Jared Diamond's research

Today in human geography we continued to watch a video about Jared Diamond and the New Guineans. James Diamond talks about how all great civilizations have three things in common and they are: advanced technology, a large population (several dozen at least), and a well-organized work forced. People back then had to have one of two jobs; either they were a hunter or a gatherer- they shared their labor. Jared studied the have and have not’s; this was the idea of developed vs. undeveloped for example: if you knew a way to find food, get water, and stay healthy than you were a have, if you couldn't do any of these things you would be a have not. We also found out that Jared had to search through history back to a time when everyone was equal, like when everyone shared the same way of life. In Papua New Guinea people still hunt and gather, 13,000 years ago people in the Middle East lived this way, but the people had to rely more on gathering than hunting because hunting was unpredictable. The women did most of the gathering, in Papua New Guinea there is a tree called the Sago tree that the people process because in the center there is a pulp that they can harvest into dough that they can eat, but it isn't very nutritious. One Sago tree only holds about 70 pounds of the pulp and it usually takes three days to process, they also eat some cereal grasses that grow there like barley and wheat; wheat and barley was also native in the Middle East.  12,000 years ago there were ice age like conditions and there was a drought that lasted for 1,000 years. Next in the video we learned that there was a village called Drah and it was the oldest village, an archaeological dig was set up and they discovered a very well structured building, it was found to be a granary; this was a place where the villagers could store their crops without them getting dried out or collecting moisture and spoiling, this was the center of the village and it was also the first community.  The people located themselves near a water source and grew crops; these people where the first farmers and they learned how to control the flow of the food. After a while people began to learn different things and they had new jobs that they could do like weaving baskets, making clothes and making food; this is when civilization took off. Eventually people learned how to control plants (domestication) In China rice was grown, in America there was corn, squash, in Africa there was sorghum, millet, and yams. In the highlands of New Guinea they had what Jared Diamond called “Geographic luck” , but the crops there spoiled very quickly and most of their food didn’t have a high nutrition level so sometimes people would just eat giant spiders. At about 9,000 years ago people( mostly farmers) learned how to domesticate animals and use them to improve their society; goats and sheep were the first to be tamed and the people could milk the goats and use the sheep’s wool for clothing, with the help of animal domestication a good system was formed.  That was it from the video today!