The Peculiarities of Themes in Guns, Germs and Steel

Jared Diamond’s, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies was Published in March of 1997 by W. W Norton and is a 480-page work of art. The Book was made to tackle an underlying question about human societies as we know using the four parts of the book for each factor including climate change, hostile neighbors, the collapse of essential trading partners, and environmental problems to answer the question: Why did history unfold differently on different continents? finished

Jared starts at the beginning of human life, at approximately 11,000 B.C. Evolution is the first topic Jared brings up. He argues that humans had the advantage over other life forms, and this caused the of the timing of evolution. Jared searched for answers by looking through millions of years of history and mapping out migrations of the Early humans from Asia to the Pacific Ocean islands, Africa to Eurasia, and from Siberia to the North and South continents. He then gives priority to the effects of food production, writing, technology, government, and religion. Jared argues that an observer transported back in time to 11,000 B.C could not have predicted which specific continent that human life would have first developed on.

In Part Two, Diamond talks about the rise of agriculture and explains why it surfaced in certain parts of the world, and not others. Diamond says there were a number of varying factors that helped the growth and survival of a group of people. Food production was a very important reason for the progress of one group over another.

First bringing up the use of carbon-dating technology, he continues with how archaeologists have found that agriculture surfaced in the Middle East in a place known as the Fertile Crescent and spread to China. They found that most humans on the planet were hunter-gatherers and had begun planting the seeds of the berries they found when food was scarce; this motivated experimentation with food production. They found the best ways to plant food by using the trial and error to bring a strong harvest. They then found ways to domesticate animals and breed them into things we have now like cows, horses, and dogs. This made farming a lot easier of the early humans as they used their animals to assist in farm work and made for a better harvest. finished

Jared shows how the difference in agriculture in early society had a long-lasting effect over time and had an effect on health, technology, and social hierarchy. He speaks about how societies built immunities to diseases by always being within close distance to domesticated animals along with a large population. This meant new germs constantly came into the area making them resistant to the effects. This passed down from era to era.

Jared then speaks on another important topic in history; the invention of written language. Early societies used the written language for record-keeping for crops. He continues with the fact that use of language has no exact start that can be pinpointed but the history of language can date back as far as the ice age. Jared explains that while it's difficult to explain why language came up in different places at times archeologists say that because of the lack of reason for a form of language since some societies did.

Langage helped develop all types of technologies the coming up of language made the need fr machine that made writing easier. Jared shows an example of this with the Phaistos Disk one of the first types of writing machines that dated back to 1700 B.C. Jared also brings up that a lot of early inventions were made in a random effort while experimenting with ways to plant and store resources. Additionally, societies that started planting had more population increase than others because of food increase and better health meaning. This meant there were more ideas and products being made as a result societies developed better skills and passed them to their neighbors