Preview

Guns Germs And Steel Analysis

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
282 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Guns Germs And Steel Analysis
Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel provides an overview of life before we knew it. Many people including Yali, a local politician in New Guinea, had the idea that cultural differences were based on the color of people, instead of the environment they were from. Jared Diamond didn't feel that way and he tried to prove that history was made based on the environment that you lived in. Diamond believed that the differences were divided between the Modern Stone Age versus the Industrial age. The environment you were raised in would effect your perception of the world you grew to know.
Climate, wealth and power were some of the things that had a huge impact on how our history unfolded. The climate affects different cultures

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    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.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    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…

    • 2134 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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.…

    • 1120 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Jared Diamond discusses how the ancestors of humans began to develop many years ago. Human ancestors began walking straight up around 4 million years ago. Archaeologists called this period of new technology and inventions the Great Leap Forward. After the Great Leap Forward, the human race started to expand its territory. Many humans stayed in Africa and Eurasia for many years.…

    • 1366 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    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.…

    • 834 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    On page 25 of his prologue, Diamond states: “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among people’s environment, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.” Clearly, Diamond argues that geography, not biology, plays a key role in determining a society’s wealth and power. Diamond’s most compelling methodology, therefore, is his use of the natural experiment of Polynesia. As Diamond notes: “When ancestral Polynesians spread into the Pacific around 3,200 years ago, they encountered islands differing greatly in their environments. Within a few millennia that single ancestral Polynesian society had spawned on those diverse islands a range of diverse daughter societies, from hunter-gatherer tribes to proto-empires” (Diamond 28). What this natural experiment shows is that various environments offer benefits or disadvantages that directly impact how a society progresses. Differences in geography on the diverse islands of Polynesia led some tribes to be hunter-gatherers, while others were able to domesticate plants and animals and therefore secure food production. Those societies that were able to secure food production could in turn have the time and luxury to develop systems of writing, organization, and even government. These societies were the ones that grew in wealth and…

    • 1227 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Differences like climate, which many believe that in colder climates more technology and ideas developed to either help survive in the cold or the result of spending more time indoors with nothing else to do. Yet many of the ideas from cold climate European thinkers were from Eurasia where it is warmer. Even in the New World the first proof of writing came from places nearest to the equator. Another answer to why some civilizations were more powerful is due to their location near rivers and the development of a complex irrigation system lead to basis of government and societies. But studies have shown that early civilizations created complex irrigation systems after they had already developed centralized governments . Both answers show that environments can shape a civilization, but the data that the ideas rely on is…

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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.…

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Guns Germs and Steel

    • 1798 Words
    • 8 Pages

    This documentary goes deep into history and answers the main question of, “How did our worlds become so different?” Jared Diamond takes on the challenge most philosophers wouldn’t dare try of dividing the haves and have-nots of the world. His journey began in the forests of Papua New Guinea. As of 30 years ago, they were still using some of the techniques used in the Stone Age. People hunted by tracking their prey and used bow and arrows. Their main source of food was the Sago tree; this only provided about 70 pounds of food and did not provide the nutrients needed to survive. Women did most of the gathering and processed the pulp taken out of the Sago tree.…

    • 1798 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    From the beginning, the Europeans had an advantage over the Native Americans. They had the horses and the guns. Guns played a major role in the success of the Europeans. Guns not only aided in overthrowing the Native Americans, but also aided in keeping the Europeans alive by allowing them to hunt and gather food. Horses also played a huge role. They made battle and travel easier.…

    • 314 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jared Diamond is on a mission to prove his thesis, "History followed different courses for different people because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves"(Pg 25). He writes many chapters filled with intriguing reasons to prove his thesis. It takes a lot of facts and countless arguments to prove something everyone thinks is true, wrong, and after reading the book, I think Jared completed the task of proving his thesis by explaining how the differences in terrain, animals, and resources affected the development of different nations.…

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Time can provide connections and ideas of answers to complicated and intricate questions. In the book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, the author encounters a man named Yali while on a trip to new Guinea. Yali asks Diamond a question that is essentially about advantages and disadvantages between different civilizations. The author cannot provide a definite answer. Later in the book, Jared Diamond describes how Francisco Pizarro, a Spanish conquistador, easily overcame the Incas using European advantage. So, what is Yali’s question and how does the author attempt to answer? How did Pizarro defeat the Incas and how does this relate? Yali’s question attempts to be answered by the author, but a closer look into how Pizarro defeated the…

    • 876 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The book Guns, Germs, and Steel is about how many different things contributed to the success of societies versus the destruction of other societies. The book starts out with the author, Jared Diamond, in New Guinea talking to a New Guinean politician named Yali. Yali asked Diamond "Why white men developed so much cargo…" Diamond was determined to seek an answer to Yali's question. Diamond surrounds his answer on how History followed different courses for different people because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves. Diamond wonders how the Europeans could have so much power and advanced technology while the rest of the world was hunting and gathering. Diamond’s answer is revolutionary. People have attributed Europe's overwhelming success in the areas of economics and politics to things such as racial features, and biological differences. However, Diamond suggests that the "superiority" of Europeans was simply due to their environment. He bases their success to a lucky chance and ecological differences of the continents. First, Diamond gives a brief summary and update of the pre-history of the world, dating back to 11,000 B.C.E. This helped in seeing exactly how diverse some cultures were in their development. He uses Polynesia as an example of what happened in the world. He lived there for some time to study the people and their cultures in detail. He used this because the Polynesians all came from the same cultural and ethnic background, so if his thesis proved to be true, it would also prove the others wrong. He believed that the diversity of the world in politics and economics had nothing to do with race, but rather with environmental differences (geography). A long time ago, the Polynesian people were split into completely different environments, ranging from rocky, volcanic areas, to arid grasslands depending on the island. As Diamond predicted, some islands, even now, were inhabited by…

    • 658 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jared Diamond gets asked an important question “Why you white men have so much cargo and we New Guineans have so little”. To Diamond, the question seemed obvious, yet he didn’t have an answer. That’s why in “Guns, Germs, and Steel: Episode 1” Jared Diamond discusses the problem of why some countries have so much while others rarely enough to survive. Also how those rich countries start developing and inventing new technology to help them thrive.…

    • 541 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Donkey Caravan Essay

    • 424 Words
    • 2 Pages

    later history spread from civilization to civilization. Because of the trade routes, some of the…

    • 424 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays