In Jared Diamond’s excerpt from his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, he puts forward the historical narrative of how human evolution progresses at varying rates for different cultures due solely to the particular geographic region that people assimilate from. Diamond supports this thesis with specific evidence on the importance of food production, emphasizing that food is the main ingredient needed for a population to experience progress and growth, enabling that culture to expand around the world. I agree with Diamond’s dissertation and find it compelling due to his logical evidence and ethos on the topic. Diamond addresses his narrative by discussing the general overview on why the rise of food production had such a significant impact on the …show more content…
Diamond addresses this when he writes, “Another [explanation], popular with inhabitants of northern Eurasian continent versus African continent Europe, invokes the supposed stimulatory effects of their homeland’s cold climate and the inhibitory effects of hot, humid, tropical climates on human creativity and energy. Perhaps the seasonally variable climate at high latitudes poses more diverse challenges than does a seasonally constant tropical climate”(22). This hypothesis raises the questions of climate and its effect on the human psyche. For example, people living in high latitudes with freezing temperatures are forced to spend valuable time and resources building shelter to stay warm, while additionally dealing with the issues of growing sustainable food sources in less than ideal temperatures. This presents the obstacle of cultivating a prosperous population while having a non-arable atmosphere, or with little to no rainfall. In Diamond’s article from his website, he recounts the reasons as to why certain cultures evolve in the world. He states that “it’s not the people themselves”, but, “Instead, the reasons were continental differences in the available wild plant and animal species suitable for domestication, resulting in earlier domestication of a more productive suite of domesticates in Eurasia, plus Eurasia’s east/west axis that facilitated the spread of those domesticates throughout Eurasia” (Diamond). If the climate of a specific country isn’t arable, or has little rainfall, the growth of plants and crops becomes extremely difficult. Compounding the difficulties is a grueling climate and living environment. Conversely, a suitable climate benefits the inhabitants of places such as Eurasia. Having arable land and seasonable climate changes, countries within Eurasia have little difficulty in mass producing
Also, I would have prefer if the author wrote the historical aspects in chronological, that would have made it a bit easier to kept up with all the historical periods. I feel that this book has given me a better understand of why food production systems had changed. For instance, from what I understand our food production has changed because, people were too busy to prepared food and depended on companies to make consumption easier for the people. I thought it was a present day issue but, after reading this book I now understand it has been an issue for a long period of time. Bobrow – Strain even say that “ convenience is an easy answer and certainly part of the historical explanation (36). Overall this book was an easy read and covers everything so that someone without knowledge of white bread and food could understand the
Many Caucasian’s have thought and believed positively they were superior to many other races. Most of these people were from a geographic area that had advanced technology, large populations, and a large workforce. This area started in the Middle East and spread laterally within a similar environment that provided a fertile habitat for farmer gatherers. Jared Diamond discovered that approximately 13,000 years ago man started out as hunter-gatherers following seasonal game migration to provide food for their survival. Man would find whatever food that grew in that area to supplement the game animals for sustenance, but this activity would take a majority of his time and would be conditional to the regions environment and his own skills. Man’s desire and ability to find innovative ways to make his life easier prompted them to plant larger open areas with some of the first edible grass seeds. They began to stay near the water and planted areas establishing more permanent shelters, which they would return to from following game. In addition, they learned to store grains for planting and future consumption, which led to a healthier lifestyle for the growing population. The first cultivated grains were wheat, barley, rice, corn, beans, millet, sorghum, squash, and yams. This farming facilitated larger production with less manpower for a growing populous. This provided time for the inventors and engineering people to find better and faster ways of production, and inventing tools. These people moved and spread east and west and began to domesticate larger indigenous animals and control breeding of goats, sheep, and pigs first, which provided meat, milk, hair, and skins. The animals best suited for domestication needed to ...
Jared Diamond, author of the Pulitzer Prize Winning, National Best Selling book Guns, Germs and Steel, summarizes his book by saying the following: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Guns, Germs and Steel is historical literature that documents Jared Diamond's views on how the world as we know it developed. However, is his thesis that environmental factors contribute so greatly to the development of society and culture valid? Traditions & Encounters: A Brief Global History is the textbook used for this class and it poses several different accounts of how society and culture developed that differ from Diamond's claims. However, neither Diamond nor Traditions are incorrect. Each poses varying, yet true, accounts of the same historical events. Each text chose to analyze history in a different manner. Not without flaws, Jared Diamond makes many claims throughout his work, and provides numerous examples and evidence to support his theories. In this essay, I will summarize Jared Diamond's accounts of world history and evolution of culture, and compare and contrast it with what I have learned using the textbook for this class.
Jared Diamond Argues that the worst mistake in Human History is the invention and widespread introduction of agriculture, because it has created a plethora of social, economic, and health problems for the word. One example of this is when the article states, “Hunter-Gatherers enjoyed a varied diet, while early farmers obtained most of their food from one or a few starchy crops. The farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition.” This illustrates that the author's main argument is that agriculture was the worst mistake in human history because it shows how agriculture has negatively impacted health of both early farmers and people today by creating mass produced bulk crops that are low in nutrition. Furthermore, another example
The 1920’s were the singularly most influential years of farming in our country. The loss of farms following the war, and new agricultural practices resulted in the dawn of modern agriculture in our country. The shift from small family to big corporation during this time is now the basis for how our society deals with food today. Traditional farming in the 1920’s underwent a series of massive transitions following WWI as the number of farms decreased and the size of farms increased.
Crops can kill thousands and build millions. During the Potato Famine, an infamous crop failure, “1845 to 1947, more than one million people died of starvation or emigrated. Additionally, over 50,000 people died of diseases: typhus, scurvy, dysentery” (American University). For thousands of years crops have fueled large societies allowing for mass population growth and human expansion. But the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural reliance bered many consequences along with its pros. Switching to an agricultural way of life provided health issues among humans, drastic changes socially and culturally, as well as ecological implications. This paper examines the changes accumulated by this transition including its enduring
In the book “Guns, Germs and steel” Jared Diamond shares his own theory which evolves around Yali’s (A politician in New Guinea) question: “Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents.”(p.16). In the prologue Diamond explains that “because of different for different peoples “not because of biological differences among people themselves.”(p.25).Diamond describes environmental factors that helped determine these rates, factors such as Guns, Germs and steel.
Diamond begins addressing his argument by explaining the general overview on why the rise of food production had such a significant impact on the development of
“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples ' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves” (Jared Diamond). In the book Guns Germs and Steel he accounted a conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician that had asked “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 tries to answer this by describing the difference in use of government throughout history by bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
Jared Diamond's theory of Guns, Germs and Steel was that the foundation of agriculture was mainly based on geographical luck. He believed that if one didn’t have the good geographical location, one would not be able to develop in ways that other people with good location would. This was further divided into Guns, Germs, and Steel. His thesis applies to the British colonization of Australia in 1788. According to Australianmuseum.com.au, they believe the British have used guns against Aboriginals. As stated by Warren he hypothetically believes that smallpox was deliberately brought in by the British. Also stated by Pei he believes that the reason as to why Australia didn’t develop steel was because of their location and adverse climates.
Jared Diamond makes the argument that when humans decided 10,000 years ago to no longer be hunter-gatherers and made the decision to become sedentary and start domesticating their animals and crops, the result is that the human race has experienced a steady downfall. Diamond makes the point that “with agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism that curse our existence,” (Diamond). While the present system certainly is far from being perfected, Diamond’s various complaints and solutions certainly would not be of much use in the present time either.
“Why do white men have so much cargo and we, Papua New Guineans, have little?” This question sparked one mans journey to find out how one country could have so little and another could became so prosperous. That man was Jared Diamond, a professor at UCLA, a biologist by training and a specialist in human physiology. Diamond spent many years in Papua New Guinea studying birds but one year, a man on the beach asked him a question. That question has since taken him to the Fertile crescent, South America, and Africa to study one of the most important question about our history. Jared diamond believes he has the answer to the question. Eurasian societies prospered, when other countries did not, because of how they were geographically located and
Any given person does not need a college degree to enjoy delicious, healthy, and sustainably produced food, and shouldn’t need one to be able to access such basic human pleasures. Since each culture has a different idea of what qualifies as “good food”, it makes more sense to equip all people with the economic prosperity to be able to access the tools needed to make these
America’s population was growing rapidly in this period. With a flood of immigrants coming from China, and eastern european countries, America was facing its highest population ever. With the increase of people, the need for food grew. Farmers began producing more and more food. To the point where farmers began to overproduce.
Agriculture has changed dramatically, especially since the end of World War II. Food and fibre productivity rose due to new technologies, mechanization, increased chemical use, specialization and government policies that favoured maximizing production. These changes allowed fewer farmers with reduced labour demands to produce the majority of the food and fibre.