Monday, January 31, 2011

Guns, Germs, and Steel

This is about a documentary that mostly focus on how some civilizations functions. People of Papua New Guine are mostly hunters and gatherers. The hunting is very unpredictable and takes a lot of time, so they mostly depend on gathering. Today the women are the ones who gather the most. Also when you are a hunter and gatherer you have to move around a lot cause once you kill ever animal in that one place or eat all the berries on one tree you are stuck and have to move. In the middle east, 1200 years ago, barely and wheat are grasses that they depend on to make a living, which is a big step because that means you don't have to move around so much, and i don't have to hunt and gather. They still did hunt but they don't have to always be on the move looking for new places. Scientist found a old civilization called Dirlop. There is one room in a old house which shows and old granary. This is a very exciting discovery cause it shows the change of being like complete animals to the begging of the human race.
There was a lot of scarcity so during the drought, people started growing there own food in the middle east. they would stay as close to water as they could so they each would have there own fields of wheat and barely. This is the first time people have seen this in the entire world. Because of this, people started controlling the envoirment. China was the next to become farmers when they started growing rice. Americans and Africans grew squash and other vegetables. People in New Guine Highlands started farming maybe even before the people in the middle east, but they are less developed in then the people in the middle east, China, and America. This came down to geographic luck. If you are lucky enough to grow the crops that are really healthy for you, have a lot of protein and can be stored easily, you are more likely to succeed in trading that crop. When you grow something like barely and wheat, its easy to plant and harvest and it grows a lot at a time which is why the middle east succeeded more.
People in the middle east were controlling there animals and there crops creating a new agricultural way of life. Animals were good for farming because there waste could be there fertilizer and the animals also eat the remanders of the crop to help them plant new things. The animals were really useful to them because there sheep gave them milk, use there wool, and they could eat them. The horses were useful for pulling the plow which helped with the farming allowing the farmers to grow new food and feed more people. New Guine missed out and only had pigs which were good for meat but nothing else and all the planting was done by hand. If you wanna raise an animal, it should be a herbavor and have it bigger. Like an elephant because they are big and can haul a lot of things. But the problem with using elephants is that you have to capture them from the wild and then train them. You cant raise them because you have to feed them and that takes a lot of food. Also the animal that you raise has to get along with humans but some do not. 14 domesticated animals are goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, 2 kinds of camels, water buffalo, yachts, mithon, llamas, reindeer, and baly cattle. All these animals originated mostly in Europe, South America, middle east, and Asia, so they all got lucky and thats why they did so well. It gave the people of the middle east a huge head start, helping them create the first human civilization. The city of Guear is more then 9,000 years old but it still shows a hint of a town. As villages grew bigger there was more people to to do more things. And free from the burden of farming, people started to do new things like making stones from limestone which is a huge technological step. They also learned how to create fire which would help them in so many ways.
People in New Guinea still haven't really changed much technology wise because they were always to focused on farming and getting food for the colony. The climate and landscape was getting to difficult because the people of the fertile crescent overused water and trees so they had to move because it was getting too hot. It was a big difference though because people of Papau New Guinea are very isolated from the world which cause them to have the same thing all the time, but the people of the fertile crescent could go other places and trade with other people, and pick up new ideas to transform human societies. Suddenly there were enough food and animals to feed the Pheoros of Egypt, and the artist of Europe, and it even began to travel America. People are fundamentally equal. They all know what they want and well do whatever they can to get it. Everything pretty much depends on geography.