Guns, Germs and Steel Part 14 of 18

Episode Three : Into the Tropics (Part 2 of 6)

So far, Jared Diamond has demonstrated how geography favoured one group of people -- Europeans -- endowing them with agents of conquest ahead of their rivals around the world. Guns, germs and steel allowed Europeans to colonize vast tracts of the globe -- but what happened when this all-conquering package arrived in Africa, the birthplace of humanity?

Can Jared Diamond's theories explain how a continent so rich in natural resources, could have ended up the poorest continent on earth?

Category:

Education

Tags:

• guns
• germs
• steel
• jared
• diamond
• pulitzer
• prize
• into
• tropics

[codymr1974]

@chillhood, I think what you are implying is incorrect. If you view the entire series, it goes out of its way to be balanced. You can't parse a single shot of a crying European baby in a reenactment scene from a 3 hour documentary and extrapolate that somehow the presentation is biased or trying to manipulate the viewers sympathies. In clip "17 of 18" Diamond visits an African hospital where there are many shots of REAL children sick with malaria, who are native Africans and who are NOT actors.

[fredjustsucks]

@chillhood

Are you mentally retarded? The entire point of this documentary, and the book it's based off of is to show that the reason the whites became the dominant race on earth has NOTHING to do with super intellect, so are you really trying to suggest this is bias in favor of whites? I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is the only part of the documentary you've seen, because if you've seen all the previous parts you would have to be a complete retard.

[TheTazzietiger]

@TheTazzietiger At some point northern populations experienced positive selection for lighter skin due to the increased production of vitamin D from sunlight and the genes for darker skin disappeared from these populations.

[TheTazzietiger]

From ~1.2 million years ago to less than 100,000 years ago, the ancestors of all people alive were from Africans which had dark skin.

As populations began to migrate, the evolutionary constraint keeping skin dark decreased proportionally to the distance North a population migrated, resulting in a range of skin tones within northern populations.

[TheTazzietiger]

remember when people first got to europe they where not white at all ..

[xxTeutonicKnightxx]

@wisestfoolalive And thank GOD the Europeans in the past are not like most Eurpans lazy and pussies today, with super liberal ideas and Conservative economy, because my GOD I thiks the Moors would had took most of Europe & have European slaves... 

[xxTeutonicKnightxx]

@wisestfoolalive The thing is European Empires earn their bones, and every one is trying to say they did not.

[NinjaTom2005]

@TheEpicLazor I heard "native african neighbors".

[wisestfoolalive]

@xxTeutonicKnightxx Too me, western culture (especially USA) is another way of saying capitalist culture. Capitalism made America the most powerful nation in the world in a relatively short period of time in the 20th cent. It's been such a potent tool, in fact, that US politicians like to use it in not only commerce but society as well. The prob with capitalism is that inequality is inherent and greed, privileged, and luck are over-pronounced. Globalism is making the world a capitalist state.