Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 1 – Up to the Starting Line
1. Who was given the “head start?
2. Give two theories for animal extinction?
3. What is the inherent flaw with radio carbon dating?
4. What is a “Clovis site”?
5. Is a “head start” really that significant in development? Why, Why Not?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 2 – A Natural Experiment of History
1. How can environments affect human societies?
2. What are the environmental barriers? – give reasons and examples for why they
are important.
3. Describe in detail what the subsistence factor is.
4. Describe in detail what the population factor is.
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 3 – Collision at Cajamarca
1. In the wars between the Inca and the Spanish (Athualpa vs. Pizarro) what
weapons were available to each side?
2. Why were horses so instrumental to the Spanish?
3. What role did small pox and other diseases play in the conflict?
4. How does having a written language give you an advantage in conquest?
5. What did the Inca’s use instead of a written language?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 4 – Farmer Power
1. Why is food production necessary for Guns, Germs, and Steel?
2. How do animals interact with crops?
3. How does agriculture encourage a sedentary lifestyle?
4. What group of non-food producing people does farming help support?
5. What 1 animal does the author claim is very important for war? What replaced
this animal in WWI?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 5 – History’s Haves and Have-Nots
1. How does geography affect food production?
2. How do archaeologists date food that they find at sites? What is the problem with
this method?
3. After observing the centers of origin of food production, what areas surprise you
as not having been a center of food production? (this is an opinion – defend with
facts)
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 6 – To Farm or Not to Farm
1. How does the author disprove the previous theory of Thomas Hobbes claim that
the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers is “nasty, brutish and short”?
2. The author asks numerous times why people waited to become food producers.
Why do you think that they waited? (opinion question)
3.
How does status and cultural preferences play a role in hunting?
4. What are the five factors that contributed to the rise of food production?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 7 – How to make an Almond
1. What is plant domestication?
2. How did latrines, spittoons and garbage dumps serve as plant domestication
laboratories?
3. Why is this chapter titled How to make an Almond?
4.
Provide examples of farmers reversing natural selection?
5. How is natural selection a factor for plants? Provide a minimum of two examples.
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 8 – Apples or Indians
1. What are two explanations for agriculture not arising in the Fertile Crescent?
2. What is the significance of the Fertile Crescent?
3. List the eight founder crops from the Fertile Crescent.
4. Food production required a competition between what two lifestyles?
5. What are the modern world’s top three leading crops?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 9 – Zebras, Unhappy Marriages and the Anna Karenina Principle
1. What is the Anna Karenina principle? How is it applied to animals?
2. Why were dogs and cats domesticated?
3. Why is the unequal distribution of wild ancestral species (in particular the ancient
fourteen) a factor for Eurasia developing guns germs and steel?
4. What is the world’s largest landmass?
5. List five to six non traditional pets discussed in this chapter.
6. List six reasons for failed domestication and give an example of each.
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 10 - Spacious Skies and Tilted Axis
1. Which axis does the author credit as having the fastest potential for spreading?
Provide ample evidence to support this claim.
2. The Fertile Crescent has an east/west axis. What did this allow to occur?
3. What are some of the shared characteristics that locations along the east/west axis
share?
4. Where are growing seasons the longest?
5. What are the two largest landmasses with a north/south axis?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 11 – Lethal Gift of Livestock
1. List seven human diseases that evolved from animals.
2. How do diseases factor into war?
3. What is a fever good for?
4. What are the four characteristics of an epidemic?
5. How are dense populations important for the spread of disease and how does
agriculture play a role?
6. Why have certain diseases evolved to keep people alive longer?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 12 – Blueprints and Borrowed Letters
1. Provide an example of each of the three basic types of writing strategies.
2. What is the oldest writing system?
3. What are the major differences between blueprint copying and idea diffusion?
4. Why is Sequoyah significant?
5. What was the purpose of most ancient writing, compare that to the way in which
we use writing today.
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 13 – Necessity’s Mother
1. Examine the disk on pg 240. Which symbols show up the most? What do you
think that they mean? Do you recognize any of them? If so what do you think
that they mean?
2. Why is the disk considered to be so baffling?
3. What does the author say “invention is the mother of necessity”, give some
examples.
4. List the four factors for adapting technology.
5. How does receptiveness to technology help or hinder a given society?
6. What are two ways that “widely useful” technologies spread?
7. How does geography tie in to cultural diffusion?
8. Why is population a factor for inventions?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 14 – From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy
1. Define each of the following classification terms – band, tribe, chiefdom, state.
Make sure to address size, economy, religion, literacy. Don’t rely too heavily on
the chart along.
2. What exactly is a Kleptocracy?
3.
What are the four things that a kleptocrapt must do in order to maintain popular
support and a better lifestyle than a commoner?
4. What two purposes does the author claim that religion serves in a kleptocracy?
5. What advantages do chiefdoms and states have over bands and tribes in a war?
6. What steps must a small and simple society take in order to become large and
complex?
7. What is Roseau’s theory? Why does the author say he is wrong?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 15 – Yali’s People
1. What are the major environmental and geographical differences between
Australia and New Guinea?
2. Why did Australia remain hunter gatherer and New Guinea food producing?
3. What aspect of plant domestication is unique to New Guinea and few other parts
of the world?
4. What are the three reasons New Guineas population was never able to really take
off and remain primitive?
5. What is “firestick” farming?
6. Why are small populations unable to survive indefinitely in complete isolation?
7. Why did Australia adopt so little from New Guinea?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 16 – How China became Chinese
1. What rule is China the exception to?
2. What does studying language in the context of China prove to us?
3. Why do hunter gatherers lack pottery?
4. Why is China’s North/South axis a non-issue? What happened because it was not
an issue?
5. How does superiority play a role in Chinese cultural unification?
6. What is the continued use of the Chinese writing system in Japan and Korea an
example of?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 17 – Speedboat to Polynesia
1. What is the Austronesian expansion?
2. The fact that the Philippines and Indonesia have similar languages proves what?
3. How was the outrigger canoe responsible for expansion in Polynesia?
4. How can linguistics determine what kinds of animals a society had without using
any archaeological evidence?
5. Why were Europeans never really able to settle Southeast Asia and the Pacific
islands in high numbers?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 18 – Hemispheres Colliding
1. Contrast the amount and usage of big game animals in Eurasia to the Americas.
2. Contrast food production in Eurasia to the Americas
3. What are the five major disadvantages that the Americas had concerning food
production?
4. What are two reasons that Native Americans had so few diseases?
5. What are the five technological advantages that Eurasians possessed?
6. Contrast the political organization in Eurasia to that of the Americas?
7. How does the north/south, east/west axis play a role in diffusion?
8. Why were the Spanish successful where the Norse were not in colonizing the
Americas?
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Chapter 19 – How Africa became Black
1. What are the five major human groups that Africa was home to by AD 100?
2. Why does the author consider Madagascar to be an “astonishing fact of human
geography” and why is Madagascar considered to be an anomaly?
3. What does Greenberg determine about Semitic languages?
4. What is the linguist legacy of Khoisan languages in N. Africa?
5. What is Africa’s earliest site of food production? What did people used to think
was the earliest site before?
6. What did iron tools and wet-climate crops allow the Bantu to do?
7. Why did Europeans colonize Africa rather than Africans colonize Europe?
Provide at least three examples.
Guns Germs and Steel Chapter Questions
-All questions must be answered in short answer form. A sentence is not enough, a
paragraph is too much. Be prepared to discuss in class. YOU MUST INCLUDE
PAGE NUMER CITATIONS WITH EVERY SINGLE ANSWER
Epilogue – The Future of Human History as a Science
1. Based on what you have learned, what is the answer to Yali’s question?
2. What are the “four sets of differences” affecting Yali’s question? Provide an
example for each.
3. Why did the Fertile Crescent fail where Europe prospered in long term food
production?
4. How did Europe’s fragmentation aid exploration? How did China’s unification
stifle exploration?
5. What evidence does the author provide in order to disprove the Great Man
theory?
6. What is a natural experiment? What are they used for? Why are they criticized?