Guns, Germs, and Steel

Introduction

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a book written by historical research biologist Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1997 . Diamond discusses the progress of different civilizations in the world and offers an explanation for the appearance of Western European culture has become predominant over the others. The author won the Pulitzer Prize for the book in 1998. It has been translated into over 25 languages.

Master's thesis

The author's main thesis is that Eurasia, for its greater length, contained the highest proportion of plants and animals that can be domesticated, plus most of Eurasia is located in the east-west where there are few geographical barriers-mountains or -deserts, which allowed rapid expansion of agriculture . In other areas, the predominance of hunter-gatherer societies led to the disappearance of animal species that could be domesticated. In Eurasia the extent of the existence of agriculture and livestock allowed a higher density of population, which was a numerical advantage in facing these societies of hunter-gatherer societies.

The close coexistence with cattle resulted in livestock societies, exposure to germs of animal origin from the human being, and increasing population density produced these germs may occasionally attack human populations, including acquiring the character of epidemics . Over time, Eurasian societies became comparatively immunized against these germs. In fact, were the epidemics of diseases such as smallpox , the measles , the tuberculosis , the flu and others, a decisive factor in the dominance of Western Populations previously unexposed to these germs and therefore not immune, as the indigenous Americans before 1492.

Diamond notes that almost all the achievements of human societies (scientific, artistic, architectural, political and others) have occurred on the Eurasian continent, while companies in other continents (Africa Sub-Saharan Africa, America and Australia) have been conquered , displaced, or, in extreme cases (as with the Indians of North America, Australia and South Africa), were completely exterminated by military and political forces of Eurasian societies. These advantages stem from the early dominance of agriculture shortly after the last glaciation. Jared Diamond proposes explanations for such drastic differences in the distribution of both power and of technology between the different civilizations of history.

Discussion

The fame of the book titled “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” has been translated in to several renowned languages and has already received the prestigious Politicizing (from which also has a television version of this book on the American PBS). Generally, these awards are given to books broadcast, written in simple enough so that the general public grasp the ideas being discussed among scholars. If form and style are concerned, the book has well deserved the prize in question, as Diamond does a great use of popular rhetoric to express their ideas clearly enough. Perhaps the objection that can be presented in this book lies not in form but in content. Diamond writes about five hundred pages to answer the following question: that the Europeans ...