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11,000 Years of history - Interpreted persuadingly...

In this stunning book Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors was the one and only reason for the Europeans to dominate the new world

Jared Diamond starts his book at around 11,000 B.C when all human beings were hunter gatherers. Eventually, over few thousand years' human beings in different parts of the world become farmers during different times in the ages of history. However, not all societies adopted farming. In the rest of the 400 pages Diamond convincingly argues that those societies that adopted farming had a considerable head start in food production, - the sole reason those societies marched into the Iron Age, while the rest were left behind.

In the back ground of his arguments lie his 30 years of research in New Guinea, a small Island about the size of Texas that lie near Australia and Indonesia. Most of the societies in New Guinea still predominantly consist of hunter gatherers. Decades of research in New Guinea has convinced Diamond that if appropriate geographical and environmental factors prevailed in New Guinea over thousands of years, New Guinean's could have been the masters of the new world

The four major areas in the world compared by Diamond include Eurasia, Americas, Australia/New Guinea and Africa. The abundant presence of wild plants and animals that can be domesticated contributed to the growth of farming in Eurasia. Farming as opposed to hunting gathering led to sedentary life style that aided population growth at more rapid rates. The population growth in localized areas and the domestication of animals in those areas led to the growth of germs, which helped the farming community to build resistance at an early stage. Also, farming in turn gave birth to large volume trade, writing, invention of wheels and technical innovation, formation of chiefdom, states and religion.

In conclusion, the presence of suitable geographical and environmental factors led to the development of Eurasia, while the deprivation of same factors kept the others behind. Along the same lines, Diamond persuades that all the other factors such as human factors, physical factors, cultural factors etc directly or indirectly depend on the sustenance of suitable environmental factors over thousands of years.