Why Do Guns Germs And Steel Essay

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.”

Yali’s question is “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?” In a broader sense, why did some things progress in some areas, but not in others?

The reason Pizarro succeeded was he had originally gained the trust of Atahualpa and then captured him and used his advanced weaponry to conquer the Incans

In this part he explains how the increase in food production enabled people to increase in population and create specialized jobs while the domestication of animals helped them with the production of tools, animal labor during farming (pulling wagons) and war (horses used for battle), warmth (leather and wool), transportation, food (meat and milk), and fertilizer. Then he explains the decision of people to move to farming. This decision was influenced by different factors in different parts of the world such a decrease in wild games’ population, more domestic plants, development of technologies for food producing, and human population vs food production. Then he explains how the environmental advantages such as biological, ecological, and geographical diversity allowed for a variety of crops. For example, the plants in the Fertile Crescent were self-pollinating which allowed an increase in crop production. He further explains how geography contributed to the domestication of animals. He states that “the wild ancestors of 13 of the Ancient Fourteen… were confined to Eurasia,” (Diamond 161) which shows the geographic advantage Eurasians had since most of the ancient 14 domestic animals were in Eurasia. Additionally, Eurasia had the least amount of extinction in the last 40,000 years along with more readily domestic animals who has a faster growth rate, diet, no problem breeding in captivity, and etc. Another geographical advantage Eurasians had was the axes of the continents. Since Eurasia has west-east axes, it was easier for Eurasians to transport food production such as crops due to the same latitude which resulted in the same climate, same day length and diseases. However, Africa and the Americas has a north-south axes which made transportation of food production difficult due to

Many historians and politicians ponder over the reason why Europeans have much more wealth and power than other ethnicities. However, this question was abandoned and rarely brought up because there wasn’t enough evidence to have a clear answer. Yali, a local politician in New Guinea, asked a similar question: “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?” Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, believes that the differences in wealth and power between different groups of people is because of the environmental differences. An event that helped answer this question was when the Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro easily defeated the Incas despite having only a few men because of their geographical location, resulting advanced military technology, and writing.

The Inca empire was the largest and most advanced empire in Pre-Columbian American. However, the Spanish led by Francisso Pizarro subjugated the Inca empire in 1572. Within mere 62 soldiers mounted on horses and 106 foot soldiers against 80,000 Incan soldiers, the Spaniard wins and killed thousands of the Incans. The Spaniard also apprehends the Inca emperor, Atahuallpa;the Spaniard received the greatest ransom in history and killed Atahuallpa afterward. In "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond, Diamond summarize the Inca empire collapsed so fast during the battle against the Spanish are because the lack of technology and knowledge and the diseases brought to the land by the Spanish. In my point of view that even if Pizarro's attack had

Jared Diamond starts off his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel with stating his attempt to answer Yali’s question, “Why is it that you white people developed much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own.” Diamond elaborates and brings to simpler terms how Yali’s question relates to many questions on the origins of humans, but more specifically, how Eurasians, the white people mentioned by Yali, came to successfully dominate the rest of the world. In the prologue, Diamond mainly drives his point of the “effects of continental environments on history over the past 13,000 years” as to what he believes is the main root to why Eurasians came to dominate so successfully. Alongside of continental environments,

In Jared Diamond’s Collision at Cajamarca and Hemispheres Colliding from his book Guns, Germs, and Steel he addresses the factors relating to the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. This is seen in their differences in development, warfare, disease and politics. Firstly, it is important to start by taking a looking at the Empire’s themselves. The Spanish Empire, like many in Europe, developed sooner than their Native American counterparts in agriculture and industries.

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

Guns, Germs, and Steel starts off with an interesting conversation in the Prologue between the author, Jared Diamond, and a friend he made in New Guinea, a politician named Yali. Yali raises the question that why the rest of the world has so much of what he refers to as “cargo”, or in a broad sense technology, compared to his homeland of New Guinea which becomes the central focus for the entire book. The first chapter begins with the origins of humans and what Diamond calls the “Great Leap Forward” where the first tools, writings and paintings began to appear, as well as watercraft in aboriginal Australia and New Guinea. Then discussing the Ice Ages, leading up to the recent era and extinction of many large animals globally as humans began to spread out. Next Diamond uses the example of The Maoris and the Morioris in the Chatham Islands in 1835 and how one culture and civilization is able to overrun another due to geography, resources, and many other things and how that can lead

1.Jared Diamond states that the environment of a race determines whether or not it’s going to survive.

To begin with, the Eurasian land mass had much larger animals. These large animals could be domesticated and bred for a virtually never ending meat supply. To add, some of these animals produced milk which also is a key to human development. In the Americas large animals were a rare sight and many species were separated from civilizations. Also, a majority of large animal “species went extinct in North and South America at the end of the Pleistocene” (106). Some species in Eurasia also went extinct, but the extinctions were not as noticeable due to the fact that there was not as many natural barriers separating animals and humans. Eurasia not only had larger animals than the Americas, Eurasia also had better farming.

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?”

Guns, Germs, and Steel was released on PBS in July of 2005 and produced by Tim Lambert. It is based off of the book by the same name, written by Professor Jared Diamond. If you've ever wanted to learn more about how geographical factors influenced the growth and development of ancient civilizations, then Guns, Germs, and Steel is the film for you. It narrates Professor Diamond's search for an answer to a question asked to him by a man named Yali, "Why you white man have so much cargo and we New Guineans have so little?" During the show, Professor Diamond studies the factors of the evolution of ancient civilizations into the agricultural and technological giants they've become today. By comparing the geographical circumstances of those civilizations with those of New Guinea, he is able to finally find an answer to Yali's question.

After watching the documentary Guns, Germs, & Steel by Jared Diamond I was amazed. Everything in the documentary was all new knowledge to me. While watching the film I noticed the purpose of why it was made, to ask the question why we all started from the same place but only some excelled. In the film Jared Diamond goes to Papua New Guinea and makes a friend named Yalli. Yalli asked Jared once “Why you whites have so much cargo and we new guineas have so little?” That question shocked Jared and persuaded him to find the answer. Jared then sets out an expedition not as an explorer but as a scientist to find the answer. He travels to different parts of the world to see why they have advanced but why others haven’t.