Analysis and Reflection on Guns, Germs, and Steel

The book I had chosen for this very intense assignment was “Guns, Germs, and Steel – The Fates of Human Societies”, which was published in 2005 by “Norton” in New York. It has, including the index, 494 pages. The assignment stated to pick any 6 chapters to read as long as I had picked 1 from every section of the book. The chapters I chose were the Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 4, Chapter 11, Chapter 16, and Chapter 17. In this book, Jared Diamond explains how some places in the world are more advanced than others due to the way they use steel, their immunity to germs, food production, and animal domestication.

Diamond presented questions important to the education of human beings. “ Why did property and force become distributed as they today exist, rather than in other way? “” Why did human process go in much various rates on different continents? “” Why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, The people to be up with guns, that nastiest germs, and metal?” In his award-winning novel, Diamond posited the “unified synthesis” — a unified set concept of history. Drawing from his wide-ranging knowledge of drugs, evolutionary life, biology, science, and anthropology, too, too as geography, he surveyed this past of this last 13,000 ages and identified plausible answers to the questions he had posed. He published what I believe to be one of the most informative novels on the history of human beings.

The prologue was like a summary of the book, it describes how the people from Eurasia conquered as much of the world as they did, due not to their genetic features, but their geographic ones. He had become interested in human societies in July 1972, the time he was studying the evolution of birds in New Guinea. After I had read the 6 chapters I had stated before, I went back into the book to see what else could help me with this essay, and I saw a few good points outside of the 6 chapters that helped me to expand on what I thought was the full summary. He talks about life thousands of years ago, and how people used to live compared to how we live now.

To start from the beginning, when Diamond was in New Guinea, his friend, Yali, asked, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo … but we black people had little cargo of our own?”. The cargo had been referred to as technology. He thought about how even after 2 centuries, New Guineas were still using stone tools, and that’s what sparked his interest in the gaps of advancement between societies. Diamond then extends said question by also asking, “Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather than in some other way?” He then said that when he had begun the answer this question, the archaeological evidence proposes that all continents were around the same technological standpoint.

Summary

Part 1

The first chapter explains what the great leap was, it happened around 50,000 years ago. It’s called “The Great Leap” because of the revolutionary tools made in the era, for example, one was a fishing hook from bone and needles. He refers to Early Europeans as “Cro-Magnons” and describes how they came to Europe and how they are the ones who made the advancements I have listed above. Around 40,000 years ago, the Cro-Magnons had come to Europe, and at around that same time, Australia and New Guinea were populated, showing proof of the first use of watercraft.

Part 2

Chapter 4 starts with an anecdote about Diamond’s experience as a teenager running on a western farm. He explains how the Blackfoot farmhand, Matthew, once went furious with the work owner, the Swiss immigrant, and shouted, “; damn you Fred Hirschy, and damn the ship that brought you from Switzerland! ” Diamond uses this anecdote to investigate how the growing people, e.g., the Swiss, or Europeans at large, would continue to have the land of the Blackfeet, the fierce and nomadic group of Great Plains hunter-gatherers. Domesticated complex food industry is the foundation on which the rest of his statement rests, and Diamond takes why some people developed farming and others did not. Land permits people to create food surpluses and thus to dramatically increase their populations. Larger populations mean higher numerical power for battle.

Part 3

In Chapter 11 Diamond has discussed how environmental factors in the production of food have led to changes, spreading at specific rates across the world. Diamond remembers meeting a farmer who had attempted to have coitus with a sheep and had a horrible disease from the animal. While there are few people who try to imitate the farmer, the truth remains that people live close livestock and catch diseases from their livestock.

Part 4

For part 4, I had chosen 2 chapters, chapter 16 and 17. Chapter 16 was based on how China stayed as culturally active as it has been for centuries. There are eight big languages, all commonly associated to Mandarin, spoken in China. But there are also hundreds of small languages, spoken by thousands of individuals, or tens of thousands. He then goes on to talk about how the climate of China was about the needed climate for farming. Thanks to China’s particular organization of large rivers, different areas of China could connect, and allow for an easier way of transportation. This collection of large rivers also helped sustain large areas used for farming and other agricultural activities.

Chapter 17 is the part of the book in which Diamond talks about the Austronesian expansion. Approximately six thousand years ago, the expansion of Austronesia was called a demographic shift. Austronesia ‘ is concerned with Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and many of the Pacific Islands. In China and Southeast Asia, ancient people shifted further south to explore Java, New Guinea, and Indonesia today.

And that’s about it for the summaries of the 6 chapters I had read for this book. I didn’t cover all of the bases of this book because I had only read 6 chapters of it. This was an amazing read, and I am surprised at how in depth he went on some of the topics he discussed. He went to the roots of every society and explained how all of them advanced in their own way. This must have taken a lot of research to complete, and it was an honor reading it.

Analysis

What was the author’s objective?- The author wanted to inform the reader about how different societies developed over time. The Prologue introduced how he sparked the interest of different societies developing over time. Chapter 1 describes what each society advanced in during “The Great Leap.” Chapter 4 explains why agriculture was a big deal and how it contributed to the future. It also explains that agriculture was discovered around 11,000 years ago and how it is one of the most efficient ways of the production of food. The rest of the chapters just explain how each society grew throughout the centuries of mankind.

The only universal lesson I took away from this incredible book is that all groups of people, no matter race, ethnicity, or any group people can be classified as are equal to each other. They have the same level of intelligence to start off with. What really matters about the progression of different societies is the geographic features of where they are. “History followed different courses for different people because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among people themselves.”

There was the only universal lesson I got from this book because it was the only thing Jared talked about. He brought up interesting points throughout the entire book, but it kept coming back to the fact that everyone starts off equally smart and the environment has everything to do with the growth of societies.

The packet instructed to say whether I liked the book or not, and I kind of liked it. There were some parts of the book that I wished I could fast-forward through, but there were also a few interesting parts in it as well. Chapter 16 and 17 were probably my favorite chapters of the 6 I had read. Chapter 16 was incredibly informative and really helped me understand why China progressed so much faster than other societies. Chapter 17 went on the explain how the Austronesian expansion came to be.

Many people who read this book would probably say that there is nothing missing from this masterpiece of a book, but I would have to disagree. Diamond talks about how agriculture and geographic features contributed to the advancement of populations, but he should also include the people involved with the change. If it weren’t for Qin Shi Huang, China would never have a centralized government. If he were to have included these important figures, I wouldn’t have to search up facts like the sentence before. It would give people a better understanding of the points he tries to cover. I understand that he is trying to make a point, that it’s all about the geographic features, but it would help to at least say which people took most advantage of said features. Other than that, there really is nothing else missing from the book.

As far as I could tell, there were 3 out of the 5 themes of geography, place (Relative), perception, and human-environment interaction. I would hope that every book based on any type of geography would be relative place for a theme. The book gave an idea of where everything was taking place, but it never went into specifices, such as longitude and latitude. In Chapter 16, Diamond explains how the Chineese follow the same system as way back when, “From the beginnings of literacy in China, it has had only a single writing system, whereas modern Europe uses dozens of modified alphabets.” This whole book is about how humans utilize the environment, so it’s self explanatory on how human-environment interaction is one of the themes used in this book.

Conclusion

Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” was an amazing, informative book that showed how societies got to where they are today. He had an incredible take on how populations were shaped through the environment. Because of this book, I am now able to understand the past a little more than what I could before the summer. 

Works Cited

1. Diamond, J. M. (2005). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Company.
2. Dixon, J. (2006). Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 129(3), 589-590.
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4. Harrison, G. (2006). Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Ethnohistory, 53(1), 202-203.
5. Hinde, R. A. (2004). Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 17(4), 325-327.
6. Kelley, D. R. (2004). Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 24(2), 487-489.
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10. Thomas, J. (2004). Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Journal of Historical Geography, 30(2), 380-381.