January 31, 2011

Today in class we continued watching Guns, Germs, and Steel. Jarred Diamond is a scientist, not a historian and it was a huge challenge to divide the world into haves and have nots. First Jarred had to think about centuries before, such as Prehistoric times. 13,000 years ago the Middle East had much more trees and plants, their people were hunter gatherers and they would live in shelters they found and created. After a period of time they would migrate to other places and start a new shelter. Diamond says that you have to be pretty smart to be a hunter, which is true, the people in New Guinea must be quiet and skillful in order to find food. They often used bow and arrows which gave no certainty that the animal would die. Since hunting is so difficult, most of their food comes from hunting and gathering, By stripping a Sago tree you can get to the center of the tree and the substance can be used as dough to cook and eat. In the Middle East they ate barely and wheat, both have more nutrients than Sago. The earth went through a change in which the world got colder and dryer just like the Ice Age. The Middle East was hit hard and had a drought for thousands of years. In the Middle East in a place called Draa scientists started to discover and dig up the remains of people that lived there thousands of years ago. They were much more complex then people are today, scientists even discovered a place under ground where people could store food away from insects called a granary. At some point during the drought in the Middle East people started to grow their own food. The stone age people were becoming the first farmers in the world. There are only a few parts of the world where people became farmers: China, North and South America, Africa, and New Guinea did also. The people of New Guinea thought that the forests were uninhabited so they became farmers. But New Guinea didn't evolve into a technological country like China and the Americas did. Farming was crucial to the people many years ago, the people who had the best crops became the most productive farmers according to Diamond.