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DESCRIPTION:\n\n\nFilm evenings begin with optional potluck refreshments & social 
 hour at  6:30 pm,\nfollowed by the film at  7:30 pm, followed by a 
 discussion after the film.\n\nGUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL\nEpisode II: 
 Conquest\nby National Geographic\n\nBased on Jared Diamond’s book of the 
 same name, this National Geographic film "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. This ambitious, ground-breaking film, following the 
 book, portrays Jared Diamond’s discovery of an answer to the question: 
 Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet — why 
 wasn’t it the Chinese or the Inca? And why are the tropics now the 
 capital of global poverty?\n\nThe balance of power between the Old World of 
 Europeans and the New World of the Americas was so unequal — why?  The 
 Spaniard, Francisco Pizarro, was able to conquer the Inca army, 80,000 
 strong and including the Emperor of the Inca, with only 168 European 
 soldiers in only one day.  At the end of that terrible day in 1532, some 
 7,000 Inca warriors lay dead — and no Europeans.  Jared Diamond examines 
 this situation and concludes that the Europeans were able to conquer the 
 Inca and all of South America because they were well endowed with superior 
 technologies as well as deadly disease to which they were themselves 
 immune. \n\nAccording to Jared Diamond’s original version of history, the 
 superior technologies of Europeans can be credited to facts of geography.  
 Geography had endowed Europe with rich sources of iron and wood, and a 
 climate conducive to high-temperature metallurgy.  Metallurgy was more 
 developed in Europe than elsewhere, again because of geographical 
 advantages.  Europeans were able to make steel and cover their bodies with 
 it — body armor.  And they made steel swords and guns to kill with.  They 
 used gunpowder that had been discovered in China.  But because China was at 
 nearly the same latitude as Europe and on the same continent, gunpowder had 
 been able to travel the vast distance between China and Europe, east to 
 west,  without overwhelming difficulties.  South American civilizations, on 
 the other hand, were not in communication with one another because of the 
 difficulties of traveling, north and south, through Central America and 
 through South America.  So advances achieved in one civilization did not 
 reach the others in the same swift time frame as they did in Eurasia.  It 
 was the same situation with using horses for battle and using writing to 
 share battle stories and theories.  Writing spread from civilization to 
 civilization throughout Europe and Asia, east and west rather than north 
 and south, because of the relative ease of traveling through the Eurasian 
 continent.  Writing benefited Pizarro in his conquest of the Incas because 
 he was able to read how Cortes had conquered the Aztec of Mexico.  And 
 finally, germ diseases, particularly small pox, enabled Pizarro to conquer 
 the Inca with a plague that killed 95% of the Inca people.  It was 
 domesticated animals that had given diseases to the Europeans and, over 
 time, they became immune to them.  But the same animals were not native to 
 Central and South America — another feature of the different geographies 
 of the Old World and the New World.  Jared Diamond’s version of history 
 may be called “geographical determinism.”\n\nWheelchair accessible 
 around the corner at  411  28th  Street\n\n$5 donations are 
 expected\n\n\n\n\n http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/08/18725328.php
SUMMARY:Film: Guns, Germs and Steel
LOCATION:Humanist Hall\n390  27th  Street\nuptown Oakland, between Telegraph and 
 Broadway\nhttp://www.HumanistHall.org
URL:http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/08/18725328.php
DTSTART:20121122T033000Z
DTEND:20121122T053000Z
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