...How did guns germs and steel impact civilizations? What impacted the development of civilizations the most? Why did some civilizations develop faster than others? Is there a simple answer? There is a very simple answer. That answer is guns, germs, and steel. So how exactly did guns, germs, and steel affect the course of history? Guns had a major part in our history and are part of the reason why some civilizations were superior to others. "You know, the flintlock rifle, it was, you know, I shouldn’t really say this but it was nearly like as important as a cellphone is today. You can’t go without your cellphone; in those days you couldn’t go without your flintlock rifle.” (ggs) This passage shows how important guns were and how much it was necessary to have one to survive. “They would shoot, hand the gun over, take the next gun, fire, hand the gun over. So every five or six seconds you could fire a shot. See that, that was the important thing.” (ggs) This shows how easy it was to kill somebody and how effective it was because it takes longer to kill somebody with a sword or arrow and you are more guaranteed to kill your enemy with a gun. ”This is a Maxim gun. What made this weapon such a great weapon, as opposed to the old single-shot weapons that had been used in years before, is this gun could fire continuously for up to 500 rounds a minute. It had the equivalent firepower of probably 100 men in a company with single shot weapons.”(ggs) This passagfe is more proof as...
Words: 778 - Pages: 4
...Guns, Germs and Steel Page 1 GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: The Fates of Human Societies By Jared Diamond, 1997 About the Author: Jared Diamond is a professor of physiology at UCLA School of Medicine. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and was awarded a 1999 National Medal of Science. He is also the author of The Third Chimpanzee. SUMMARY The book asks and attempts to answer the question, once humankind spread throughout the world, why did different populations in different locations have such different histories? The modern world has been shaped by conquest, epidemics, and genocide, the ingredients of which arose first in Eurasia. The book’s premise is that those ingredients required the development of agriculture. Agriculture also arose first in Eurasia, not because Eurasians were superior in any way to people of other continents, but because of a unique combination of naturally occurring advantages, including more and more suitable wild crops and animals to domesticate, a larger land mass with fewer barriers to the spread of people, crops, and technology, and an east-west axis which meant that climate was similar across the region. The book is well written and contains not only information about the history of cultures around the world, but excellent descriptions of the scientific methodologies used to study them, from how archeologists study the origin of agriculture to how writing evolved to how linguistics can trace the movements of peoples across huge geographic...
Words: 18440 - Pages: 74
...Titles: Episode 1: Out of Eden Our thesis is based on Jared Diamond’s book ‘Guns, germs and steel’. Modern history is a product of conquests of European “explorers” and the Conquistadors, who led the way. The local population was utterly decimated by the few who came to the New World. With the aid of Guns, germs and steel, they were successful in taking over those lands. Ever since, people of European origin have dominated the globe, with the same combination of military power, lethal microbes and advanced technology. But how did they develop these advantages in the first place? Why did the world ever become so unequal? How have guns, germs and steel shaped the history of the world? There have been people living in the rainforests of New Guinea for at least 40,000 years – long before the settlements of North and South America were formed. But one of the few places on earth where it’s still possible to find people hunting and gathering is the rainforest of Papua New Guinea. They are among the most culturally diverse and adaptable people in the world. So why is it that they are being ravaged by rampant poverty while their European and American counterparts sit in bungalows and have their lavish their meals? Advanced technology, large populations, and a well-organized workforce have been common characteristics of majority civilizations. To understand the pace of the progress of each civilization in the course of history, we must need to dwell deep into the roots of the...
Words: 1799 - Pages: 8
... The Rise and Fall of Rome To many people, the ancient world has always been a topic of great interest and study. The ancient world is essentially the explanation for how the world ended up where it is today. Our ancestors laid down the foundation that would help form and mold today’s civilization and the way people live out their lives in modern times. Perhaps no civilization of the past did more for the future than the efforts and contributions of the Roman Empire. For almost a millennia, the Romans controlled the vast majority of the world. Their Empire made it possible to spread wealth and knowledge to the far corners of the world and lay down a base common knowledge that helped pave the path for people to follow. This paper shall look into the background of Rome and see what economic forces helped lead to the formation of such a formidable empire. What allowed these people to become so wealthy and construct a vast territory? Why was it easy for the Romans to do so much while many other nations are still set back in our day and age? The paper shall also look at the forces at work near the end of the Western Empire that brought an end to the glory and majesty of Rome and how this knowledge can perhaps produce a means of prevention of the same fate for the United States. The city of Rome became a Republic around the year 509 BC. By the end of the first century BC Rome controlled almost all of the known world (the Mediterranean area). Its system of government changed from...
Words: 3070 - Pages: 13
...and gatherers, then as peasants or laborers. But with the Industrial Revolution, some societies traded this ancient poverty for amazing affluence. Historians and economists have long struggled to understand how this transition occurred and why it took place only in some countries. A scholar who has spent the last 20 years scanning medieval English archives has now emerged with startling answers for both questions. Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, believes that the Industrial Revolution -- the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 -- occurred because of a change in the nature of the human population. The change was one in which people gradually developed the strange new behaviors required to make a modern economy work. The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history, Dr. Clark argues. Because they grew more common in the centuries before 1800, whether by cultural transmission or evolutionary adaptation, the English population at last became productive enough to escape from poverty, followed quickly by other countries with the same long agrarian past. Dr. Clark’s ideas have been circulating in articles and manuscripts for several years and are to be published as a book next month, "A Farewell to Alms" (Princeton University Press). Economic historians have high praise for his thesis, though many disagree with parts of it...
Words: 2197 - Pages: 9
...or Easter Island villages. Jared Diamond tells the story of the Viking explorer Erik the Red, who discovered Greeland and Vinland (Terranova, in Canada). Another character is captain Olafsson, a norse sailor who wrote the last news about Greenland in 1410. Another main character is Christopher Columbus, who arrived at Hispaniola in 1492, but now this island is two countries, the Dominican Republic and the Haiti. Diamond studied the politics of two presidents. the dominican Rafael Trujillo, who protected the enviroment and the dictator François, Papa Doc, Duvalier, who decided on politics of deforestatation of his country, Haiti. The author considered the bad politics of another main character, king George II, who was interested in sending merinosheeps from Spain to Australia, an idea which was succesful from 1820 to 1950 but then the farmers understood their lands lost fertility. Another main character is Tokuwaga Jeayasu, a shogun of Japan in 1600, who prohibited Christianity in 1600 and protected his country againt deforestation. The book takes us to a lot of places around the globe: Mayan cities, Rwanda, Viking colonies of Vinland or Greenland, Haiti and Dominican Republic, Easter Island and Polynesian colonies in Pacific, and the Chaco villages in New Mexico (United States). The time period was from 800 AC, when collapsed Mayan cities to 2005. Other locations are the Viking ships, isolated churches in Greenland, ghostly stone heads in Easter Island, sheep farms in Australia...
Words: 22095 - Pages: 89
...The Diamond of Sustainable Growth A Historical Framework for the study of political economy and economic development George David Smith, Richard Sylla, Robert E. Wright( NYU Stern School of Business For most of its existence, humanity neither enjoyed nor understood economic growth, or society’s capacity for creating wealth. Prior to the 18th century, the aggregate incomes of particular societies may have increased a little for short periods in a few places, but most of the time incomes hovered not far above the subsistence level. Powerful leaders and ruling classes could accumulate vast wealth, but this was normally achieved through the redistribution of incomes from the weak to the powerful, and certainly not through the creation of wealth as we know it today. Going back centuries, to paraphrase the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, human life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Peace and good weather were more likely to summon forth children more than prosperity. Whenever war, pestilence, and drought returned -- and they always did -- people died in droves. To many observers, humanity appeared doomed to spend eternity wet, cold, hungry, and grief-stricken. In the late 18th century, the English proto-economist Thomas Robert Malthus warned that the mass of humanity, quite aside from the foregoing perils, was doomed to a life at the margins of starvation, as surges of population growth would inevitably outstrip the finite sources...
Words: 8652 - Pages: 35
...Mantesh TABLE OF CONTENTS Cure Tooth Decay Book Description Foreword By Timothy Gallagher D.D.S. President of the Holistic Dental Association Introduction 100% Real Dental Healing Testimonials Leroy from Utah Ms. Steuernol from Alberta , Canada Mike from Ashland , Oregon Pioneering Tooth Cavity Remineralization CHAPTER 1 DENTISTRY'S INABILITY TO CURE CAVITIES Reaffirm Your Choice to Cure Your Cavities The Real Cause of Cavities Remembering Your Connection Fear of the Dentist How Conventional Dentistry Works Micro-organisms Conventional Dentistry’s Losing Battle Against Bacteria The Failure of Conventional Dentistry Chapter 1 References CHAPTER 2 DENTIST WESTON PRICE DISCOVERS THE CURE Lack of Nutrition is the Cause of Physical Degeneration The Healthy People of the Loetschental Valley, Switzerland Modern Swiss were Losing Their Health The Healthy People of the Outer Hebrides Gaelics on Modern Foods are Losing Their Health Genetics and Tooth Decay Aborigines of Australia Nutritive Values of Diets Compared Fat-soluble Vitamins and Activators Mantesh Why Tooth Decay with Modern Civilization? Weston Price's Tooth Decay Curing Protocol Dr. Price's Protocol Summarized Chapter 2 References CHAPTER 3 MAKE YOUR TEETH STRONG WITH FAT-SOLUBLE VITAMINS How Teeth Remineralize 101 Hormones and Tooth Decay Cholesterol The Miracle of Vitamin D Vital Fat-Soluble Vitamin A Cod Liver Oil Heals Cavities Weston Price’s Activator X More Fat-Soluble...
Words: 66501 - Pages: 267
...co1 Introduction: The Sixteen-Page Economic History of the World He may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind. —Samuel Johnson, Rambler No. 175 (November 19, 1751) The basic outline of world economic history is surprisingly simple. Indeed it can be summarized in one diagram: figure 1.1. Before 1800 income per person—the food, clothing, heat, light, and housing available per head—varied across societies and epochs. But there was no upward trend. A simple but powerful mechanism explained in this book, the Malthusian Trap, ensured that short term gains in income through technological advances were inevitably lost through population growth. Thus the average person in the world of 1800 was no better off than the average person of 100,000 BC. Indeed in 1800 the bulk of the world population was poorer than their remote ancestors. The lucky denizens of wealthy societies such as eighteenth-century England or the Netherlands managed a material lifestyle equivalent to that of the Stone Age. But the vast swath of humanity in East and South Asia, particularly in China and Japan, eked out a living under conditions probably significantly poorer than those of cavemen. The quality of life also failed to improve on any other observable dimension. Life expectancy was no higher in 1800 than for hunter-gatherers:...
Words: 5709 - Pages: 23
...R F S N O I TAT O U Q NAMRIAHC GNUT - EST OAM 5 SSERP EGAUGNAL NGIEROF 6691 G N I K E P Printed in the People’s Republic of China Study Chairman Mao’s writings, follow his teachings and act according to his instructions. Lin Piao A facsimile of the above statement by Comrade Lin Piao in his own handwriting appears on the previous page. FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION OF QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN MAO TSE-TUNG (December 16, 1966) Lin Piao Comrade Mao Tse-tung is the greatest Marxist-Leninist of our era. He has inherited, defended and developed MarxismLeninism with genius, creatively and comprehensively and has brought it to a higher and completely new stage. Mao Tse-tung’s thought is MarxismLeninism of the era in which imperialism is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to world-wide victory. It is a powerful ideological weapon for opposing imperialism and for opposing revisionism and dogmatism. Mao Tse-tung’s thought is the guiding principle for all the work of the Party, the army and the country. Therefore, the most fundamental task in our Party’s political and ideological work is at all times to hold high the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought, to arm the minds of the people throughout the country with it and to persist in using it to command every field of activity. The broad masses of the workers, peasants and soldiers and the broad ranks of the revolutionary cadres and the intellectuals should really master Mao Tse-tung’s thought;...
Words: 45851 - Pages: 184
..... 15 Prostitution in the West: .................................................................................................................................................... 17 The Gilded Age ..................................................................................................................................................................... 21 The Duties of American Citizenship ................................................................................................................................. 21 The Gospel of Wealth ....................................................................................................................................................... 28 The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age...
Words: 77768 - Pages: 312
...TABLE OF CONTENTS Author’s Preface ...................................................................................................................... p. 3 Chapter 1 — Introduction ....................................................................................................... p. 9 Chapter 2 — Desire: The Turning Point of All Achievement ................................................. p. 22 Chapter 3 — Faith Visualization of, and Belief in Attainment of Desire ............................... p. 40 Chapter 4 — Auto-Suggestion the Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind .............. p. 58 Chapter 5 — Specialized Knowledge, Personal Experiences or Observations ...................... p. 64 Chapter 6 — Imagination: the Workshop of the Mind .......................................................... p. 77 Chapter 7 — Organized Planning, the Crystallization of Desire into Action ........................ p. 90 Chapter 8 — Decision: the Mastery of Procrastination ......................................................... p. 128 Chapter 9 — Persistence: the Sustained Effort Necessary to Induce Faith ........................... p. 138 Chapter 10 — Power of the Master Mind: the Driving Force ................................................. p. 153 Chapter 11 — The Mystery of Sex Transmutation .................................................................. p. 160 Chapter 12 — The Subconscious Mind: The Connecting Link ........................................
Words: 91742 - Pages: 367
...Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115 Numbers, Days, Months . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 Chemical Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 Organs of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 Computer Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122 Business Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .124 United States Branches of Government . . . . . . . . . .126 Map of the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128 Map of the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 Presidents of the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132 www.VOASpecialEnglish.com Table of Contents 6 7 The Voice of America has been broadcasting programs in Special English since 1959. Special English is VOA’s method of communicating with English learners around the world in a way that is easy to understand. The vocabulary is limited to about 1,500 words. The sentences are short. The speed is slower than normal. Special English...
Words: 23894 - Pages: 96
... Dawkins coined the term ‘selfish gene’ to emphasize the single, focused object of a gene’s existence. What he means is that the sole purpose of a gene is to make copies of itself using the Darwinian selection process; very selfishly ignoring the consequences this pursuit may have on other living entities. Self-interest is a requirement for survival. This does not mean, of course, that animals and humans cannot be altruistic sometimes, in certain activities.2 It does mean that no living entity can survive for long if it is only purely altruistic. On the other hand, survival is not necessarily jeopardized when an organism is purely self-interested. Altruism, in the absence of self-interest, is not evolutionarily stable in the biological world; it leads to extinction. It is for this reason that all extant life forms must be selfish. Humans, like all creatures, are self-interested; not because it is good to be selfish but because we would not be here if we were not.3 SURVIVAL Self-interest is a powerful motivation because the basic concern for biological survival is the insufficiency of the resources that are required to maintain life. Organisms cannot survive when they cannot get enough air, water or food, or do not have adequate information and/or competence to discover and utilize the resources that are available in their environment....
Words: 14733 - Pages: 59
...Volume 10 Number 6 June 4, 2007 Black Intellectual Genocide: An Essay Review of IQ and the Wealth of Nations Girma Berhanu Göteborg University Sweden Lynn, Richard & Vanhanen, Tatu. (2002). IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Westport, CT: Praeger. Citation: Berhanu, Girma. (2007). Black intellectual genocide: An essay review of IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Education Review, 10(6). Retrieved [date] from http://edrev.asu.edu/essays/v10n6index.html. Abstract I review the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, written by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen. I critique the authors’ major assertion that a significant part of the gap between rich and poor countries is due to differences in national intelligence. The authors claim that they have evidence that differences in national IQ account for substantial variation in per capita income and growth of a nation. This essay review debunks their assumptions that intellectual and income differences between nations stem from genetic differences. This critique provides an extended review of the research literature that argues against these assumptions and presents a different picture from that presented by Lynn and Vanhanen about the concept of intelligence, what IQ measures and does not measure. The essay exposes the racist, sexist, and antihuman nature of the research tradition in which the authors anchored their studies and the deep methodological flaws and theoretical assumptions that appear in their book. The low standards of scholarship...
Words: 13913 - Pages: 56
