Guns Germs and Steel

Directions: 1.Read the following passage in groups of 2-4 taking turns. Each person will be responsible for
reading either the words that are bold, underlined, Italicized , or normal. If it is not your turn to read allowed you
need to be following along closely so that you are paying attention and nobody waits for you to begin reading.
2. When your group is done reading, make a 3-5 branch tree map, in your notebook that answers the following
questions; Why were Europeans successful in taking over the world, and what role did geography play have in the
conquest?
3. Work together to as a group to answer study questions 1-5, make sure your answers are in blue.
4. Type your thinking map into 3-5 paragraphs at the end of this document, make sure to have topic sentences.

On November 15th 1532, 168 Spanish conquistadors arrive in the holy city of Cajamarca, at the heart of
the Inca Empire, in Peru.
The Spanish 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?

Two Empires
Spaniard Francisco Pizarro has gone down in history as the man who conquered the Inca. Leading a small
company of mercenaries and adventurers, this former swineherd from a provincial town in Spain managed to
demolish one of the most sophisticated Empires the world has ever seen.

From Pizarro's home town of Trujillo, Jared Diamond pieces together the story of the Spaniards' victory over the
Inca, tracing the invisible hand of geography.

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 width of the
Andes.

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

Horses vs Llamas
Eurasia boasted 13 of the 14 domesticable mammals in the world as native species. Among these was the horse. As
Diamond learns, the horse was fundamental to the farming success of Eurasian societies, providing not only food and
fertilizer but also, crucially, load-bearing power and transport transforming the productivity of the land.
The only non-Eurasian domesticable animal species in the world was the llama native, by chance, to South America. The
Inca relied on llamas for meat, wool and fertilizer but the llama was not a load-bearing animal. Llamas can't pull a plow,
nor can they transport human beings.
And unlike horses, llamas could never be ridden for war.
Spanish horsemanship, based on principles of cattle-herding, was famous throughout Europe for its manoeuvrability and
spontaneity skills learned by Pizarro's conquistadors in their youth. Horses could charge, mounted soldiers could slay with
brutal efficiency. Diamond realizes that, to a people like the Inca, who had never seen humans ride animals before, the
psychological impact of these alien mounted troops must have been huge.

Steel vs bronze
But Pizarro's men only brought 37 horses to Peru. So where did the rest of their shock value lie?
Well, once again, the Europeans had something the Americans didn't they had steel.

For thousands of years throughout Eurasia, metal-working technology had evolved from the simplest ore-
extraction of the first Neolithic villages, to the highly-sophisticated forging of steel, in cities like Toledo and Milan.
Geography had endowed Europe with rich sources of iron and wood, and a climate conducive to high-
temperature metallurgy.

Thanks to the geographic ease with which ideas spread through the continent of Eurasia, discoveries like
gunpowder could also migrate thousands of miles, from China to Spain.
And political competition within Europe fuelled a medieval arms race. Pizarro's conquistadors were armed with the
latest and greatest in weapons technology guns, and swords.

The Inca, by comparison, had never worked iron or discovered the uses of gunpowder. Geography had not
endowed them with these resources. Nor had they received technologies from other advanced societies within the
Americas. This included a technology even more critical to Spanish success than their weapons, writing.

Writing
On the eve of battle, Pizarro and his men discuss how to tackle the vast army of the Inca. It seems an
impossible task. But they have a secret weapon up their sleeve the weapon of past experience.
Jared Diamond travels to the library of Salamanca University, to read for himself the published accounts
of Hernan Cortes' conquest of Mexico.
Only twelve years before Cajamarca, Cortes and his men had faced similar odds against the vast army of
the Aztec Empire. But somehow Cortes had captured the Emperor and conquered the land for Spain.

Cortes and his soldiers sent their written accounts back to the general public in Europe, where they were
widely published. Diamond discovers a repository of dirty tricks at Salamanca a collection of
handbooks for would-be conquistadors. And on the eve of battle, it was the printed lessons of Cortes that
inspired Pizarro and his men.

By contrast, the Inca Emperor Atahualpa had never heard of Cortes, or even of his own neighbors, the Aztecs.
Thanks to the geography of the Americas, it was practically impossible for any ideas, technologies, or even news,
to spread from north to south. So whilst the Mayan civilisation of Central America had invented a form of written
communication, it had never got as far as Peru. The Inca were isolated and Atahualpa had never even seen a
book before.
So, when presented with a copy of the Bible on November 16th, 1532, Atahuallpa throws the alien object to the
floor, prompting a furious and surprise attack from the conquistadors. The combined impact of mounted troops,
gunpowder and sharpened steel lead to a massacre, and Atahuallpa is personally seized by Pizarro himself.
In a matter of hours, the Inca Empire lies in ruins. But the story of Eurasian triumph isn't over.

Lethal gift of livestock

Seven thousand Inca died at Cajamarca. Over the course of a generation, the Spaniards killed tens of thousands more. But
Diamond learns that up to 95% of the native population of the entire Americas were wiped out after the conquest. Genocide
alone can't account for this number.
Instead, he discovers, native Americans fell victim to European germs infections which they had never encountered before.
And Diamond realizes that European diseases like smallpox were a fatal inheritance of thousands of years of mammal
domestication the lethal gift of livestock.
European farmers, rearing cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, horses and donkeys, lived in close proximity with their animals -
breathing, eating and drinking animal germs. Eventually some diseases crossed over to the human population and the
resulting epidemics wiped out millions of Europeans.

But each time, a few people would survive and the immunities they'd developed passed through their genes to the
next generation. The conquistadors who sailed to the Americas carried immunities like these.
But in Peru, the llama was never brought indoors, and never milked so the prospect for the spread of disease was
severely reduced.

But then the Europeans arrived and a single Spanish slave arrived, infected with smallpox and the consequences
were devastating. The disease emptied the continent, killing millions of indigenous people who lacked any prior
exposure, and therefore any immunity. The European triumph was complete.
Study Questions
Working together in groups of 2-4 answer the following questions. Make sure your answers are in blue
and are in complete sentences.
1. Why were horses important according to the text?
:
2.Why was the steel used by the Spanish so much different from what was used by the Inca?
:
3. Why was writing important?
:
4. In what other ways were livestock especially deadly?
:
5. What role do you think geography played in Europes success?
:

Guns Germs and Steel

Directions: Using the thinking map in your notebook, write 3-5 paragraphs that answer the following
questions.
Why were Europeans successful in taking over the world? What role did geography play have in the conquest?
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Rubric My
points

At least 3 paragraphs, topic sentences, spell checked etc. 25

Answers why geography was so important to europeans taking over. 25

Answers what specifically allowed the Spanish to take over in the 1500s. 25

Study questions are answered in blue and thinking map is clearly photographed 25
and included in the document.

Total 100