National Geographic Guns Germs And Steel (2005) [MKV]Armas, Germes e AçoJared Diamond, a distinguished professor of physiology and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, has devoted much of his life trying to understand man's impact on nature,
through significant, often pioneering,
work on bird species diversity in New Guinea, and the extinctions of endemic species of plants and animals in the aftermath of human colonization of the South Pacific by the ancestors of the Melanesians and especially, Polynesians. For this excellent work he has earned numerous accolades, including - if my memory is correct - membership in the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a superb writer and a mesmerizing lecturer; qualities which are shown in ample abundance throughout this National Geographic miniseries devoted to his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Guns, Germs and Steel".
Originally published back in 1997, "Guns, Germs and Steel" posed the interesting hypothesis that Western civilization's preeminence is due to mere happenstance, simply because its ancestral Fertile Crescent civilizations were lucky to have the richest abundance of potentially domesticated grains and animals. The eventual triumph of Western civilization is due to its successful colonization of the temperate regions of the globe, via its rich abundance in domesticated grains and animals, advanced weaponry and technology, and the accidental spread of virulent, often deadly, diseases associated with domesticated animals such as pigs and sheep.
This National Georgraphic miniseries is a somewhat successful exploration of Jared Diamond's work and the ideas described in "Guns, Germs and Steel". The first hour-long episode, devoted to domestication of grains and animals, is the most successful of the three. It is followed immediately by a second episode describing the clash of Western civilization with an indigenous, technologically advanced, American civilization - the Inkas - in 1532 and 1533 - in which the Spanish conquistadors succeeded only because an Old World disease - smallpox - had decimated the Inka population in 1531. The third episode is a more contemporary test of Diamond's hypothesis, set in Sub-Saharan Africa, but yielding a result not nearly as clear cut as the Spanish invasion of the Inkan Empire. Still, despite the mixed quality of these episodes, I can recommend this DVD set as a visual introduction to Diamond's hypothesis; an ecologically-oriented, testable hypothesis which was virtually unknown to anthropologists and other social scientists prior to the book's original publication.
Geral
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