Guns, Germs, and Steel Group

Question:

southbro6
southbro6
Student
High School - 10th Grade

How is farming an "auto-catalytic" process?

Jared Diamond

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Posted by southbro6 on Tuesday October 14, 2008 at 6:58 PM and tagged with and steel, autocatalytic, germs guns and farming, guns, germs, and steel, jared diamond.

Answers:


  1. ladyvols1 Teacher
    High School - 9th Grade

    Diamond's theory is that societies moved from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to becoming farmers in an "autocatalytic process" of a greater population of people living in a specific area who were "requiring more food, becoming more dependent on agriculture," and  becoming even larger in population.

    Secondly Diamond then looked at how plants for "settled agriculture were "domesticated" through a variety of selection mechanisms implemented consciously and unconsciously by early farmers." The farmers didn't realize didn't seem to realize that "by bringing home the largest fruit, s/he was propagating its seeds near her settlement, or that later by planting seeds each year, s/he was selecting for annual plants without seeds that remain dormant."

    There is more specific information listed at the links below.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/guns-germs-steel/themes
    http://www.princeton.edu/~innov/issues/v7i1/ishistoryscie...

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    Posted by ladyvols1 on Wednesday October 15, 2008 at 2:42 AM