Guns, Germs and Steel

Chapter 1: Out of Eden

"Why were Europeans the ones with all the cargo? Why had they taken over so much of the world, instead of the native people of New Guinea? How did Europeans end up with what Diamond terms the agents of conquest: guns, germs and steel? It was these agents of conquest that allowed 168 Spanish conquistadors to defeat an Imperial Inca army of 80,000 in 1532, and set a pattern of European conquest which would continue right up to the present day.

Diamond knew that the answer had little to do with ingenuity or individual skill. From his own experience in the jungles of New Guinea, he had observed that native hunter-gatherers were just as intelligent as people of European descent -- and far more resourceful. Their lives were tough, and it seemed a terrible paradox of history that these extraordinary people should be the conquered, and not the conquerors. "

The cause of inequality in modernization between countries is mainly due to the geographical location of the country and the crops they yield. Papau New Guinea's main agriculture yield was taro and bananas, which are low in protein. Unlike wheat and sweet potato grown in other countries like America and Asia, which are high in protein. Hence, population grew faster, and more people could help in sourcing for food. When there are more people to source for food, others could take on the role of the innovators and creators, thus inventing the plough using animal domestication. Another reason was that Papau New Guinea people domesticated pigs, which could not be used for labour. Whereas in America and Egypt, they had horses and cows, to help them plough the land for farming, thus increasing the efficiency. This slowly led to changes in society.

Man started building homes and decorating them back in the olden ages, around the same time they started developing metal tools. The discovery of plaster, by heating stones to 1000 degrees, used to plaster their homes. The concept of air-conditioning, by building homes with a small vent that allows cooler air from the outside to flow in.

However, back to Yali's question: 'Why do you white men have so much cargo, and we New Guineans so little?'. Jared Diamond affirms it to the geographical location. The blueprint for the division between haves and havenots lies within the land itself. The fertile crescent, in the Middle East played a huge role in the revolution of agriculture. However, ironically the people living in the fertile crescent soon moved away as the hot weather did not favour the growth of crops. The fertile crescent spread east and west, to Eurasia. The rise in civilisation in Europe began and grew rapidly only after the spread of the fertile crescent.

Chapter 2: Conquest

The roots of power. The key to it is the distribution of farm animals.
16th century, European farms were dominated by domesticated animals, which provided dairy, meat and muscle power, and all these came from the fertile crescent, none were native to Europe.

Gunpowder orginally came from China, but was pioneered as a weapon by the Arabs. People started working with metal in the fertile crescent, and because Europe was nearer to the fertile crescent, they developed metal tools and weapons faster. Only in the 16th century did people start to 'wear' swords on them, unlike in the middle ages. It was a symbol of aspiring greed.

Like how animals and crops spread from the fertile crescent, knowledge and technology of writing also spreaded across the world. Due to Europe's favourable geographical location, they advanced faster than most parts of the world.

"On November 15, 1532, 168 Spanish conquistadors arrive in the holy city of Cajamarca, at the heart of the Inca Empire, in Peru. They are exhausted, outnumbered and terrified -- ahead of them are camped 80,000 Inca troops and the entourage of the Emperor himself. Yet within just 24 hours, more than 7,000 Inca warriors lie slaughtered; the Emperor languishes in chains; and the victorious Europeans began a reign of colonial terror which will sweep through the entire American continent."

But the Spaniads won because of horses, swords and strategy, the first two-Inca people have never seen before. European powers were so huge that they colonise not only Inca (peru), but also America, Africa and much of Asia. They were able to do so, because they had guns, germs and steel. Smallpox started from the Spainards on their conquest over Inca, and there they spreaded the germs to the Incans.

Chapter 3: Into the Tropics

"So far, Jared Diamond has demonstrated how geography favoured one group of people -- Europeans -- endowing them with agents of conquest ahead of their rivals around the world. Guns, germs and steel allowed Europeans to colonize vast tracts of the globe -- but what happened when this all-conquering package arrived in Africa, the birthplace of humanity?

Can Jared Diamond's theories explain how a continent so rich in natural resources, could have ended up the poorest continent on earth?"

An advantage the Eurpeans had was living in close proximity to their livestock, they become infected with viruses of those animals, which evolved into disesases of humans. Through exposure over centuries, Europeans have developed resistance to some of those diseases. but as Europeans spread around the world, they encounter ppl who didn't have those resistance and thus spreading the diseases.

Back in those days, guns developed outside of Europe, but Europe kept them inside. People went everywhere with their rifles, just like how people now would go everywhere with their handphones. The Voortrekkers from Europe were travelling, when the Zulus attacked them. Did Europe, who had guns, germs and steel, finally met their match of Africa? The sneak attack rendered the Voortrekkers useless to their guns. // Another attack between the settlers and the Zulus occured and this time, the Europeans had time to maximise the use of their technology, some shoot while others reload. Guns, germs and steel had prevailed over the Zulus.

As settlers move to Africa, they were soon faced with problems that disabled them from farming, and their animals died. This is due to the horrible climate. Africans overcame the problem that Europeans faced, developed a unique system of agriculture that spread across Africa. Usually, its the guns, germs and steel from Europe killing the Indigenous people. But now, in African Cape, it is the germs from the native African countries killing the Europeans who came in. Tropical Africans, through exposure to these germs, have developed resistance to them too. They were also resistant to smallpox, combating them with their own ways. Malaria also started in Africa (some experts say that smallpox originated from Africa), and killed many European settlers. The Africans have found ways to deal with Malaria, by moving to higher and dry locations where mosquitoes cannot breed. Many Europeans died as they could not understand the Africans way of living, and continued living by the river-a water source, and a place for mosquitoes to breed. This way, tropical Africans have triumphed over the Europeans settlers.

In the late 1800s, the Europeans took over Africa -now known as Congo, and set the Africans to labour. The Africans were forced to abandon their way of life, and labour for the Europeans. The colonisers turned to their technology, they forced Africans to build railway tracks from Cape to the tropics, constructed for Europeans to extract Africa's wealth, built on the ruins of African civilisation.

Malaria is a pandemic in Zambia, and its one of the biggest killer of African children below 5 years. Other continents like Asia also experienced such pandemics, but through knowledge and technology, they knew how to combat the disease and thus eliminate or largely reduce malaria.

Guns, Germs and Steel are the most powerful forces shaping the world.
Why is our world divided between rich and poor? And how perhaps can we change it?

Lesson #12

We had 4 groups presenting this lesson, one of which was my group. Anyway, in order of who went first:

First group did the topic on The End: Technology and Armageddon. They had role playing too, a darth vadar guy, a guy in thrash bag, and the others. If armageddon were to stike Earth, obviously we would all die, hence they introduced the idea of having cyborgs apart from us humans and robots which exists today. Cyborgs would survive all these, and is at the top of the pyramid, hierachy-wise.

Our group went next, we did on Diseases and the technology related to combat the spread of disesases. More specifically, we did on infectious diseases like Malaria, Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS as they are more prevalent in developing countries, and we want to spread awareness through our website, so that people will be more aware and know the preventative and curative measures to undertake. Role playing again, we had Nickolas as the businessman, who is the CEO (Chief Everything Officer) of SHABABIES Medical Wing and wants to create a website that has all these info on infectious diseases. Hence his IT man Xun Kai sets up the websites. Tracy the historian talks about the timeline, the two doctors KangSheng and I did on case studies and current technologies, while Matthew the (mad) scientist did on future technology. I really love my group, and I felt that we did well as a team. By the way, SHABABIES stands for Spreading Health Awareness, Bringing About Better Implementation to Educational Sustainability.

Next group did on Technology and Art, and how technology has helped revolutionise the art world today, and yet some might think it is spoiling it instead. To be honest, I felt that their presentation was a little too long and monotonous as well. However, the topic is sure unconventional and interesting to note.

Lastly, the group surprised me with another unconventional topic that is bound to interest me, Women and Technology. They made use of a lot of videos that they produced by themselves as well, and the topics covered were really interesting. So was their website, as they had a lot of women related stuffs, like even polls, blogshops etc. They talked about the traditional stereotype view of people that women are not good with technology, which they already proved wrong as they are a all female team! (:

Well, that concludes TWC lesson this sem. It was surely an interesting module, and I learnt a lot about Technology, and how it changes the world. Every second, something new somewhere else in the world is created, by a change leader. We CAN be a change leader, if we dare to take the step forward and lead, rather than following the changes. Technology? I'm not so afraid of it, and less of a noob now! (:

Lesson # 11

Today was filled with presentations, from 3 groups.

The first was on How Air Transport Changed the World. I felt that their presentation was pretty cool and interesting, as they each took on a role of captain, co-captain, stewardess and steward. Their presentation was clear and in-depth, about future cars that can fly, like planes. That is a pretty fascinating idea, just imagine if cars could fly? When there is a traffic jam, we could just fly over the jam to get to our destination quicker. However, all cars could fly, there might even be a jam in the air; or accidents in the air might have a greater negative impact on us.

The second group did the topic on Storm Troopers: Cleaning Up Space. This bunch of intellects amazed me with their theories and formulae and scientific explanations on the whiteboard. There is a lot of space junk, like broken satellites etc. However, I felt that what this group lacked was presentation skills, which was a little monotonous and hard to follow.

Lastly, the third group did a presentation on Spacemen: Technology in dealing with space constraints. Their presentation was fun to watch as well, they made use of a lot of videos which they produced by themselves, and they had two parts to their presentation-the past and the future. They talked about the lack of space and this group incorporated much of what we have learnt in the past few lessons like biobusiness agriculture and ict etc.

I felt that the three groups did amazingly well, and the websites are just fantastic. Technology and World Change, a module that teaches us so much more.

Stay tune next post for my group's turn to present, along with three others (: