Summary Of Guns Germs And Steel

Ryan Maierle/Global 2H/Guns, Germs and Steel
What is “Yali's question”?
“Yali’s question” is “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 14). By “cargo,” Yali is referring to wealth and technology, which leads to power and dominance. Essentially, Yali wants to know why was there is such a disparity between the lifestyle of the average New Guinean versus the average European or American? In other words, why did white people become so rich and powerful, while black people lagged behind?
What does Guns Germs and Steel attempt to answer?
Guns, Germs and Steel attempts to answer a broader version of “Yali’s question”—that is, “Why did wealth and
He further states that IQ tests do not test for pure innate ability, but rather cultural learning and that “because of those undoubted effects of childhood environment and learned knowledge” (Diamond 20) genetic intellectual superiority could not be proven.
Climate: Stimulatory effects of cold climate is conducive to technological advances because people have to invent in order to survive. Tropical climate inhibits human creativity and energy. People can survive there with simpler housing and no clothing.
Diamond refutes this answer by pointing to the idea that the peoples of northern Europe benefitted from the advances—such as agriculture, wheels, writing, and metallurgy— “developed in warmer parts of Eurasia” (Diamond 22). As evidence, Diamond points to the facts that writing in Native American societies arose in Mexico, New World pottery derives from tropical South America, and that Classic Maya society of the tropical Yucatan and Guatemala was “generally considered the most advanced in art, astronomy, and other respects” (Diamond 22).
Geographical needs: Lowland river valleys in dry climates required complex, large-scale irrigation systems that then led to the creation of centralized
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