Jared Diamond discusses many different historical time periods in Guns, Germs, and Steel. It would be very difficult to list them all. However, you could say that the time period in which he is most interested is the time period (or periods) when agriculture was being developed and spread in various parts of the world.
In this book, Diamond discusses many time periods. He talks in Chapter 1 of the time leading up to...
Jared Diamond discusses many different historical time periods in Guns, Germs, and Steel. It would be very difficult to list them all. However, you could say that the time period in which he is most interested is the time period (or periods) when agriculture was being developed and spread in various parts of the world.
In this book, Diamond discusses many time periods. He talks in Chapter 1 of the time leading up to the year 11,000 BC. In Chapter 2, he talks about a fight that happened in 1835, but he also talks about the peopling of the islands of Polynesia, which took place over a very long period of time, starting around 1200 BC and only being “mostly complete” (as Diamond says on p. 55) by 500 AD. In Chapter 3, Diamond talks about the Spanish conquest of the Incas in 1532. The list of time periods that are discussed in this book goes on and on.
However, Diamond is mostly interested in prehistory and, more importantly, the time period before and during the rise of agriculture. Diamond is trying to explain why Europeans had come to dominate the world by modern times. He thinks that this happened because people in Eurasia achieved agriculture before other people and because their agricultural societies spread out across their landmass more effectively. He therefore asks two main questions. First, he wants to know why Europeans got agriculture before other people did. This forces him to look at the historical time period before agriculture was developed in the various regions of the world. Second, he wants to know how agriculture helped Europeans come to dominate the world. This forces him to look at the historical time period when Europe (and Eurasia more generally) was developing agriculture. He has to look at how societies changed during this time and how that helped them dominate the world.
Thus, while Diamond talks about all kinds of different historical time periods in Guns, Germs, and Steel, the most important of these periods are 1) the period before agriculture arises and 2) the period as the rise of agriculture leads to the rise of civilization.
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