Blog Number 3

Human history has tended to be biased towards Eurasian soceity for thousands of years, and, lately, Western Eurasian societies, or those of Europe. Why could this be? Were the people of other continents inferior to their White counterparts,as racist, Eugenicists of the Imperial Age often claimed? Or was it a deeper, less racially based reason? These are some of the questions Jared Diamond attempts to answer in his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Diamond uses the intense power of statistical analysis and an overwhelming abundance of evidence to support his claim that Eurasian societies grew into promincence because they possesed Guns, Germs and Steel, while other cultures did not. The preface outlines what his four sections of the book pertain to: the account of the Diaspora out of Africa (an inferred analysis based on archaeological findings) and the eventual Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in 1531, the rise of food production around the world, how food production affected societies, and finally, the history of the people of seperate continents themselves. All throughout these four sections, Diamond cites archaeological, linguistic, and other historical sources, to support his idea.
This book has a deep meaning attached to it, because it accurately explains why history turned out the way it did. Everyone has wondered at one time or other why did the Europeans "find" the New World, and not the other way around? Diamond uses his great knowledge of different peoples of the world, and their history, to prove that it wasn't inadequacy in the indigenous peoples of a given area that caused them to obtain guns, germs, and steel, and that geography had the biggest impact on the history of the world. It is a great read for anyone interested in analyzing why history turned out the way it did, but I reccomend it to all.