National Geographic Guns Germs And Steel 1of3 Out Of Eden x264 AC3 www mkv

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Based on Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name,

Guns, Germs and Steel traces humanity's journey over the last 13,000

years from the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the

realities of life in the twenty-first century.



Inspired by a question put to him on the island of Papua New Guinea more

than thirty years ago, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to

understand the roots of global inequality.



Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet?

Why didn't the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead?

Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East?

Why did farming never emerge in Australia?

And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?

Diamond answers also one question I´ve wondered , why Incas´fell with european diseases

and not the other way around?



As he peeled back the layers of history to uncover fundamental,

environmental factors shaping the destiny of humanity, Diamond found

both his theories and his own endurance tested.



The three one-hour programs were filmed across four continents on High

Definition digital video, and combinied ambitious dramatic

reconstruction with moving documentary footage and computer animation.

They also include contributions from Diamond himself and a wealth of

international historians, archeologists and scientists.



Guns, Germs, and Steel is a thrilling ride through the elemental

forces which have shaped our world and which continue to shape our future.









Part 1: Out Of Eden

Jared Diamond´s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New

Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively

simple question:

?Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black

people had little cargo of our own??



Diamond realized that Yali´s question penetrated the heart of a great

mystery of human history -- the roots of global inequality.



To examine the reasons for European success, Jared realized he had to

peel back the layers of history and begin his search at a time of

equality a time when all the peoples of the world lived in exactly the

same way.



Time of Equality



At the end of the last Ice Age, around thirteen thousand years ago,

people on all continents followed a so-called Stone Age way of life ?

they survived by hunting and gathering the available wild animals and

plants. When resources were plentiful, this was a productive way of life.



Around eleven and a half thousand years ago, the world's climate

suddenly changed. In an aftershock of the Ice Age, temperatures

plummeted and global rainfall reduced. The impact of this catastrophe

was felt most keenly in an area known as the Fertile Crescent, in the

modern Middle East. Here, hunter-gathers had thrived on some of the most

useful and plentiful flora and fauna in the world. They had even

developed semi-permanent settlements to exploit the resources around them.









Part 2: Conquest

On November 15th 1532, 168 Spanish conquistadors arrive in the holy

city of Cajamarca, at the heart of the Inca Empire, in Peru.



They are exhausted, outnumbered and terrified ? ahead of them are camped

80,000 Inca troops and the entourage of the Emperor himself.



Yet, within just 24 hours, more than 7,000 Inca warriors lie

slaughtered; the Emperor languishes in chains; and the victorious

Europeans begin a reign of colonial terror which will sweep through the

entire American continent.*



Why was the balance of power so unequal between the Old World, and the New?



On the surface, the Spaniards had discovered a foreign empire remarkably

similar to their own. The Inca had built an advanced, politically

sophisticated, civilization on the foundations of successful

agriculture. They had ruthlessly conquered their neighbors in South

America, and by 1532 governed a vast territory, the length and breadth

of the Andes.



But as Jared discovers, the Inca lacked some critical agents of conquest.









Part 3: Into The Tropics

So far, Jared Diamond has demonstrated how geography favoured one group

of people ? Europeans ? endowing them with agents of conquest ahead of

their rivals around the world. Guns, germs and steel allowed Europeans

to colonize vast tracts of the globe ? but what happened when this

all-conquering package arrived in Africa, the birthplace of humanity?



Can Jared Diamond's theories explain how a continent so rich in natural

resources, could have ended up the poorest continent on earth?



Guns Germs and Steel triumph again...?



Jared's journey begins on a steam train in Cape Town, designed to carry

civilization to the heart of the so-called 'dark continent'. In the

Cape, Jared discovers a landscape and way of life that feels very

European ? farms growing cattle, wheat, grapes and barley; settler

communities dating back over three hundred years.



Enter the Tropics



As the settlers traveled further north, life suddenly became a lot

harder. The foundations of their success, their crops and animals,

refused to grow. They were forced to barter for food from their

neighbours. And they started to fall ill with a mysterious and

terrifying fever. It was a complete reversal of the usual pattern of

European conquest.



So what had changed?





Dr.Jared Diamond lecture at CalTech 1993 "The Great Leap Forward"







DVD Cover





Technical Specs



Video Codec: x264

Video Bitrate: ~1913 Kbps

Video Resolution: 720x480

Video Aspect Ratio: 16:9

Video Framerate: 29.970 fps

Audio Codec: AC3

Audio Bitrate: 192 kbps 48 KHz

Audio Channels: 2

Runtime per Part: 54 min

Number of Parts: 3

Part Size: 746 MB

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