Guns, Germs, and Steel

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Guns, Germs, and Steel

• Jared Diamond

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Jared Diamond

• Biologist specializing in anatomy
• Bird expert
• He believes that all humans have essentially the
  same potential, but that geography or the
  environment has played the biggest role in
  determining the haves and the have-nots.

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Five Themes of Geography

• As you watch the film, take Cornell notes.
• Topic Hunter Gatherers to Cultivators
• Date October 9, 2007
• Answer Questions and write a short paragraph at
  the end about what you found most interesting
  about the film each day.

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Questions (left column)

• Name and describe the physical characteristics of
  two places in and the types of foods these places
  provide.
• How did humans come to depend on, adapt to, and
  modify their environment to have enough food?
• Why did ancient hunter-gatherers move and what
  ideas moved with them?

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Food Collection

• Hunter Gatherers are dependent on naturally
  occurring sources of food such as plants and
  animals.
• Subsistence living having enough to survive

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H-Gs

• Anthropologists study modern HG societies to
  understand those 15,000 years old.
• Be careful
• 1. HGs have lived in numerous environments.
• 2. HGs have evolved and changed over time.

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Australian Aborigines

• Gibson Desert, Western Australia
• Low rainfall, high temperatures
• Sparsely populated.
• Bark, plants, fruit, emus, kangaroo,
• Women gather food with children along.
• Children get water
• Men Hunt from brush with spears along river.
• Small groups of nomadic people.

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Copper Eskimos

• Canadian Arctic
• 9 month winter mostly below freezing
• Ice and snow in winter, boggy in summer.
• Winter Seal, polar bear, Spring fish, caribou,
  dried fish.
• Men hunt with harpoons. Women and children prep
  food. (copper and bone knives)
• Move to pack ice in winter, to shore for fishing
  in spring, to snow drifts in fall to build
  igloos.

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Depend, Adapt, Modify

• What do they need? Why?
• How do they change because of the environment?
• What do they do to the environment to get what
  they need?

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Food Production

• Cultivating and domesticating plants and animals
  to control natural processes of growth.
• Three types of food production
• Horticulture
• Intensive Agriculture
• Pastoralism

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Horticulture

• Growing of all types of crops with simple tools
  and methods
• Hand tools, sticks, no beasts of burden, no
  fertilizers, no irrigation
• Shifting cultivation grow crops for a few
  years, grow nothing for a few years, then use
  slash and burn.
• Long Growth Tree Cultivation dependence on tree
  crops

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Horticulture Society

• Do not rely on plants alone.
• Raise small animals
• Nomadic but somewhat sedentary
• Able to support larger populations
• Show evidence of specialized workers

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Intensive Agriculture

• Cultivate permanently
• Fertilizers (dung)
• Crop rotation
• Paired crops (corn/beans)
• Irrigation
• Plows and animal labor

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Intensive Agriculture

• Towns and cities
• Specialized workers
• Complex political institutions
• Differences in wealth
• Long work days (9 hrs. day 7 days a week.)
• Reliance on single crops
• Commercialization Surplus food for sale
• More machines, corporate farms, fewer farmers

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Pastoralism

• Primary dependence on domesticated animals
• Milk, blood, protein, wool, meat, trade?
• Nomadic move with the herds
• Small communities
• Sense of ownership
• Community decision making

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Causes of Diversity in Food-Getting