10th grade Advanced Placement World History II Summer Reading Assignment Since the last ice age, civilizations have progressed at different rates. Some developed literate societies with metal tools and innovative farming societies, while others developed illiterate hunting-gathering societies with improvised rock tools. But why has society advanced at such unlike proportions? This question, also known as Yali’s question, is the main focus of the book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
Africa Before European Arrival DBQ Some of the earliest humans lived in Africa. Though time, Africans have developed their way of living and has established their own successes, such as city-states and empires. Even though there is only a little knowledge of the early civilizations in Africa, the achievements of the African empires, kingdoms, and cities before the arrival of the Europeans brought both East and West Africa to prosper, due to its geography, culture, and successful trade. Like all ancient civilizations that continued to develop, Africa has grown to survive and move forward. To begin, Africa is the second largest continent in the world.
Chapter three of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond is a story about how Francisco Pizarro, the Conquistador, brought the end to the Inca civilization with only two hundred men. Diamond uses real accounts from six of the 200 men to tell what happened. The story goes like: Francisco Pizarro by order of the King to travel across New World and conquer the lands and riches for his nation. They had gathered information about an Incan Empire and soon sent their sights on capturing the Incans. The Spanish Conquistadores tried to the Incan leader, Atahuallpa, to convert to Christianity but it failed so Pizarro then captured Atahullpa.
In Episode three of Gun Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, describes how the European settlers settled in the southern parts of the African continent. Many of the farms animals that the European people brought played very important roles in the process of colonizing. Over time the Europeans developed some kind of refusal against the germs that the livestock carried. The germs and diseases began to spread amongst the Khoisan people which resulted in killing their population. After that happened the European population enlarge in potential and proportions.
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond answers Yali’s question, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people have little cargo of our own?”. Diamond begins his research in Papua, New Guinea where he says people have been living for 40,000 years. In Papua, Diamond discovers that gathering is both more productive and effective rather than hunting. He wonders why these New Guineans did not advance like more developed countries did. Geographic luck is the term that comes into play.
Jared Diamond in his book titled Guns, Germs, and Steel tells about certain places in the world having more geographic luck than others and thus causing them to prosper. During the Civil War the North and the South were warring over state rights and slavery issues. While the industrial revolution fueled the creation of new inventions such as the steam engine, the south refused capitalize upon these new creations. When the North grew and continued to grow in its industrial strength, they began to make themselves a world power, causing the South to continue to mostly produce cotton and several other agricultural crops. The South didn’t provide many new technologies which limited there economic effect on trade and production.
Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond is an American biologist who spends 30 years trying to figure out why the world is unequal. Diamond traveled around the world looking for answers to why the world is the way it He believed that racial or gender were not responsible for difference in wealth and development. where he learned about the people and the agriculture problems they were facing. He wanted to comprehend why the people of Guinean were having difficulties on civilization. One of the Guinean asked “why you white men have so much cargo, and we black have so little.”
In the book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond, Part Three talks about the evolution of germs, writing, technology, government, and religion. Jared Diamond seems to feel like the development of technology helped shape the world as it is today (most importantly Eurasian societies) except, even he had a struggle figuring out how technology was developed. He compares how the Eurasian societies developed technology compared to the Western societies. Technology, in general, helped shape those societies and created many powerful inventions that are used in our world today. Jared Diamond is also interested in answering Yali’s question from Chapter One which makes his curiosity grow on to how everything happened the way it happened.
Burns, Sydney BPQ #2- I see areas of the world, such as Bantu Africa and North America, that didn't generate "civilizations" as different, but certainly not as "backward." Many would consider the Roman Empire an example of an amazing civilization, and although it did have many achievements, Roman society had many undesirable aspects, such as its large scale slavery that "had some 2 to 3 million slaves" (page 231). Bantu Africa did not have slavery, and even "developed gender systems that were markedly less patriarchal than those of established urban-based civilization" (pg 284). Bantu Africa and other similar societies did not lack religion, art, and many other important aspects of culture.
This new combination of the Old (Europe and Africa) and New Worlds gave rise to the
Firstly, European empires in the Americas as well as Russian, Chinese, Mughal, and Ottoman empires are different in their development because Europe interacted and depended on other regions. The Atlantic Ocean connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Strayer states how “these two ‘old worlds’ were joined, increasingly creating a single biological regime, a ‘new world’ of global dimensions.” The reason for this difference is that Europe constructed their empires across the Atlantic Ocean in the Americas, or the New World, unlike their Russian, Chinese, Mughal, and Ottoman counterparts. This resulted in an advantage for the Europeans because they had access to new resources and ideas.
Lauren Collegnon ANP 121 29 February 2024 Guns, Germs, and Steel. In the movie “Gun, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond, he explores the question of European dominance through Eurasian dominance and attributes it to factors like geographic or environmental rather than genetic. A lot of the world remained hunters and gathers after the first agricultural evolution because the environment was not useful for farming.
For the period 500 BCE to 1200 CE, the societies of Africa and the societies of Americas both developed primarily in isolation. The geography of these regions and environmental variations created great distance between the emerging civilizations within the two continents. For example, In Africa the civilization of Axum, located on the horn of Africa, emerged with ties to Arabia. The proximity to the Red Sea linked Axum with Egypt and subsequently Christianity.
Civilizations in Africa and the Americas had very different experiences concerning trade, government and economic opportunities. Axum, emerging at around 50 CE, and Meroe, flourishing in 300 BCE, both appearing on the eastern half of Africa, had connections to the Eurasian empires and large domesticated animals to use in their specialized, imperial economies, while civilizations such as Maya, materializing cultural achievements in 250 CE, and Teotihuacan, developing in 150 BCE, had very little acculturation and no pastoral opportunities. Although Meroe, Axum, Maya and Teotihuacan had several differences including Meroe and Axum’s single, imperial monarch and extensive trading connections in comparison to Maya and Teotihuacan’s elite centered
This created vast differences in social development amongst societies. The advantages of looking at this theory towards the response of Yali’s question is because there is archeological proof that in a thriving environment, humans settled where there were fertile soil and abundance of livestock. We can attribute this to European dominance, they had favorable sources for planting and contact with animals. As they had more close contact with these animals, diseases begin to emerge slowly given them immunity to many diseases that the rest of the Earth’s population weren’t exposed to. Furthermore, as they expand in the East-west axis, they were able to cultivate some of the exported crops, exchange technology, and share ideas.
