Themes In Guns, Germs, And Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: An Essay of the Fates of the Themes in Human Societies

Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains…Because of the wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm till the end will be saved (The Holy Bible: New International Version, Matthew 24:7-13).

This verse of the bible is of Jesus telling his inquisitive disciples about “the end.” “The end” refers to the end of life as we know it and the world turning on itself, and Jesus is asked how we would know when it is to come. His answer is that he does not know, but “he who stands firm till the end will be saved,”( Matthew 24:13)

Similarly,

Jared Diamond’s award winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Faith of Human Societies, describes humanity’s conquest, and those who had the most strengths and advantages were the ones who survived the obstacles and hardships of their journey and conquered everybody else.

In this critically acclaimed book, Diamond tries to answer a supposedly easy question by a

New Guinea local, Yali, who asks, “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?” (Diamond,

14) as he explores humanity’s history extending to 13,000 years ago arguing the themes of the development of human civilization, geographic advantages and disadvantages, and humanity’s conquest of the world.omingo 2

Yali’s question poses a great significance in the inquiry of the development of human civilization. As humanity progressed from savagery and into civilization, the imbalance of

All in all, the answer to Yali’s question isn’t as simple as, “because Eurasians are more advanced,” or “because New Guineans are incapable.” It was the prerequisites of geographic factors that ultimately decided the fates of the world’s societies. As Jesus told his disciples “he who stands firm till the end will be saved,” (Matthew 24:13), the same is true when it comes to humanity’s progress. Those who don’t fall in the hardships of their conquests will be the ones who stand tall after the storm has passed, as we saw in the results of the hunter-gatherer’s in the

Fertile Crescent adopting farming and so making their life easier, or the conquest of Pizzaro and his 168 soldiers who defeated the army of the 80,000 Incas that they were so afraid of. As the conquest of the world continued and nation after nation, kingdom after kingdom fell, the ones with the most strengths and advantages were the ones to succeed. Unfortunately for Yali’s ancestors, they lacked the geographic and technological advantage that would’ve given them the strengths to be the ones who could have developed guns, germs, and steel and be the ones to rise from the forest floors and conquer the world in “the