Guns,Germs, and Steel - Anthropology of Food PDF

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Anthropology of Food...

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“Guns, Germs, and Steel” Episode 1 1. What is Yali's question? Yali’s question to Jared Diamond was, in his words, “Why you white men have so much cargo and we New Guineans have so little?" Cargo is a term used to describe material goods brought to their country. In other words, why was there such inequality between these two men? 2. How does this question impact Jared Diamond? Diamond believed that this question, which seemed simple and obvious, was rather the contrary. Diamond realized that Yali’s question was far bigger and more complex than it first appeared. Inspired by this question Yali asked him on the island of Papua New Guinea, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to understand the roots of global inequality. 3. What are the foods that the New Guinean horticulturalists eat? Horticulture involves the tending of domesticated crops for survival, and it is still successful in tropical, equatorial areas of the world. New Guinean horticulturalists tended to crops like the taro root. People would also farm local varieties of bananas, sweet potatoes, and breadfruit. These tropical foods that horticulturalists tend to cannot be stored for long periods of time or processed into other foods that can be stored. 4. Who does the work of getting the food among horticulturalists? (men, women, animals?) Only able-bodied humans do the work of getting food among horticulturalists. Horticulturalists do not use the domestication of animals as the agriculturalists do. 5. What types of foods do agriculturalists eat? Agriculture requires permanent cultivation of the land and use of domesticated animals and plants. Agriculturalists plant and eat corn, rice, and grains. These foods can be stored for longer periods of time and processed into other foods, unlike horticulture. 6. How are those foods fundamentally different from horticulturally produced? The Stone Age people of the Middle East became the first farmers in the world by changing the very nature of the crops around them. With every round of plant and harvesting they would favor certain traits like which seeds were biggest, tastiest, or easiest to harvest. They interrupted the normal environmental cycle and started to select these individual plants, rewarding those that were most profitable to them. Without knowing it, they began to control nature. This altering of crops by human interference is known as domestication. People who remained hunter-gatherers couldn’t produce nearly as much food as farmers and couldn’t produce much food that could be stored. They would always remain at a disadvantage.

7. What is the earliest evidence of agricultural production that included the "package" of plants and animals? ‘ About 9,000 years ago, according to the documentary, a transformation is seen in the way that humans are interacting with animals and begin to see the process of animal domestication. The combination of these plants and animals is an extremely advantageous package that is mutually beneficial. 8. How does the production of these different foods result in the social changes we see in agricultural societies? As societies moved from one subsistence practice to the next, they became more complex with each transition. There is a change from egalitarianism to social stratification. This shift to power results in inequality among people and within class systems, as well as power structures supported by wealth. The people of Eurasia had the key ingredients for dominance as they had the best plants and animals for domestication and east-west orientation. This allowed them to form larger populations that were denser, form permanent settlements, invent tools and technology, and ultimately move around the globe....