Yali's question can be used as a basis for understanding and explaining world history because it allows us to reevaluate and break down our previous evolutionary causes in order for us to grasp the outcomes of today. Diamond begins breaking it down by bringing into context our differences between technology, politics, geography, diseases, weapons, and people since A.D. 1500. In the beginning of his prologue he writes," Of course, technological and political differences of A.D. 1500 were the immediate cause of modern world inequalities. Empires with steel weapons were able to conquer or exterminate tribes weapons of stone and wood" (Diamond, 15). This excerpt signifies that places such as Aboriginal Australia and many Native Americans have
In the historical book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” by Jared Diamond, Diamond attempts to provide an understanding to the inequality in modern times. He attempted to provide this understanding by stepping 13,000 years back and figuring out why each continent had a different history from one another. Diamond first got inspired to discover the reasons for this inequality in New Guinea, where he was studying bird evolution. In the prologue, he explained how it was one simple question from his friend Yali, a local politician of New Guinea, that aroused his curiosity and pushed him to write this book. While on a walk with his friend, Diamond was asked, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black
In the book, Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, the author asks many questions about histories of the world. These question are questions that lie in the main question Jared Diamond is trying to answer. In the Prologue, the author discussed about his personal experience in New Guinea where a local politician asked him the major question "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” (Diamond 14). When further exploring the meaning of this question it could represent why major civilizations developed and advanced so much faster technologically and economically but other civilizations like New Guineans are behind in these advancements. Which could explain
In the prologue of Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond introduces readers to a question posed to him by Yali, a New Guinean politician. Yali inquired about the reason for different developmental rates of civilizations, and Diamond, who couldn’t explain at the time, began to search for the answer. Diamond links certain “power factors,” such as advanced weaponry, certain diseases, and metal tools, to the rate of advancement in civilizations. However, the causes for the creation and use of the “power factors” in some civilizations, but not others, remains an unsolved mystery. In the prologue, fittingly titled “Yali’s Question,” Diamond expresses his belief that throughout history, civilizations develop
Jared Diamond, however, believes that the environmental differences are exactly the case. His thesis is, “The striking differences between the long-term histories of people of the different continents have been due, not to innate differences in the peoples themselves, but to differences in their environments.” He believes that it is not biology that makes some societies more advanced than others, but rather the environments that people were and are currently living
Jared Diamond starts off his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel with stating his attempt to answer Yali’s question, “Why is it that you white people developed much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own.” Diamond elaborates and brings to simpler terms how Yali’s question relates to many questions on the origins of humans, but more specifically, how Eurasians, the white people mentioned by Yali, came to successfully dominate the rest of the world. In the prologue, Diamond mainly drives his point of the “effects of continental environments on history over the past 13,000 years” as to what he believes is the main root to why Eurasians came to dominate so successfully. Alongside of continental environments,
Jared Diamond delves deep into humanity’s history in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel in attempt to answer a question imposed upon him by Yali, a New Guinean politician. Diamond weaves together many theories and historical examples, such as the Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro’s defeat of the Incas, to explain why humans have developed at vastly differing rates. Yali asked a question that had stumped historians for decades and Diamond dissects and reassembles the phrasing often. In order to give his most complete answer, the author takes a look at both post 1500s inequalities, and differing rates of development throughout human times. The examination of Pizarro’s defeat of the large Inca force came first at the battlefield and continued
As Professor Diamond walked along the side of the beach he came upon a politician named Yali who was preparing his people in New Guinea for self-government. Yali and Professor Diamond talked each about their jobs and soon Yali started quizzing Professor Diamond and asking him many questions but only one had really made Diamond think leaving him without an answer. “ Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea , but we black people had little much cargo of our own,” asked politician Yali. After thinking about the question for a while, Diamond saw that the true question was much more broad and universal than Yali's initial question. He reworded the question as follows: "Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are rather than in some other way?”
1.Jared Diamond states that the environment of a race determines whether or not it’s going to survive.
In the book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, the author was trying to conceive the explanations behind the idea that why did other societies dominated others and why those dominated could not dominate the other society. In the beginning of the book, the author, Jared Diamond, revisit his past experiences in New Guinea. There, Diamond meets a friend, Yali, who asks him a question of why did the whites had been successful and arrived with large quantities of cargo compared to the local people in New Guinea. From there, the author writes his book to explain Yali’s question. In each of the chapters, the author then uses events and facts to support his answer for Yali’s question. Diamond wasn’t trying to teach the reader history but also to point out that
“Ender did not hesitate. He stepped on the head of the snake and crushed it under his foot. It writhed and twisted under him and in response he twisted and ground it deeper into the stone floor… And in the mirror he saw a face that he easily recognized. It was Peter.” (117)
In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond explains why throughout history the people of Eurasia have politically and economically dominated the rest of the world. With an American’s perspective and his extensive study of geography, Diamond argues that the geography of Eurasia, not the assumed innate superiority of the Eurasian people, is responsible for Eurasian dominance. I agree with his thesis as a general statement about the development of civilizations, but I believe it is an incomplete view of history.
Yali’s question, based on Professor Diamond, asks, why is it that countries arising from people of caucasian descent had gained immense power and industrial development while the people of New Guinea and other “black” countries had gained little material development or global power and influence?
When reading the title of Jared Diamond’s, “Guns, Germs, and Steels,” the readers must initially think how do these three connect? After starting the first few chapters they will realize that Diamond is referring to the proximate and ultimate factors in that lead to the advancement of society. When Diamond talks about proximate and ultimate factors, he is explaining the cause of European dominance in the world. The proximate factors are the one that directly led to the European dominance and the ultimate factors are the ones that let to proximate factors. I believe that this book is referring to the Homo sapiens revolutionizing through the years, through the Neolithic Revolution through agriculture and industrialization.
Yes, if there is a lot of resources around it can support a large group of people instead of a small group of gatherers
I first read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel in the Fall 2003 based on a recommendation from a friend. Many chapters of the book are truly fascinating, but I had criticisms of the book back then and hold even more now. Chief among these is the preponderance of analysis devoted to Papua New Guinea, as opposed to, say, an explanation of the greatly disparate levels of wealth and development among Eurasian nations. I will therefore attempt to confine this review on the "meat and potatoes" of his book: the dramatic Spanish conquest of the Incas; the impact of continental geography on food production; and finally, the origins of the Eurasian development of guns, germs, and steel. In terms of structure, I will first summarize the