Guns Germs And Steel Essay

“Environments can affect economy, technology, political organization, and fighting skills within a short time” (Diamond 57). An environment rich in domesticable flora and fauna allows for sedentary communities to develop. Farming allows for the storage of surplus food, which in turn allows for full-time soldiers, politicians, and craft specialists. In Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, the amount of domesticable large mammals, the amount of domesticable crops containing high calorie counts, and the volume of people contributed to countries’ development of guns, germs, and steel. “The largest domestic mammals interacted with domestic plants to increase food production by pulling plows and thereby making it possible for people to till land that had previously been uneconomical for farming” (Diamond 88). Africa and Eurasia had human inhabitants far before the Americas. Because humans originated in Africa, they could only reach Eurasia at first due to their lack of boat-building skills and ability to survive cold temperatures. The large mammals of Africa and Eurasia developed along with humans. This allowed them to better evade human hunters. The large mammals of the Americas developed separate from humans,

Today, a group of crops called cereals provide over half of all calories eaten by humans. Five of the current twelve leading crops are cereals: sorghum, wheat, barley, corn, and rice. The people of West Africa and Sahel domesticated sorghum; the people of the Fertile Crescent domesticated wheat and barley; the people of Mesoamerica domesticated corn; and the people of China domesticated rice. Corn took a large amount of effort and time to domesticate, resulting in a slower population growth than that seen in the other countries that domesticated major cereals. The major cereals of eastern Asia and the Americas had reduced protein quantities that led to many nutritional