Guns, Germs & Steel

Today i watched an interesting documentary from National Geographic called "Guns, Germs & Steel".

In a nutshell, it tries to answer that old question of: why is there so much inequality around the world? and...when and why did it all start?

In case you are interested, here's part 1 of it (you can browse youtube for the rest)!

According to the documentary, during one of Jared Diamond's (an American Scientist, specializing in Geography and Philosophy - which can actually explain his findings ;o)) trips to New Guine more then 30 years ago, one of the natives (Yali) asked him the simple question: "Why do white people have so much cargo, but we New Guineans have so little?".

Although an apparent simple question, Jared did not know the answer and set off in search to find, what he hoped it would be, a simple question.

If you do not want to watch all the episodes or do not have time to do it, here's the short answer: Geography.

According to Jared's findings, Geography took a very important role in the development of different cultures.

The different Geography of the land allowed for different civilizations to arise, depending on how easy it was to grow crops and animals, as well as which types of crops and animals did the different people have access to.

As they evolved, civilizations had more and more time to focus on different areas (then just harvesting or hunting for food), which allowed them to research on other areas of knowledge, hence further creating inequality behind the civilizations.

In my opinion, this documentary, although simplistic at times, is pretty interesting. So, if you have the time, do watch it!