Guns, Germs and Steel Part 1 of 18

Episode One : Out of Eden (Part 1 of 6)

Jared Diamond's journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively simple question:

"Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"

Diamond realized that Yali's question penetrated the heart of a great mystery of human history -- the roots of global inequality.

Why were Europeans the ones with all the cargo? Why had they taken over so much of the world, instead of the native people of New Guinea? How did Europeans end up with what Diamond terms the agents of conquest: guns, germs and steel? It was these agents of conquest that allowed 168 Spanish conquistadors to defeat an Imperial Inca army of 80,000 in 1532, and set a pattern of European conquest which would continue right up to the present day.

Diamond knew that the answer had little to do with ingenuity or individual skill. From his own experience in the jungles of New Guinea, he had observed that native hunter-gatherers were just as intelligent as people of European descent -- and far more resourceful. Their lives were tough, and it seemed a terrible paradox of history that these extraordinary people should be the conquered, and not the conquerors.

To examine the reasons for European success, Jared realized he had to peel back the layers of history and begin his search at a time of equality -- a time when all the peoples of the world lived in exactly the same way.

• Category

  Education

[Jonathan Xavier]

To conclude because of colonialism Africa cannot thrive is completely hogwash considering it is still swimming in 2/3rds of the worlds resources. "people were not enslaved" - only small proportion of people were enslaved. "infrastructure...." - What infrastructure? They hadn't even invented the wheel when whitey turned up. You pretend as if whites haven't been the subject of colonialism or slavery. The meaning of the word slave is derived from Slavic, because the Slavs were constantly enslaved.

[Jonathan Xavier]

=A=

You're mistaken, unfortunately. You labour under the delusion that a progression of a society is driven by a few geniuses among idiots;you couldn't be further from the truth. Geniuses are byproducts of the nature of the societies they belong to, it is therefore, the small contribution of the everyday man that moves their civilisation forward. White civilisation indeed owes its greatness to both its people and their geniuses.

[ZimmermanHound]

Guns, Germs and Steel is a great book but what I do not like is that he rejects a biological and racial aspect of different peoples. This is also the problem with Jared Diamond - he is a liberal. One of the more honest scholars that still is mainstream and not an outcast is Napoleon Chagnon. This is the problem in modern post-liberal society. Even a liberal like Diamond is called ethnocentric racist.

[AK Elmi]

Besides, arn't most Europeans and Middle Eastern people related? They both have J1/2 genes and use Phoenician alphabets, had Abrahamic religions for the passed 1,600 years and share similar facial and racial features and originate from the Caucuses Mountains. Both Europeans and Middle-Easterners are descendants from Mesopotamian civilization and was part of the Roman Empire. So no need to have an dick contest between each other. China is an different story...

[AK Elmi]

Arab mathematicians were able to solve by purely algebraic means certain cubic equations, and then to interpret the results geometrically. This was done, for instance, by Ibn al-Haytham in the 10th century AD. Subsequently, Persian mathematician Omar Khayyám (born 1048 A.D.) discovered the general method of solving cubic equations by intersecting a parabola with a circle. These methods were passed in to Renaissance Italy.

[Jonathan Xavier]

The wheel was simultaneously invented across four places, Mesopotamia (Caucasian descent), Indus valley (Caucasian decent), Maykop Culture (mixed race), and in Central Europe. No, I was aware that the Greek alphabet was derived from the Phoenician alphabet much in same way Latin was derived from Sanskrit.

[Jonathan Xavier]

Semitic is a reference to a language group. The Mesopotamians were of primarily Caucasian origin, as were the Persians and Phoenicians (all have the R1a and R1b Halogroups). While I'll admit that these cultures did play a role in Greek development, much of it was done by the Greeks themselves and is yet to remove any value away from their achievements.

[Jonathan Xavier]

Complex geometry was in existence well before the invention of the Hindu numeral system.Euclid was one such example of a developer of complex geometry. The decimal place-value or the decimal fractions were never developed by Arabs, they were developed by Brahmani mathematicians and was adopted by the a Persian and then an Arab.Their work with the number system resulted in Algebra, but nothing more.Algebraic geometry on the other hand was developed in the 20th century by Jean Pierre, Grothendrick

[Thurman Ulrich]

I have been to Tenochtitlan and it is indeed an Engineering marvel. However, the only thing worth mentioning is the fact that it was built on a lake. They employed relatively simple mathematics to construct the city, and is hopelessly unmatched in grandeur and architecture, say for example the Vactican .

[AK Elmi]

Simple, the City of Tenochtitlan itself was an engineering marvel on its own. It was literally built on top of an Lake and running swamp discharges. They also created one the worlds longest aquaducts, drainage systems and even had artificial showers in middle class Aztec homes. Mayan Mathematics was one of the most advance and was ahead of Roman Mathematics in many areas at the time. 

[AK Elmi]

Do think the Greek Alphabet came from Greece by itself? No! It was invented by the Phoenicians and was adopted by the Greeks by Trade with Lebanon and the cities of Tyre and Acres. Did you think Indo-Europeans invaded the Wheel by themselves? The Sumerians (MIddle-Eastern) invented the wheel which was passed in to the nomadic Indo-European Tribes in Central Asia via trade routes and was used for Chariot warfare.

[AK Elmi]

It is insulting to think that Greek Civilization developed on it's own rather than being an important recipient of Knowledge from the well established Civilizations of Mesopotamia (Semitic), Persia (Indo-European), Seabans and the Phoenicians (Semitic). Like the Arabs after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 4th Century AD, the Greeks were at an maritime global cross road and came into contact with different peoples around the Mediterranean Sea.