...Guns, Germs, and Steel 1. Yali’s question was, “How come the rate of technology development differs with people in different races and levels of intelligence?” 2. One of the three objections to answering Yali’s question is if you did answer it, it would seem like you’re justifying world domination instead of understanding it. Another reason is that it may seem like you glorify the Eurocentric view of everything. The third is by answering this question you’ll come across saying that civilization is better and makes life better than the tribal ways of life. 3. A Eurocentric approach to history is focusing on Europe. 4. Jared Diamond doesn’t agree with the argument that Europeans are more innately intelligent than the New Guineans. H believes this because the survival of the fittest. In New Guinea people who aren’t smart wouldn’t be able to survive where they are, therefore unable to pass down their genes. While Europeans...
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...Guns, Germs, and Steel Assignment A. Yali's question is "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we block people had little cargo of our own?" The Americans brought over lots of material goods in their ships. Yali asks why there is such a difference in between him (and people like him) and the Americans, especially why there's a great difference in wealth and power. And how race may play a role in how advanced people are. B. Pizarro successfully captured King Atahualpa, they had bigger, better weapons and strong armor. The Europeans also had horses and a helpful writing communication system. The Spaniards suffered from the diseases (mainly smallpox) the Europeans brought over killing many...
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...Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond had been having a conversation with a New Guinean politician, Yali, when he asked a strange question. “Why do you white men have so much cargo, and we New Guineans have so little?” Diamond was confused by the question at first, and had no idea how to answer it. Why had European civilization developed at such a fast rate, compared to other peoples around the world? Diamond set himself to the task of finding out, and spent years answering this question. Yali’s question is a hard one to answer. Diamond travelled around the world to try to answer it. Why did some civilizations grow faster? After years of research, he found his answer. His answer was geography. Natural resources are key in building and development, food and water especially. Without the necessary resources to survive, civilization cannot develop. For groups of people to develop and create new things, there need to be people within those groups who are not focused solely on feeding themselves. This requires a surplus of food, which requires farming at least to some extent. When food is less of an issue, some people can focus on other things, like building better houses, creating better tools, and coming up with better solutions to a multitude of problems. These people, specialists, are what allows the group to...
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...Information about the Book: Guns, Germs, and Steel was written by author, anthropologist, ecologist, geographer, and physiologist Jared Diamond and published in 1997 by W. W. Norton & Company. It has 480 pages, and has won the Phi Beta Kappa Award in 1997 for Science and the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for General Nonfiction. Later in 2005, a documentary based off the book was produced by the National Geographic Society and was broadcast on PBS. What is the book about? Guns, Germs, and Steel starts off with a simple question asked by Jared’s friend, a local New Guinea politician named Yali: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [goods] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”[p.14]....
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...12/1/15 Chapter Summaries Prologue Diamond wonders why Eurasia presided over other cultures. The question was answered with racial intelligence differences and environmental differences. He also talks about survival of the fittest. He says that intelligence is closely linked to human and cultural survival. All of these questions would be answered by the end of the book. Part One: - From Eden to Cajamarca Chapter 1. Up to the Starting Line Evolution is explained, relating us and our “ancestors” of many centuries ago. Primates such as gorillas are said to be our closest relatives. Africa presides as the homeland for all species. Neanderthals have always been viewed as mindless, mentally deranged creatures. Fifty years ago, The Great Leap Forward was like a big advancement in technology. Hominids also began to spread across New Guinea and Australia. The larger animals that failed to attain protection qualities against other predators during evolution died out and became extinct. Eurasia also occured. It became the more advanced between them and Africa, although Africa started out on top. Chapter 2. A Natural Experiment of History The Maori and Moriori descended from Polynesians,...
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...In this chapter of Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, he talks about how Eurasians invented firearms and steel equipment instead of the Sub –Saharan Africans. Diamond also talks about how most inventions that were made took a long time until it became widespread and popular. His opinion is that inventions are only made because something in the society isn’t “clicking”. Diamond talks about how an invention is made and after it is made, the inventor actually has to find a purpose for it, and how its because of curiosity and tinkering that it is made. Only after a long period of time passed when the society actually considered the invention needed. Rare geniuses like Watt and Edison were very important according to Diamond, because of the “heroic theory of invention”, and how an inventor must prove that the idea came from them to begin with. Many inventors fed off of other inventors inventions and made their own, very similar to the original invention. This was like a train, each inventor would feed off of the other inventions to make their own. Diamond argues that ideas and inventions depend on the type of society and how well the society is doing or will be doing over a long period of time. Diamond also argues that...
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...In Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, the author talks about how the continent of Africa became what it is now through the migrations of the Bantu people. Africa had many types of languages and one of the most important ones to this day is Bantu. The people who spoke Bantu had traveled around the continent impacting the rest of the people to convert to their language. After others joined the bandwagon, the other languages began to fade. The author talks about this when he writes, “Only gradually, as the Bantu multiplied and incorporated cattle and dry-climate cereals into their economy, did they fill in the leap-frogged areas. But the eventual result was still the same: Bantu farmers occupying most of the former Khoisan realm; the...
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...History is infused with multiple changes and continuities that affected the way of living for humans in the past, which eventually had an impact on the divergent lifestyles experienced today. Jared Diamond attempts to address these modifications and continuities in his book “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” discussing specific changes that occurred and allowed one location to succeed at a faster rate than another location. As we look at the rate of progression in the past and the present, Eurasia, the continent of Europe and Asia, developed faster than any other continent. The reasoning behind this is the earth’s tilted axis which came to Eurasia’s advantage because the its orientation corresponded with the growth of plants. This greatly impacted...
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...In the video, Jared Diamond explains that the three major elements that separate the world's "haves" from the "have nots" are guns, germs, and steel. These are the same elements that the Spaniards used to their advantage during their conquest of the Inca empire. Diamond had a theory about geographic luck, which basically means that where you are born is what dictates how much of an advantage you will have due to your surrounding environment. A key element in geographic luck includes domesticated animals which led to greater productivity; the majority of domesticated animals were indigenous to the mild climates of the world where powerful civilizations then developed. Because of their geographic location, Europeans were the first to obtain...
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...differences affect the growth of civilizations. The independent variables were the “island climate, geological type, marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation, and isolation” (55). The dependent variables were how the inhabitants adjusted and survived the varying environmental differences. The constants were the humans, and the test was how humans living in the Polynesian Islands shaped their civilization according to their environment. The conclusion was the Maori and the Moriori, despite coming from a common ancestral origin, differed vastly in terms of government, technology, population, and many others due to the surrounding land they inhabited. 6. The proximate causes of Pizarro’s victory against the Inca’s are the superior weapons, steel armor, and horses. These advantaged quickly overpowered the spears, clubs, and other less advanced weapons wielded by the Incas. The ultimate cause was the lack of knowledge about the Spaniards or any other conquering kingdom from afar. 7. Auto-catalytic is when something catalyzes itself repeatedly, without needing a catalyst. In terms of food production, as more food is produced, the population rises. As the population rises, even more food in necessary. Food production is auto-catalytic because it repeats itself in a cycle, going faster or growing larger as time passes (111). 8. Plant and animal domestication lead to conquest because it allowed for food surplus. Hunter-gatherers did not possess much food surplus, therefore spending most...
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...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...
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...Finally she talked to the store clerc and purchased a book. Subject 3 - Caribbean/Indian Approximately 21 years old, dressed for a party, she has spent most of her time in the science fiction section. Subject 4 - The bouncer - Stocky, tattooed male around 30. Has spent quite a lot of time in the discount section, read books with great attention. Around 40 minutes. Participant experiments 1. Talking to customer service. I participated in the buying process - talked to store clerks, however they guided me to healthcare section, then to the computer station. However, I could not find the book I was looking for. 2. Buying a book - Something made me to go Bestsellers book stands. After, browsing through the titles, I stumbled upon “Guns. Germs, and Steel - the fates of human societies”. what really made me buy at it, was a shiny sticker, which said:”Winner of Pulitzer Prize”. Interpretation What I didn’t expect is that for a lot of people buying books at a bookstore is not always the priority. Many come here just to wander around or have some private time or discuss personal life with friends. It also occured to me that few people look for anything specific. Only one of my subjects, chose the book right away. I didn’t notice other customers buy a book within 3-5 minutes of their entry. We can link people’s desire to spend extra time here as a way of satisfying need for belonging. Perhaps, coming to bookstores, makes them feel like a member of “high-society”. Or, they perceive...
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...Required Reading: Chapter 1, 2, 3 & 4 Slides 1: Themes of cultural psychology: - Psychological processes are shaped by cultural experiences Defining Culture: (3, last one is the best/preferred definition for this class) - A group of people who have a shared context (geographical, historical, linguistic, etc.) - A group of people who have shared beliefs - BEST definition: Information acquired from other members of a species through social learning. Challenges to defining culture: Cultural boundaries are not distinct and often unclear Cultural are dynamic and change There is substantial within-culture variation Fuzzy category(模糊的) Compare and Contrast: Cultural PSYC vs. General PSYC (different focuses and premises假定) - General Psychology: • Focused on: human universals(普遍性): does not vary across human cultures • All people everywhere are the same • Context and content of thought is largely just noise (Ignore the ability to understand the human mind) - Cultural Psychology: • Focused on: cultural variation and causes of variation • Humans are a cultural species - culture informs how we think • Thoughts are shaped by contexts • Minds and culture are entangled( 缠绕在⼀一起) with each other Mueller-Lyer illusion(哪个更长): - Trick of perspective - A lot of cultural variation is susceptibility(易受影响的) to this illusion Psychology is W.E.I.R.D.: - Most of what we know about psychology is based on WEIRD samples: • Western • Educated • Industrialized • Rich • Democratic 第 1 ⾴頁 ...
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...Collapse- book is about a history topic about how societies choose to fail or survive. The main characters are historical people and unknown kings of Mayan cities 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...
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...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 Vitamin Sources: Bone Marrow, Brain, Kidneys, and Glands Organs from the Water Fat-soluble Vitamin Summary Chapter 3 References CHAPTER 4 REMINERALIZE YOUR TEETH WITH WISE FOOD CHOICES The Town without a Toothache Deceptive Labeling Pasteurization Kills Milk Obtaining Raw Milk Good Soup Heals Your Teeth Blood Sugar Sweeteners Protein for Your Teeth Protein Assimilation...
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