Jared Diamond: The Roots Of Human Civilization

“Why you white men have so much cargo, and we New Guineans have so little?” asked Yali. Yali, a New Guinean asked this question to Jared Diamond, a professor at UCLA in Los Angeles. Cargo is the word that New Guineans use to describe material goods. Yali’s question perplexed Jared and drove him to discover the origins of inequity of wealth and power throughout the world. To find the answer, Jared had to go to to the roots of human history. He would have to find a time where all humans were equal, back to the very first human civilizations. This was not an easy task, rather an arduous one. It took Jared around thirty years of his life to find the answer. Throughout his research, Jared found that the three concepts that led to diverse civilizations

They made shelters wherever they could find plants and animals. Due to the unpredictability of hunting, these small mobile groups relied more on gathering barley and wheat. These cereal crops would be vital in creating modern civilizations, but that would only happen after a drought in the Middle East. Ian Kite, an archeologist, and his team, found remains of a village near the Dead Sea. In the village, archeologists found evidence of the world’s very first granary, in which grain was stored for the village. Most of the time, wheat and barley were kept since they could be stored for months and years without rotting. Even with the drought, humans developed a way to feed and entire village; they became the world’s first farmers. Unknowingly, humans back then would take the seeds from the tastiest and biggest crops and plant those seeds. By this process, humans had unconsciously domesticated plants and ended up growing plants that helped them. Regions where crops were a surplus usually ended up turning into a modern civilization. Domesticated farming was not the only element that started the process of differences in power and wealth throughout the

Through thirty years of researching, he found out that the two innovations that humans had developed in the Fertile Crescent had been the domestication of farming and animals. The Fertile Crescent was able to have a prosperous civilization only because geography was on their side. Without being placed in the center of a land mass, farming couldn’t have spread very far and modern civilizations couldn’t have came to be. The Fertile Crescent was a very prosperous region thirteen thousand years ago. This region was where the division of wealth started. Places such as New Guinea isn’t as advanced as other countries such as the United States because they had never been introduced to different types of animals that help humans farm or crops that are nutritious. Farming, geography, and farm animals played a massive role dividing up civilizations to becoming what they are right