More Germs, Guns, and Steele

Today we took a ton of notes on the video. We learned about Jared Diamond's theory on basically "the luck of the draw". We have a huge advantage because we have nutritional, plentiful, and well growing crops. In Papua New Guinea, they cannot grow things like we can. Everything they can grow lacks in protein, vitamins, and minerals. In China, they grew rice. In the America's, we grew corn, squash, and beans which is all healthy and can easily be stored, dried, etc. In Africa, they grew sorghum and millet, which are grains so they are easy to grow. They also had yams. In Papua New Guinea, they will eat large spiders for a supply of protein. We learned that domesticating animals was popular back then because it gave them meat, milk, and clothes made from the hair and skins of the animals. There are 14 species of animals,weighing over 100lbs, that have been domesticated. Goats and sheep were the first to be domesticated. There was one animal species in South America that was domesticated and that was the llama. The other 13 were from Asia, Europe, and North Africa. The theory of why these New Guinean's are living as if it were 10,000 years ago, is because they have been stuck wasting their time trying to survive, raise food, and not starve to death. If you had the most productive crops, you were the most productive farmer. Unfortunately, they did not have good luck with their crops due to their location.