So Atheists: What is this "guns, germs & steel" you keep asking me to read? Can you summarize it as I'm 2 busy?

Read it years ago. Pretty effective counter to racism. Jared Diamond is an ornithologist who has been watching people too. Frank's right about it. Europeans and to a lesser extent Asians advanced technologically because they had the resources in high yield crops like wheat and domesticatable animals like horses, cattle and sheep. Sub Saharan Africans, Native Americans and Australian aboriginals did not because they did not have them, or advanced less because they had fewer of them.

Germs such as smallpox, measles, diphtheria, influenza were endemic in Europe, but they did not exist in the Americas or Australia. So Europeans were descended from people who had survived one or more of these diseases and had inherited resistance. Native Americans and Australian aboriginals did not have this inherited resistance so died like flies when the diseases were accidentally introduced.

The Spanish took over in Mexico because the Aztec leadership were all sick with measles or influenza one night. If it had been a "fair fight" without the diseases, the Spanish would have been annihilated. Same thing happened to the Sioux / Mandans when a party of white travellers left a sick man for the people in one of the large Native American towns to look after. He infected the lot and they virtually all died. That was just a few years after Lewis & Clarke went through. The eastern seaboard of North America was depopulated by these diseases and so was the Amazon basin, that was before there were white settlements of any real size in Virgina or Brazil.

Real history Ann, not the dumbed down expurgated pap taught in schools.

It looks at the question of why Europeans came to the new world with technology instead of the Aztecs coming to Europe. And why did the Europeans have dangerous diseases that killed people they met, rather than the other way around

The basic answer given is: The land of Europe runs roughly east-west, while the Americas run north-south. As winter set in, people in the new world could move to where it was warmer, whereas Europeans were more likely to hunker down and spend the cold winter inventing things.

As to germs, many Europeans lives in high-density settlements (cities), and so more dangerous germs could survive because they could spread faster than they killed. In the Americas, people were more spread out, so very dangerous germs would kill faster than they could spread.

I'm not an atheist, but we watched it in world geography class and it really doesn't have much to do with God... but basically it's about this man who went on a journey to figure out why different cultures are more successful than others. He decided it was based on geography; in the past, if you lived in an area where gathering and growing food was no problem, you could expand your interests and develop things like swords and other tools. If you didn't live in an area where it was easy to grow food, you'd have focus on making food to live.

It's a very good book by Jared Diamond. One of the ideas it proposes is that geography has a very large impact on civilizational development.

Frank pretty much nailed it.

I'll just add this: somewhere around two-thirds of the way through it says Ann Coulter is stupid and annoying. You might want to read at least that part.

It's a very interesting sociology book about the rise of civilizations throughout history.

Why would people bother you to read it? Can't see you having any interest in history.

You should use the word "too" instead of the number two in your last sentence. As an aside, you should always spell out single-digit whole numbers. Use numerals for numbers greater than nine.

it's a book by jared diamond. u would not understand either it or the summary. just keep busy.

Oh roxanne, turn off the red light. Then you'll have more time.

you begin to sound like Olga. Are you both cloned from the same lab?