Blog Day Fifty- Six: Test about Guns, Germs, and Steel

Today in class we went over all the things that will be on our test about Guns, Germs, and Steel. Mr. Shick told us we needed to know about the author of the book, Jared Diamond. Here are a few facts about him; he wrote the book in 1997, he was/ is a professor at UCLA, he is a biologist, specialist in human physiology, his real passion is studying birds. Also Papua New Guinea is the last place where people are still hunters and gatherers. Three things that make up great civilizations are advance technology, large population, and a well organized workforce.  Another thing we need to know is Yali's questions which is, "Why you white men have so much cargo and we New Guineans have so little?" Cargo is defined as material goods Europeans brought to New Guinea. One thing that new Guinea has is wild sago. This is a type of food that New Guineans get from a tree. It takes about three days to process all 70 pounds of food. It has no nutrients and does not last very long after it has been harvested. Draa is one of the earliest settlements to have been discovered. It was discovered around 11,500 years ago. In this settlement it had a place called a granary. A granary is a place where food can be stored year round. It has humidity control and stored grains like wheat and barley. As settlements started to take place, plant domestication started to occur. Plant domestication started when the ice age people started to stay in one place and farm. They selected the plants they wanted to grow and plant domestication begun. Along with plant domestication came animal domestication. This was when people discovered they could use animals for more than just their meat. They could use animals for their milk for protein, their hides for clothing, their power for farming, and their waste for fertilizer. There was one major thing that Diamond pointed out in his theory, and that is geographic luck. That in and of itself covered the differences between the advancements of all the civilizations in the worlds. A few facts that support the theory of geographic luck are that none of the major domesticated plants or animals were domestic to New Guinea. The fourteen animals that have been domesticated are goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, bactrian camels, arabian camels, water buffalos, llamas, reindeer, yaks, mitans, and bali cattle. None of which are native to New Guinea. On the plants side of things, rice is indigenous to China, corn, squash, and beans are indigenous to the Americas, barley and wheat are indigenous to the Middle East, and sorghum, millt, and yams are indigenous to Africa. With some of these plants people kept replanting them and destroying the soil of the land, like they did in Mesopotamia. Eventually people had to find a new home away from the fertile crescent, as after a few hundred it became to so fertile. Overall, I think I have hopefully covered all the facts that will be on the test about Guns, Germs, and Steel.