Changes in Civilization

Today in Humanities class I watched a movie called "Guns, Germs,and Steel." This movie was basicly about differences and similarities in the history of civilization. After the movie I was asked to make a headline summerizing what I learned from the movie. My headline was "Changes in Civilization." I thought that this was a good headline because this movie was about how different places had different kinds of civilizations. Jared Diamond tries to answer why different places are behind in civilization while others aren't, such as New Guinea and the Middle East. Jared thinks that the Middle East is ahead of New Guinea in terms of civilization because of the different environments, and different resources. For examplae the Middle East is ahead of New Guinea in civilization because New Guinea to depend on gatherings and wild sago trees, since hunting wasn't very reliable. Unlike the Middle East where people had farming skills to make wheat and barley 2 cereal grasses that could be stored for a long time, they also had more productive crops. Another huge reason the Middle East is ahead of New Guinea is domestication. The Middle East domesticated animals. This allowed them to have food(people would gather animal, feed iet kill it, and eat it), make use of the animal by making it either carry weights, or even plow the ground. Animals like sheep could be shaved and the wool would be made into clothing, or a cow being milked for milk. In New Guinea though all work is done by hand. There are hardly any domesticated animals except the pigs. There were 14 animals that were domesticated. Most of them came from Asia, Europe, and North Africa. People recommended that animals that were human friendly, big (over 100 pounds) and plant eaters were the best to domesticate. Since the environment was hard to adapt to New Guinea was still at a state of using stone tools, and were too busy growing food and feeding themselves to be at the same level as other places like the Middle East, America, Europe, and etc...