Another reason that enabled them was that they were also involved in trading which helped them transport items to and from the Americas. The last reason was the Europeans immunity to diseases. While many Americans fell ill because of all of the European diseases, the Europeans did not, enabling them to conquer more land.

The beneficial continental circumstances enjoyed by Eurasians first appears in vegetation. The Fertile Crescent was endowed with diverse, abundant, and highly productive cereals and pulses such as wheat, barley, and pea that yielded both starch and protein. These food staples were domesticated very quickly and with little effort by Eurasians, whose newfound farms gave rise to specialization and division of labor. Conversely, in the Americas, the sole cereal crop of corn took many more thousands of years of domesticated refinement to prove useful to humans. Mr. Diamond also places great emphasis on the geographic East-West orientation of Eurasia. A plant growing at a given latitude can grow at that latitude the world over. Thus, Eurasia's East-West orientation was highly conducive to the rapid spread (by trade) of productive domesticated grains across the continent. Conversely, the Americas, Africa, and Australia were impaired by their North-South orientation, which dictated that domesticated plants from people of one latitude were of little use to their neighbors to the North and South. Compounding the effect, the trade of agricultural technology in Eurasia ultimately led to trade in other things, such as technological advances, including writing and language