Hello everyone, this is a listening gap activity for part 1 from Eden to kaja marca
chapters 1 2 & 3 and of course before that the prologue
Ok, so diamond begins his text with a story that illustrates his main question
When diamond was working as a biologist in New Guinea ax he had a meeting with a politician named yalli?
Yalli had impressive charisma energy and intelligence
Even though he had not been educated
beyond high school as
They talked
Yali asked Diamond why white people had managed to develop so many goods
tools and weapons that they brought to New Guinea ax
Whereas local people had not developed the same technology
This is the central dilemma
Diamonds book deals with
Why did wealth and power become distributed in the way they are today?
Rather than in some different pattern
for example
Why were Native Americans Africans or Aboriginal Australians not the ones who killed Europeans and Asian's?
diamonds texts addresses this question by tracing
Human development and the differing rates at which it proceeded on different continents
in order to explain why modern
inequalities exist
Diamond begins before ad
1500
When technological and political differences already?
existed in
The prologue
Dimond explains why the topic is important?
his question is
interesting not only to academics
His research has concern for modern politics
the inequalities that first arose
Through the different tread directories of human development
Diamond studies still have consequences today
Much of Africa now struggles with colonial legacies it remains poorer and less
developed than non colonized places
although the West now rejects obvious racism many people still accept racist
explanations for human development
For example some people assume that white colonists and
immigrants were biologically superior
to indigenous populations
Since they were able to kill them
Proving. These people wrong is the most important driving force of diamonds book
the groundbreaking
explanation
Diamond presents in his book. Is that history?
followed different courses for different people
not because of biological differences among them but because of differences in their
environments
He explains that biological explanations don't make sense
since many indigenous peoples today show greater intelligence than
Westerners do
They tend to be quicker to learn because natural selection has prompted more genes for intelligence in
societies where only the most intelligent could survive their difficult
Hunter-gatherer lifestyle and more clever because they do not have passive entertainment like TV
But must instead stay active all day
Diamonds book asks why the genetically inferior?
Asians were able to subjugate these people
he rejects explanations that point to differences in whether
irrigation systems or
immediate factors like guns diseases and steel tools
Instead. He looks for a new more complete and accurate
explanation
His book looks at new science from fields such as genetics
molecular biology
linguistics and
Archaeology in order to provide an updated look at human history
Diamond also admits. However, that some people may take offence at his environmental
explanation for the differences between societies
Some people might think that advanced societies were somehow destined
because of their environment to dominate the less advanced ones
but Dimond argues that
interpretations of a historical explanation are
separate from an explanation itself
His question does not contain a value judgment
Other people might object that Diamonds question provides a Eurocentric approach to history
meaning it glorifies
the status of Western Europeans in fact
diamonds answer will actually show how
European civilization borrowed heavily from other peoples earlier
civilizations
Finally diamond also responds to those who believe that using phrases like
the rise of civilization
Implies that civilization is good while tribal hunter-gatherer lifestyles are bad
Diamond does not want to judge one type of society as better than
Another he simply wants to understand how the two forms of society
came to be
Part, one of the book identifies the immediate proximate causes of eurasian dominance
Chapter one provides a broad overview of human evolution and history
from the time of Apes
until the end of the last ice age
it also
traces the spread of humans from their origins in Africa to other continents and
Shows that human development had a head start on certain continents
Evolving from Apes
modern humans originated in Africa
Then migrated to other parts of the world about half a million years ago
However, it is impossible to say for sure
when the evolution process and the migration started
What?
Anthropologists call the great leap forward
Took place almost
50,000 years ago when humanity invented new tools built cities and even created art
then
humans invented ships and traveled to distant lands
they could not reach before that point such as Australia and
eventually the Americas
the first settlers
Populated Eurasia and then moved to Australia and America
Somewhere around fourteen thousand years ago
diamond supports the view that humans were the reason why some species went extinct as
humans colonized a new continent mass
extinctions would occur on that continent
this is probably because
existing animal species
Were not used to humans and were therefore not afraid of them and they were easy to hunt
The extinction of large wild animals is notable
especially in the Americas Australia
and New Guinea ax where it could explain why native peoples did not have domestic animals and
therefore did not
develop
agriculture
some parts of the world such as Australia and the Americas
remained
unpopulated until fairly recently
Some historians believe this could explain the slower
technological and
Agriculture development that occurred in those areas
but diamond
points out that the earliest humans were in Africa
Which should have given this continent an advantage?
nevertheless
Africa today remains less developed than North America
This raises another question
Why were Eurasian societies the ones that developed human societies most quickly?
Even though this would have been impossible to predict at the time of the Great Leap Forward
Chapter 2 looks more closely at how the environments of different continents
affected human development
It starts from smaller scale examples in order to find general patterns
the Polynesian islands make a good case study for explaining how
societies that started from the same point of development
eventually diverged based on environmental factors in
Particular it shows why some societies remained?
Hunter-gatherers and some turned to agriculture to survive
Diamond begins with the specific example of the aggressive and
technologically advanced Maori people
taking over the peaceful and less advanced moriori in
Polynesia the same group of people
populated many islands around the same time
But because some islands were not fertile the people there went back to being hunter-gatherers
They had to cooperate
more among themselves in order to share food
divide tasks and survive
Those people who lived on the farm herbal islands
Developed agriculture and went on to fight amongst themselves
overland
They also had enough surplus resources
To have more free time
Which allowed them to develop complex political structures and hierarchies for?
Example they were more likely to have soldiers
politicians and craftsmen
The islands that could provide better food became denser and more
Populated which meant they could develop more complex
organization and technology
The environmental differences between one Island and the other thus influenced the way the tribes developed
Though in the beginning they were all the same
They developed different social organizations
because of their differing resources
these
Categories of cultural difference within Polynesia are the same categories that developed everywhere else in the world
in
all parts of the world
Environmental differences are what created differences in how human societies operated?
The third chapter then focuses on the collisions between different
populations from different continents
Dimond uses a specific example to illustrate larger patterns
Dimon describes the capture of Incan Emperor
atahuallpa
by Spanish
conquistador Francisco
Pizarro in
1532
Pizarro was able to capture
Atahualpa and
Defeat the Incan forces, even though his soldiers were greatly outnumbered
by Incan cylinders
the crucial question this raises is
why the Spanish were able to travel to Peru and
defeat at the Hopa
instead of the other way around
the answer depends on a number of factors a writing system new germs
centralized politics and advanced weapons
Writing allowed the Spanish to plan ahead on the other hand
The Incas did not know what to expect from the Spanish
When the Spanish first arrived, they brought germs the Incas were not used to
Which were able to spread and kill many Incas
Centralized political organization in Spain
allowed people to finance
build
staff and equip ships to travel to Peru and
Spanish horses and armor allowed fewer Spanish soldiers
to kill a large number of Incas
the chapter concludes that Spanish germs
horses
literacy
political organization and technology allowed their small forces to defeat a
dehaka's much larger forces
the third chapter thus summarizes the proximate factors that explain how
Europeans were able to colonize the new world and not the other way around
They are the same factors listed in the title of the book, which is an extremely short summary
Military technology infectious diseases maritime technology
centralized political
organization and
writing are
Important to keep in mind as the biggest immediate reasons for European dominate of the world
however
Diamonds book also tries to explain how these factors started in the first place
The book not only tries to identify
proximate causation but also
ultimate causation
for the rest of the book
Diamond will explain how Guns Germs and Steel
Came to exist in certain societies and not in others
