Chapter 12 Review Guns Germs and Steel Summary

The Book in Three Sentences

Some environments provide more starting materials and more favorable weather for utilizing inventions and edifice societies than other environments. This is particularly notable in the rise of European peoples, which occurred because of environmental differences and not because of biological differences in the people themselves. At that place are four primary reasons Europeans rose to power and conquered the natives of North and South America, and not the other way around: ane) the continental differences in the plants and animals bachelor for domestication, which led to more food and larger populations in Europe and Asia, 2) the charge per unit of diffusion of agriculture, technology and innovation due to the geographic orientation of Europe and Asia (e-w) compared to the Americas (north-south), 3) the ease of intercontinental diffusion betwixt Europe, Asia, and Africa, and 4) the differences in continental size, which led to differences in full population size and engineering improvidence.

Guns, Germs, and Steel summary

This is my volume summary of Guns, Germs, and Steel past Jared Diamond. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the volume equally well equally my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

• History followed dissimilar courses for different peoples because of differences in their environments not because of biological differences in the people themselves.
• This volume seeks to answer the question, "Why did the charge per unit of progress differ so much for cultures on different continents?"
• Around eleven,000 years agone all human societies were hunter gatherers.
• Understanding the causes of history improves our ability to intervene and meliorate the earth. Many people mistakenly assume that discussing history is merely a way to explain away tough problems. Not at all. Information technology improves our ability to take constructive action.
• The most common caption of the different trajectories experienced by Europe compared to Africa, Asia, Oceania, etc. is genetic and biological. People assume there is some innate biological difference that fabricated Europeans smarter, more than creative, or more than resilient. Scientific discipline, even so, has produced no substantial prove to indicate this is the primary cause of dissimilar outcomes.
• Interesting side annotation: scientists are e'er competing to notice the "earliest human remains" or the earliest XYZ. As a result, every few years there is a new "earliest" discovery. Only i can actually be the earliest, of course.
• The occupation of Australia was an incredible feat. It was the starting time use of h2o craft and range extension by humans.
• Humans were likely responsible for the extinction of nearly all of Australia's large mammals. The same is truthful for many big mammals that occupied the Americas over x,000 years ago.
• The surround of ancient Polynesian society heavily dictated the lifestyle and behaviors. The many islands have widely varying landscapes and climates. Whether or not cultures adult weapons and became skilled at warfare, whether they became hunter gatherers or farmers, whether they acted more tribal or more hierarchical was largely determined past the environment in which these people lived.
• Food and brute domestication arose independently in five different areas of the world (at widely differing times) and peradventure four others although there is still some contention well-nigh those.
• We often recall there is a clear partitioning between farmer and hunter gatherer lifestyles, but actually there can be a blending of the two. For example, some cultures plant crops, resume a hunter gatherer lifestyle while they grow, then return to harvest and consume.
• Agriculture did not lead to an unequivocally ameliorate lifestyle. In fact, for those who really grow food life tends to exist worse than it would be every bit a hunter gatherer. If this is true, and the evidence seems to point that way, then information technology means that advancement of culture has essentially happened on the backs of society's have-nots. In other words, the entire organisation we live within – agriculture, capitalism, etc. – requires inequality to part.
• Agriculture allowed food production per unit area to increase, which meant a given area could support a larger population. This immune farming cultures to defeat hunter gatherer cultures past sheer force due to larger populations. This, in plough, led to the spread of more than agricultural societies across the globe.
• Throughout the industrial revolution in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, moths of darker colors became more likely to survive because the surrounding environs go dirtier and covered in soot, smoke, and debris. Thus, it was more than likely that dark-colored moths would survive than low-cal-colored moths. As the environment inverse, so did the development of moths. A fascinating case of evolution on a small calibration.
• Cereal crops alone business relationship for more half of the food consumed by modern humans.
• The rise of indigenous nutrient production in certain areas was the result of a few factors. First, certain areas had plants better suited to domestication. This led people to domestic earlier in those regions. Second, because of this early start, these people eventually domesticated more difficult plants. Show seems to indicate that all people'southward are capable of nutrient production and even modern hunter gatherers seem to be naturally moving that fashion.
• The rise of agronomics in some areas before others has to practice with the environment, not the intelligence of the people.
• The Anna Karenina Principle: In many areas of life, success is non near doing i thing correctly, but about avoiding many possible modes of failure.
• Domesticated animals differ in multiple ways from their wild ancestors. For case, many domesticated animals are dissimilar sizes and take smaller brains than their wild ancestors.
• Domestication of large mammals ended approximately 4500 years ago. This indicates humans attempted to domesticate all of them and no suitable species remained. This is another piece of testify that the type of animals available dictated the domestication in certain regions, not the people living in the region. This the spread of agriculture was over again impacted past the environment.
• There is a inefficiency during the eating process. The food transfer is much less than 100 percentage and typically effectually x percentage. For example, information technology takes x,000 pounds of corn to create a 1,000 pound bull.
• The primary geographic axis of Northward and South America is north-south. That is, the land mass is more than longitudinal than latitudinal. The aforementioned for Africa. But for Europe and Asia, the chief axis is east-west. Interestingly, this positioning and shape matters greatly because it appears that agriculture and innovations spread more rapidly forth east-w axes than forth northward-south axes.
• Locations along the aforementioned due east-west axis share similar latitudes and thus have similar day lengths, seasons, climate, rainfalls, and biomes. All of which increase the speed of innovation relative to north-due south axes.
• All tropical rainforests are within 10 degrees of latitude of the equator.
• One collection of bear witness for the deviation in spread along geographic axes is the spread of domesticated crops. Many crops spread across Asia with one domestication, while crops like cotton or squash were domesticated in multiple individual areas throughout Mesoamerica. This is because the crop spread too slowly for ane domestication to takeover the region.
• It is vital to realize that although Diamond is discussing long time frames of hundreds or thousands of years, the core idea can exist applied to short fourth dimension spans of private behavior as well. Indeed, large long term differences only occur considering curt term differences are repeated over and over once again. Small-scale ecology differences led to modest changes in individual behavior, which resulted in significant differences when repeated for thousands of years.
• 1 reason farming communities developed immunity to diseases that wiped out hunter gatherer populations is that some diseases (like measles) are "crowd diseases." They require a large population to sustain themselves because they act quickly: you either die or develop immunity. In order for the disease to sustain itself there must be enough new babies born to contract the illness from those who have already developed immunity. Just agricultural communities could grow to the required population size.
• On boilerplate, farming sustains populations that are 10x to 100x larger than hunting and gathering.
• N America was populated by almost 20 million Native Americans when Columbus landed in 1492. Within 2 centuries, 95 percent of the native population had died, most of them from infectious diseases.
• Writing systems are historically seen as the deciding factor on whether an ancients civilization is considered advanced or not. This tin can be debated. The Incas congenital a cracking civilization without writing.
• All alphabets in the modern world evolved from i original alphabet, either in thought or actual written form, developed in the Middle East.
• Writing evolved independently in a few areas, just was spread via idea diffusion in almost cultures and locations.
• Most inventions are not a upshot of necessity, simply rather the consequence of tinkers and marvel.
• Engineering develops cumulatively rather than in isolated heroic acts. Even people we often associate with acts of genius similar the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison actually congenital upon the work of predecessors and had capable people who followed them and avant-garde ideas.
• Technology finds near of its uses after it has been invented rather than existence invented to solve a foreseen need. The phrase, "necessity is the female parent of invention" is by and large incorrect. (Fifty-fifty though some examples, like the Manhattan Project, exist.)
• Long life expectancy is one reason engineering science might develop and spread faster in some locations rather than others. A longer life increases the expanse yous take to test ideas and allows y'all to take on longer projects that yous might otherwise avert with express fourth dimension.
• Geographic location is a key determinant in the stride of technological innovation and acceleration because a centrally located society will not only accumulate noesis and applied science from their ain inventions, merely also from neighboring societies. In the instance of a specially large land mass like Eurasia, technologies can spread from 1 civilization to some other and go on to do so along the unabridged span of the continent. This spread occurs much more rapidly in these locations than information technology would to, say, aboriginal cultures in Tasmania, which did not receive outside contact from other civilizations for over ten,000 years.
• Authorities and religion are ii of the master reasons some societies overcame others. These shared myths led to collaboration and increased power.
• There are four levels of arrangement in gild: bands (5-80 people), tribes (100-thousand people),  chiefdoms (1000 to tens of thousands of people), and states (50,000 or more than people).
• Humanity has been on a clear path from pocket-sized groups to larger ones, culminating in states, over the last few thousand years.
• The size of a population in a region is a strong predictor of the complexity of the society.
• Culture is heavily dependent on population density. The higher the population, the more culture seems to spawn and spread.
• State of war, or the threat of war, is the master factor in the amalgamation of human societies throughout history. It is how cultures merge.
• V canis familiaris nighttime is an Australian phrase referring to a very cold night because you would need to use five dogs as blankets.
• Isolation is a cardinal factor preventing creativity and innovation from spreading considering most people and societies get their ideas from outside societies. Then constant connection to others and trading of ideas and resources is essential for technological and creative progress.
• Food production was a key component in the determining the strength of a club. People sharing similar ancestors inhabited New Guinea and Republic of indonesia, but the Indonesians were still hunter gatherers while the New Guineans had develop agriculture. When Austronesians invaded the region, Indonesians fell nether their control, simply New Guineas (with their food, germ resistance, and technologies) were able to resist.
• Again and again, the environment dictated the spread of power throughout islands of East asia and the Pacific. Depending on location, islanders differed in their connectedness to other peoples and in the plants and animals available to them to domesticate. People with favorable locations for food production and access to technology replaced those with less favorable environments.
• The terminate of Chapter 18 shares multiple interesting examples of peoples who were largely like genetically because of similar ancestors, but developed very different societies and technologies due to the their individual environments.
• Instance of cultural development: the Moari of New Zealand were able to determine the almost useful rocks and animals for domestication inside a century of arriving.
• The striking differences in the histories of peoples on different continents have been due not to differences amid the peoples themselves, just to differences in their environments.
• There are iv primary reasons Europeans rose to ability and conquered the natives of North and South America, and not the other fashion around.
• Reason i: Continental differences in the plants and animals available for domestication. The differences are vast. Europe and Asia had the best prospects, and so Africa, then the Americas, and so Australia. The improved agricultural aspects led to larger populations and larger armies in Europe and Asia.
• Reason 2: the rate of diffusion of technological innovation due to the orientation of continents (east-west vs. northward-south) and geographic barriers (mountains, deserts, etc.). The favorable geography of the Europe and Asia landmass resulted in much faster agricultural and technological expansion.
• Reason 3: ease of intercontinental diffusion. It was easy for ideas, technologies, and innovations to spread between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Withal, information technology was quite difficult for things to spread to the Americas because of big oceans and the only close landmass being in cold climates and at high latitudes unsuitable for farming.
• Reason 4: continental differences in total population size. Europe and Asia had a huge landmass where there was constant and widespread competition.
• All human societies contain inventive people. It's just that some environments provide more than starting materials and more favorable conditions for utilizing inventions than other environments.
• The fragmentation of Europe was a key in enabling Columbus to cross the Atlantic. He was turned downwardly by four different kingdoms before finally convincing the king and queen of Spain to fund his trip. Meanwhile, Chona had the technology to explore the world by ship, but their dictator at the time did not want to practice so. In this way, one person prevented an entire made of people (with the engineering) from succeeding. A little fragmentation is good. Besides much centralized power means one person can handcuff the creativity of many.
• In the 1960s and 1970s, the decisions of a few Chinese leaders resulted in the schools closing in the state for five years. Crazy how so much centralized power is withal playing a huge role.
• Europe has always been far more than fragmented than China. Even at its meridian, the Roman Empire never controlled more than than half of Europe.
• Understanding ultimate causes is essential to understanding human being behavior.
• Prediction of history is much easier over long time spans, merely basically impossible over short time spans.
• Swell discussion of scientific discipline in the last half of the epilogue.
• Careful observations of natural experiments (things happening in the real globe) tin can pb to fascinating and useful insights.
• Epidemiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology are developing amend methods for dealing with the misreckoning factors ofttimes present in natural experiments.

Reading Suggestions

This is a listing of authors, books, and concepts mentioned in Guns, Germs, and Steel, which might be useful for future reading.

• Toynbee's 12-volume series on history
• Pic: The Gods Must Exist Crazy
• Maori New Zealand'south musket wars
• Applications of Chaos Theory. The QWERTY keyboard vs. Dvorak keyboard is one example.

Additional Thoughts

This is a list of interesting notes, side stories, or additional thoughts that were sparked as a I read the book.

• Many large mammals used for nutrient product were not domesticated in the Americas because they became extinct around 13,000 BC (due to the appearance of humans?). This was well before agriculture arrived in America, thus domesticating these animals never occurred to prehistoric hunter gatherers. Only why?

Guns, Germs, and Steel past Jared Diamond

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Source: https://jamesclear.com/book-summaries/guns-germs-and-steel

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