Guns Germs And Steel Summary

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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 …show more content…
Of the 148 candidates for domestication, Eurasia had 48% of these species, with most of the other areas of the world having most of their big mammals become extinct about the time that humans began to colonize the area. Although those who existed on other continents may not have had as much opportunity to domesticate, they still failed miserably at domesticating the animals at their disposal, and this is the next point that Diamond investigates.
Diamond explains that cultural differences were not a problem with domestication, and uses five pieces of evidence to refute this theory, the rapid acceptance of Eurasian domesticates by non-Eurasian peoples, the universal human penchant for keeping pets, the rapid domestication of the Ancient Fourteen, the repeated independent domestications of some of them, and the limited successes of modern efforts at further domestications. Many of the peoples that had been without domesticated animals acquired a huge evolutionary advantage once they adopted the techniques that had been presented to them. The Khoisan people in southern Africa who acquired domesticated sheep and cows displaced many of the hunter-gatherers that had dominated the area, and once

Summary Of Guns Germs And Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond discusses the past 13,000 years, and answers many questions posed by historians, and particularly a question posed by a New Guinean politician by the name of Yali, whom Jared Diamond had met by chance in 1972. Yali had asked Diamond, “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?” This question inspired many others, such as why Europeans and Asians dominated all other cultures…

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Guns Germs And Steel Summary

In the video of ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel: Part II: Conquest’ Jared Diamond is on a mission to discover just how the Spanish Conquistadors, led by Francisco Pizarro, were so successful in conquering the globe. The Spanish Conquistadors traveled to South America reaching the Inca Empire that stretched from modern day Ecuador all the way to central Chile. The people of the Inca Empire had never seen Europeans before the Spanish Conquistadors had arrived, which was essentially a huge culture and diversity…

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Guns Germs And Steel Summary

In Guns, Germs, and Steel the author Jared Diamond aims to demonstrate and support his knowledge and research about human development by stating that the differential development of our society is not due to the intelligence of different people themselves but to the difference in their environment and geographical factors. The main focus of the book is to find a response to a question asked to Diamond by "Yali" a local politician from New Guinea which asked why "white people" (Eurasians) had developed…

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Essay on Guns, Germs, and Steel Chapter by Chapter Summary

Chapter 1 1. The main lesson of chapter one was explaining how humans came to be and major jumps in our development. 2. I agree with diamonds ideas because it is scientifically proven that humans started by evolving from monkeys in Africa 3. That people developed certain things suddenly instead of gradually, that the clovis was responsible for many mass extinctions of large mammals around 11,000 B.C. Chapter 2 1. Looks at the effect of the climate on the civilization being a small group of…

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AP Euro Notes Essay

Essay #2: Discuss the political development of Italy during the Renaissance. What new political practices (statecraft) did the Italians contribute to Europe? - Machiavelli believed it was better to be feared than loved, which meant he should abandon morals to stay in power. In his The Prince, he says Cesare Borgia is a good ruler, although he uses extreme measures to stay in power. Political activity shouldn’t be restricted by morals. - Machiavelli said there was a gap between how Christianity…

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