Guns Germs and Steel

Why is it that Europeans ended up conquering so much of the world? Or as Yali puts it in the far beginning of the book, “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”? Despite all the contrary evidence from anthropology and human biology, many persist in attributing the differing political and economic successes of the world’s peoples to historical contingency. On the other hand though, the author sees the fundamental causes as environmental, resting ultimately on ecological differences between the continents and as he well puts it on page 25: “Authors are regularly asked by journalists to summarize a long book in one sentence. For this book, here is such a sentence: ‘History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological difference among peoples themselves.”

The complex and integrated argument unfolds in four parts, strategically constructed by questions: why have different continents and regions developed so differently like the Maori killing the Moriori, and why did Pizzaro capture Inca emperor Atahu

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Studying extensively the history of World War II, I’ve attained the belief of cause and effect and the writer describes almost all of his arguments giving out a strong case. Followed by the studies of why some peoples chose not to farm, why some did not domesticate animals, and why production spread on different rates at different continents. More food available meant, and still does, more people. In part three the author argues that the settled communities made possible by production of plant and animal food allowed diseases to leap from domesticated animals to humans. The only thing that I did not quite grasp, was the quick description of the Spaniards’ conquest of Mesoamerica; what exactly caused the Spaniards to capture the natives, since the natives were not a thread to them?

Besides that, I believe Guns, Germs and Steel was a very well structured, extensively researched and superbly presented book. In a relatively short display (part two), the author outlines the origins of agriculture. Reading this was actually a different experience, because it covers and explains in a nutshell how, when and why we are here today. …evidence for the existence of human differences in intelligence… is lacking. The characteristics of these crops are extensively discussed, driving us, the readers, to the conclusion that food production indeed played a major role in a material sense, mental sense, as an agent of civilization and as a source of power. The author in this particular section gives modern examples of modern animal breeders that were not able to domesticate some wild large mammals of Africa and justifies why ancient Africans and other peoples could not domesticate them either. Through these strong words we can see that he will try to convince people that there was something else holding people back and there is not such a thing as a superior race. We can see that the writer starts off the book with a notable amount of frustration about the mistaken ideas our society has come to believe: “ … objection to such racist explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong.

Firstly, the author argues that ancient farmers had to develop more advanced tools for producing more amounts of food and had the opportunity to support people that did not work in the fields, such as politicians, warriors, priests and so on.

Approximate Word count = 1029
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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