history outline
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Preface
On page 10, the author
suggests that the roots of western Eurasian dominance in the modern world lie
in what?
On
page10, the author suggests that the roots of western Eurasian dominance in the
modern world lie in the preliterate past before 3,000 B.C. By
western Eurasian dominance, the author means the dominance of
western Eurasian societies themselves and of the societies that they spawned on
other continents.
Why has the author chosen
to write this book in this style and manner?
In
order to study western Eurasian societies the reader must also understand the
differences among other societies. As in the style of this author,
the author says, “it is impossible to understand even just western Eurasian
societies themselves, if one focuses on them. The interesting
questions concern the distinctions between them and other
societies. Answering those questions requires us to understand all
those other societies as well, so that western Eurasian societies can be fitted
into the broader context.” (pg 11)
Prologue
According to the author,
why did human development proceed at different rates on different continents?
According
to the author, human development proceed at different rates on different
continents because “in the 13,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age, some
parts of the world developed literate industrial societies with metal tools,
other parts developed only nonliterate farming societies, and still others
retained societies of hunter-gatherers with stone tools.” (pg 13) due to the
interactions among disparate peoples (The history of interactions among
disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics,
and genocide.” (pg. 16) Human development rates depended on the type
of society these civilizations chose to live by and the interaction among other
people outside of there ethnic group. Another possible reason for
different rates of human development is biological differences among peoples
and the difference in climate in different regions (“Perhaps cold climates
require one to be more technologically inventive to survive, because one must
build a warm home and make warm clothing, whereas one can survive in the
tropics with simpler housing and no clothing” (pg. 22). Another reason
for the rate of human development is the quantities of the necessities need be
people in order to survive. The more food a civilization had the
more people it can hold. All these are good reasons, but the best
explanation comes from the title guns, germs, and steel. “Yet
another type of explanation lists the immediate factors that enabled Europeans
to kill or conquer other peoples—especially European guns, infectious diseases,
steel tools, and manufactured products” (pg. 23). “The proximate
explanations are clear: some peoples developed guns, germs, steel,
and other factors conferring political and economic power before others did;
and some peoples never developed these power factors at all” (pg. 24).
What is the author’s
personal view on civilization and progress versus hunter gatherer societies?
Even
though the word ‘civilization’ and phrases such as ‘rise of civilization’
convey the false interpretation that civilization is great, and the phrase
‘tribal hunter-gatherers’ are miserable and uncivilized the author thinks other
wise. “Compared with hunter-gatherers, citizens of modern
industrialized states enjoy better medical care, lower risk of death by
homicide, and longer life span, but receive much less social support from
friendships and extended families. My motive for investigating these
geographic differences in human societies is not to celebrate one type of
society over another but simply to understand what happened in history.” (pg.
18)
Chapter 1
What was the Great Leap
Forward? Describe the life of Cro-Magnon man.
Human
history at last took off around 50,000 years ago, at the time of what the
author has termed our Great Leap Forward. “The earliest definite
signs of that leap come from East African sites with standardized stone tools
and the first preserved jewelry (ostrich-shell beads). Similar
developments soon appear in the Near East and in southeastern Europe, then
(some 40,000 years ago) in southwestern Europe, where abundant artifacts are
associated with fully modern skeletons of people termed Cro-Magnons”
(pg.39). Cro-Magnon men produced tool that were made in diverse and
distinctive shapes so modern that their functions as needles, awls, engraving
tools, and so on. They also made multipiece tools. Cro-Magnon
men went hunting using these multipiece tools such as harpoons, spear-throwers,
and eventually bows and arrows. Those efficient means of killing at
a safe distance permitted the hunting of dangerous prey. They also
made rope for nets, lines, and snares that allowed the addition of fish and
birds to their diet. The Cro-Magnon men also built houses and sewn
clothing which greatly improved their ability to survive in cold climates, and
remains of jewelry and carefully buried skeletons indicate revolutionary
artistic and spiritual developments.
What impact did the
arrival of humans have on big animals? Provide an example.
The
arrival of humans had a very bad impact on big animals such as the giant
kangaroos, rhinolike marsupials called diprotodonts, a 400-pound ostrichlike
flightless bird, one-ton lizard, giant python, and land-dwelling
crocodiles. The impact led to the extinction of these big
animals. “Human colonization led to an extinction spasm whose
victims included the moas of New Zealand, the giant lemurs of Madagascar, and
the big flightless geese of Hawaii. Just as modern humans walked up
to unafraid dodos and island seals and killed them, prehistoric humans
presumably walked up to unafraid moas and giant lemurs and killed them too”
(pg. 43).
Which continent had a
“headstart” in 11,000 BC? Why
Eurasia
had a “headstart” in 11,000 BC because it is “the world’s largest
continent. It has been occupied for longer than any other continent
except Africa. Africa’s long occupation before the colonization of
Eurasia a million years ago might have counted for nothing anyway, because
protohumans were at such a primitive stage then. Our archaeologist
might look at the Upper Paleolithic flowering of southwestern Europe between
20,000 and 12,000 years ago, with all those famous artworks and complex tools,
and wonder whether Eurasia was already getting a head start then, at least
locally” (pg. 51). (Eurasia is where Cro-Magnons and Clovis appeared.)
Chapter 2
Explain the difference
between the development of the Moriori and the Maori. Who conquered
whom and why?
The
Moriori lived on the Chatham Islands, 500 miles east of New
Zealand. The Moriori people were peaceful people who once offered
peace, friendship, and a division of resources to the Maori. The
Moriori were hunter-gatherer who only carried homemade clubs and sticks because
their land was not good for farming unlike New Zealand which had good farming
in the north island. The people who lived in New Zealand’s North
Island were called Maori. The Maori were not peaceful
people. They carried guns, clubs, and axes to kill animals and
neighboring people. They built ships and had farming societies
unlike the hunter-gatherers of the Chatham Islands. “On November 19
of that year, a ship carrying 500 Maori armed with guns, clubs, and axes
arrived, followed on December 5 by a shipload of 400 more
Maori. Groups of Maori began to walk through Moriori settlements,
announcing that the Moriori were now their slaves, and killing those who
objected. An organized resistance by the Moriori could still then
have defeated the Maori, who were outnumbered two to one. However,
the Moriori had a tradition of resolving disputes peacefully. They
decided in a council meeting not to fight back but to offer peace, friendship,
and a division of resources. Before the Moriori could deliver that
offer, the Maori attacked en masse. Over the course of the next few
days, they killed hundreds of Moriori, cooked and ate many of the bodies, and
enslaved all the others, killing most of them too over the next few years as it
suited their whim” (pg. 53). The Maori conquered the Morioiri
because “the Moriori were a small, isolated population of hunter-gathers,
equipped with only the simplest technology and weapons, entirely inexperienced
at war, and lacking strong leadership or organization. The Maori
invaders came from a dense population of farmers chronically engaged in
ferocious wars, equipped with more-advanced technology and weapons, and
operating under strong leadership” (pg. 54).
What lessons can be
learned by the pattern of dispersion of the Polynesians?
As
in the pattern of dispersion of the Polynesians within a modest time span,
enormously diverse island environments were settled by colonists all of whom
stemmed from the same founding population. The ultimate ancestors of all modern
Polynesian populations shared essentially the same culture, language,
technology, and set of domesticated plants and animals. Therefore
Polynesian history constitutes a natural experiment allowing us to study human
adaptation, devoid of the usual complications of multiple waves of disparate
colonists that often frustrate people’s attempts to understand adaptation
elsewhere in the world. This small-scale natural experiment tests
how environments affect human societies. “Contributing to these
differences among Polynesian societies were at least six sets of environmental
variables among Polynesian islands: island climate, geological type,
marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation and isolation” (pg.
58). “Thus, Polynesian Islands societies differed greatly in their
economic specialization, social complexity, political organization, and
material products, related to differences in population size and density,
related in turn to differences in island area, fragmentation, and isolation and
in opportunities for subsistence and for intensifying food
production. All those differences among Polynesian societies
developed, within a relatively short time and modest fraction of the Earth’s
surface, as environmentally related variations on a single ancestral
society. Those categories of cultural differences within Polynesia
are essentially the same categories that emerged everywhere else in the world”
(pg. 65).
Chapter 3
Write a paragraph
detailing your interpretation of the account provided on pages 69-74 of
Pizzarro’s conquest of the Incas.
Six
of Pizarro’s companions, including his brothers Hernando and Pedro made
eyewitness accounts of the lands they encountered. They praise the
Emperor of the Roman Catholic Empire, their natural King and Lord, and they did
it for the glory of God their Lord and for the service of the Catholic Imperial
Majesty. In the account provided, they write that such great
exploits been achieved by so few against so many. Most of the time
the Spaniards only had 200 or 300 men together or even fewer when they
conquered many territories in the new land. Governor Pizarro, as
they would call him, obtained intelligence from some Indians who had come from
Cajamarca, so he had them tortured. They confessed to Pizarro that
Atahuallpa, emperor of the Incan empire, was waiting for him at
Cajamarca. Then Pizarro and his men advanced to the city and were
awestricken when they saw the camp of Atahuallpa. There were so many tents
that it sent terrible fear and confusion to the Spaniards. But they
held back their fear for they knew if they didn’t the Indians will surely see
them as weak and attack them. Pizarro’s brother Hernando Pizarro estimated
the number of Indian soldiers there at 40,000, but he was telling a lie just to
encourage the Spaniards, because there were actually more than 80,000
Indians. Pizarro concealed his troops around the square at Cajamarca,
dividing the cavalry into two portions of which he gave the command of one to
his brother Hernando Pizarro and the command of the other to Hernando de
Soto. Pizarro divided the infantry, he himself taking one part and
giving the other to his brother Juan Pizarro. At the same time, he
ordered Pedro de Candia with two or three infantrymen to go with trumpets to a
small fort in the plaza and to station themselves there with a small piece of
artillery. Later that day, around noon, Atahuallpa began to draw up his
men and to approach. In front of Atahuallpa went 2,000 Indians who
swept the road ahead of him, and these were followed by the warriors, half of
whom were marching in the fields on one side of him and half on the other
side. More and more Indians drew from the camp with dazzling attire. Atahuallpa
himself was very richly dressed, with his crown on his head and a collar of
large emeralds around his neck. He sat on a small stool with a rich
saddle cushion resting on his litter. The litter was lined with
parrot feathers of many colors and decorated with plates of gold and
silver. Atahuallpa in very fine litter with the ends of its timbers
covered in silver. Eighty lords carried him on their shoulders, all
wearing a very rich blue livery. Pizarro sent Friar Vicente de
Valverde to go speak to Atahuallpa, and to command Atahuallpa in the name of
God and of the King of Spain that Atahuallpa subject himself to the law of
their Lord Jesus Christ and to the service of the King of Spain. The
Friar drew close the Atahuallpa with nothing but a cross in one hand and the
Bible in the other hand. When Friar was near Atahuallpa, he said, “I
am a Priest of God, and I teach Christians the things of God, and in like
manner I come to teach you. What I teach is that which God says to
us in this Book. Therefore, on the part of God and of the
Christians, I beseech you to be their friend, for such is God’s will, and it
will be for your good.” Then Atahuallpa asked for the Book, that he
might look at it, and the Friar gave it to him closed. Atahuallpa did
not know how to open the Book and the Friar was extending his arm to do so,
when Atahuallpa, in great anger, gave him a blow on the arm, not wishing that
it should be opened. Then Atahuallpa opened it himself, and without
any astonishment at the letters and paper he threw it away from him, with
anger. The Friar returned to Pizarro, exclaiming, “Come
out! Come out, Christians! Come at these enemy dogs who
reject the things of God. That tyrant has thrown my book of holy law to
the ground! Did you not see what happened? Why remain
polite and servile toward this over-proud dog when the plains are full of
Indians? March out against him, for I absolve you!?” Then
Pizarro gave the signal to Candia, who began to fire off the
guns. Trumpets sounded, and the armored Spanish troops, both cavalry
and infantry, allied forth out of their hiding places straight into the mass of
unarmed Indians. Pizarro himself took his sword and dagger, entered
the thick of the Indians with the Spaniards who were with him, and reached for
Atahuallpa on his litter. Pizarro had to kill most of the eight
lords that held the litter in order to get to Atahuallpa. Pizarro
and the Spaniards killed many of the Indians that were with Atahuallpa,
including many of the high chiefs and councilors. Pizarro proclaimed
to Atahuallpa that this is by the will of God that so few have conquered so
many, and that they are doing by coming into his land.
What strikes you the most
from this account?
What
strikes me most is the idea of so few conquering so many as Pizarro
stated. Another astonishing fact is that not a single Spaniard died
in this attack against the Indians. Another factor that surprised me
is that no Indian warrior tried to fight back, as well as that Atahuallpa
marched right into an obvious trap.
Write a paragraph
explaining the reasons for Pizarro’s success.
“Pizarro’s
military advantages lay in the Spaniards’ steel swords and other weapons, steel
armor, guns, and horses. To those weapons, Atahuallpa’s troops,
without animals on which to ride into battle, could oppose only stone, bronze,
or wooden clubs, maces, and hand axes, plus slingshots and quilted
armor. Such imbalances of equipment were decisive in innumerable
other confrontations of Europeans with Native Americans”
(pg.74). Spaniards also had a little help from Native American
allies. Horses were another great factor that allowed Spaniards to
travel fast and easily, and gave Spaniards an advantage. Atahuallpa
being at Cajamerca that the same time Pizarro arrived became a great advantage
to the Spaniards, because it allowed them to capture the ruler of the Incan
Empire. Diseases transmitted to Indians lacking immunity by invading
Spaniards with considerable immunity became a great advantage to Spaniards
because it wiped out many of the Indians that lived there (pg.
77). Pizarro came to Cajamarca by ship. Ships allowed the
Europeans to travel across the world. “Pizarro’s presence depended
on the centralized political organization that enabled Spain to finance, build,
staff, and equip the ships. The Inca Empire also had a centralized
political organization, but that actually worked to its disadvantage, because
Pizarro seized the Inca chain of command intact by capturing Atahuallpa. Since
the Inca bureaucracy was so strongly identified with its godlike absolute
monarch, it disintegrated after Atahuallpa’s death” (pg. 78). “A
related factor bringing Spaniards to Peru was the existence of
writing. Spain possessed it, while the Inca Empire did not. Information
could be spread far more widely, more accurately, and in more detail by writing
than it could be transmitted by mouth” (pg.78). Atahuallpa’s
knowledge of the Europeans was very low, which played as a great advantage.
Chapter 4:
Write a paragraph
explaining the chart on Page 87. Do you agree with the author’s
conclusions?
Top
of the chart is Ultimate Factors and the bottom of the chart is Proximate
Factors Underlying the Broadest Pattern of History. The first part
of the chart explains that a community that has many suitable wild species can
develop a means of animal transportation like horses. Many suitable
wild species in a community can also lead to the domestication plant and animal
species; domestication of plants and animals can be due to the ease of species
spreading in a community. Many domesticated plant and animal species
can lead food surpluses, food storage, and epidemic diseases. Food
surpluses, food storage can allow a community to have a greater
population. Large, dense, sedentary stratified societies can lead to
the development of technology, political organization to keep the peace within
a community, writing in order to talk to each other, and epidemic diseases
which are easily sustain in dense populations. Technology encourages
the production of guns, steel swords, and ocean-going ships. Technology
helps people out and gives them more luxury and pleasures of
life. Technology can also lead to a greater increase in population
within that community. I agree with the author’s conclusion about
Factors Underlying the Broadest Pattern of History which can be interpreted
from the chart given on pg. 87.
What advantages are
gained by being the first to domesticate animals?
“Plant
and animal domestication meant much more food and hence much denser human
populations. The resulting food surpluses, and (in some areas) the
animal-based means of transporting those surpluses, were a prerequisite for the
development of settled, politically centralized socially stratified,
economically complex, technologically innovative societies. Hence
the availability of domestic plants and animals ultimately explains why
empires, literacy, and steel weapons developed earliest in Eurasia and later,
or not at all, on other continents. The military uses of horses and
camels, and the killing power of animal-derived germs, complete the list of
major links between food production and conquest” (pg.
92). Societies that domesticated animals first will get a head start
because they will have horses, make guns, steel swords, ocean-going ships,
political organization, writing, and have epidemic diseases.
Chapter 5
Identify the centers of
origin of food production throughout the world. Which crops
originated where?
“There
are only five such areas for which the evidence is at present detailed and
compelling: Southwest Asia, also known as the Near East or Fertile
Crescent; China; Mesoamerica (the term applied to central and southern Mexico
and adjacent areas of Central America); the Andes of South America, and
possibly the adjacent Amazon Basin as well; and the eastern United States” (pg.
98). Some other places that are not certain to be center of origin
of food production throughout the world is Africa’s Sahel zone, tropical West Africa,
Ethiopia, and New Guinea. Wheat, peas, and olives originated in
Southwest Asia. Rice and millet originated in China. Corn,
beans, and squash originated in Mesoamerica. Potatoes and maniocs
originated in the Andes and Amazonia. Sunflower and goosefoot
originated in Eastern United States. Sorghum and Africa can rice are
said to be from Sahel. African yams and oil palm are said to from
Tropical West Africa. Coffee and teff are said to be from
Ethiopia. Sugar canes and bananas are said to be from New Guinea
(pg.100). (Chickpeas are from Turkey and Emmer wheat from the
Fertile Crescent (pg. 97)).
What are “founder” crops?
Some
people domesticate at least a couple of local plants or animals, but for food
production they depended mainly on crops and animals that were domesticated
elsewhere. Those imported domesticates may be thought of as
“founder” crops and animals because they founded local food
production. “The arrival of founder domesticates enabled local people
to become sedentary, and thereby increased the likelihood of local crops’
evolving from wild plants that were gathered, brought home and planted
accidentally, and later planted intentionally” (pg.100).
What is the author’s view
on “head start” as discussed on page 103?
“The
peoples of areas with a head start on food production thereby gained a head
stat on the path leading toward guns, germs, and steel. The result
was a long series of collisions between the have ands the have-nots of
history.” (pg. 103)
Chapter 6
Write a paragraph
outlining the merits of hunter-gatherers versus farmers.
Hunter-gatherers
can get food that can be eaten right away. Hunter-gatherers also
spend less time working than farmers. Hunter-gatherers are also
exposed to fewer diseases than Farmers. Farmers on the other hand,
have more edible calories per acre and increased food output. Short
birth spacing and produce more people. Farming societies can support
higher density of people than hunter-gatherer societies. Farmers
also can support specialist who can widen technological advances.
What determines your
choice to be one or the other? Why would some hunter-gatherers
consciously reject farming?
One
factor that determines if you will be a hunter-gatherer or a farmer is the
decline in the availability of wild foods. A second factor is that,
just as the depletion of wild game tended to make hunting-gathering less
rewarding, an increased availability of domesticable wild plants made steps
leading to plant domestication more rewarding. Another factor
tipping the balance away from hunting-gathering was the cumulative development
of technologies on which food production would eventually depend
on. A fourth factor was the two-way link between the rise in human
population density and the rise in food production. “In principle,
one expects the chain of causation to operate in both directions. As I’ve
already discussed, food production tends to lead to increased population
densities because it yields more edible calories per acre than does
hunting-gathering. On the other hand, human population densities
were gradually rising throughout the late Pleistocene anyway, thanks to
improvements in human technology for collecting and processing wild
foods. As population densities rose, food production became
increasingly favored because it provided the increased food outputs need to
feed all those people” (pg. 111). Even thou farming was more
favorable some hunter-gatherers consciously rejected it. For example
“the adoption of intensive food production from the Asian mainland was also
very slow and piecemeal in Japan, probably because the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle based on seafood and local plants was so productive there” (pg.
109). Why work hard when all you need is already provided? This
is the reason why some hunter-gatherers consciously rejected farming.
Chapter 7 & 8
Discuss Darwin’s natural
selection as described on page 123. How does it relate to the
selection and propagation of seeds?
“Darwin’s
phrase ‘natural selection’ refers to certain individuals of a species surviving
better and/or reproducing more successfully, than competing individuals of the
same species under natural conditions. In effect, the natural
processes of differential survival and reproduction do the
selecting. If the conditions change, different types of individuals
may now survive or reproduce better and become “naturally selected,” with the
result that the population undergoes evolutionary change” (pg.
123). Animals or plants with favorable adaptations will survive and
reproduces, giving their offspring the favorable
adaptations. Animals or plants with unfavorable adaptations will
dies and not reproduces and there unfavorable adaptations will not be passed
on. Selection and propagation of seed ties in with Darwin’s natural
selection, because farmers choose which seed will be
planted. Farmers will only plant or eat the seeds of the plant that
has the favorable traits like pea pods that don’t explode when ripe or sweet
fruit than bitter fruits. The seeds with the favorable traits will
be planted consciously or unconsciously by the people who eat it, while the
seeds with the unfavorable traits will not be eaten or planted. The
seeds that were planted will pass on there favorable traits to there offspring
and more seeds will be produced with the same favorable traits.
What are the five
advantages the Fertile Crescent enjoyed over other Mediterranean Zones?
“First,
western Eurasia has by far the world’s largest zone of Mediterranean
climate. As a result, it has a high diversity of wild plant and
animal species, higher than in the comparatively tiny Mediterranean zones of
southwestern Australia and Chile. Second, among Mediterranean zones,
western Eurasia’s experiences the greatest climatic variation from season to
season and year to year. That variation favored
evolution. A third advantage of the Fertile Crescent’s Mediterranean
zone is that it provides a wide range of altitudes and topographies within a
short distance, ensuring a corresponding variety of environments, hence a high
diversity of the wild plants serving as potential ancestors of crops. The
Fertile Crescent’s biological diversity over small distances contributed to a
fourth advantage—its wealth in ancestors not only of valuable crops but also of
domesticated big mammals. A final advantage of early food production
in the Fertile Crescent is that it may have faced less competition from the
hunter-gatherer lifestyle than that in some other areas, including the western
Mediterranean” (pg. 138-142).
Why was cannibalism so
widespread in the New Guinea highlands? (pg.149).
“Protein
starvation is probably also the ultimate reason why cannibalism was widespread
in traditional New Guinea highland societies” (pg.149)
Chapter 9
Identify and define the
Ancient Fourteen.
The Major Five
- Sheep. Wild
ancestor: the Asiatic mouflon sheep of West and Central
Asia. Now World wide
- Goat. Wild
ancestor: the bezoar goat of West Asia. Now
worldwide.
- Cow, alias ox or
cattle. Wild
ancestor: the now extinct aurochs, formerly distributed over
Eurasia and North Africa. Now worldwide.
- Pig. Wild
ancestor: The wild boar, distributed over Eurasia and North
Africa. Now world wide. Actually an omnivore (regularly
eats both animal and plant food), whereas the other 13 of the Ancient
Fourteen are more strictly herbivores.
- Horse. Wild
ancestor: now extinct wild horses of southern Russia; a
different subspecies of the same species survived in the wild to modern
times as Przewalski’s horse of Mongolia. Now worldwide.
The
Minor Nine
- Arabian
(one-humped) camel. Wild
ancestor: now extinct, formerly lived in Arabia and adjacent
areas. Still largely restricted to Arabia and northern Africa,
though feral in Australia.
- Bactrian
(two-humped) camel: Wild
ancestor: now extinct, lived in Central Asia. Still
largely confined to Central Asia.
- Llama and alpaca. These
appear to be well-differentiated breeds of the same species, rather than
different species. Wild ancestor: the guanaco of the
Andes. Still largely confined to the Andes, although some are
bred as pack animals in North America.
- Donkey. Wild
ancestor: The African wild ass of North Africa and formerly
perhaps the adjacent area of Southwest Asia. Originally
confined as a domestic animal to North Africa and Western Eurasia, more
recently also used elsewhere.
- Reindeer. Wild
ancestor: the reindeer of northern Eurasia. Still
largely confined as a domestic animal to that area, though now some are
also used in Alaska.
- Water buffalo. Wild
ancestor lives in Southeast Asia. Still used as a domestic
animal mainly in that area, though many are also used in Brazil and others
have escaped to the wild in Australia and other places.
- Yak. Wild
ancestor: the wild yak of the Himalayas and Tibetan
plateau. Still confined as a domestic animal to that area.
- Bali cattle. Wild
ancestor: The banteng (a relative of the aurochs) of Southeast
Asia. Still confined as a domestic animal to that area.
- Mithan. Wild
ancestor: the gaur (another relative of the aurochs) of Indian
and Burma. Still confined as a domestic animal to that area.
Which animals most helped
Eurasians
The
Major Five of the Ancient Fourteen, the sheep, goat, cow, pig, and horse, most
helped Eurasians.
Chapter 10
Explain the map on p.
181. What does it show?
The
map begins by examining the rapid spread of food production out of Southwest
Asia (the Fertile Crescent). Soon after food production arose there,
somewhat before 8000 B.C., a centrifugal wave of it appeared in other parts of
western Eurasia and North Africa farther and farther removed from the Fertile
Crescent, to the west and east. The map illustrates how the wave had
reached Greece and Cyprus and the Indian subcontinent by 6500 B.C., Egypt soon
after 6000 B.C., central Europe by 5400 B.C., southern Spain by 5200 B.C., and
Britain around 3500 B.C. The map shows the spread of Fertile
Crescent crops across western Eurasia.
What explains the rapid
diffusion of crops in Eurasia? How was geography instrumental in the
spread of crops?
“The
answer depends partly on that east—west axis of Eurasia” (pg.
183). “Localities distributed east and west of each other at the
same latitude share exactly the same day length and its seasonal
variations. To a lesser degree, they also tend to share similar
diseases, regimes of temperature and rainfall, and habitats or biomes (types of
vegetation)” (pg. 183). Different crops are programmed grow or
germinate at different climates. If they are moved to a different
climate they will not survive. This is why geography is instrumental
in the spread of crops. Plants spread rapidly in Eurasia because
climates in Eurasia are almost the same because most of Eurasia share the same
latitudes.
Chapter 11
What are characteristics
of infectious disease epidemics?
“The
infectious diseases that visit us as epidemics, rather than as a steady trickle
of cases, share several characteristics. First, they spread quickly
and efficiently from an infected person to nearby healthy people, with the
result that the whole population gets exposed within a short
time. Second, they’re “acute” illnesses: within a short
time, you either die or recover completely. Third, the fortunate
ones of us who do recover develop antibodies that leave us immune against a
recurrence of the disease for a long time, possibly for the rest of our
life. Finally, these diseases tend to be restricted to humans; the
microbes causing them tend not to live in the soil or in other
animals. All four of these traits apply to what Americans think of
as the familiar acute epidemic diseases of childhood, including measles,
rubella, mumps, pertussis, and smallpox” (pg. 202-203).
What is the relationship
between agriculture and the domestication of animals and the launch of
infectious disease?
As
agriculture and the domestication of animals rises, the launch of infectious
disease also rises up in a society with agriculture and domestication of animals. “Some
infectious diseases are caused by microbes capable of maintaining themselves in
animals or in the soil, with the result that the disease doesn’t die out but
remains constantly available to infect people” (pg. 204) The rise of
agriculture launched the evolution of our crowd infectious
diseases. “One reason just mentioned is that agriculture sustains
much higher human population densities than does the hunting-gathering
lifestyle—on the average, 10 to 100 times higher. In addition,
hunter-gatherers frequently shift camp and leave behind their own piles of
feces with accumulated microbes and worm larvae. But farmers are
sedentary and live amid their own sewage, thus providing microbes with a short
path from one person’s body into another’s drinking water” (pg
205). “For many of the microbes responsible for our unique diseases,
molecular biologists can now identify the microbe’s closest
relatives. These also prove to be agents of crowd infectious
diseases—but ones confined to various species of our domestic animals and
pets! Among animals, too, epidemic diseases require large, dense
populations and don’t afflict just any animal: they’re confined mainly to
social animals providing the necessary large populations. Hence when
we domesticated social animals, such as cows and pigs, they were already
afflicted by epidemic diseases just waiting to be transferred to us” (pg.206).
P.208 – What ended
laughing sickness?
“A
fatal disease vanishing for another reason was New Guinea’s laughing sickness,
transmitted by cannibalism and caused by a slow-acting virus from which no one
has ever recovered. Kuru was on its way to exterminating New
Guinea’s Foré tribe of 20,000 people, until the establishment of Australian
government control around 1959 ended cannibalism and thereby the transmission
of kuru” (pg. 208).
What was the role of
disease in the exploration and conquest of Hernando de Soto?
Societies’
Destruction was the role of the disease in the exploration and conquest of
Hernando de Soto. “Conquistadores contributed nothing directly to
the societies’ destruction; Eurasian germs, spreading in advance, did
everything. When Hernando de Soto became the first European
conquistador to march through the southeastern United States, in 1540, he came
across Indian town sites abandoned two years earlier because the inhabitants
had died in epidemics. The epidemics had been transmitted from
coastal Indians infected by Spaniards visiting the coast. The
Spaniards’ microbes spread to the interior in advance of the Spaniards
themselves” (pg. 211).
Chapter 12
Define the term Blueprint
as used by the author.
Blueprint
copying is when you copy or modify and available detailed blueprint (pg.
224). A Blueprint, as used by the author, is a detailed system of
writing or language. From the Blueprint a civilization can make or
use (the Blueprint) a language.
Why did Sequoyah devise
an alphabet? Was he successful in his endeavor?
“Sequoyah
observed that white people made marks on paper, and that they derived great
advantage by using those marks to record and repeat lengthy
speeches. However, the detailed operations of those marks remained a
mystery to him, since (like most Cherokees before 1820) Sequoyah was illiterate
and could neither speak nor read English. Because he was a
blacksmith, Sequoyah began by devising an accounting system to help him keep
track of his customers’ debts. He drew a picture of each customer;
then he drew circles and lines of various sizes to represent the amount of
money owed. Around 1810, Sequoyah decided to go on to design a
system for writing the Cherokee language. He again began by drawing
pictures, but gave them up as too complicated and too artistically
demanding. He next started to invent separate signs for each word,
and again became dissatisfied when he had coined thousands of signs and still
needed more. Finally, Sequoyah realized that words were made up of
modest numbers of different words—what we would call syllables. He
initially devised 200 syllabic signs and gradually reduced them to 85, most of
them for combinations of one consonant and one vowel” (pg.
228). Sequoyah was successful in his endeavor?
Chapter 13
Provide the fourteen
explanations provided to explain resistance to technological changes and
advancements.
A
list of at least 14 explanatory factors has been proposed by historians of
technology. (1) One is long life expectancy, which in principle
should give prospective inventors the years necessary to accumulate technical
knowledge, as well as the patience and security to embark on long development
programs yielding delayed rewards. The next five factors involve
economics or the organization of society: (2) The availability of
cheap slave labor in classical times. (3) Patents and other property
laws, protecting ownership rights of inventors, reward innovation in the modern
West, while the lack of such protection discourages it in modern
China. (4) Modern industrial societies provide extensive opportunities
for technical training, as medieval Islam did and modern Zaire does
not. (5) Modern capitalism is, and the ancient Roman economy was
not, organized in a way that made it potentially rewarding to invest capital in
technological development. (6) The strong individualism of U.S.
society allows successful inventors to keep earnings for themselves, whereas
strong family ties in New Guinea ensure that for themselves, whereas strong
family ties in New Guinea ensure that someone who begins to earn money will be
joined by a dozen relative expecting to move in and be fed and
supported. Another four suggested explanations are ideological,
rather than economic or organizational: (7) Risk-taking behavior,
essential for efforts at innovation, is more widespread in some societies than
in other. (8) The scientific outlook is a unique feature of
post-Renaissance European society that has contributed heavily to its modern
technological preeminence. (9) Tolerance of diverse views and of
heretics fosters innovation, whereas a strongly traditional outlook (as in
China’s emphasis on ancient Chinese classics) stifles it. (10)
Religions vary greatly in their relation to technological
innovation: some branches of Judaism and Christianity are claimed to
be especially compatible with it, while some branches of Islam, Hinduism, and
Brahmanism may be especially incompatible with it. The remaining
four proposed factors—war, centralized government, climate, and resource
abundance—appear to act inconsistently: sometimes they stimulate
technology, sometimes they inhibit it. (11) Throughout history, war
has often been a leading stimulant of technological innovation. But
war can also deal devastating setbacks to technological
development. (12) Strong centralized government boosted technology
and crushed it. (13) Many northern Europeans assume that technology
thrives in a rigorous climate where survival is impossible without technology,
and withers in a benign climate where clothing is unnecessary and bananas
supposedly fall off the trees. An opposite view is that benign
environments leave people free from the constant struggle for existence, free
to devote themselves to innovation. (14) There has also
been debate over whether technology is stimulated by abundance or by scarcity
of environmental resources. Abundant resources might stimulate the
development of inventions utilizing those resources (pg 249-251).
Chapter 14
Write a paragraph on each
of the following terms: (some based on chart pg. 268-69)
Band-(pg 267-270)
Bands
are the tiniest societies, consisting typically of 5 to 80 people, most or all
of them close relatives by birth or by marriage. In effect, a band
is an extended family or several related extended families. Today,
bands still living autonomously are almost confined to the most remote parts of
New Guinea and Amazonia, but within modern times there were many others that
have only recently fallen under state control or been assimilated or
exterminated. All those modern bands are or were nomadic hunter-gatherers
rather than settled food producers. Probably all humans lived in
bands until at least 40,000 years ago, and most still did as recently as 11,000
years ago. Bands lack many institutions that we take for granted in
our own society. They have no permanent single base of
residence. The band’s land is used jointly by the whole group,
instead of being partitioned among subgroups or individuals. There is no
regular economic specialization, except by age and sex: all
able-bodied individuals forage for food. There are no formal
institutions, such as laws, police, and treaties, to resolve conflicts within
and between bands. Band organization is often described as
“egalitarian”: there is no formalized social stratification into
upper and lower classes, no formalized or hereditary leadership, and no
formalized monopolies of information and decision making. However,
the term “egalitarian” should not be taken to mean that all band members are
equal in prestige and contribute equally to decisions. Rather, the term
merely mans that any ban “leadership” is informal and acquired through
qualities such as personality, strength, intelligence, and fighting
skills. They have no slaves.
Tribe-(270-273)
The
tribe is larger than a band because they are typically comprised of hundreds
rather than dozens of people and usually have fixed
settlements. Some tribes consist of herders who move
seasonally. Tribe is a group that shares language and
culture. Besides differing from a band by virtue of its settled residence
and its larger numbers, a tribe also differs in that it consists of more than
one formally recognized kinship group, termed clans, which exchange marriage
partners. Land belongs to a particular clan, not to the whole
tribe. However, the number of people in a tribe is still low enough
that everyone knows everyone else by name and relationships. A fact
further diffusing potential problems of conflict resolution in tribes is that
almost everyone is related to everyone else, by blood or marriage or both. Those
ties of relationships binding all tribal members make police, laws, and other
conflict-resolving institutions of larger societies unnecessary, since any two
villagers getting into an argument will share many kin, who apply pressure on
them to keep it from becoming violent. Tribes still have an
informal, “egalitarian” system of government. Information and
decision making are both communal. Many highland villages do have someone
known as the “big-man,” the most influential man of the village. But
that position is not a formal office to be filled and carries only limited
power. There social system is without ranked lineages or
classes. They lack a bureaucracy, police force, and
taxes. Their economy is based on reciprocal exchanges between individuals
or families, rather than on a redistribution of tribute paid to some central
authority. Economic specialization is slight: full-time
crafts specialists are lacking, and every able-bodied adult (including the
big-man) participates in growing, gathering, or hunting food. They
also lack slaves.
Chiefdom-(pg. 273-276)
Chiefdoms
were considerably larger than tribes, ranging from several thousand to several
tens of thousands of people. The size created serious potential for
internal conflict because the vast majority of other people in the chiefdom
were neither closely related by blood or marriage nor known by name. With
the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the
first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting
to kill them. Part of the solution to that problem was for one
person, the chief, to exercise a monopoly on the right to use
force. Chief held a recognized office, filled by hereditary
right. The Chief was a permanent centralized authority, made all
significant decisions, and had a monopoly on critical information (such as what
a neighboring chief was privately threatening, or what harvest the gods had
supposedly promised). Chiefs could be recognized from afar by
visible distinguishing features like lavish ornaments. The chief’s
orders might be transmitted through one or two levels of bureaucrats, many of
whom were themselves low-ranked chiefs. However, in contrast to
state bureaucrats, chiefdom bureaucrats had generalized rather than specialized
roles. Chiefdom’s large population in a small area required plenty
of food, obtained by food production in most cases, by hunting-gathering in a
few especially rich areas. The food surpluses generated by some
people, relegated to the rank of commoners, went to feed the chiefs, their families,
bureaucrats, and crafts specialists, who variously made canoes, adzes, or
spittoons or worked as bird catchers or tattooers. Luxury goods,
consisting of those specialized crafts products or else rare objects obtained
by long-distance trade, were reserved for chief. Chiefdoms consisted
of multiple hereditary lineages living at one site with social
classes. Their economy is redistributive.
Kleptocrat-(pg. 276-278)
Kleptocracies
are term of transferring net wealth from commoners to upper
classes. The difference between a kleptocrat and a wise statesman,
between a robber baron and a public benefactor, is merely one of
degree: a matter of just how large a percentage of the tribute
extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and how much the commoners
like the public uses to which the redistributed tribute is
put. Kleptocracies with little public support run the risk of being
overthrown, either by downtrodden commoners or by upstart would-be replacement
kleptocrats seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services
rendered to fruits stolen. Kleptocrats throughout the ages have
resorted to a mixture of four solutions in order to gain popular support while
still maintaining a more comfortable lifestyle than commoners. 1.
Disarm the populace, and arm the elite. 2. Make the masses happy by
redistributing much of the tribute received, in popular ways. 3. Use
the monopoly of force to promote happiness, by maintaining public order and
curbing violence. 4 The remaining way for kleptocrats to gain public
support is to construct an ideology or religion justifying
kleptocracy. Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to
kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to
centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion help solve
the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing
each other—by providing them with a bond not based on
kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than genetic
self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. At
the cost of a few society members who die in battle as soldiers, the whole
society becomes much more effective at conquering other societies or resisting
attacks. They had small-scale slavery.
Protostates/States-(pg.278-281)
The
Political, Economic, and social institutions most familiar to us today are
those of states, which now rule all of the word’s land area except for
Antarctica. Many early states and all modern ones have had literate
elites, and many modern states have literate masses as
well. Vanished states tended to leave visible archaeological
hallmarks, such as ruins of temples with standardized designs, at least four
levels of settlement sizes, and pottery styles covering tens of thousands of
square miles. Protostates extend many features of large paramount
(multivillage) chiefdoms. The population of most modern states
exceeds one million. The paramount chief’s location may become the
state’s capital city. Cities differ from villages in their monumental
public works, palaces of rulers, accumulation of capital from tribute or taxes,
and concentration of people other than food producers. Early states
had a hereditary leader with a title equivalent to king, like a super paramount
chief and exercising an even greater monopoly of information, decision making,
and power. Central control is more far-reaching and economic
redistribution in the form of tribute (renamed taxes) more extensive, in states
than in chiefdoms. Economic specialization is more extreme, to the
point where today not even farmers remain self-sufficient. Many
early states adopted slavery on a much larger scale than did
chiefdoms. That was not because chiefdoms were more kindly disposed
toward defeated enemies but because the greater economic specialization of
states, with more mass production and more public works, provided more uses for
slave labor. State governments have several separate departments,
each with its own hierarchy, to handle water management, taxes, military draft,
and so on. Early states had state religions and standardized
temples. States are organized on political and territorial lines.
Chapter 15
Why was European
colonization of Australia so much more successful than in New Guinea?
“A
major factor was the one that defeated all European attempts to settle the New
Guinea lowlands until the 1880s: malaria and other tropical
diseases, none of them an acute epidemic crowd infection. Eurasian
germs were not simultaneously falling on New Guineans because there were no
permanent European settlements in New Guinea until the 1880s, by which time
public health discoveries had made progress in bringing smallpox and other
infectious diseases of European population under control. The
remaining obstacle to European would-be settlers was that European crops,
livestock, and subsistence methods do poorly everywhere in the New Guinea
environment and climate” (pg. 317-318). “The basic reason that European
colonization of Australia was more successful is Australia’s suitability for
European food production and settlement, combined with the role of European
guns, germs, and steel in clearing Aborigines out of the way. Unlike
New Guinea, most of Australia lacked diseases serious enough to keep out
Europeans” (pg. 319-320).
Chapter 16
What accounts for Chinese
success in colonization?
“China
too was once diverse, as all other populous nations still are. China
differs only by having been unified much earlier. Its “Sinification”
involved the drastic homogenization of a huge region in an ancient melting pot,
the repopulation of tropical Southeast Asia, and the exertion of a massive
influence on Japan, Korea, and possibly even India. Hence the
history of China offers the key to the history of all of East Asia” (pg.
324). China appears to be politically, culturally, and
linguistically monolithic even to this day. This unification is what
accounts for Chinese success in colonization.
Chapter 17
What areas did
Austronesian expansion include? What links these societies?
Austronesian
expansion included every area from Madagascar, Indonesia, New Guinea,
Philippines, and Pacific Islands all the way to Easter Island. Their languages,
equally homogeneous, are what link these societies. “Their languages
are equally homogeneous: while 374 languages are spoken in the Philippines and
western and central Indonesia, all of them are closely related and fall within
the same sub-subfamily (Western Malayo-Polynesian) of the Austronesian language
family” (pg. 336).
Chapter 18
At the time of Columbus,
what advantages did the Eurasians enjoy? Which was the most
important? Why?
Food
production is a major determinant of local population size and societal
complexity—hence an ultimate factor behind the conquest. “The most
glaring difference between American and Eurasian food production involved big
domestic mammal species” (pg. 354-355). These differences suggest
that Eurasian agriculture as of 1492 may have yielded on the average more
calories and protein per person-hour of labor than Native American agriculture
did. Among the resulting proximate factors behind the conquest, the
most important included differences in germs, technology, political
organization, and writing. “Ultimate factors that tipped the
advantage to European invaders of the Americas: Eurasia’s long head
start on human settlement; its more effective food production, resulting from
greater availability of domesticable wild plants and especially of animals; and
its less formidable geographic and ecological barriers to intercontinental
diffusion” (pg 370). The most important was differences in food
production. Because that was ultimately what cause the disparities
between Eurasian and Native American societies. Food production also
led up the resulting proximate factors behind the conquest.
Chapter 19
Write a paragraph
explaining the fate of Khoisan.
“The
Khoisan are formerly distributed over much of southern Africa, they consisted
not only of small-sized hunter-gatherers, known as San, but also of larger
herders, known as Khoi. (These names are now preferred to the
better-known terms Hottentots and Bushmen.) Both the Khoi and the
San look (or looked) quite unlike African blacks: their skins are
yellowish, their hair is very tightly coiled, and the women tend to accumulate
much fat in their buttock (termed “steatopygia”). As a distinct
group, the Khoi have been greatly reduced in numbers: European
colonists shot, displaced, or infected many of them, and most of the survivors
interbred with Europeans to produce the populations variously known in South
Africa as Coloreds or Basters. The San were similarly shot,
displaced, and infected, but a dwindling small number have preserved their
distinctness in Namibian desert areas unsuitable for agriculture” (pg. 380).
Epilogue
Provide a one-paragraph
overview of the epilogue.
Author,
in the beginning of the epilogue, states that the “striking differences between
the long-term histories of peoples of the different continents have been due
not to innate differences in the peoples themselves but to differences in their
environment” (pg. 405). The continents differ in innumerable
environmental features affecting trajectories of human societies. Four
sets of differences appear to the author to be the most important ones. “The
first set consists of continental differences in wild plant and animal species
available as starting materials for domestication. Second set of factors
consists of those affecting rates of diffusion and migration, which differed
greatly among continent. Related to these factors affecting diffusion
within continents is a third set of factors influencing diffusion between
continents, which may also help build up a local pool of domesticates and
technology. Ease of intercontinental diffusion has varied, because
some continents are more isolated than others. The fourth and last
set of factors consists of continental differences in area or total population
size. A larger area or population means more potential inventors,
more competing societies, more innovations available to adopt—and more pressure
to adopt and retain innovations, because societies failing to do so will tend
to be eliminated by competing societies” (pg. 406-407). Later the
author talks about the Fertile Crescent and China eventually losing their
enormous leads of thousands of years to late-starting to late-starting
Europeans. Like cultural idiosyncrasies, individual idiosyncrasies
throw wild cards into the course of history. They may make history
inexplicable in terms of environmental forces, or indeed of any generalizable
causes. Each glacier, nebula, hurricane, human society, and
biological species, and even each individual and cell of a sexually reproducing
species, is unique, because it is influenced by so many variables and made up
of so many variable parts. History is made up of classical
mechanics. Later the author the explains the difficulties historian
face in establishing cause-and-effect relations in the history of human
societies are broadly similar to the difficulties facing astronomers,
climatologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, geologists, and
paleontologists.
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