Guns and Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society by Jared Diamond

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Food did not originate from every continent; some food had to be imported because some regions could not grow food as they did not develop agriculture. Diamond formulates this into a question about food origination and when it arose on certain continents (94). It is also stated that there are many global inequalities that Diamond calls the HAVES and HAVES–NOTS. This leads readers to think about Yali’s question regarding New Guiana. Many people had farm power and many did not until several years later or did not have farm power at all because of the environmental and ecological issues in that society like climate. This leads to an issue Diamond calls “to farm or not to farm.” This also raises another question about food production and why some continents chose to farm and to be a part of the food revolution and some did not. Diamond later explains how food production evolved from decisions made by societies without a thought about the effects of growing their crops. Many people did not know if their crops would grow or not, and many people did not know if they could establish food in the environment they lived in. It is also learned that the spread of the food production was crucial to understanding the rise of guns, steels and germs. (176) Food was spread in many ways throughout the nine areas of the globe which Diamond mentions in an earlier chapter. Diamond states that the spread occurred with neighboring regions and sometimes the spread did not occur at all in prehistoric time. Diamond uses the axis of the continents to demonstrate the effects of crops and animal distribution by placing a map in this chapter. He also provides many examples of this idea including this rapid spread along the east and west axes, from Southeast As...

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...ir time being passively entertained by television, radio and movies… New Guinean children have virtually no such opportunities for passive entrainment” (21). I disliked this comment because I feel like he is generalizing Western children as unintelligent. If the education ranking is viewed, it is known that the United States which does not have the best ranking, surpasses New Guinea in education. This showcases that Diamond’s discussion of mental ability and New Guinea’s genetic superiority is very general as he does not incorporate general education statistics. Overall, I thought this was an excellent book because Diamond changed my idea on how societies developed as a whole and has also opened my eyes as to why some societies did not work.

Works Cited

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Society. New York: W.W.
Norton &, 1999. Print.

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