The article, “Around the World in 40 Minutes” by Jared Diamond is focused on the question of why history took such a different evolutionary course for people of different continents. He continues to rephrase the question the more you get into the story, altering it so that he can give more information on that subject. For example, in part one her rephrases the question to, why did human development proceed at such different rates on the different continents for the last 13,000 years? He then begins to answer these questions based on his research on the world’s history. In part one of the article it states that, “By the year A.D. 1500, the time where Europe’s overseas expansion was just beginning, peoples of the different continents already differed greatly in technology and political organization.”Each continent had a different state of development. For example, most of Eurasia and North Africa were occupied by Iron Stages and empires while the people of Australia were still living as farmers or as hunters/ gatherers. This shows us that way of development that each continent used was a direct cause to the inequalities. And the land that each continent is located in is identified as one of the most important determinants to a society’s success. But there are other proximate factors that make a society successful. Another way would be the weapons and technology that that continent contains. In part 2, he discusses the event where the Spaniards overthrew the Aztecs and the Incas. The reasons were that the Spaniards had steel, guns, and horses while the two Native
