Guns, Germs and Steel
Jared Diamond, author of the Pulitzer Prize Winning, National Best Selling book Guns, Germs and Steel, summarizes his book by saying the following: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Guns, Germs and Steel is historical literature that documents Jared Diamond's views on how the world as we know it developed. However, is his thesis that environmental factors contribute so greatly to the development of society and culture valid? Traditions & Encounters: A Brief Global History is the textbook used for this class and it poses several different accounts of how society and culture developed that differ from Diamond's claims. However, neither Diamond nor Traditions are incorrect. Each poses varying, yet true, accounts of the same historical events. Each text chose to analyze history in a different manner. Not without flaws, Jared Diamond makes many claims throughout his work, and provides numerous examples and evidence to support his theories. In this essay, I will summarize Jared Diamond's accounts of world history and evolution of culture, and compare and contrast it with what I have learned using the textbook for this class.
Jared Diamond begins Guns with a prologue which sets the stage for the rest of the book. Approached in New Guinea by his friend and local politician Yali, he is posed a question: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" Yali's question flared a nerve in Diamond. This question brought about the thesis of his book, that environment is more persuasive on development of civilization than people may have once thought.
In the first chapter of Guns, Diamond establishes two main arguments that will become crucial to his thesis later on in the book. First, he goes in depth about mass extermination and further extinction of large mammals that occurred in New Guinea and Australia which were important for food and domestication, and secondly he argues that all the first civilized peoples in the world each had the ability to out develop one another, but were hindered or helped by their environment.
Diamond continues to provide evidence for his thesis that environmental factors play a significant role in the development of society by citing the Maori and Moriori incident of 1935. In 1935, the Maori killed and enslaved the Moriori peoples.
The reason Jared Diamond wrote this book was to answer the question of his politician friend Yali that why did some societies like Eurasia was able to develop Guns, Germs, and
Jared Diamond is born in Boston on 1937. He is a physiologist, ecologist, and a prolific writer. Diamond has published hundreds of articles that is about science. Not only that Diamond is a writer, but he also received his Bachelor’s Degree at Harvard University in 1958 and PHD at Cambridge University in 1961. Diamond is currently working at UCLA as a professor of geography and physiology. He has done many research about ecology and the evolutionary of biology in New Guinea and many other southwest Pacific islands. Diamond has done many projects in his career. He is also a field researcher and director of the World Wildlife Fund. No only he published hundreds of articles, but he also wrote many essay in his life. One of his essay that he shared to the public is called, “The Last Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization.” Diamond wrote this essay on June 2003. The essay that Diamond wrote is about the environment and how it is failing miserably.
In the book “Collapse” written and theorized by Jared Diamond, historical societies known for their peril due to environmental and human catastrophes. Jared Diamond analyzes the root causes of failed societies and uses his knowledge to depict today’s warning signs. The main focus of this book is to present clear and undeniable evidence that human activities corrupted the environment. To prove this Diamon used past societies, modern societies, and social business societies as a foundation. The most specific and beneficial theories that Diamond analyzes would be the decline of biodiversity on Easter Island, the deforestation of the Greenland Norse, the mining mismanagements in Australia and big businesses.
In his well known piece, Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond proposes that the differences between populations of different continents is not due to differences in the people, but of the environment. There are, of course innumerable differences to be found among the environments that each continent has to offer, however, Diamond stresses only a few. They include: wild plants and animals native to the area- which affect a society’s surplus thus allowing the society to move beyond their basic need- a group 's ability to travel and/or migrate both intercontinental and to other continents- this would allow for trade and access to other goods, and exposure to alternate philosophies and illness- and the size of the continent and population allowing for more potential inventors, competing societies, and groups to exchange with (Diamond, 1999). Diamond’s theory lends to the concept of how our environment shapes us. It’s the nurture of Nature vs Nurture on the large scale. There are countless things that we cannot control about ourselves, where
All of our history can be dated down to some place anywhere in the world and the time, now just imagine if that history could still be affecting you to this day. In Jared Diamonds Guns, Gems, and Steel he explores the idea, the theory that geographic could determine the differences between societies and social development. The book is framed upon a question that Yali, a New Guinean politician, asked him as they were chatting the question being “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” Diamond concludes that geography has ultimately affected the differences between peoples of the world.
He adds to the support he already garnered from the Chilean mummies with another example from Greek tombs, which suggest that the royals had a better and fuller diet and had better teeth than the average person. Diamond shifts the focus onto modern day life, where people are still suffering from this gap between poor and wealthy, using the contrasting examples of Americans and Ethiopian farmers, proclaiming that the Kalahari hunter gatherer lived a far more comfortable life than the Ethiopian farmer. In addition to that, he also deliberates over the sexual inequalities in modern day as well. Speaking about an incident he himself witnessed in New Guinea, where women were forced to carry more weight/load than men cementing his argument that it’s still the same as the Chilean example. Creating a bridge between then and now, and relating these situations help add more substance to his argument. It feels almost surreal to the reader now, how the author’s initial ideas actually seem to be a reality and how one’s preconceptions of a better life now were just propaganda that our text books and media seem to drill into our
This essay will explain some of the reasons why the Middle East has developed so much better than Papua New Guinea through the evidence in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Diamond's hypothesis is that geography gave certain groups big initial advantages. Specifically, some places are more conducive to domestication of plants and animals. Most people think that domestication is just a matter of capturing animals and breeding them in captivity. This is a misconception. Domesticated species of plants and animals have undergone major genetic changes through years of selective breeding. Compared to their wild ancestors, the major cereal crops are more nutritious, quicker to germinate, and easier to sow and harvest. Domestic animals are more docile, easier to train, and generally more suited to life in captivity. Diamond's key point is that not every wild species is equally susceptible to domestication and that domesticable species are not evenly distributed across the globe. Wild horses and camels had the "right" stuff, reindeer not so much. As modern attempts to domesticat...
Professor Jared Diamond is an American scientist and author of the best known book “Guns, germs, and steel”. He is known for drawing from a variety of fields, including geography, ecology, anthropology, and etc. Documentary movie which was shot on guns, germs, and steel, made an excellent job of demonstrating the authors theoretical approach in pursuit of the question “What are the factors that contributed to some country's capacity to grow, while others have remained impoverished?”. In each episodes of three parts, Jared Diamond visits a different continents of the world to find an answer for the root of inequality. He mainly focused on how environmental resources such as topography, climate of different parts of the world predisposed particular
The purpose of Guns, Germs, and Steel starts with a question posed by a friend 30 years before. Professor Diamond searching to explain how certain fluctuating civilizations became dominate and how others were dominated based on a question. Diamond approaches this question by examining the conditions which caused inequalities in different societies. Ultimately Diamond questions how these inequalities led to certain civilizations developing guns, weaponized germs, steel, other advanced technology, and highly structured governments which lead to societal dominance. Professor Diamond uses his research from traveling to different regions and archeological sites to disprove the adopted notion of why some societies have so much, and others have so little. His research resulted in Diamond concluding that there is no difference in intellect, creativity, culture, or physical advantage in certain groups of people which could explain the dominance of one society over another. Ultimately, the documentary concludes that dominance arises in certain civilizations solely based on geographic advantages which can lead to modernization.
“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples ' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves” (Jared Diamond). In the book Guns Germs and Steel he accounted a conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician that had asked “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”. Diamond tries to answer this by describing the difference in use of government throughout history by bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
Jared Diamond’s theory of “Guns, Germs and Steel” accounting for global inequalities is a concept which has raised many conspiracies over the years of publication. Professor Diamond’s theory answers a significantly complex question with simple answer; the reasons which ‘history unfolded differently on different continents1’ as the result of the primary basis of geography and climate. It is an interesting and arguably true notion, which agrees greatly with the facts of history, including the Australian context during 1888 to 1900. The thesis is associated to European technological superiority over the Aborigines who lived a balanced lifestyle and did not require advancement in any regards. It is therefore important to discuss the guns, germs
“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among people themselves.”(Diamond 25) This statement is the thesis for Jared Diamond’s book Guns Germs and Steel the Fates of Human Societies.
Many geographers have attempted creating a unified theory explaining why cultures advance much more readily than others. Very few have actually reached mainstream society and even fewer seem reasonable. However, Jared Diamond shines where most do not. His book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, proposes an idea that has long been established called environmental determinism. Most view environmental determinism as a racist theory attributing a peoples’ intelligence only to their oppressive climates and geographical barriers. Diamond instead has created a theory that applies environmental determinism to only a peoples’ technology—not the people themselves. This has given researchers valuable tools that allow them to explain why some nations have become the superpowers they are today. If applied to the modern United States, Jared Diamond and his new theory would attribute the country’s dominate status to blankity blankity blank.
There is nothing better then realizing that each indigenous people evolved into something better or that they found ways to survive in situations they weren’t use too. There were many changes that happened over time that cause for situations to change for everyone around them. But it also has helped with being able to progress with the way they lived. Jared diamond the author of Guns, Germs and Steel interpret his famous theory oh how we came to be. How the geography luck helped each country developed more rapidly than others as well as being able to expand more. However they also had geography luck when it came to how many advantages they had with the technology nevertheless, germs also was a big part of how the conquered most of the lands because it would kill instantly millions of european and