Today in class our assignment was to take notes on the video "Guns Germs and Steel". Here are my notes:
The secret to peoples' success of taking over populations were guns, germs, and steel. Jarad Diamond has been trying to answer these following questions for more than 30 years: How did they develop these advantages in the first place?, Why did the world ever become so unequal?, and How did Guns, Germs, and Steel shape the history of the modern world? He has been trying to explore the very roots of power in the modern world. Jarad first starts off in New Guinea. There have been people living in New Guinea for at least 40,000 years. A question Jarad is trying to figure out is why do Americans have so much more money than them, which is an example of the world being unequal. How did our worlds ever become so different? He starts going all the way to prehistory after an ice age. He talks about hunter gatherers, and how it was different back then to how it is now for the people in New Guinea. Then, it goes to the worlds global temperatures dropping again. The drought lasted for more than 1,000 years. People were forced to travel much farther and look much harder for food. A new way of life came to be, one that would change the face of the Earth. The stoneage people of the Middle East were becoming farmers, the first farmers in the world. They figured out domestication. The inequalities of the world were born from the crops we eat. The wealth of modern America could have never been sustained by taro and bananas. Then he gets into animal domestication. The best animals to farm are large plant-eating mammals. The Middle East became known as the "Fertile Crescent". Places like New Guinea never developed advanced technology. In conclusion, places like New Guinea never became modernized because they weren't exposed to the same agriculture as we were. They were more focused on feeding themselves than figuring anything out. Many people think Jarad's view on this is too simple, but honestly I agree.
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