Study Questions for Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, Chapter 10 and 11
1) Quick review: Summarize in 1 sentence the findings of the last
reading (chapter 8).
2) OK. This chapter is about diffusion of domesticated plants and animals. It looks
like Diamond answered all the important questions in chapter 8. But he
still has a hard task to answer Yali's question about the different rates
of development among different
peoples. Let's start with the basics. What are the axes of
orientation among the world's major continents?
3) Reduce the entire chapter to a single sentence that compares
East-West diffusion and North-South diffusion.
4) The ease of EW diffusion (in contrast to NS) is clearly made in the
parable of the Canadian farmer. What was the point of that story in
relation to the growth cycles of plants.
5) Why didn't the Pilgrims immigrate to the Amazon?
6) Other than length of day, what inhibited crop/animal diffusion in
7) Other than length of day, what inhibited crop/animal diffusion in the
8) Diamond ends his discussion with a brief word about the wheel.
Clearly, a wheel doesn't respond to differences in day length or tropical
lowlands. What point is he making then? Hint--this example makes a
link to the "proximate" factors that we are about to discuss:
namely, germs, technology, and politics.
Chapter 11
9) Sorry about the story at the start of this chapter. But
Diamond is trying to make a point. What is it?
10) Does this chapter present a proximate or an ultimate explanation
for Yali's question? Explain.
11) Why do diseases make us sick (cough, diarrhea)?
12) What is a necessary ingredient for epidemic diseases like measles,
mumps, rubella, and smallpox? Quick, can you connect the answer of this
question to the "power of farming"?
13) Explain how city folks are exposed to "crowd
diseases." Explain how farmers are exposed to the same diseases.
14) This is an important connection. Describe why the plague was
so successful, using what you have learned from Diamond, especially his
thoughts on the importance (ease of spread) of the east-west axis.
15) Diamond remarks that when he was a student in high school, he had
learned that there were only about 1 million Native Americans in the
16) Give the two most important reasons for the failure of epidemic
diseases in the
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17) Where do we find such diseases as malaria and yellow fever? How
did these diseases impact the history of European colonization?