Guns Germs and Steel

A detailed Summary of Guns Germs and Steel

Why is it that Europeans ended up conquering so much of the world? Or as Yali puts it in the far beginning of the book, "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"? Despite all the contrary evidence from anthropology and human biology, many persist in attributing the differing political and economic successes of the world's peoples to historical contingency. On the other hand though, the author sees the fundamental causes as environmental, resting ultimately on ecological differences between the continents and as he well puts it on page 25: "Authors are regularly asked by journalists to summarize a long book in one sentence. For this book, here is such a sentence: 'History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological difference among peoples themselves."

The complex and integrated argument unfolds in four parts, strategically constructed by questions: why have different continents and regions developed so differently like the Maori killing the Moriori, and why did Pizzaro capture Inca emperor Atahu

Firstly, the author argues that ancient farmers had to develop more advanced tools for producing more amounts of food and had the opportunity to support people that did not work in the fields, such as politicians, warriors, priests and so on. As a result of that, farmers became materialistically richer than hunter-gatherers who stayed in relatively small groups, because hunters could not support people that were not able to hunt and kill wild animals. More food available meant, and still does, more people. More people to feed requires better technology and also soldiers to guard, politicians to make laws, priests to have as spiritual leaders and so on. Through this argument we can see that new techniques were being invented and new levels of hierarchy as well. So, in a nutshell, with food as basis the farmers were able to first build the materials, then establish some sort of a hierarchical system, which led to the invention of the alphabet and the rise of major civilizations.

Guns, Germs and Steel is a fascinating synthesis that brings together history, archaeology, agriculture, linguistics, medicine, evolution and many other fields. We can see that the writer starts off the book with a notable amount of frustration about the mistaken ideas our society has come to believe: " ... objection to such racist explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong. ...evidence for the existence of human differences in intelligence... is lacking. ...modern "Stone Age" people are probably more int

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Approximate Word count = 1029
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels