Guns, Germs and Steel Part 4 of 18

Episode One : Out of Eden (Part 4 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

Tags:

• guns
• germs
• steel
• jared
• diamond
• pulitzer
• prize
• out
• of
• eden

[711DAS]

@shottaboss24 I know you posted this a while ago but.....i don't care.

I find it a shame that you have top comment because your claim is actually a wide misconception.Many of those tropical areas have inadequate soil for growing crops; the soil is very thin.Thus many of the inhabitants were hunter gatherers because they couldn't be farmers. A chain-reaction that begins with the proper environment, not genetic "intelligence" 

[Abu7929]

@yellowman88 Lobsters are crustaceans bro, it is scorpions which are arachnids

[CrossLucane]

7:54 Why is he wearing a Pi symbol? XD

[MegaBigpapa007]

this is gay

[OdeToFoliage]

@overOOview I would rather pull off all my fingernails than eat spiders for the rest of my life..... !

[altmusicguy]

and after looking back at my comment... I noticed all the wonderful grammatical errors... too lazy to fix them. deal with it. If you can't understand what I said then you dont need to even be here.

[altmusicguy]

In all reality... The first people to prove that the earth is older than 6 thousand years (and that it is actually 4 billion years old) were geologists, not the creators of carbon dating. Back in the 1800's people (I know the story, just not the particular name) began to realize that every year, a new layer of sediment built up on top of the one from the previous year. (Just like a tree) By noticing the fact that there are MILLIONS of these layers built up, we learned that the earth us damn old

[StuartTheScot74]

@shottaboss24

Go read the book dumbass.

[jlittlewings]

@shottaboss24 Please read the book before you conclude something so ignorant.

[JCouture4u369]

@shottaboss24 It's not only farming. The fertile crescent had the most plants and animals for domestication. After the land became arid, humans migrated from the region and bringing those resources elsewhere across Eurasia. The combination of domesticated plants and animals gave the Europeans an advantage at development. The people of Papua New Guinea lack either, hence their archaic farming practices and poor health.

[AirbornePig]

This is so incredible!