Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, explains how he went from being a biologist, studying birds in New Guinea, to developing an entirely new theory on the evolution of human societies. It began in 1972, when a native New Guinean asked him "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" (Diamond, 1997, p.14) "Cargo" was what the New Guineans called all the products and technologies that the modern world exports. After 25 years of studying the development of human societies across the planet, his answer, as well as the premise of his book, can be summed up in one sentence, "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples…...

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References

Diamond, Jared. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

New York: W.W. Norton. Print.

The Italian cities prospered from the transport of Crusaders. Trade passed through Italian hands to Western Europe at a large profit that created a commercial power, which served as the economic base for the Italian enaissance (History World Int., 2007).
More recently, organized religion led al-quaeda to fly two passenger jets into the world trade centre, because those involved were promised eternal life after death. Originally, organized religion united society, but the building animosity between religious groups has only accomplished separation, stereotypes, and war amongst peoples.

Further, The spread of certain diseases can be linked to organized religion. Specific examples of human suffering are not hard to find. For example the Catholic Church refuses to countenance condom use to stop the spread of HIV / AIDS (Hogan, 2009). Hogan cites to empirical data that demonstrates the transmission of the virus is far less likely in countries that have no religiously created…...

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REFERENCES

Diamond, J., (1997). Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Norton, N.Y.

History World International, (2007). The Crusades. Retrieved from: http://history-world.org/crusades.htm.

Hogan, T., (2009). The Catholic Church Studies the Efficacy of Condoms in Preventing HIV / AIDS Twenty-Five Years Too Late. Retrieved from:  http://www.helium.com/items/462716-Speculations-Criticisms .

Then, in 1000 a.D., Polynesian farmers colonized New Zeeland -- the group would break into two tribes, the Maori and the Moriori, who would later on collide (Diamond).
In 1500 a.D., Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil and claimed it as a territory for his country. The period also represented an ascension in arts, as numerous works, such as sculptures and cathedrals, had been completed. Books were being printed; advancements were being made in literacy and more focus was being placed on the learning process, with the opening of learning institutions; diplomatic services and approaches were gaining momentum; more inventions were being made and the first forms of copy right and patents emerged (Timeline). All these developments were however occurring in the more developed states, such as Spain, France, the Netherlands or Portugal.

Given this situation, as well as Diamond's theory of world evolution, it could be argued that the…...

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References:

Diamond, J.M., 1997, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, W.W. Norton

2009, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Barnes & Noble Website, last accessed on September 25, 2009http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?r=1&ean=0393038912

Guns, Germs and Steel, About the Book, Jared Diamond, PBS, accessed on September 25, 2009http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/about/jared.htmllast

Jared Diamond: Why Is the World so Unequal? Yonsei University, Retrieved from www.yeh.pe.kr/s2/report_down.php?d_uid=160&PHPSESSID on September 26, 2009

Triumph of estern Civilization
In the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, the historian and New Guinea anthropologist Jared Diamond argues that the geography and the environment of the est played the major role in determining the dominance of estern civilization of the modern world. According to Diamond, although geography and the environment do not automatically lead to dominance over other civilizations, these two factors do make major contributions to the four factors that are responsible for all historical developments. The first of these factors is the widespread availability of potential crops and domestic animals as a sustainable food source. This first factor's importance is followed by the need for a nation's location near the a continental axis in a way that facilitates the sustenance of year-round agriculture and yields the seasonal and climatic advantages for a variety of foodstuffs. Third in importance to holding sway over other nations is an…...

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Work Cited

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel W.W. Norton & Company.1999.

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), pp.93.

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), pp.321-323.

Further, Diamond's argument that agriculture inherently provides less nutrition is less valid today, when a greater variety of food choices are available. hile he is correct in noting that there are global disparities in health in today's agricultural society, he also fails to note that this issue could be relatively easily remedied through better food distribution.

Essentially, the disparities in nutrition boil down to issues of political will and wealth, and these issues are not necessarily explained by the growth of agriculture, as Diamond suggests. It could just as easily be argued that the creation of the wheel (which allows for the movement of the military) or of gunpowder (which allows for the suppression of people and societies) is the root cause of such fundamental inequalities between societies.

In conclusion, Diamond's argument that domestication is the biggest mistake in the history of humankind is overly simplistic, and potentially incorrect. It can also…...

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Works Cited

Diamond, Jared. The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. Discover Magazine, May 1987, 64-66. 11 October 2004.  http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html

Aldo Leopold and Environmental History
In answering the question of whether the United States has improved on environmental policy since the 1930s, the cyclical nature of the political system must be considered. A generational reform cycle occurs every 30-40 years, such as the Progressive Era of 1900-20, the New Deal of the 1930s and the New Frontier and Great Society of the 1960s and early-1970s. All of the progress that the United States has made in conservation, wilderness preservation and other environmental issues has happened in these reform eras. Barack Obama represents yet another reform cycle and his environmental record is better by far than any other president over the last forty years, although much of what he attempted to accomplish has been blocked by the Republicans and the corporate interests that fund them. In conservative eras like the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s and 1990s, almost nothing worthwhile happens with environmental…...

Diamond disagrees on two counts: The first is that technology has created "an explosion" of problems and the potential for solving them. Yet, the first thing that occurs is technology creates the problem and then maybe later it solves it, so at best there is a lag (or as noted above a reaction, rather than a proactive stance). Second, an environmental lesson repeated again and again is that it is much less expensive and more effective to prevent a problem from the start than to solve it by high technology later on.
Environmentally, much of the world is in both of these situations noted by Diamond. First, people are just beginning to recognize the environmental problem. Years of concerns by environmentalists did not influence the average consumer. Al Gore's movie and other media pushes have put the idea of global warming and the need to be "green," into the forefront.…...

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References

Carey, D. (July 31, 2007) Who's Minding the Mind? New York Times February 29, 2008  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html 

Diamond, J. (2006) Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Penguin Books.

Garrett, K. (January 12, 2003). Why societies fail: An interview with Jared Diamond. ABC National Radio. February 28, 2008. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s743310.htm

Glendinning, C. Technology, trauma and the wild (1995) in Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind Washington, DC: Sierra Club Books

Societal Collapses
Environmental determinism has long been out of favor among historians and social scientists, although well into the 19th Century even the majority of Westerners were highly dependent on the climate and environment for their survival. Since the entire world economy was based on agriculture, a shortfall in harvests meant famines, epidemics and death for those who were at or below subsistence level. Such famines were a primary cause for the overthrow of the monarchy in France in 1789, for example, and they led to rebellions, riots and instability wherever they occurred. As late as the 1840s in Ireland, the great potato blight led to the death or immigration of half the population, and the near-destruction of Irish society. In the case of Easter Island, Norse Greenland and the Classic Maya civilization, climate change combined with deforestation and agricultural practices that destroyed the environment led to the total collapse of…...

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Penguin Books, 2006).

Demarest Arthur A.. Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Fagan, Brian M. The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History (Basic Books, 2000).

Gill, Richardson B. The Great Maya Droughts: Water, Life, and Death (University of New Mexico Press, 2000).

They goal for globalization is to increase material wealth and the distribution of goods and services through a more international division of labor and then, in turn, a process in which regional cultures integrate through communication, transportation and trade. The overall theory is that if countries are tied together cooperatively economically, they will not have needed to become political enemies (Smith 2007). Notice the continuum here -- globalization, like modernization, is a process, but a process that insists movement from A to B. is not only desirable, but necessary to become part of the Global Club. hile this is primarily an economic determinant, nothing exists in a vacuum. Therefore, economics drive technological, social, cultural, political, and even biological factors. And, with this exchange of paradigms, there is transnational circulation of ideas, languages, popular culture, and communication through acculturation. Typically, we see the movement of globalization moving into the developing…...

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Works Cited

Achebe, C 2000, Home and Exile, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Adams, W 2006, The Future of Sustainability: Re-THinking Environment and Development in the 21st Century, viewed December 2011, http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/iucn_future_of_sustanability.pdf

Aristotle VII, 'Politics', pp. 1339a 29-30.

Bartlovich, C, Mannur, A (eds.) 2001, Marxism, Modernity and Post-Colonial Studies, Cambridge University Press, New York.

Samantha Vargas
Chinese Religion

Intro to Cultural Anthropology

Ch'en, Kenneth K.S. Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey. New Jersey: Princeton University

Press, 1907-1964. In this text, Professor Kenneth Ch'en writes a historical account of the development of Buddhism and how it modified as it grew. Buddhism is a unique religion in that it has been adapted to incorporate the cultural attitudes of the various countries in which it is found. Within China, Buddhism took an especially strong hold because it was able to incorporate the philosophical ideas of people like Confucius.

Ch'en's main argument of the piece seems to be that Buddhism is different from other religions. This is what makes the book a useful tool for academic research. There is not one set of dogmatic rules that have to be accepted, but rather many different versions of the religion. In this text, Ch'en has identified all of the social, political, and cultural events that…...

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Yuan, Haiwang. The Magic Lotus Lantern and Other Tales from the Han Chinese. USA: Green

Wood Publishing Book, 2006. This book is a collection of folktales from Chinese culture. Each of these stories is beautiful in its own right as a work of fiction, but also interesting in what the story tells about the culture of the period in which the story was written. Each story has some element of magic in it, but also an element of cultural historicity.

While not really about the religious beliefs that are held by Chinese people, they nonetheless tell about the value systems of the time period in which the stories were written. It is the beliefs that people already held that determined what religion they chose. These beliefs would also shape the unique form of that religion which would become popularized in the region.

Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization" by Jared Diamond.
With a BA from Harvard University and PhD from Cambridge University, as well as a vast amount of works published, professor Diamond uses his extensive knowledge as well as his equally extensive field work and research to put on the table what he found disturbing about the fall by self-destruction of ancient civilizations, among which, he focuses on that of the Mayas.

The author opens his essay with Percy Shelly's poem, Ozymandias, using poetry to appeal to the reader's sensibilities. By creating a sad, hopeless atmosphere, he is setting the tone in anticipation of the rest of the essay. His choice for the poem of an incurable romantic as Shelley, may seem odd for the opening of an essay about the environment. However, it strikes several cords and thus opens the reader's heart instead of just one's mind. This approach…...

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Lopez, Barry. "Children in the Woods."

Diamond, Jarred. "The Last Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization"

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2009. Discourse on Inequality: On the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men. The Floating Press.

The notable exception to this layout of the various departments of the casino at The Venetian is again its Sports-ook, which is entirely rounded into a half-circle and therefore gives an air of having consumed far more resources than a rectangular shaped Sports-ook would. It is easy to craft a desk that is straight, to cut the wood in a way that makes it have strong borders and edges; for that reason most desks that you see are straight. To cut the wood so as to make it rounded is far more difficult, and someone looking at such a curved piece of wood would have to assume high expense involved in procuring and designing wood in such a fashion.

In the center of the floor of the Venetian (and not all casinos are like this) are the slot machines, conspicuous examples of mass expenditure, ringing and glittering and flashing lights. To…...

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Bibliography

1. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, taken from Michael Lewis (ed.), The Real Price of Everything (Sterling, 2007), 1048-1227.

2. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, taken from Great Books of the Western World, Volume 40 (Britannica, 1952)

3. Jason Goetz, The Bubble Boys: How Mistaken Educational Ideals and Practices are Causing a Warped Social Fabric (CreateSpace, 2011)

4. Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or to Succeed (The Penguin Press, 2005)

History Naval Warfare
What was naval power in the age of sail and how did different sea going states exercise it from the period 1650-1850?

"There is a deep landlubber bias in historical and social research," writes Charles King. "History and social life, we seem to think, happen on the ground. What happens on the water…is just the scene-setter for the real action when the actors get where they are going. ut oceans, seas, and rivers have a history of their own, not merely as highways or boundaries but as central players in distinct stories of human interaction and exchange." Current essay is an exploration of the naval power and sea command during the period of the age of sail (1650-1850). The author has mentioned the war history and war strategies of major navies and sailors during this era. The author has also discussed how different sea going states exercise naval power…...

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BibliographyAmes, Glenn Joseph. "Colbert, Mercantilism, and the French Quest for Asian Trade." DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, (1996).Black, Jeremy. "Britain as a Military Power, 1688-1815." London: UCL Press, (1999).Boxer, C.R. "The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825." London: Hutchinson, (1969). Brewer, John. "Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783." Cambridge: Harvard University Press, (1988).Charles King, "The Black Sea: A History" Oxford: Oxford University Press (2004), 3.Diamond, Jared. "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies." New York W.W. Norton & Co., (1997).Kennedy, Paul M. "The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery." Malabar, FL.: Robert E. Krieger, (1982).Pearson, M.N. Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: The Response to the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 12.Warren I. Cohen East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 88.]

Conclusion

The author discussed the sea power in the age of sail i.e., 1650-1800 and how different countries adopt this power. For this purpose the author analyzed main sea powers during this period i.e., Purtogues, Dutch, French and English in the Atlantic Ocean and Chinese navy. The author concluded that sea power was the main source of authority for any country. The courtiers with powerful fleet ships and navy were dominant in the world.

Mostly the countries having command on sea used this dominance to expand trade. There are also evidences of unfair means to occupy other countries as well to maintain this occupation. The author also discussed how the British Royal Navy used impressments system to forcefully include the seaman in the Royal Navy.

Endnotes

Mann challenges the belief that superior weaponry was the main factor in the Inca loss to the Spanish. Give two examples of Inca weaponry or strategy that was viable in warfare against the Spanish. 1) Huge roadway system connecting all parts of the Incan Empire; 2) Versatility and ability to fight at high altitudes; 3) Overwhelming population; 4)Large stone fortifications; 5) No gunpowder, but an abundance of weapon: clubs, spears, bows, lances, slings that were accurate at shorter distances.

Mann argues that the rivalry for power in the Andes among the Inca and other native groups was a major factor the Spanish conquest. Explain at least one of these rivalries. Who were the two, three or four players involved? Who were they allied with and what role did they play in the Spanish victory? Because Atawallpa's clan had been so authoritarian and destructive in subjugating other populations (e.g. those from the…...

Some Chinese researchers assert that Chinese flutes may have evolved from of Indian provenance.

In fact, the kind of side-blon, or transverse, flutes musicians play in Southeast Asia have also been discovered in Africa, India, Saudi Arabia, and Central Asia, as ell as throughout the Europe of the Roman Empire. This suggests that rather than originating in China or even in India, the transverse flute might have been adopted through the trade route of the Silk Road to Asia. In addition to these transverse flutes, Southeast Asians possessed the kind of long vertical flutes; similar to those found in Central Asia and Middle East.

A considerable amount of similarities exist beteen the vertical flutes of Southeast Asia and flutes from Muslim countries. This type of flute possibly came from Persians during the ninth century; during the religious migration to SEA. Likeise, the nose-blon flute culture, common to a number of traditional African…...

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works cited:

Purple highlight means reference from his thesis, chapters 1-5

Blue highlight means reference from his raw research that was sent (17 files)

Yellow highlight means that writer could not find reference; one of the 17 files received

Gray highlight means writer found this source

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