Guns Germs and Steel Free Essays

1. Yali’s question; â€Å"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? † 2. Diamond rewords the question as â€Å"History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among people environment not because of biological differences among peoples themselves. We will write a custom essay sample on Guns Germs and Steel or any similar topic only for you Order Now † 3. Jared Diamond analyzes several factors that he believes contributed to the existing balance of the world’s resources. In order to answer Yali’s question, he speculates about the role of geography, technology, cultural diffusion, agriculture, culture and biology. . The Maori evolved differently because of population and leadership differences. The Maori conquered the Moriori due to its advanced weapons and technology and the Moriori lost due to its lack of leadership and simple weapons. 5. Population density affected economies because the more people there are the more things you need such as food. It also affected social complexity because it easier to control smaller populations. With more people you need more control over things for decisions which goes with political organization 6. Atahualpa was the last ruler of the Inca Empire of pre-Columbian South America to exercise power independent of Spanish control. Francisco Pizarro and a small group of Spanish soldiers captured Atahualpa. In a vain attempt to save Atahualpa, his subjects assembled one of the largest ransoms in history, an estimated $30 million worth of gold and silver. 7. Pizzarro completely surprised and overwhelmed Atahualpa’s empire; Pizzarro had guns germs and steel where the Incas didn’t. Pizzarro also had horses that terrified the Incas having never seen it. Pizzarro also had a written language and the Incas did not. 8. Availability of more consumable calories means more people equals strength of numbers. Domestic animals fed people by furnishing meat, milk, and fertilizer and by animal labor. Animals and crops also provide warmth and tools. 9. These areas are Southwest Asia’s Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes and possibly the Amazon Basin, and eastern United States. 10. These areas are Sahel, tropical West Africa, Ethiopia, and New Guinea. 11. These areas were western and central Europe, Indus valley, and Egypt. 12. The only hunter-gatherers to continue to exist were those who were separated geographically or lived in areas not fit for food producing. One theory of why people first started producing food was just as a back-up plan. Another theory is that there are different factors in different parts of the world that caused the decision to move to farming. 13. A plant is to be domesticated when its native characteristics are altered such that it cannot grow and reproduce without human intervention. 14. Because Different factors in different parts of the world caused the decision to move to farming. 5. Some plants need to be pollinated by another plant, but some mutant plants are self-pollinating. These self pollinating plants would also be picked and eventually wipe out the non self-pollinating plants. 16. Eurasia 17. Three advantages were the climate of the Fertile Crescent was wet in the winters and dry in the summers, ancestor crops were already very productive and fruitful, and many of the crops that inhabited the Fertile Crescent were self-pollinating. 18. For one the continent contained the largest amount of wild mammals. Another reason is that Eurasia has had the least extinction in the last 40,000 years. In other parts of the world large mammals were not as readily available for domestication. 19. Diamond gives six reasons why: diet, growth rate, and problems of captive breeding, nasty disposition, tendency to panic, and social structure. 20. The Americas and Africa both have a north-south axis while Eurasia has a west-east axis. It is because west-east regions share the same length of day, same types of seasons, same diseases, and same aspects of climate such as rainfall and habitat. Trade spread farther west east than it did north south. 21. Plants moved from north to south or vice-versa were not built to endure the different climates, times of day, and etc. Domestic animals could not fight off the new types of disease and climate as well. 22. Genetically some people have developed immunity to certain diseases or illnesses through generations of repeated exposure. The small populations can’t fight outside epidemics, and can’t evolve their own because they are nearly wiped out every time, therefore the epidemic disappears. 3. Blueprinting copying- when you copy or modify an available detailed blueprint. Idea Diffusion-when you receive little more than the basic idea and have to try to do it yourself. 24. If kings limited writing they can better control the masses and there is a smaller chance of and uprising. 25. â€Å"Invention is often the mother of necessity† which means that many inventors created things out of curiosity rather than becau se of need. In other words, they made a product before there was a demand for it 26. The factors are economic advantage of new technology, social value and prestige, vested interest, and ease of observing advantages. 27. Factors are peaceful trade, espionage, emigration, and war. 28. Behavior became lethal in the presence of peasant soldiers ungracefully blasting away with guns. Eventually reduced government orders for guns until japan was almost without functional guns. 29. Sedentary living was decisive for the history of technology, because it enabled people to accumulate non-portable possessions. 30. Bands are the smallest societies lack many types of institutions that other societies have. They are so small because the region they live in lacks the resources for larger societies. Next is the tribe, being a little larger. Tribes are large enough where they can have separate clans. Next is Chiefdoms, which contain different lineages, and have many jobs that were often filled by captured slaves. Chiefdoms had a redistributive economy in which the chief received all the goods and then spread it back out among all the people. States have many more slaves and are supported by a political and territorial basis, not one of kinship and heredity. 1. There are four reasons why large societies must have complex centralized government. Secondly is the â€Å"growing possibility of communal decision making with increasing population size. † Thirdly involves economic reasons of differentiating talents and transfer of goods. The final consideration is that larger societies have denser populations 32. One reason is because of early extinction of large wild fauna in the Americas, while in Eurasia there were a variety of wild animals for domestication. Agriculture is another reason. Eurasia also had much more variety of domestic able plants. Those parts of the Americas that did have agriculture were lacking in protein. It was also much less successful because they did not have the labor animals that Eurasia did. Germs, metal, military technology, and power to operate machinery were all more reasons that Eurasia had such an advantage over the Native Americans. 33. Those parts of the Americas that did have agriculture were lacking in protein. 34. These were blacks, whites, African Pygmies, Khoisan, and Asians. 35. 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