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Guns Germs and Steel The Fates of Human Societies

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Title: Guns Germs and Steel The Fates of Human Societies


1
Guns Germs and SteelThe Fates of Human Societies
  • By Jared Diamond
  • 1997

Text extracted from Chapters 1-10
http//images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0393317552.03
.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
2
After the Ice Age
  • Human societies began to change 13,000 years ago
  • when the last ice age melted

3
After the Ice Age
  • Different societies resulted
  • Some literate, industrial
  • Some illiterate, agricultural
  • Some hunter gatherers retaining stone tools

4
Inequality and Extermination
  • Those historical inequalities have cast long
    shadows on the modern world, because the literate
    societies with metal tools have conquered or
    exterminated the other societies."

5
Yalis Question
  • Yali, a New Guinea politician asked
  • "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?"

6
Distribution of Wealth
  • To rephrase,
  • "why did wealth and power become distributed as
    they now are,
  • rather than in some other way?

Distribution of Wealth in the World
7
Common explanations
  • Racial or genetic superiority?
  • No objective evidence for this theory

8
Common explanations
  • Cold climate stimulates inventiveness?
  • But Europeans inherited from warm climate peoples
  • agriculture,
  • wheels,
  • writing, and
  • metallurgy

9
Conquest of the New World
  • "The biggest population shift of modern times
  • has been the colonization of the new World by
    Europeans,
  • and the resulting
  • conquest,
  • numerical reduction ,
  • or complete disappearance
  • of most groups of Native Americans".

10
Pizarro
  • The Incas were conquered by the Spaniard
    Francisco Pizarro.

11
Pizarros Forces
  • Pizarro had 168 soldiers.
  • They were in unfamiliar territory,
  • ignorant of the local inhabitants,
  • were 1000 miles away from reinforcements,
  • and were and surrounded by the Incan empire
  • with 80,000 soldiers led by Atahuallpa.

12
Guns, Germs and Steel
  • Pizarro had
  • steel armor
  • swords
  • horse mounted cavalry
  • guns
  • a minor factor

13
Treachery
  • Pizarro
  • ambushed and captured Atahuallpa
  • used religion to justify it.
  • collected a huge ransom in gold and silver,
  • killed him anyway.

Inca Gold
14
Conquistadors
  • In addition to horses and steel, conquistadors
    had
  • Superior ocean going ships
  • Superior political organization of the European
    states
  • Carried infectious diseases that wiped out 95 of
    Native Americans
  • smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus, bubonic
    plague
  • Superior knowledge of human behavior
  • from thousands of years of written history.

15
Why not the other way?
  • Still, why was it that the Europeans had all of
    the advantages instead of the Incas?
  • Why didn't the Incas
  • invent guns and steel swords,
  • have horses,
  • or bear deadly diseases?

Inca
Inca Warrior
16
Advantages of Agricultural Societies
  • More food, more people.
  • Domestic animals
  • Meat
  • Pull plows, carts
  • Transportation, war
  • Furs, fiber
  • Fertilizer
  • Deadly germs

17
Advantages of Agricultural Societies
  • Sedentary Existence
  • Short birth intervals
  • higher population densities
  • Grain Storage
  • Support specialists
  • Kings
  • bureaucrats
  • soldiers
  • priests
  • artisans.

18
Unequal Conflicts
  • "Much of human history has consisted of unequal
    conflicts
  • between the haves and the have-nots
  • between peoples with farmer power and those
    without it,
  • or between those who acquired it at different
    times."

19
Independent Crop Domestication
  • Middle East (8,000 BC)
  • Wheat, pea, olive
  • China
  • Rice, millet
  • Mexico (3,000 BC)
  • Maize, squash, beans
  • Andes mountains
  • Potato
  • USA
  • Sunflower

Other people adopted these crops (and
domesticated animals) later as a cultural package
20
Adoption by Hunter-Gatherers
  • Sometimes domesticated plants and animals were
    adopted by hunters/gatherers
  • Native Americans in U.S.
  • Sometimes hunters/gatherers were displaced by
    agriculturalists
  • European expansion in Australia, Tasmania

http//www.tasmanianaboriginal.com.au/images/hist/
Trugannie.jpg
Trugannini, last Remaining Tasmanian Aboriginal,
1868
21
Head Start
  • "The peoples of areas with a head start on food
    production
  • thereby gained a head start on the path leading
    to guns, germs and steel.
  • The result was a long series of collisions
    between the haves and have-nots of history."

22
Food Production
  • Food production often led to
  • poorer health
  • shorter lifespan
  • harder labor for the majority of people.

23
Early Plant Domestication
  • Humans unknowingly selected for traits
  • seed size, fiber length
  • lack of bitterness
  • early germination
  • selfing
  • dispersal mutations
  • wheat that does not shatter
  • seeds that stay in pods

http//www.union.ku.edu/traditions/desktops/wheat.
JPG
24
Sowing by Broadcast
  • Grains in Eurasia were sown by broadcast,
  • later in animal plowed fields to give
    monoculture.

25
Digging Sticks
  • In the new world,
  • planting done by digging stick
  • no domesticated plow animals
  • Result mixed gardens.

26
80 of Worlds Production
  • Wheat
  • Maize
  • Rice
  • Barley
  • Sorghum
  • Soybean
  • Potato
  • Cassava
  • Sweet potato
  • Sugar cane
  • Sugar beet
  • Banana

27
Major Domesticated Crops
  • No new plants domesticated in modern times
  • All of these domesticated  thousands of years
    ago.
  • Need a suite of domesticated plants to make
    agriculture work
  • Thus new plants domesticated where agriculture
    already successful

28
Fertile Crescent
29
Fertile Crescent Attributes
  • Mediterranean climate.
  • Wild stands of wheat
  • Hunter/gatherers settled down here before
    agriculture, living off grain
  • High percentage of self pollinating plants --
    easiest to domesticate.
  • Of large seeded grass species of the world, 32 of
    56 grow here.
  • Big animals for domestication goat, sheep, pig,
    cow

30
Meso America
  • In Meso America, the only animals domesticated
    were turkey and dog
  • Maize was slow to domesticate.
  • Occurred 5,000 years after domestication of wheat

31
Big 5 Domesticated Animals
  • Horse
  • Cow
  • Pig
  • Sheep
  • Goat
  • All from Eurasia

32
Large Animals
  • Of 148 large herbivorous or omnivorous species in
    the world
  • Eurasia had 72
  • Africa 51
  • Americas 24
  • Australia 1
  • Most cannot be domesticated

33
Why have 134 out of 148 big species not been
domesticated?
  • Diet too finicky
  • koala
  • Growth rate too slow
  • elephants, gorillas
  • Wont breed in captivity
  • cheetah, vicuna
  • Nasty Disposition.
  • grizzly bear, African buffalo, onager, zebra,
    hippo, elk

34
Why have 134 out of 148 big species not been
domesticated?
  • Hard to herd (no dominance structure)
  • deer, antelope
  • Tendency to panic.
  • deer, antelope, gazelles
  • Solitary
  • only cats and ferrets domesticated
  • Territorial
  • rhino

35
Easier to spread East-West
  • It was easier for domestic plants and animals
  • later, technology like wheels, writing)
  • to spread East-West in Eurasia
  • than North- South in Americas.

36
Evidence
  • Some crops domesticated independently in both S.
    America and Meso America
  • due to slow spread
  • lima beans
  • common beans
  • chili peppers

37
Evidence
  • Most crops in Eurasia domesticated only once.
  • Rapid spread preempted same or similar
    domestication.
  • Fertile Crescent crops spread to Egypt, N.
    Africa, Europe, India and eventually to China.

38
Africa
  • East-West spread of plants, animals easier
  • due to same day-length, similar seasonal
    variations.
  • Temperate N. Africa crops did not reach S. Africa
    until colonists brought them
  • Sahara
  • Tropics
  • Tropical crops spread West to East in Africa with
    Bantu culture,
  • did not cross to S. Africa due to climate.

39
Americas
  • Distance between cool highlands of Mexico and
    Andes was only 1,200 miles but separated by low
    hot tropical region.
  • Thus, no exchange of crops, animals, writing,
    wheel.
  • Only maize spread.

40
Americas
  • It took 2,000 years for maize to cross 700 miles
    of desert to reach U.S.A.
  • It took another 1000 years for maize to adapt to
    U.S.A. climate to be productive

41
Not a Cultural Issue
  • Some species like cows, dogs, pigs independently
    domesticated in different parts of the world.
  • These animals were well suited for
    domestication.
  • Modern attempts to domesticate
  • eland, elk, moose, musk ox, zebra, American Bison
  • are only marginally successful.
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