Ap World History Summer Assignment

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Brandon Velazquez 8/17/15 AP World History 9 Summer Assignment Part A Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, is a memoir by James Diamond about how he seeks to prove that it is in fact geography, not biology or race, which made the cultural disparities of different societies. Throughout the book he explains the accounts of over 13,000 years of human evolutions and social development. It all started when Diamond was studying birds in New Guinea and met a friend named Yali, who had asked him “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo (goods and technology) and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” Diamond’s search for this answer by examining millions of years of history, following humans as they evolve biologically, and then concentrating on specific representative societies to explain his findings. To state the difference between developing cultures, Diamond emphasizes the effects of food production, writing, technology, government, and religion. The he shows, in his opinion, why the differences among these various cultures occurred. A major theme that was written about was that there is no difference in intellect between races. Diamond’s main concern was to reject any simple racial explanation for the apparent differences in material culture between different regions of the planet. An example of this theme was when he explained his personal experience with “primitive” people, and their capacity to adapt to severe environments or respond well to new technology. Another main theme was the theme of geographic success, and geographic failure. Diamond argues throughout the memoir that certain aspects of local geography allow the people that live there to produce food more
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