Exam Questions/ Guns, Germs, and Steel


Today in class we got to look at our exam grades and start learning about Guns, Germs, and Steel. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a novel written by Jared Diamond in 1997. In the book he explains why some societies are more materially successful than others. Diamond attributes societal success to geography, immunity to germs, food production, the domestication of animals, and use of steel. After we did some brief research and shared our knowledge, we started to watch part 1 of the National Geographic video on Guns, Germs, and Steel. In the video I learned that the beginning of Diamond’s quest took place in Papua New Guinea. Diamond was a professor at UCLA, a biologist, and a specialist in human physiology, but his main interest was birds. There have been people living in Papua New Guinea for over 40,000 years. During his time in Papua New Guinea, Diamond meets a man named Yali who asks him the question, “why do you white people have so much cargo, and we New Guineans have so little?” In Papua New Guinea, cargo meant material goods that the Europeans brought in the first place. We also learned that in the minds of westerners, power was determined by race, they thought that they were genetically superior. After all that information, class was over.

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