Guns Germs And Steel Chapter Summary

Inequality in the development of civilizations has long been a mystery. That is, until the book Guns, Germs, and Steel came out in 1997. This book revealed how geography determined that Europe was fortunate in agriculture, domesticated animals, germs and Papua New Guinea and Inca were not.
Climate is determined by the latitude and longitude of a location. The latitude and longitude of Papua New Guinea causes it to have a hot tropical climate year-round and one of the only things they can grow is sago.This particular food is extracted from a tree. New Guineans have to peel back the bark and beat the middle contents of the tree into a pulp. After this, they can make a dough with the pulp and dry it in the sun. By the end of this time and energy
consuming process, they will have lost more calories than they will gain from consuming it.
On top of that it provides few calories, it also provides little protein and cannot be stored for long periods of time. In the Fertile Crescent they grow wheat, which is easy to both harvest and prepare. Unlike sago, it provides quite a bit of protein and can be stored for long amounts of time. But what is available to both of these civilizations is beyond their control and again, things were in the Europeans favor. Some animals can only live in a certain climate, therefore many places don’t have practical working animals to help them harvest food and spare them the extra work. But it’s not just working animals. For example, sheep, which are often kept for wool, can’t be found in warm climates such as Papua New Guinea because it doesn’t need to grow wool to stay warm. Domesticating animals is difficult because of the specific criteria the animal has to fit. They can’t be vicious and have to be pretty large with some muscle power. Nevertheless, it’s preferable that they’re herbivores. Any meat that people gather they’re going to want to keep and eat themselves for protein, they aren’t going to want to feed it to their animal. Also, their animals won’t eat them if it gets hungry. Another factor is that they be able to
reproduce in captivity. They have found some animals, like cheetahs, won’t breed in captivity. The final problem they’ve had with domesticating animals was found with elephants. Elephants can be great for muscle power, but it takes an elephant 15 years to be sexually mature. Animal domestication is one of the many reasons Papua New Guinea hasn’t advanced their civilization. Pretty much every animal that was practical to domesticate couldn’t live in their tropical climate. The main animals that Papua New Guinea had was pigs, which aren’t that helpful for anything. This specific animal doesn’t have enough muscle to be a working animal and gives minimal amounts of meat. The Fertile Crescent had many animals that they could domesticate. They had cows, which are hard working animals and give a sufficient amount of meat. Domesticating animals is important to civilizations because they can help with work so that people don’t overwork themselves while trying to find food or build shelter. Unfortunately, many civilizations didn’t develop because they didn’t have the right climate for domesticating animals that fit this criteria. Therefore, they don’t have any animals to help them collect more food so they can’t focus on developing other parts of their civilization. The exposure to diseases was just one more thing that gave the Spanish an advantage over the Incan civilization. The Spanish kept their animals in close quarters. Often times in their own home. Due to this many people caught smallpox from their cows, sheep, and goats. Most people died because they didn’t have modern medicine. But the upside to this was that the generations of Spanish people after them were less likely to catch smallpox because their ancestors had built an immunity to it. The Inca weren’t so lucky. Because their land was elevated and they didn’t really have seasons, the animals that they could keep was limited. So they kept llamas. The Inca had limited contact with the llamas and didn’t drink their milk, therefore they didn’t contract diseases from them. While the Inca were healthy for a short-term period of time, when the Spanish exposed them to smallpox later they weren’t immune which cost them 95% of their population. Once people figured out ways to advance food collection so it took less time, they could have specialists. Specialists were people who specialized in creating things that helped with other aspects of life, such as steel. Spain came to a point where specialists were a reality and at this point steel, a strong, pliable metal, was created when carbon was infused into the iron the Spanish had. Strong and pliable metal was a winning combination for swords. This metal is strong enough to impale someone, but not so strong that it’s brittle and breaks off. They would spring back into place. The Spanish had everything needed to create steel. Iron, carbon, fire, and dry weather because they lived in a semi-arid climate.The Inca were provided with gold and bronze. Neither were preferable, but gold was the lesser option due to it being so soft and pliable. So all of the Inca’s weapons were made out of bronze which stood no chance against the steel weapons carried by the Spaniards. And because they were constantly fearing their overruling and collecting enough food to survive, they couldn’t do much else. Inequality wasn’t because any people were smarter than others. It was simply because climate and geography, which controlled agriculture, livestock, and what resources were available to people. It wasn’t possible for places like Papua New Guinea to develop more than Europe because they weren’t provided with the correct resources that were mentioned before. So even if they went back in time and did it again, they would come out with the same results.