Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, was asked a question by New Guinean politician named Yali. Yali asks, “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?” Jared then thinks about this question. He realizes it is a rather difficult question. He knows that there is still a huge difference between the lifestyle of the average New Guinean and the average American or European. He wants to find out why these two peoples are so different. He rephrases Yalis question into why is human development more advanced in some places and not developed as much in other places. For example he also wants to find out why Europeans were the ones to end up with guns and steel, instead of Africans or Native Americans. Jared Diamond wrote Guns, Germs and Steel to prove that some civilizations are more advanced than others because of the environment around them. AJ Mills Chapter 1 summary: Up to the Starting Line In this …show more content…
He argues that there are three types of writing-alphabetic, logogram, and syllabic, but some writing can use parts of all three types. For example, cuneiform, the first language used parts of all three types of writing. He shows in this chapter that writing is an important tool for conquest and expanding civilization. Writing spread faster east to west rather than north to south. Writing can either spread by replicating specific parts of other writing or trying to imitate the general form of other writings. Writing is very useful because you can create maps, keep organized documents, write letters, keep track of taxes, and so on. It is very important for organization and can help a society grow. Therefore the earliest known writing system was in Eurasia and the ideas spread from there so Eurasia had the advantage of writing over other
In the book, Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond attempts to answer questions of conquest, such as why Eurasia conquered the Americas, and not the other way around. Diamond is a biologist by trade, and both impressed and disappointed the academic world with his new historian side. He believes the answer to western dominance lies in geography and the spread of guns, germs and steel. His theories had led him to be heavily critiqued by historians everywhere, including environmental historian J.R McNeil and Professor of Anthropology and Geography James Blaut. While Diamond provides solid ideas relating to the conquest of the New World, he often uses his scientistic background loosely with unclear supports forgetting other historical factors that
In chapter one Diamond mentioned the first stone tools and cave paintings
Chapter three of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond is a story about how Francisco Pizarro, the Conquistador, brought the end to the Inca civilization with only two hundred men. Diamond uses real accounts from six of the 200 men to tell what happened. The story goes like: Francisco Pizarro by order of the King to travel across New World and conquer the lands and riches for his nation. They had gathered information about an Incan Empire and soon sent their sights on capturing the Incans. The Spanish Conquistadores tried to the Incan leader, Atahuallpa, to convert to Christianity but it failed so Pizarro then captured Atahullpa.
Jared Diamond, an anthropologist, known for his popular book Guns, Germs, and Steel, originally published in 1997 and updated last in 2005. Guns, Germs, and Steel received the Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Prize (1997), the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction (1998), and many other awards throughout the years. Within roughly nineteen chapters, Jared Diamond uses his educational background in order to identify why societies are more materially successful than others. Many influential factors such as geography, germs, food production, animal domestication, and the use of advanced technology like steel Diamond claims to be the reasonable belief of why some societies are successful. Many praise Diamond for attempting such a controversial topic in Guns,
Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel did not change my thinking of the human evolution because that is how I already felt about history. I believe that everything develops at their own speed because different places have different beliefs and have their own ways of evolving. Since I was born, my grandparents would take me with them to National Parks such as Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, and Crater Lake. Because of my grandparents, I became educated on many things concerning our nation’s history. I understood that some things couldn't happen at the same time as others because of how the land is different in other places. An example of how the United States is different across the country is simply the accents.
In the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond overall argues that geography and the environment help shaped the modern world today. In the beginning of the book, Diamond has several questions that he wants to find out the explanation for. He believes that New Guineans are way more smarter than the Westerners based on their survival and how they adapt to it. While doing some bird watching in New Guinea in 1997, Diamond met a young man named Yali, a politician. As they got to know one another, there was a question that Yali wanted to know and he asked Diamond, "why is it that you white people have so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea,but we black people have little cargo of our own?
In the book Guns,Germs and Steels, Jared Diamond illuminates how and why the human societies of different continents followed widely divergent pathways of development over the past 13,000 years. However, Mcneil thinks, though Diamond makes a good case for the critical importance of continental differences in the wild plant and animal species available as starting material for domestication, he puts too much effort to reduce history to the level of biological science. In my perspective, Diamond frames his book around “Yali’s questions”, and his answers to those questions are simple in principle but complex in detail. One of the most important viewpoints of Jared Diamond is that he proposes, before culture was advanced enough, small differences
Chapter nine in Guns Germs and steel goes to describe how and where many of the domesticated animals in history came from, and how many of the larger species could not be domesticated and why. He uses the analogy of the Anna Karenina principle, that there are many reasons why an animal could be undomesticable, but in order for an animal to be domesticated, it must fit a multitude of requirements for it to be advantageous to use it in this way. He specifically refers to large animals, those over 100 pounds, and of those, only five species were used worldwide, and nine were used in specific geographies, this out of approximately 148 candidates throughout the world. Diamond then describes why most (13 of the 14) of the domesticated animals came
History is made up of all the factors of people’s lives, whether those exist till today or not. These factors are considered to be crucial and contributed to the historical events. One of the most crucial factors is writing. Writing has contributed to the development of trade, political system, education, and more. Addition to this, writing made it possible for numerous historical facts to be passed down till today.
The Chinese built large cities with stable social class divisions aggrandized irrigation systems and utilized their supply of jade and of course, Bronze. Their ‘unlimited supply’ of bronze would be used for spear heads, jars, vessels and iron casting. In addition to all these successful achievements, a developed and the evolution of a writing system came
In modern society, guns are seen as a form of control. Those who have guns are able to overpower those who do not. This trend was set when guns were first invented and has stayed the same throughout history. The one place where guns are not a symbol of power and control is in literature, specifically “The Old Gun” and Hamilton. In Mo Yan’s short story “The Old Gun”, the protagonist is a hungry boy who does not even know how to use the titular firearm.
Writing has always been a big part of History due that it can teach people, document events, and even tell a story; one of the earliest examples of this occurring is Homer's Epics (The Odyssey and The Iliad) which definitely had a greater effect than most would notice. In fact, Homer's Epics were awe-inspiring and profoundly influential at the time of their creation and were highly influential in Greek culture. Additionally, his writings/message spread and helped influence western culture. Lastly, his writings had a massive impact on future writing and literary styles. This is all due to his amazing use of story elements, theme/moral, and figurative language intertwined throughout his writing To begin, Homer's Epics influenced Ancient Greece in a profound way.
“How have the world’s nations arrived at the developmental stages that they are at today?” A lot of people ask the same questions over and over again. People wonder about the history of mankind and the exact reason or situation in which the past has undergone; the reason that initiated the reality in the present generation. Thus, because of people’s advance research and studies, they arrived into a conclusion that the world written in the history of every nation’s past was not systematic as it is at the current.
Not all were writing, most were the pictures for oral story tellers. “Writing more than likely began as a separate and distinct symbolic system of communication, like painting, sculpture and oral storytelling, and only later merged with spoken language.” (1/6) Although most places began using writing, not all of their writing styles were the same. Writing styles differed from place to place. “Egyptian hieroglyphics are so different from Sumerian cuneiform, Dr. Baines said, that they were probably invented independently not long after
I never thought of myself as a great writer. I would always see my classmates have higher grades than me in my honors English classes, and it made me feel insecure about myself. Because of this mentality that I would not be as good as my peers, I never wanted others to look at my writing because I was afraid of judgment although I knew that it would help me. Eventually, I started progressing as a writer, and I knew that using tips and getting help was how I could improve myself.