“I’d rather spend my leisure time doing what some call my work and I call my fun,” Jared Diamond. Jared Diamond is a biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. His passion however is bird study and has been making regular trips to Papua New Guinea since he was 21. His travels have made him an expert on birds. On his adventures he has learned of the many birds and about the wide variety of people who have lived there for over 40,000 years. One day, Diamond encountered a man who asked him a question that stuck him to the core. The question was, “Why you white man have so much cargo and we Guineans have so little?” To the Guineans cargo is equivalent to the white man’s power, and they believed that power was determined by race. Jared …show more content…
In the Middle Ages infectious diseases took millions of lives in Europe. They came from the animals, but some people were genetically resistant to these diseases and then passed this onto others which led to some protection with a built-in vaccine. When the Spanish began to explore the world in search of conquest they found the ancient Aztecs. The Spaniards had advanced modern weapons and the Aztecs didn’t, but the Spaniards had an even more important weapon of conquest. Jared discovered that one Spanish ship reached Mexico with signs of fever; one of the slaves had small pox and lead to infect thousands of Native Americans. After 10 to 12 days, the slaves friends have the infection, and after that their friends were infected. That is how the infection spread. Most of the infections came from animals, which again relates to geography. The animals that spread from the Fertile Crescent spread disease to them first. Many people died, but they were also the first to receive the genetically built in vaccines so they were not as susceptible to diseases. The Incas did not have diseases before the settlers came because the geography around them only had llamas around. They didn’t have any resistances so they were more susceptible to illnesses. When the Africans were being conquered some scholars believe that 20 million people in North Africa in the Middle Ages died. 95 percent were killed by disease or war; virtually emptied of it’s people. Germs were perhaps the most gruesome force to shape the history of our world. Everywhere it spread a wide epidemic of death spread. This is why Jared Diamond believes germs were such an important part of creating our