Introduction to Guns Germs & Steel

Welcome to 7A members who had just and is still visiting this blog. This is just going to be the introduction and the summarizing of the book, Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. You can also visit the official blog for it which is: www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel , but we will explain it in a simpler way which is easier to understand.

Well, this is about Jared Diamond's theory that geographical advantages has advanced some people faster than the others. So, to prove this, it talks about inequality between middle east, Europe, and some of Papa New Guinea. About the geographical advantages, we will explain by four ways: the crops, domesticated animals, writings, and being around other civilizations. Well what we are going to explain is about the Big Question which is similar to the theory, "What geographic advantages have allowed some people to advance faster than others?"

http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/the-situation-of-inequality-guns-germs-and-steel/

Glossary Terms

This is the glossary where you can find the definition of a word used at GGS that you don't under stand about.

Cargo- materials brought by usually a ship (can contain weapons, tools, etc.) .

Inequality- is the condition of unequal. Like the difference between the rich and the poor.

Stone Age- is the age earlier then the Bronze and Iron age, where the only tools were usually made of stones.

Fertile Crescent- the first ancient civilization in the Middle East who actually had the Agricultural Revolution.

Domestication- is the system of taming wild animals and breeding them for the benefits having it.

Beast of Burden- are animals that we use for food, working, or etc. (usually domesticated animals).

Specialization- is the way of adapting to special conditions or environment.

East-West Axis- the latitude/line that goes directly over the Middle East Asia.

Agricultural Revolution- the period where the people try to learn about how to farm.

Conquistador- are the Spanish Conquerers.

Metallurgy- work or study the relates on doing something with metals.

Conquest- the act of conquering other territory, or place.

Epidemic- describes something the infects and spreads easily from person to person; usually diseases.

Gutenburg Press- is the first type-printing or the type-writing machine that Johannes Gutenburg invented.

One Factor to the Big Question-Germs

Germs, germs, germs. They are one of the minor factors that are involved with the big question. These kind of germs or diseases are from the domesticated animals. However, they do make a big advantage in conquests. Smallpox, europeans mostly had them since there were lots of domesticated animals and a lot were killed. Due to this, they (europeans) were immune to smallpox. On the other hand, other civilizations for an example the Incans never came to smallpox and never had problems with them since they only had the llamas as there domesticated animal which are not so full of germs. (meaning that they didn't even know that they were sick and that they even existed and having no cure to smallpox) So they all died out due to the contagious and the epidemic smallpox and other minor diseases that the spaniards didn't even know that they had.

http://www.dreamstime.com/germs-under-the-microscope-image3131800

One Factor to the Big Question-Writing

Writing was one of the factors of the big question and it introduces several details out to the public rapidly, just like a rumor. It is believed that cuneiform was the earliest writings that is recognized in human history. They advanced from the stone age into the Gutenburg press so basically if stone age didn't exist, writings will never have been put out in the public. This is the most important factor for specialization and in the early civilizations' development. The first civilization that used writings were civilizations located in the fertile crescent who is also known as the sumerians. These evolved approximately 5000 years ago.

(This is an example of a writing)

 http://octophetusart.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/writings-4/

One factor to the Big Question - Location

Another answer for the Big Question we want to tell you is about where the civilization has been located. If you have seen the post about the Agricultural Revolution, you will know that some places have specific farming crops than others or even none. This tells that it is very important on that what type of landform, or climate you live in. Some other thing is that if you live between other civilizations, you can easily get the information of what is going on and also easily do trades with other countries. Well we will explain further more about it.

As we said, the climate and the landform really do affect you. We will tell you about the East-West Axis for example. The East-West Axis is the latitude that straightly goes over the Middle-East. In the axis, it is a very good place for farming and the resources are already there. Even though you didn't have the resources, if anyone in the Middle-East have planted something, it will spread easily over the all places. It is because in the East-West Axis, the climates are all the same, which any plants that live in those areas are able to live in the other side of the area too.

http://mabryonline.org/blogs/howard/archives/2007/02/map_of_the_midd_1.html

Also, I've said that if you are between other civilizations, it can be beneficial too. It is probably because you can get the "cargo" easily and have often trades. For example, the europeans, had easily gotten infos from other places. For example, they got and learned about the gunpowders from China, and they have gotten few important knowledges from ancient civilizations.

http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/ 

Personally, I think that these reasons are the most obvious and the important reasons, since if you are in a bad location, then you might not have any agriculture or domestication and etc.

One Factor to the Big Question - Agricultural Revolution

Perhaps the Agricultural Revolution was one of the factors that concludes to the Big Question. The Agriculture Revolution was the period when the people of a civilization try to learn about agriculture and farming. The first actual civilization that had the Agricultural Revolution was Fertile Crescent. So they were the head-starting civilization of all. This lead to some great benefits since there were food surplus and population growth after farming, not only that, it made it able to domesticate animals by feeding the right crops for them. Also, after Agricultural Revolution, came the specialization and then came the Bronze Age. One good example of it is Europe, since they've got all they need, like guns and steels, probably because of specialization. This could have probably worked because of people had enough food needed.

For instance there were wheats which were the most used crops around the world. Wheats were the most devoted farmland crop which were seed-bearing grass. Even in the Modern day, today, it is still the widely used crops in all.

Other than the wheats there where were corns (maize) which were from the Native Americans. The corns are very famous around the Americas which are small bits of ripe cobs from a specific kind of a plant. The corn produces about the world's half of total tonnage.

Wheats and Corns

http://www.geocities.com/cadets2806/description.html

The last one of the crops I will tell you are the rices. First of all, the rice had been domesticated in China about 10,000 years ago, which is about in the Neolithic Revolution or New Stone Age. These crops had effected us greatly for survival almost everywhere, but especially all parts of Asia. They were the seedling from the rice plant which they were relatives to wheats and wild grasses. They were used in variety of ways, but mostly as a food.

Rices

http://www.worldcommunitycookbook.org/season/guide/corn.html 

Well these crops are very beneficial to us, but the point is that, what if some people had or known agriculture, but the others don't? There probably will have some big changes in something like inequality. Now this can explain the big question on how some civilizations are more advanced than others. Lack of food, or energy could have been the affect. Before the Agricultural Revolution, people hunted for food which wasted energy for them to do something else, like specialization. Since you can't sustain food for more people, the population would have stayed constant and the civilization would also wouldn't have grew. The big thing is that if you kept going on like that, then the food will soon also start to decrease in amount since you have done nothing for the food resource reproduce or get bred.

nd so now you see that if we didn't have or knew about Agricultural Revolution all of our lives could have changed in very many ways.

One Factor to the Big Question - Domesticated Animals

 There were several domesticated animals that gave a huge geographic advantage to the spaniards back then when they were on conquests. Domesticated animals are wild animals that are tamed by human hands. First of all, they have helped us in variety of ways. Some of them were used for food, or maybe as a Beast of Burden, so then which the people were able to save energies. However, the biggest thing could have been that they were a good resource for food that didn't run out, but then they had some infective germs  Goats were one of the domesticated animals (13) that were domesticated 10000 years ago at Zagros Mountain (modern-day) Iran and they are the oldest farmyard animal. Then comes pigs, they were domesticated 7000 years ago at the fertile crescent and China. Pigs were the easiest tamable farm animals. Zebras weren't domesticated because they were so hard to domesticate, so the weren't a part of the 13 domesticated animals. Second to the last, sheep come in. They were domesticated 7000 years ago as well and wild sheep were located in the Fertile Crescent around the stone age. Finally horses come along with the 13 domesticated animals. They were domesticated 5000 years ago at Asia and they were mostly used for their strength and farm machines.

 

       animalsneedkisses.wordpress.com/.../ 03/zebras/

 As well as you know, the domesticated animals were great benefits to us. They also did work for us, make food for us, and we know that they did a lot, but they helped the civilizations get more time to get specialized. So what I'm trying to say is that these animals has quite helped us a lot in getting the civilizations grow and get advanced.