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
More food available meant, and still does, more people. Here, again, Eurasia was favored with almost all the suitable species. As a result of that, farmers became materialistically richer than hunter-gatherers who stayed in relatively small groups, because hunters could not support people that were not able to hunt and kill wild animals. 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. 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. He also links success in food production to the inventions of writing and of technology. Guns, Germs and Steel is a fascinating synthesis that brings together history, archaeology, agriculture, linguistics, medicine, evolution and many other fields. 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. These he relates also to government and religion, which he characterizes as "kleptocracy".
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Acceptance Essays
