Analysis Of Guns, Germs, And Steels By Jared Diamond

Decent Essays
In Guns, Germs, and Steels, Jared Diamond explores for an explanation of the reasons that some people were able to dominate others with their own innovations while the opposite was not able to happen. While the general public believes that genetics and intelligence can provide an interpretation, Diamond recognizes geography to be the leading cause. Natural selection promotes favorable genes to increase the chances of survival while intelligence leads to the superior level of awareness in the surroundings. Both of these factors are advantages the New Guineans possess that Eurasians don’t not have the opportunity to do so. Despite the benefits, they were not able to aid the New Guineans in becoming the power of the world. The environment of humans

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Jared Diamond, uses figurehead Yali, a New Guinean politician, to shape his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Yali asks an essential question in which Jared Diamond formulates his work around. “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?” (14). Even though Yali’s question was only relating the differences between the New Guinean and European lifestyles and success, Jared Diamond was able to broaden Yali’s question to examine why the Europeans became so specialized, powerful, and wealthy while other peoples did not. To find the answer to Yali’s questions, Diamond began the book by mapping out the early migrations of people from Africa to all of the other continents, and from there he chose specific societies to focus on (24).…

    • 989 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In order to truly understand human society as it exists today, it is first necessary to be able to distinguish between all of the variables that culminated to yield the present. For, if even one condition was to vacillate, the whole outcome of human development could have been drastically different. The man undertaking the arduous task of trying to classify and decipher human history is Jared Diamond, who, through his work, Guns, Germs, and Steel, is able to show just how interconnected the different factors were. Starting off with the infamous incident of the Inca collapse to Pizarro and his army, Diamond seeks to explain exactly what events—and why—lead to this climax. “How,” he questions, “did Pizarro come to be there to capture him [Incan Ruler Atahuallpa], instead of Atahuallpa’s coming to Spain to capture King Charles I?”…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Guns, Germs and Steel Essay There is a technological disparity between different countries and civilizations because of what their geography and what type of climate they have. The climate and natural resources determine how the civilization developed. The Europeans geography controlled their agriculture giving them abundant crops, the ability to domesticate animals to increase productive development, immunity to deadly germs as a result of their exposure to their animals, and the ability to make steel which then led to decimation to other civilizations. Geographic location has a big effect on a civilations development and plant-lives ability to produce and thrive.…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Uneven Ground From the perspective of a teen in a world filled with injustice and constant newsflashes about racists and movements for equality, I’m trained to see things in tunnel vision. I’m trained to view my culture as the very “developed” and “civilized” United States as superior to other cultures despite its flaws. I’m trained to look down upon Middle Eastern countries as they are all “terrorists”. When I turn on the television I hear talk about this white policeman, that black policeman. However, at the exact same time, if any of these opinions were explicitly stated out loud, I would surely be called a racist, a Trump.…

    • 1370 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Jared Diamond, in Chapter 19 of the novel Guns, Germs, and Steel, proposes that the black Bantu ethnic group was able to exert dominance over the other four cultural groups in Africa in areas that food production was viable because the Bantu’s sedentary lifestyle was greatly advantaged compared to hunter-gatherers living in the same area. Diamond supports his claims by illustrating the major societal and organizational difference between the Bantu and hunter-gatherer groups and pointing to the methods by which the Bantu expansion was carried out. The author’s purpose is to show what environmental factors led to certain peoples asserting dominance over others in order to support his theory about geographic determinism and refute racist explanations about the fates of human societies. The author writes in a logical scientific tone for an educated and intellectually honest audience. The factors all come together to allow Diamond to create a convincing argument about the factors that led to the Bantu expansion in Africa.…

    • 1303 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Analysis of chapter four in Guns, Germs, and Steel “why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents” (Diamond 16). A perplexing question that even historians cannot find a definitive answer to. However, in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond is able to derive an answer to such an elusive question. To answer that question Diamond takes a unique approach to convey his theories on human development by combining his unique writing with a modular chapter structure. Since the chapters are written in a modular approach, each chapter is distinctive and can be analyzed individually to understand Diamond’s methodology.…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jared Diamond’s popular book , Guns, Germs and Steel, argues that Eurasians were blessed with superior environmental conditions. Eurasians were able to utilize this advantage to dominate and colonize other parts of the world. According to Diamond, this environmental theory explains the inequality that has occurred in our world in the past 500 years and is the main reason that our world is the way it is today. Although Diamond’s argument looks to be valid on the surface, when examined, it turns out to be full of fallacies and holes. By only looking at this issue from an environmental perspective, Diamond’s conclusion is inaccurate and incomplete; he has left moral, intellectual and biological factors out and as a result, he has had to modify and twist facts to serve his purpose.…

    • 1389 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Jared Diamond explores the history of the world from a unique view. An ecologist and evolutionary biologist himself, he was not particularly trained to examine the world in the way an anthropologist would. This book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Society, delves into the known world and societies within it, at least as of 1997. Diamond wanted to uncover why history unfolded differently on the different continents over the last 13 thousand years, but more importantly he wanted to find the answer without saying that some peoples were superior to others. The question that started this adventure was posed to Diamond by a well-respected figure in New Guinean society, Yali.…

    • 1661 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    European expansion did so well primarily because of the social and cultural benefits the Europeans had in comparison to the Native Americans whose land they conquered. This is exampled in the Battle of Cajamarca, where cultural advancement was the largest contributor to the victory of Pizarro and the Spaniards against the Inca emperor Atahuallpa. The Europeans level of food production also aided increased the gap of power between them and the Native Americans. Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” goes over Europe’s social and cultural benefits as well as their advantages in food production. I will also include a discussion of the world systems theory, as well as express my criticism towards why Diamond chose not to include the topic of culture in his literature.…

    • 996 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kwang Hyun Ko suggest that Homo sapiens were able to become superior and advance into modern humans because of how aggressive Homo sapiens where. This aggressiveness allowed them to control and take advantage over other species in the animal kingdom (Kwang Hyun Ko, 2016, para 16). The ability to take control of other of species allowed for the Homo sapiens to evolve more like modern day humans. Foraging and taking control over other species became essential to the life of Homo sapiens. Up to this point Homo Sapiens controlled the eastern hemisphere until they, “created efficient rafts to cross the oceans and eventually drive away and kill the regional population of Homo Fluences”…

    • 1085 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Guns, Germs and Steel Essay Do you ever wonder why certain places of the world starve every day, but places like the United States have advanced technology and so much food to spare? The answer lies in geography. Geography is the key factor in how a civilization can advance or why is cannot, this being demonstrated flawlessly by its dictation of agriculture ( what crops people can grow ), domesticated animals ( what animals are domesticable ), disease and genetic immunization ( who is exposed to what viruses and bacteria and when ), and who has the best resources and the most amount of time to become specialists and create steel. Geographic location affects the crops a civilization can grow by creating either an extraordinarily warm, exceptionally cold, or somewhere…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Developing civilizations since the beginning of time have lacked the sophistication that European empires have exemplified. Pre-columbian indians have been said to come close to the greatness that surrounds the characteristics of a sophisticated society. Though native accomplishments have proven a technological feat, their civilizations didn't acquire the domestication of large animals, steel weaponry, steady production of goods, functioning currency, communication with other empires, or smart military tactics that further define the sophistication of an empire. Pre-columbian civilizations were built on complex systems that seem to only work in such conditions they were in at the time. Beginning with the Inca economic system which had a non existent currency.…

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Colonial Violence Essay

    • 791 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Colonial Violence During the Age of Exploration, Europeans explored Asia, Africa and the Americas. The western European states became nationally unified and centralized become able to invest and fund explorations. These Europeans usually were very eager to set up fortified trading posts and strategic ports with the intent of benefitting their own pockets. Most of these encounters began with amazement that ended in horror.…

    • 791 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Effectively, through this ideal many have concluded that Pharaonic Egypt was the highest form of African genius, and all other forms from the continent are not to be considered historically significant (Kaiwar, 2016). This ideal excludes other portions of Africa from all history of the Old World. Therefore, Europe is considered the only supreme contributor to the creation of modernity and our viewpoint of the world become misconstrued. We start to believe that there was never any collaboration between the East and West, thus creating the longstanding notion of a battling Eastern and Western world. Additionally, another important contribution that has been cast aside by Eurocentric and exclusive views, is that of the Native Americans and their regard for women in high positions.…

    • 1604 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Egypt and Australia: The Power Behind European Domination Treading along the shore with Jared Diamond, New Guinean local politician Yali casually 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?" (Diamond 14) As a response to Yali, Jared Diamond first negates the assumption that the biological differences in humans from different parts of the globe affected the rate of development of their civilizations by sharing his observations of more intelligent and expressive New Guineans who are still underdeveloped compared to the Western civilizations and provides a new idea that the different environments of the people caused history to take different courses…

    • 1272 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays