Guns Germs and Steel
Summer Supplemental Reading Assignment
Yali asked the question of “why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had so little cargo of our own?” (Diamond 14) In other words, he is asking “what is the factor between our people and ours that causes human development to proceed at different rates?” (Diamond 16) What Yali is really asking though, is, what is this mysterious factor? According to Diamond, the basis for development is the environment around us including the resources and the native people of New Guinea don’t live in an area where a chance is provided for them to take advantage of. The natural resources are just enough for them to get by. This is why the people of New Guinea produce so little “cargo” of their own.
Pizarro’s capture of Atahuallpa and destruction of the Incas made the Europeans realize what power they head, and what they could do to the rest of the world. They easily wiped out the Inca’s of 80,000 with 168 men. From the Battle of Cajamarca, Pizzaro came back to Charles I saying that Europe had the power to conquer the Americas. There were reasons Pizarro and the Europeans could conquer the Americas… They had better warfare than the Incas. Pizarro’s men had armor rode horseback and used steel compared to their wooden weapons.
Eurasia happened to have an abundance of edible material because of the right environment leading to the domestication of plants and animals led the people to settle down in one place instead of being nomads. When people started to settle down and bring the food to them, they started to have a surplus which led for the people to have extra jobs and it started to also support a higher population while allowing women to have more children contributing to job specialization. These specialists were not devoted to farmers or food producers but varied to priests, blacksmiths etc. Permanent agriculture societies were able to from with the food surpluses leading
Yali asked the question of “why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had so little cargo of our own?” (Diamond 14) In other words, he is asking “what is the factor between our people and ours that causes human development to proceed at different rates?” (Diamond 16) What Yali is really asking though, is, what is this mysterious factor? According to Diamond, the basis for development is the environment around us including the resources and the native people of New Guinea don’t live in an area where a chance is provided for them to take advantage of. The natural resources are just enough for them to get by. This is why the people of New Guinea produce so little “cargo” of their own.
Pizarro’s capture of Atahuallpa and destruction of the Incas made the Europeans realize what power they head, and what they could do to the rest of the world. They easily wiped out the Inca’s of 80,000 with 168 men. From the Battle of Cajamarca, Pizzaro came back to Charles I saying that Europe had the power to conquer the Americas. There were reasons Pizarro and the Europeans could conquer the Americas… They had better warfare than the Incas. Pizarro’s men had armor rode horseback and used steel compared to their wooden weapons.
Eurasia happened to have an abundance of edible material because of the right environment leading to the domestication of plants and animals led the people to settle down in one place instead of being nomads. When people started to settle down and bring the food to them, they started to have a surplus which led for the people to have extra jobs and it started to also support a higher population while allowing women to have more children contributing to job specialization. These specialists were not devoted to farmers or food producers but varied to priests, blacksmiths etc. Permanent agriculture societies were able to from with the food surpluses leading