Guns Germs And Steel Essay

Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel discusses the topic of the ancient and current civilizations with an eye-opening argument. Diamond’s main argument is that civilizations developed based on the environment and not because of individual humans. In this book he summarized a history of the last 13,000 years in civilization. Although his points were scattered he makes it clear that he believes strongly in environmental determinism, which is the belief that physical environment predisposes human social development and surrounding civilizations.

Throughout the book Diamond gives his belief fin environmental determinism. He talks about Europe thriving as well as the lack of development in African civilizations. He believes that the two civilizations differ because of their environment. Diamond states “Europe’s geographic balkanization resulted in dozens or hundreds of independent, competing statelets and centers of innovation” This quote explains that Europe’s location provided a good place for
European civilizations thrived in the world they lived in because, they were able to utilize the materials given to them by their environment. Also in areas like Sub Saharan Africa innovation was low because they lived in a desert landscape. His argument also exists in today’s world. Inner city kids are born into a city ravaged with crime. Sadly, it causes these kids an increased chance to be involved in crime or gangs. They grow up in bad neighborhoods which indirectly causes criminal activity. This is not true in all cases, and a great example of this is Dr. Ben Carson who was an inner city kid himself, and he is now a neurosurgeon as well as part of Donald Trump’s cabinet. To criticize, the book was very scattered as it was hard to put together his final argument until the epilogue. In each chapter he hinted his idea of environmental determinism but never allowed the audience to fully grasp his