Video Gallery

Guns Germs and Steel Episode 1

Go to Video Gallery Added May 21, 2018 •

Copy this URL:
Embed code:	<iframe class="edlio-embed-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="360" src="//www.aghseagles.org/apps/embed/?v=184915" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Change dimensions

Go HD

Show Transcript

modern history has been shaped by Conquest conquest of the World by Europeans the doors lead the way a few hundred men came to the new world and decimated the native population are the Bears success and steel people of European origin have dominated the globe with the same combination of military power lethal microbes and I can use technology but how did they develop these advantages in the first place why did ever become so unequal questions that Professor Jared Diamond has spent more than 30 years trying to answer one of the most thinkers of our age Diamond has traveled the world looking for Clues he said himself a daunting task to peel back the layers of the explore the very roots of power in the modern world whatever I work on for the rest of my life I can never work on questions as fascinating as the questions of guns to go see the pics questions of human what separates the haves from the have-nots how have Guns Germs and Steel shaped the history of the world Jared Diamonds quest to uncover the roots of inequality began in the rainforest Apple New Guinea diamond is a professor at UCLA in Los Angeles is a biologist by training a specialist in human physiology that is real passion has always been the study of birds I love watching birds in this place I began watching Birds but I was 7 years old in the United States that it was just a matter of identifying them I came here when I was 2 6 years old to New Guinea and it was love at first sight Diamond has been making regular trips to New Guinea ever since there's now a leading expert on the bird life of the eye morning we'll talk in the course of his field work he's become just as curious about the people of New Guinea number to push power program over the years I've gotten to know in like five thousand of new guineans learn several of their languages and much of what I know about birds I picked up from them beer can people living in New Guinea for at least 40,000 years much longer than all the continents of North and South America peer among the most culturally diverse and adaptable people in the world so why they so much poorer than modern Americans the question was put the diamond bluntly by a man called yelli we met on the beach more than 30 years ago men have and we Sony phone all these question really threw me it seems so simple and obvious and I thought it must have a simple and obvious answer but when he asked me I have no idea what that answer was what you wanted men have so much cargo new guineans use the word cargo to describe the material Goods first brought to their country by what cargo was regarded by many as evidence of The White Man's power it was treated with an almost religious reverence are there Parts Western Colonials typically believe that power was determined by race they saw themselves as genetically superior to the native population them it was only natural that they should have so much cargo and new guineans so little show me any explanation based on race is absurd I know too many really smart new guineans to believe his anything genetically inferior about them just a Ingenuity and equipments to learn that have always trust me now bro you passing they can go empty-handed into some of the most difficult environments on Earth knock up a shelter in a few hours and survive I wouldn't know where to start in this environment I be helpless without them so why didn't these a genius people invented metal tools great cities develop in the trappings of modern civilization the world that I'm from you so different in modern US is the richest most powerful state on Earth it's crammed with more cargo the most convenience could ever imagine why that's what y'all leave how to draw world's ever come so different Diamond realize that yali's question was Far bigger and more complex than it first appeared it was really about the roots of inequality question as old as human history itself boy since ancient times have some societies progressed faster than others what allowed the directions to go Great Pyramids but most of the world was still scratching out a living how did the Greeks ever develop such an advanced civilization or the Romans Baltimore all great civilizations have had some things in common advanced technology large populations and well-organized work for us if I could understand how those things came into existence then I don't understand why some people march faster than others during the course of history Diamond set out to explore the division of the world into Haves and Have Nots it was a massive challenge that few Scholars would have dared take on he was a scientist historian how could he possibly solve the great puzzles of human history do understand where inequality came from Diamond needed to identify a time before any quality when people across the world we're living more or less the same way he had to turn back the clock thousands of years back before the first civilization back into prehistory 13000 years ago the ravages of the last ice age were over the world was becoming warmer and wetter one area where humans were striving was the Middle East 13000 years ago the Middle East was far less arid than today with more forests trees and plants people here live like people everywhere this time as hunter-gatherers in small mobile groups frequently on the Move making shelters wherever they could find animals to hunt for plants together they live in these shelters for weeks or months at a time as long as to keep feeding themselves what is seasons change in animals migrated they move on the next Valley or Ridge looking for new sources of food one of the few places on Earth where it's still possible to find people hunting and Gathering is the rainforest of Papua New Guinea should have just reading about this lifestyle in archaeological books I've been lucky enough to witness it first-hand to see for myself how we all lived 13,000 years ago iCarly fan food the catch an animal requires skill stealth and encyclopedic knowledge about hundreds of animal species do you have to be pretty smart to be a hunter 30 thousand years ago people in the Middle East hunted in the same way tracking down whatever game they could find but the fundamental problem with hunting is that its never been a productive way find enough food takes time to track each animal and with a bow and arrow there's no certainty about the Hop plant do you know strong Reno strong motorcycle find me Coco Rico because hunting is so unpredictable traditional societies have usually relied more on Gathering in this part of Papua New Guinea the Gathering is done by women important source of food here is wild Sago by stripping a sago tree they can get to the pulp at the center which can be turned into a dough and then cook hello it's me the harder work Gathering is generally a more productive way of finding food than hunting but it still doesn't provide enough calories to support a large population jungle around us you might think it's a cornucopia but it isn't don't give us anything edible they were just a few Sago trees and the rest of ice creams don't you have anything that we could eat and then say go with self Scott limitations one tree yields only made about 70 lb of Sago it takes them 3 or 4 days to process that tree so it's a lot of work really for a knock of great view of food plus the Sago sausage is low on protein and also the Sago can't be stored for long time that's why hunter-gatherer populations are so sparse if what if you lot of people you got to find a different food supply you got to find a really productive and violent and it's not going to be a psycho Squad in the Middle East they were very different plants together growing wild between the trees were to cereal grasses barley and wheat farm or the full and nutritious than Sago these simple grasses would have a profound impact setting Humanity on the course towards modern civilization but it would take a catastrophic change in the climate before this would happen 12 and a half thousand years ago the world's climate that came highly the tile long term saw that it brought about the end of the last ice age suddenly went into reverse global temperatures drop and Ice Age conditions returned the world became colder and dryer the Middle East suffered and environmental collapse animal herds died off so did many trees and plants the drought lasted for more than a thousand years people were forced to travel farther and look much harder to find any source of food but despite the conditions they would somehow survive and even prosper here in the Middle East new way of life for coming to being one that would change the face of the Earth kite is a Canadian archaeologist who specializes in the Stone Age history of the Middle East his work is focused on a light in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea a place known as draw height of the co-director of the Dig and works with an international team of archaeologists they've uncovered the remains of ancient dwellings that were clearly more sophisticated than any hunter gatherer shelters they believe this was a small village one of the earliest permanent Villages anywhere in the world people were starting to put down roots we would have had was this Village of I don't know 40 to 50 people living in the same place and we would have had a series of oval pots would have been partially cut into the ground and this would have been very much the the first time people settled and lived in communities in a really extensive way when they radiocarbon dated the site they discovered that the village first emerged 11 and a half thousand years ago at the same time as the is the drought in the Middle East but how was it possible to feed an entire Village if times were so hard after 4 years of Tetra the archaeologists believe they have an answer it lies and biscuit mix structure you can see here is he outline mud wall coming all the around here and inside we have a series of upright stones that have been chipped in such a way where you can see and it would have been if you would have had a dry humidity controlled environment where they could take grain they could take any planets they could dry them out put them in here protect them from insect protect them from moisture protect them from water percolating through what that ends up being from our perspective is probably world's first Granary in some form a place where they're able to store food in particular location that are year-round faces the team at dropping leaves Granary was an oval shaped mud wall building at the center of the village a place where grain could be stored collectively and the greens that were being stored for primarily wheat and barley what other plants were no longer available these cereal grasses were Hardy enough to survive and durable enough to be stored for years but if this was a time of scarcity how was there enough grain to fill a granery the answer suggest a radical shift in human behavior at some point during the drought in the middle people started growing their own food unable to maintain a mobile way of life they would have stayed close to any source of water they could find and planted new fields of Wheat and barley around them rather than just following food sources around different locations for the first time what people start to do is if they bring these reefs back to them not just as harvested food but they're bringing them and seeds and they're blowing them next to their Village and that's the first time really this is the first time does anywhere in the world Stone Age people of the Middle East were becoming Farmers the first farmers in the world without realizing it these new farmers were changing the very nature of the crops around them with every round of planting and harvesting big favor ears of Wheat and barley whose seeds were the biggest tastiest or easiest to hardest traits that were useless to the plant in the wild Shrine under human cultivation they interrupted the cycle they interrupted the normal environmental cycle started to select these individual plants and basically rewarding those that we're going to be most profitable to them and so even though it was accidental once that whole process started people are starting to control nature the way crops are changed by human interference is known as domestication today it happens in research the scientist selecting genes and breeding crops to be ever more useful to humans it's a very precise deliberate process but not so different the first farmers were doing unconsciously thousands of years ago in the Middle East the transition to form was clearly a decisive turning point in human history people who remain hunter gatherers couldn't produce anywhere near as much food as followers it also couldn't produce much food that can be stored do always going to be The Chronic disadvantage now I can just nowhere else in the ancient world people have become farmers could have stablished links between the spread of farming in the spread of civilization I'd be well on my way to answering yali's question there are only a few parts of the ancient world that developed farming independently not long after the Middle East came to China where people grew another high-yield cereal grass rice pockets of farming also emerged in the Americas based on corn squash and beans later in Africa people Farm sorghum Millet and yams and most places were farming emerged or relatively large Advanced civilization followed but there was an exception to the rule an area where farming didn't bring the same dinner Highlands of New Guinea 450 years after westerners colonize New Guinea they fought the Highland valleys in the interior or in fact they were the most densely populated part of the island with one of the oldest systems of farming in the world Park I was just now believe the people have been farming here for almost Ten Thousand Years almost as long as the people of the Middle East it's amazing to think that these people yali's people were some of the earliest farmers in the world after World Civilization as the people of the Middle East I'm trying to roll Central America do guinea fowl with some cells will surely no less did the farmers anywhere else in the world so what was the difference Highland agriculture was based on crops like these Taro Roots which very different from cereal crops Star Wars much more work got a plan for one by one unlike week where you throw your hand and spread the seed and these New Guinea crops can't be stored for years the way we can stay Rock quickly they have to beat noonish what time the role so low in protein compared to reach Saudis farmers of New Guinea Highland suffer from protein deficiency it's not much protein to be gotten from New Guinea Zelda cropseyville people hear from local varieties of bananas Provo bananas rich and sugar and starch like tarot that low in protein if people in the highlands have so little protein that sometimes they eat giant spiders to supplement their diet I reached moment of realization farming was clearly crucial to the store a few mini quality Justice what's the type of farming people around the world who had access to the most productive crops became the most productive farmers ultimately it came down to Geographic block it's an audacious idea that the inequalities of the world were born from the crops we eat go to Jared Diamond Americans have had an advantage over new guineans because for centuries they've grown crops that are more nutritious and productive crops like wheat which provides about a v all the calories they eat the wealth of modern America could never have been sustained by Tarro and bananas the diamonds idea seems almost too simple could plants alone really have the power to shape the course of human history but was there something else at play another reason for the division of the world into Haves and Have Nots by 9000 years ago the first settlements in the Middle East were giving way too much larger villages people were only able to live on the scale by becoming more productive farmers they were surrounded by fields of domesticated wheat and barley but by now they also had another steady what we see happening about 9,000 years ago is a remarkable transformation in the way that humans are into with animals we begin to see the process of animal domestication by which we mean humans were controlling where they were moving it was controlling that feeding and they were controlling that reading instead of having to go out to hunt you have a Dependable meat Supply on the hoof year-round around you'll sign rather than being subject to seasonal variations and walking as well as meet animals could be used for their milk providing an ongoing source of protein their hair and skins could be used to make clothes for extra one overtime domestic animals became an integral part of the new agricultural way of life we know that the communities which first started to have domestic on a already had cereal crops Hollywood cultivators and the combination of these particular animals in the plums that comes in extremely attractive package and that the complementary off to the home office. Animals could be turned out on the stubble and they can actually eat the remains of the cereal crop harvest in that an animal dung can be used to provide fertilizer for the cereal crops as well for crops for the humans goats and sheep were the first animals to be domesticated in the ancient world and were eventually followed by the the big farm animals of today all of them were used it first for their meat but they all prove useful in other ways especially with the invention of the plow before the just real Revolution Beast of Burden or the most powerful machines on the planet a horse or an ox harness to a plow could transform the productivity of the land allowing Farmers to grow more food and feed more people in New Guinea and many other parts of the world people never used plows because they never had the animals to put the only big domestic animal in New Guinea was the pig and wasn't even made if it came in from Asia few thousand years ago file Europe and Asia had not only but also goats horses Buffalo camels and so on but things don't give you the other products did you get from those European nation animals pigs don't give you milk for leather or hard looking for pigs can't be used for muscle power dome pool close or pool cards the only muscle power in New Guinea for a human muscle power even today there are no beasts of burden in New Guinea and almost all of the farm work is still done by hand but if all animals were so useful why didn't you give me instamess 2K Denny room I just saw your dad off of all the animals in the world that have that have been domesticated that was some days by but I found there are nearly 2 million known species of wild animals but the vast majority have never been fine most insects and rodents practical used to humans I'm not worth the effort to find me some birds fish and reptiles have been domesticated but most are simply practical Farm so are most carnivores not because they're dangerous but because you have to grow other animals just to feed them the best animals to farm or large seating map and over the years humans have probably tried to domesticate all of them usually without success despite repeated Africans have never domesticated the elephant South Asia some elephants are used as work animals but they're not farmed for the purpose instead each elephant is caught in the wild and then came and train it doesn't make economic sense to farm an animal that takes him 15 years to mature and reach an age where you can start reproducing animals which make suitable candidates for the mastication install giving birth in their first or second use they will have one or maybe two of spring a year so that productivity  high Behavior lady they need to be social animals didn't get the names of the females in the young or live together as a group and they also have an internal social hierarchy which means that if humans can control the Linda then they will also gain control over the whole heart there's another crucial requirement it needs to get along with humans some animals don't have the temperament to live on a phone a zebra could be an ideal domestic animal potentially as useful as a horse but evolving in the midst of Africa's great Predators zebras have become flight nervous creatures they have a vicious streak that humans have been unable to tame that may be why zebras have never been harnessed to plow for ribbon in the battle I counted up a hundred forty eight different species of wild plant-eating terrestrial mammals that weigh over a hundred pounds but of those hundred forty the number to the death of been successfully fall out for any length of time is just 14 goats sheep pigs cows horses donkeys. Cream camels Arabian camels water buffalo Lions reindeer Jack Smith on Sand Valley cattle just 14 large domestic animals in 10,000 years of domestication where did the ancestors of these animals come from was from New Guinea or Australia what's UPS horn Africa for the whole continent of North America had the ancestor just one large domestic animal the llama the officer T-Mobile from Asia North Africa and Europe are the fees too big for livestock animals cows pigs sheep and goats related to the Middle East very same area that was home to some of the best crops in the world was also home to some of the best animals who won the FIFA series became known as the first Crescent the people of the Fertile Crescent were geographically blessed with access to some of the best crops and farm and I gave them a huge Head Start what is the gun with the selling of wheat in the painting of goats was leading towards the first humans Malaysian the archaeological site and where in southern Jordan is 9000 years old but it has all the Hallmarks of a town a few hundred people lived here in rows of houses that were a Wonder of Technology everytime I come here I'm Amazed by what those people were doing some of the houses have a kind of air conditioning this window here is to control the air coming from the street inside and the houses the walls and the floors over the houses from the inside that he used we're covered with plaster people are moving to the concept of homes it's not place just to sleep it is a proper home and people started to decorate the houses from the from from the inside I'm people would start to coo invest in their homes because if we are talking about plaster it is time-consuming it's effort consuming it's very expensive to have Plastering house as Villages grew bigger there were more people to work on the land more people could produce more food more efficiently enough to support specialist within the community freed from the burden of farming some people were able to develop new skills and new technologies making plaster from limes was a major technological breakthrough Stones had to be heated for days at a time at a temperature of 1000 degrees it may seem insignificant today understanding how to work with fire was the first step towards forging steel a technology that would transform the world by contrast places like New Guinea never developed advanced even today some people in the highlands are working in ways that have barely changed for centuries when I first came to New Guinea in the 1960s people were still using stone tools like this ask in parts of the island that before European arrival people using stone tools so why did New Guinea develop metal tools by itself and eventually I realize that to have metalworking specialist who can figure out how to spell copper and iron requires that the rest of the people in this Society who will Farmers be able to generate enough food surpluses to feed them was not productive enough to generate those food surpluses and the result was no specialist no metal workers no metal tools the way of life in New Guinea was perfectly viable that have survived intact for thousands of years but according to Dimond people didn't Advance techno logically because they spent too much time and energy feeding themselves and then westerners arrived and use their technology to colonize the country yep for all its advantages the Fertile Crescent is not the PowerHouse of the Modern War nor is it the Bread Basket it once was how did it lose its head start within a thousand years of their emergence most of the new Villages of the Fertile Crescent were abandoned ironically the region of the fundamental weakness despite having some of the most nutritious crops on Planet its climate was too dry and it's ecology too fragile to support continuous intensive farming people were destroying the environment the waters had overexploited the trees have been cut and this is what we went when you're when you're face it did end I mean you are facing the world you will n then skip like that man what would if you were trees with no grass and with less water so what we are looking at today is the outcome of polar exploiting the environment unable to find their land entire communities were forced to move on the advantages that accrued from centuries of domestication might have been lost but again geography was on their side Fertile Crescent is in the middle of a huge landmass Eurasian plenty of places for farming to spread and crucially many of those places were to the east and west of the Fertile Crescent roughly the same line of latitude why is that so important because any two points the globe the chair the same latitude what a matically she had the same length of day and they go share similar climate and vegetation crops or animals domesticated in the Fertile Crescent were able to prosper in all the places along the East-West axis of Eurasian we can Barley Sheep and goats cows and pigs bull spread from the Fertile Crescent East towards India and West towards North Africa and Europe wherever they went Transformers humans signs once the crops and animals of the Fertile Crescent reached Egypt they caused an explosion of civilization suddenly there was enough food to feed the Pharaohs in generals the engineer's and scribes the armies required to build the pyramids the same is true European civilization ancient times until the Renaissance crops and animals of the Fertile Crescent led the artists inventors and soldiers Europe in the 16th century the same crops and animals were taken by Europeans to the new world at the time there was not a single cow or ear of Wheat and all the Americas now there are a hundred million cattle in the us alone Americans consume how many million tons of wheat the year modern industrialized America would be Unthinkable without the spread of farming from the Fertile Crescent there are some who think Jared Diamonds argument is too neat and easy can the distribution of wealth and power really be reduced to Cattlemen wheat what about culture politics and religion surely they've been just as important diamonds been criticized for being too deterministic for ignoring the part people that played in shaping their own desk my Years in New Guinea have convinced me that people around the world the fundamentally similar wherever you go you can find people who are smart resourceful and dynamic no Society has a monopoly on those crates of course there are huge cultural differences but they mainly the result of inequality did not it's weird cause ultimately was far more important is the hand the people until the raw materials they had at their disposal new guineans acquired pigs from Eurasia clock cows or sheep or goats or horses or feet or both did you develop in the same way as Europeans and Americans because they didn't have the same raw materials I'm not the those divisions of the world a set-in-stone can't be changed it's quite the opposite the towns of Papua New Guinea are becoming bigger and more developed populated by modern new guineans tried truck with the rest of the world unfortunately for them this still a big gap to overcome why you want men have so much cargo and we new guineans have so little Jolly caught me by surprise 30 years ago I had no idea what to say to him but now I think I know the answer yali's wasn't for lack of Ingenuity that you want people didn't end up with modern technology they had the engine Nast of these difficult New Guinea and violence instead the whole last you a question was geography if you want people have enjoyed the same Geographic advantages as my people you are people would have been the ones to invent helicopters Jared Diamond set out to explore the division of the world into Haves and Have Nots is convinced the blueprint for division lies within the land itself what can his way of seeing the world really shed light on the turning points history and then explain how a few hundred Europeans have conquered the new world and began in the age of Guns Germs and Steel

Video Gallery

Guns Germs and Steel Episode 1

Popular Videos