Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Steel and Germs: The Fate of Human Societies takes readers on a whirlwind tour of human history from our origins in Africa to Today. The book seeks to explain why such large socioeconomic disparities exist among people around the world today, and why European peoples conquered Africans, South Americans, Australians, Asians, and Native Americans and not the other way around. In the book, Diamond explains that factors such as the wide diversity of wild plants and animals, germs, east-west and north-south axes, climate and simply geographical luck have contributed to the progress of some peoples while inhibiting others . Diamond goes on to explain that as a result of these factors, and not because of European biological superiority, European peoples were able to have higher population densities, more disease, more time to develop agriculture, writing, and governments , and have more free time to develop technologies like steel that they used to subjugate other peoples around the world later in history. Finally, Diamond explains that although other non-European peoples, such as the Sioux Indians of the Midwestern United States, acquired European animals and technologies such as the horse, they were unable to conquer European peoples because they were hundreds or thousands of years behind both in lifestyle and culture. technology and did not have enough time to utilize their new resources before they were conquered. The book is divided into three separate sections that build on one another. The first section explains why only a few wild animal and plant species can be domesticated. Then, the second section explains how the domestication of animals led to the development of agriculture, food production, sedentary lifestyles, disease, and increased human population density. Finally, in section three, Diamonds compares different companies around the world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay After reading Guns, Steel, and Germs, I learned that some people's success does not depend on race as some have previously stated, but rather on some favorable geographic features such as diverse tamable flora and fauna that serve as prerequisites for the subsequent progress of that particular people. I also learned that most advanced societies followed a certain pattern of progress. First, a society needed a large pool of potential animal candidates that could be domesticated. After these animals were found and domesticated, societies needed agriculture and food security. Then, they needed larger, denser populations and diseases, and finally they needed technologies like steel to subjugate more people. Diamond explained that there has always been a “survival of the fittest” mentality as a society advanced; grow, improve and spread, repeat. Finally, I discovered that scientists use different types of dating techniques, such as radiometric dating and carbon dating. Carbon dating is usually more precise, but scientists prefer to use radiometric dating to get an approximation of when a truly ancient event occurred. In the book, Diamond used radiometric dating instead of carbon dating. Diamond did this because it encompasses such broad historical periods as the Ice Age that do not require precise start and end dates. I think it's important to read about human geography because it helps us understand why the world is the way it is. today and.