Bibliography: McNeill, J.R. "The World According to Jared Diamond." February 2001. The History Teacher. 11 March 2012 .
Bibliography: McNeill, J.R. "The World According to Jared Diamond." February 2001. The History Teacher. 11 March 2012 .
In the story Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond pages 17-21 Jared is trying to understand why humans are developed differently, he is also trying to determine why only certain communities of people has became powerful. The author also goes on to tell us readers about the many different inequalities between civilizations in the modern world. Jared met a man name Yali, Yali was a politician. During the reading Yali was trying to come up with solutions to questions that he was asked, concerning the domination of certain communities. Throughout the reading in pages 17-21 Jared compared the differences between New Guineans and White Colonists.…
Domestication is to covert a plant or animal to a household use or in other words for it to be tame. The animals that most helped the Eurasians are the sheep, goat, cow, pig, and horse, the major five of the ancient…
Diamond makes various arguments about diseases. The argument he makes that I will mention is that deadly disease came from Europe and spread to other places killing people that were unfamiliar with the disease. This is a good point that he makes, and the example he uses helps support his argument. His example is that smallpox came to the Aztecs from Europe. This disease killed a lot of Aztecs because they were unfamiliar with the disease, and because of that they couldn’t cure themselves or others. When I read this I knew there were way more diseases that could of killed the Aztecs. With this argument and example I did some research. For this topic I will argue against Diamond’s argument using valid information.…
In this section of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond portal’s the food production was the root because of beneath the ability of the Eurasia people. This information helped develop guns, germs, and steel. This helped them conquer the rest of the world. Jared Diamond discusses how the food production came to this. The greater the population the more food can be produced. The more food you have for the people the longer they will live.…
There was a difference in the ability of the Europeans to dominate and colonize the Americas and the Chinese Empire between the 15th and 18th centuries. The oldest argument before Jared Diamond’s observation, was that white people were smarter compared to other people across the whole world. Jared Diamond’s observation proved this argument wrong by observing the environmental conditions, because everyone has the ability to invent new ideas, however, only some people have the opportunity to use what their environment provides them, in order to support their ideas. There are four main factors that affect the advancement of every place in the world. The first factor is; a continental difference in wild plants and animals. The second factor is; the factors that affect the rate of diffusion and migration. The third factor is; the diffusion within continents. The fourth and the last factor is; the difference in population size and total area in a continent. These were the four main factors that affected the expansion of the Europeans.…
Prologue: According to the author, why did human development proceed at different rates on different continents? What is his personal view on civilized and progressive societies versus hunter- gathers?…
Guns, germs, and steel uses a variety of techniques to present its argument. On the three hour documentary movie, professor Jared Diamond demonstrated a very precise and logical answer on his thesis statement representing the main factor which is geographical and topographical location of the country played a dominating role in a developed countries. He is explaining methodically that some societies got advantages to progress and some are still stagnating. Professor J.Diamond made his points very clear and factual by using examples throughout the…
Diamond knew that the answer had little to do with ingenuity or individual skill. From his own experience in the jungles of New Guinea, he had observed that native hunter-gatherers were just as intelligent as people of European descent -- and far more resourceful. Their lives were tough, and it seemed a terrible paradox of history that these…
Throughout the nineteenth century, Europeans were able to control and dominate most of the world. Europe was able to emerge as a world power because of its economic supremacy and individualism. Europe came to rule the world because of its geographical determinism, British sea power which built the modern global system, and the continuous competitions that led to a self-perpetuating evolution in European economy.…
The article, Guns, Germs and Steel, written by Jared Diamond, is an argument about how and why things happened differently in history in different continents. It’s about looking deeper into why things happened the way they did. Why did western Eurasian societies become more powerful? What enabled these parts of the world to develop more quickly and in turn be able to conquer less developed societies around the world? The important message to grasp from this article is not about how certain continents or areas becoming developed quicker, but why those specific areas were the ones to develop quicker. An example of this that Diamond discusses, is how New Guineans were still living in the “Stone Age” 200 years ago when Europeans came to New Guinea with materials (called cargo) that were very valued. The question was, why did the people of New Guinea have a scarce amount of cargo when the white Europeans had so much of it? (page 14)…
Physical environment helped with the development of early civilization in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley by helping societies to flourish. Excerpt from the story of Gilgamesh states how the people of Sumer depend on the grain that they grow. The environment provides Sumer their grain thus allowing them to feed themselves and continuing to grow. The increase in population allows the society to flourish. One could say that document 1 is unreliable because it only describes how Sumer depends on grain. It does not state if their population flourishes or not due to the grain. An additional…
The Earth is filled with many different environments, but only a few are suitable for the domestication of crops. Throughout the first few chapters, Diamond emphasizes the importance of crops being domesticated in certain areas. The nation's that learned to domesticate crops first became more prosperous. A good example of this is the Fertile Crescent. The reason the Fertile Crescent got such a head start on developing a civilization was because they were quickly able to domesticate crops. Some civilization's, like the Maori people, could not prosper because they did not have the correct environment to do so. The book explains, "Maori tropical crops could not grow in the…
Rusty James- Rusty-James is a fourteen-year-old kid who feels he can achieve any thing in life with his fists. He is the number-one tough guy among the junior high kids who hang out and shoot pool at Benny's, and he enjoys keeping up his reputation. What he wants most of all is to be just like his older brother, the Motorcycle Boy. Rusty-James confesses himself that he isn't a particularly smart person, and he relies more on his fists than his brains. Every time he gets into trouble, which he can't handle, his brother is there to help him out. Rusty-James' lack of direction, causes him to…
In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond is the response to a question Diamond had been asked by a New Guinean politician, Yali, in 1972. The question was, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people have little cargo of our own?” This refers to the inequality between many different civilizations, quite like how Europeans developed great objects and wealth that they used to dominate over other societies. Diamond begins to wonder why that is, “Why did human development proceed at different rates on different continents?” Before explaining possible answers, Diamond clarifies that his book isn’t to justify European domination of other civilizations nor does the answer take a European historic approach. Diamond also clarifies that hunter-gatherer civilizations are not inferior to agricultural or industrial civilizations.…
In the prologue of Guns, Germs and steel by Jared Diamond, Diamond seeks to explain why there were different rates of human development on different continents. The author explains and expresses this statement by many different angles, such as evolution, intelligence, climate, location and advanced technology. Why did history take such different evolutionary courses for people of different continents? In other words, what steps did different continents take to become who they were and how were they able to take those steps? How did different continents develop faster than others? Could it depend on intelligence? Then again, it was stated that “New Guineas are on the average at least as smart as a European” (p.g 14). Also, for many years psychologists have looked and studied for differences in IQ between different people around the world. Unfortunately, “IQ tests tend to measure cultural learning and not pure innate intelligence.” (p.g 20), Therefore, should we really base history on intelligence? Or could the answer to Yali’s question be answered based on climate and location? It has been said that “people from northern Europe contributed nothing of fundamental importance to Eurasian civilization until the last thousands years; they simply had the good luck to live at a geographic location where they were likely to receive advances (such as agriculture, wheels, writing and metallurgy) developed in warmer parts of Eurasia.”(p.g 22) Advances? Agriculture? Wheels? Writing and metallurgy? All these advantages were given by location and climate. The “white” people obviously were higher up on the evolutionary scale. Despite, their intelligence; they still had the materials and the location to work with. While New Guineas had it more complex and struggled a lot more because of their location and climate.…