Based on Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, Guns, Germs and Steel traces humanity's journey over the last 13,000 years – from the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the realities of life in the twenty-first century.
Inspired by a question put to him on the island of Papua New Guinea more than thirty years ago, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to understand the roots of global inequality.
Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet?
Why didn't the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead?
Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East?
Why did farming never emerge in Australia?
And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?
As he peeled back the layers of history to uncover fundamental, environmental factors shaping the destiny of humanity, Diamond found both his theories and his own endurance tested.
The three one-hour programs were filmed across four continents on High Definition digital video, and combined ambitious dramatic reconstruction with moving documentary footage and computer animation. They also include contributions from Diamond himself and a wealth of international historians, archeologists and scientists.
Guns, Germs, and Steel is a thrilling ride through the elemental forces which have shaped our world – and which continue to shape our future.
**Your assignment questions can be found in the Google Drive Folder that I have Shared With You**
Jared Diamond’s basic theory is that some countries developed more rapidly than others and were able to expand and conquer much of the world because of geographic luck. The natural resources available to them coupled with the native species and climate provided by their geography led them to become more agricultural and less reliant on hunting and gathering for sustenance. This agrarian lifestyle, in turn, allowed for the development of “specialists” within the civilization who could work on developing and perfecting the technologies necessary to make these civilizations more profitable, stronger, and more powerful than others around them. Diamond asserts that those living in temperate climates with indigenous animals that could be domesticated were more likely to develop advanced civilizations.
This episode explores, in more depth, the idea that geographic luck enabled some cultures to become more agricultural, thus allowing them to establish larger settlements with people specializing in many aspects of technological development. One of these was the development of steel for use in weaponry. Diamond chronicles the success of the Spanish Conquistadors and how the use of written language gave them an advantage over the Incas, along with their advanced weapons including guns and state of the art steel swords. These two things combined allowed the Spanish to overthrow a much larger Inca army, thus taking control of their empire and its riches.
Episode 3 looks at the role that germs played in the historic conquests of the world as well as how the spread of these same diseases today is keeping many of the world’s poorest countries from developing. The economic, social, and technological impact of the spread of germs and disease and how this part of Diamond’s theory remains true even today will be explored in this episode.