Guns Germs And Steel Book Review

B. In section one, chapter one, Diamond explains that the ancestors broke off from Africa as a separate lineage from animals about 7 million years ago. Human ancestors began walking upright around 4 million years ago, and they moved to Eurasia around 1 or 2 million years ago. Sometime between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, not long after human fossils began to resemble modern homo sapiens, the human race had an explosion of new technological and artistic innovations that far surpassed anything previously created, also known as the Great Leap Forward. Shortly after, between 50,000 and 35,000 years ago, the human race expanded its territory. The arrival of humans in the Americas are harder to determine, but the colonization was at least 12,000
Diamond then explains about the fates of human societies, in 11,000 B.C., because during this time all the continents were populated with hunter-gatherers and no place had advanced technologically to become farmers or city dwellers. Diamond then, on page 52, explains that if an observer transported back 13,000 years could not have predicted on which continent human societies would develop most quickly, but could’ve made a strong case for any of the continents. He says that the remainder of the book is to discover those real reasons. In section two, chapter four, Diamond argues that superior food production was the root cause beneath the ability of Eurasia’s people to develop the guns, germs, and steel that conquered the rest of the world. First, a population that can produce more food can also produce more
Pertussis was acquired from pigs & dogs. Farmers have increased exposure to the germs of their livestock. In addition, keeping pets, human intimacy with animals, and animal fecal contamination in crowded sedentary urban conditions contribute to the increased exposure of humans. Many disease manifestations serve the needs of the infecting organisms in providing a means of increasing transmission. The transformation to exclusively human diseases involves changes in the intermediate vector and/or changes in the microbe. Newly introduced infections, like smallpox, measles, flu, diphtheria, malaria, mumps, pertussis, plague, and yellow fever, decimated up to 95% or more of the Mississippian Indians, Peruvians, Mexico Indians, etc. Khoisan, Pacific Islanders, and Aboriginal Australians were also decimated by imported diseases. Only syphilis, with its unknown origin may have traveled from New to Old World. The insufficiency of domesticated animals and their noncuddly characteristics prevented New World acquisition of human epidemic diseases from their own domestic animals. Although native endemic tropical diseases did not