Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond - Book Report/Review Example

? Guns, Germs and Steel Book Report This report provides analysis of the book Guns, Germsand Steel, which has been written by Jared Diamond. W.W. Norton & Company based in New York published this book in 1996. Jared William is a well-known biologist and physiologist, who wrote the book Guns, Germs and Steel. The author is famous for writing books on evolution and physiology in which he writes very demanding stories with a wider scope of his thinking. The author has performed research work in the fields of New Guinea for many years. He has not considered racial differences among the people; instead, he focused on addressing different issues. Many books of Jared William cover racism and Eurocentric thoughts, as they are not correct according to him. This book is very informative for readers because the author has described a different development related to human beings from ancient times to the modern period. Another important reason why this book is vital for readers is that it has highlighted different cultures and impact of various factors on these cultures all over the globe. The book seems more interesting as it contains a history of food production and effects of this production on human beings. The author has done a good job by illustrating the social transformation of human beings during different eras. From governance to food, the author has been able to explain different elements of culture and their impact on human beings living in different regions of the world. In the first three chapters of the book, Diamond talked about the journey of human beings during millions of years from Africa to Euro Asia. The technological and innovative changes in humans by the change of time, their migrations, and their living styles have been discussed comprehensively in these chapters. From chapter’s five to eight, the author illustrates the agricultural changes in human beings by the developments in food production. In the earliest times, human beings hunted to gather food, but with the passage of time when awareness increased and lifestyles changed, human beings started to use different animals and plants. The author describes the advantages and disadvantages of these developments by use of plants and animals in further chapters. In chapters ten and eleven, the author reports the transfer of infections in human beings from farm animals causing different diseases in humans. In chapter twelve, author talks about the importance of literacy in human beings by stating that people in ancient times never knew how to write and read, as they were illiterate. He describes the origination of writing by alphabetic, logographic systems and syllabus systems in the modern times that helped human beings to study, read and write. In chapter thirteen, the author tells about the need of inventions and technology because as time passed by, humans needed a setup and innovative ways to cope up with modern lifestyles. In the middle of the book, Diamond describes different governments and religions in different parts of the world. He enlightens different cultures that are prevailing in the world and explains that people have different languages and the way of living that make them distinctive and separate from others as the culture is responsible for influencing people’s standard of living. Jared Diamond wrote this book to emphasize the controversial points of scientists who gave arguments that were not in favor of the thesis written by the author. Diamond examines the history for millions of years by discussing human evolution from their ancestors to the modern age. Diamond’s evolutionary study follows human beings through a definite representative of different cultures. Diamond describes the breakage of ancestors in Africa who existed 7 million years ago and accounts of the human ancestors who walked to Europe and Asia from Africa approximately 1 or 2 million years ago. During the period of 100,000, to 500,000 years ago, many modern Homo sapiens came into existence, which was an innovative creation. Diamond’s evolutionary and biological research on ancestors of human beings shows that developed societies have different cultures. He highlights different consequences for religions, food, technological effects, governments, and writing effects on different cultures by evolutionary changes. The author describes ancient times in his book and discusses about the development of agriculture that has changed suddenly around the globe. The author specifically talks about agricultural areas that were not productive, and the most fertile parts of the globe where agriculture was not heard until the beginning of the European colonial period. Further in his book, Diamond describes the life styles of human beings who gathered their food by hunting in ancient times. Diamond illustrates the largest distinguishing factor in multiple kinds of animals that were in abundance in Eurasia, whereas the domestication of plants was not so common for different reasons in America. Their lifestyle was changed by the development in productions of food as they were given the right to use different plants and animals in any way they like. The development of human beings in food production was far better than gathering food by hunting. The author illustrates some of the facts in his book that modernizing of human beings and developments in the food production through farming and agriculture caused different diseases. He discusses the domestic approach of human beings towards animals that were kept on farms and were considered as a source of food for humans. These farm animals transferred diseases such as smallpox, flu, plague, etc. from animals to humans. Diamond discusses literacy in human beings until the adventurer of Europe could understand writing and reading, and made them dominant over the people who were uneducated and ignorant. Education in human beings helped them study maps, directions for sails, and detail studies by travelers and voyagers in ancient times. The author describes the basis of writings and alphabetic systems in his book. Diamond presents how different religions and governments around the globe came to existence, how they were explored, and how they arose in miscellaneous parts of the world. He writes in his book about four divisions in the society by categorizing them into tribes, bands, chiefdoms and states. Bands are the groups that are small and comprise around 80 people bonded by a family tie. The people in bands live together and work to earn together without any external relationships. The author describes in his book the people living in the form of bands, without organizational groups and with the comfortable managements. Diamond speculates that linguistic origination and development was in Taiwan, and he wants to discover human disparity in different regions of the world. The book seems very interesting as I have a keen interest in ancient studies and I was able to understand many aspects of evolutionary changes in humans from the early times to modern developments. I was not interested in reading this book because I thought that this book would be based on biological aspects, but after reading the first two chapters, I realized that this book is very thought provoking for me. The food production processes were very interesting for me and it was informative to know that people used to live in different groups in the past and they had to work very hard to get food for themselves. This book has persuaded me to find out different cultural and religious aspects of human beings that lived thousands of years ago, and has built a lot of interest in me to explore and discover new developments in human’s evolutionary changes. Jared Diamond has produce a masterpiece and I am expecting more books from him related to similar topic. Works Cited Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. Print. Read More