GG&S Notes 4

     People were still using stone tools in the 1960s in New Guinea.  Surplus is to make more food tan you need.  This fertile crescent is not the powerhouse of the world.  Most of the villages of the fertile crescents were abandoned because the climate was to dry and the economy was to much to handle.  Entire communities were forced to leave their land because they were unable to find food.  Things got really dry in the Middle east and they would just move east or west so they could make the same food and raise the same animals.  New Giunea is isolated so they could not do the same thing.  They moved away from India and then they grew in civilization a making the pyramids.  The same crops and animals were taken to the new world.  We would not be where we are in civilization without the farming of the fertile crescent.  People around the world are fundamentally similar but they are cultural differences.  Diamond thinks that the reason is geography not because of ingenuity.