AP World History
Summer Reading
Below are study questions for the book Guns, Germs, and Steel. You should make sure you have
read the entire book and use the questions to prepare for the exam you will have on Tuesday,
August 16, 2011.
1. What are the other commonly espoused answers to "Yali's question," and how does
Jared Diamond address and refute each of them?
2. Why does Diamond hypothesize that New Guineans might be, on the average,
"smarter" than Westerners?
3. Why is it important to differentiate between proximate and ultimate causes?
4. Do you find some of Diamond's methodologies more compelling than others? Which,
and why?
5. What is the importance of the order of the chapters? Why, for example, is "Collision at
Cajamarca"—which describes events that occur thousands of years after those described
in the subsequent chapters—placed where it is?
6. How are Polynesian Islands "an experiment of history"? What conclusions does
Diamond draw from their history?
7. How does Diamond challenge our assumptions about the transition from huntergathering
to farming?
8. How is farming an "auto-catalytic" process? How does this account for the great
disparities in societies, as well as for the possibilities of parallel evolution?
9. Why did almonds prove domesticable while acorns were not? What significance does
this have?
10. How does Diamond explain the fact that domesticable American apples and grapes
were not domesticated until the arrival of Europeans?
11. What were the advantages enjoyed by the Fertile Crescent that allowed it to be the
earliest site of development for most of the building blocks of civilization? How does
Diamond explain the fact that it was nevertheless Europe and not Southwest Asia that
ended up spreading its culture to the rest of the world?
12. How does Diamond refute the argument that the failure to domesticate certain
animals arose from cultural differences? What does the modern failure to domesticate, for
example, the eland suggest about the reasons why some peoples independently developed
domestic animals and others did not?
13. What is the importance of the "Anna Karenina principle"?
14. How does comparing mutations help one trace the spread of agriculture?
15. How does civilization lead to epidemics?
16. How does Diamond's theory that invention is, in fact, the mother of necessity bear
upon the traditional "heroic" model of invention?
17. According to Diamond, how does religion evolve along with increasingly complex
societies?
18. How is linguistic evidence used to draw conclusions about the spread of peoples in
China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Africa?
19. What is the significance of the differing outcomes of Austronesian expansion in
Indonesia and New Guinea?
20. How does Diamond explain China's striking unity and Europe's persistent disunity?
What consequences do these conditions have for world history?
21. How does Diamond refute the charge that Australia is proof that differences in the
fates of human societies are a matter of people and not environment? In what other areas
of the world could Diamond's argument be used?
22. What aspects of Diamond's evidence do lay readers have to take on faith? Which
aspects are explained?
23. Diamond offers two tribes, the Chimbu and the Daribi, as examples of differing
receptivities to innovation. Do you think he would accept larger, continent-wide
differences in receptivity? Why or why not? How problematic might cultural factors
prove for Diamond's arguments?
24. How, throughout the book, does Diamond address the issues he discusses in the last
few pages of his final chapter, when he proposes a science of human history?
PROLOGUE:
1. What is “Yali’s Question”?
2. How does Diamond reword this question (which becomes the focal question of the entire book)?
3. Briefly describe the various possible answers to the question.
CHAPTER 1: Up to the Starting Line
* No questions but read this chapter quickly, focusing on the origins and spread of man
* Don’t get bogged down in all of the terminology like, Homo Sapien, Cro-Magnon, Clovis, etc.
CHAPTER 2: A Natural Experiment of History
4. Why did the Maori and the Moriori evolve differently?
5. How did population density affect economies, social complexity, and political organization?
CHAPTER 3: Collision at Cajamarca
6. Who are Atahualpa and Pizzarro and why was their meeting significant?
7. Explain the variety of reasons why Pizzarro’s small force defeated Atahualpa’s empire.
CHAPTER 4: Farmer Power
8. How did food production lead to Spanish advantages over the Inca?
CHAPTER 5: History’s Haves and Have-Nots
9. What are the 5 areas of independent domestication of plants (food production)?
10. What are the 4 areas that are possible sites of independent domestication of plants?
11. What 3-4 other areas received “founder packages” from Southwest Asia?
CHAPTER 6: To Farm or Not to Farm
12. Why did hunter-gatherers evolve to become farmers in some areas and not in others?
CHAPTER 7: How to Make an Almond
13. What does “plant domestication” mean?
14. Why is it important to understand when and why people became farmers?
15. What made some plants easier and more attractive to domesticate than others?
CHAPTER 8: Apples or Indians
16. Where is the fertile Crescent?
17. Why did its domesticated plants and animals give it such a head start over the rest of the world?
CHAPTER 9: Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle
18. Why did Eurasia have the most domesticated animals of all continents?
19. What are the 6 characteristics of domesticated animals?
CHAPTER 10: Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes
20. Why is it significant that Eurasia is the only continent with an East/West axis?
21. What does this mean for continents with a North/South axis?
CHAPTER 11: Lethal Gift of Livestock
22. Following the arrival of European explorers in the New World, why did European diseases wipeout Native Americans and not the other way around (Native American diseases killing Euros)?
CHAPTER 12: Blueprints and Borrowed Letters
23. What do the following terms mean: “blueprint copying” and “idea diffusion”?
24. Why did kings want to limit writing to the elites?
CHAPTER 13: Necessity’s Mother
25. How does Diamond feel about the old adage, “Necessity is the mother of invention”?
26. What are the 4 factors that affect societal acceptance of an invention?
27. What are the 4 vehicles of diffusion (ways that ideas or items move) (top of page 256)?
28. Why did Japan lose gun technology?
29. Why did leading a sedentary lifestyle (living in one place) lead to an explosion of technology?
CHAPTER 14: From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy
30. Summarize the differences between: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
31. What are 4 reasons why large populations require complex, centralized political organization?