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Essay / Guns, Germs, and Steel: How the Study of History Expands Our Understanding of Geographic Determinism and Knowledge of Current Social Civilization brought to New Guinea, but we The black had little of our own cargo? Professor Jared Diamond attempted to answer this question posed by a New Guinean politician, Yali, in his film Guns, Germs and Steel. He argued that the reason Eurasian civilizations developed faster than other countries was not due to their racial or biological superiority, but rather to their luck and advantages in geography, ecological conditions, and domestication of animals. These advantages gave the Eurasians the ability to develop weapons of mass destruction, firearms; immunity to germs and the ability to spread and transport using steel – the three great powers that allowed Europeans to conquer and dominate. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay According to the film, the origin of agriculture as well as the home of the first human civilizations was in the Fertile Crescent. The region's climate was moderate, with the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flowing through the land, making it suitable for crops of rich nutritional value such as wheat and barley, which grew on agriculturally productive land. The abundance of crops also led the hunter-gatherers of the Fertile Crescent to invent underground storage pits to use their food and create free time. Additionally, as the Earth rotates from east to west, cultures in Eurasia were able to spread more quickly and easily along lines of latitude. For example, when they arrive in Egypt, the crops provide enough food for the Pharaoh and the Egyptian workers, which in turn increases the population and gives them enough energy to get a head start on other countries in building magnificent pyramids and a prosperous civilization. In contrast, in countries like Papua New Guinea, geographic barriers such as oceans and mountains hinder the migration of these crops. Therefore, this barrier prevents Papua New Guineans from eating enough. Without barley or wheat, their main staple is sago, a starch extracted from palm stems, which not only requires more energy and time to harvest but also has little nutritional value. As a result, Diamond theorizes that the reason Papua New Guinea is less economically developed was because it had to devote most, if not all, of its energy and time to food. In addition to crops, thirteen of the fourteen domestic animals were native to Eurasia, including pigs, sheep, goats, cows, and horses. These animals not only provided sources of food (meat, milk, fertilizer) and clothing (wool) for the Eurasians, but also gave them superhuman muscle power to aid in plowing and harvesting, as well as transportation. By living with domestic animals and eating animal products, natural selections cause Eurasians to develop genetic immunity to diseases or germs. As the film shows, when Europeans came into contact with Native Americans, they wiped out their population with invisible weapons of slaughter, namely infectious diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza. This gave the Europeans advantages in terms of.
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