Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Jared DiamondSözler ve Alıntılar
İcadların ihtiyaçlardan dolayı ortaya çıkmadığı
These familiar examples deceive us into
assuming that other major inventions were also
responses to perceived needs. In fact, many or most inventions were developed by people driven by curiosity or by a love of tinkering, in the absence of any initial demand for the product they had in
mind. Once a device had been invented, the
inventor then had to find an application for it. Only
after it had been in use for a considerable time did
consumers come to feel that they "needed" it.
Ortaçağ da nasıl Müslümanların Avrupa'ya teknoloji transferi yaptıkları.
But medieval Islam in the same region was
technologically advanced and open to innovation.
It achieved far higher literacy rates than
contemporary Europe; it assimilated the legacy of
classical Greek civilization to such a degree that
many classical Greek books are now known to us
only through Arabic copies; it invented or
elaborated windmills, tidal mills, trigonometry,
and lateen sails; it made major advances in
metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering,
and irrigation methods; and it adopted paper and
gunpowder from China and transmitted them to
Europe. In the Middle Ages the flow of technology
was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe, rather
than from Europe to Islam as it is today. Only after
around A.D. 1500 did the net direction of flow begin
to reverse.
Our closest living relatives are three surviving species of great ape: the gorilla, the common chimpanzee, and the pygmy chimpanzee(also known as bonobo). Their confinement to Africa, along with abundant fossil evidence, indicates that the earliest stages of human evolution were also played out in Africa.
Sayfa 29Kitabı okudu
Yes, world history is indeed such an onion! But that peeling back of the onion’s layers is fascinating, challenging— and of overwhelming importance to us today, as we seek to grasp our past’s lessons for our future.
The most dramatic moment in subsequent European-Native American relations was the first encounter between the Inca emperor Atahuallpa
and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro at the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca on November 16,1532.Atahuallpa was absolute
monarch of the largest and most advanced state in the New World, while Pizarro represented the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (also known as
King Charles I of Spain), monarch of the most powerful state in Europe. Pizarro, leading a ragtag group of 168 Spanish soldiers, was inunfamiliar terrain, ignorant of the local inhabitants, completely out of touch with the nearest Spaniards (1,000 miles to the north in Panama) and far beyond the reach of timely reinforcements. Atahuallpa was in the middle of
his own empire of millions of subjects and immediately surrounded by his army of 80,000 soldiers, recently victorious in a war with other Indians. Nevertheless, Pizarro captured Atahuallpa within a few minutes after the two
leaders first set eyes on each other. Pizarro proceeded to hold his prisoner for eight months, while extracting history's largest ransom in
return for a promise to free him. After the ransom—enough gold to fill a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide to a height of over 8 feet—was
delivered, Pizarro reneged on his promise and executed Atahuallpa. Atahuallpa's capture was decisive for the European conquest of the Inca
Empire.
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