Thesis On Guns, Germs, And Steel By Jared Diamond

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Trisha Polo AP World, Period 4 Mr. Bowers 22 August 2015 Guns, Germs, and Steel: Author’s Thesis “Why is that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” American professor Jared Diamond could not answer a simple question asked by Yali, a New Guinean, right away, but it took him 25 years to answer it through “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. Through the book he elaborately explains his simple answer: “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.” (Diamond, pg 35). Jared Diamond’s thesis of societal success stemming from peoples’ environments…show more content…
“The major killers of humanity throughout our recent history—smallpox, flu, tuberculosis, malaria, plague, measles, and cholera—are infectious diseases that evolved from diseases of animals, even though most of the microbes responsible for our own epidemic illnesses are paradoxically now almost confined to humans.” (Diamond, pg 288). Over years, societies that have domesticated animals encountered diseases that threatened their lives, but their bodies have grown immune to the diseases they were exposed to if they didn’t die from it. Now when the Europeans immigrated to the Americas, they brought over diseases the Native Americans haven’t been exposed to, simply because Native Americans weren’t able to domesticate the same animals the Europeans domesticated, so they weren’t able to be immune to it. “The winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies.” (Diamond, pg 288-289). In the tropics such as Southeast Asia, they grew immune to their own set of diseases because of the different animals they had around them, which made it hard for the Europeans to colonize them as they weren’t immune to diseases such as malaria rather than the ones they’ve faced like…show more content…
“European weapons were steel swords, lances, and daggers, supplemented by small firearms and artillery, while body armor and helmets were also made of solid steel or else of chain mail. In place of steel, Native Americans used clubs and axes of stone or wood, slings bows and arrows, and quilted armor, constituting much less effective protection and weaponry.” (Diamond, pg. 523). Ideas such as the wheel and metallurgy were ideas available to be developed first in Eurasia as things that can aide them in warfare and daily living such as machines to help them with food production. “Writing empowered European societies by facilitating political administration and economic exchanges, motivating and guiding exploration and conquest, and making available a range of information and human experience extending into remote places and times. In contrast, use of writing in the Americas was confined to the elite in a small area of Mesoamerica.” (Diamond, pg 526). It takes a very long time for civilizations to develop alphabets for the language they speak in, but writing is helpful for powerful societies to stay organized in maintaining a huge population of many
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