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caring for a yucca plant indoors

caring for a yucca plant indoors Buy Large Yucca Cane Online | Large Indoor Plant

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Description

caring for a yucca plant indoors Buy Large Yucca Cane Online | Large Indoor PlantDescription The Yucca brings sculptural beauty and southwestern charm right into your home. With those distinctive sword shaped leaves arranged in perfect rosettes and the promise of towering Yucca flower spikes, this resilient beauty transforms any space into a desert inspired sanctuary. Native to the Americas and naturally adapted for easy living, your Yucca tree thrives with gentle care and understanding. We love how forgiving these plants are

Description

The Yucca brings sculptural beauty and southwestern charm right into your home. With those distinctive sword-shaped leaves arranged in perfect rosettes and the promise of towering Yucca flower spikes, this resilient beauty transforms any space into a desert-inspired sanctuary.

Native to the Americas and naturally adapted for easy living, your Yucca tree thrives with gentle care and understanding. We love how forgiving these plants are - they're wonderful companions for both new plant parents and experienced collectors who appreciate low-maintenance elegance. Whether you choose a smaller Yucca for your favorite corner or a statement-sized specimen for your living room, this plant will grow alongside you for decades, adding timeless beauty to your carefully curated space.

Care 

Are yuccas hard to care for?

Yuccas are wonderfully forgiving plants that make excellent choices for both beginners and experienced plant lovers. These resilient beauties adapt well to various conditions and don't mind if you occasionally forget to water them, requiring mainly bright light and patience.

We find that most plant parents quickly fall in love with how understanding these plants are. Think of your Yucca as that low-maintenance friend who always looks great - minimal fuss, maximum beauty, and always ready to brighten your day.


Do Yuccas like full sun or shade? 

Your Yucca absolutely thrives in bright light and loves soaking up full sun whenever possible, though it gracefully tolerates partial shade too. Indoors, we recommend placing it near your brightest window where it can enjoy optimal growing conditions.

The more sunshine your Yucca receives, the more likely you'll be rewarded with those spectacular sword-like leaves and potentially even those magnificent flower spikes that make these plants so special.


How often should you water yuccas?

Water your Yuccas every two to three weeks during spring and summer, allowing the top few inches of soil to dry completely between waterings. In winter, reduce watering to once monthly as these desert natives prefer staying dry.

When you do water, give it a thorough drink until water flows from the drainage holes, then let it rest. We always tell our customers that with Yucca plant care, it's better to underwater than overwater.


Where is the best place to keep a yucca plant?

The perfect home for your Yucca is near a bright, sunny window with good drainage and adequate air circulation. We love seeing them in entryways, living rooms, or anywhere their stunning silhouette can create a natural focal point.

Choose a spot where your plant can show off its striking beauty while staying safely away from cold drafts and heating vents. Your Yucca will reward you with steady, graceful growth in return.


What is the best fertilizer to use for yuccas?

Feed your Yucca with a balanced, all-purpose fertilizer diluted to half strength every few months during the spring and summer growing season. Skip fertilizing completely in fall and winter when your plant naturally rests and doesn't need extra nutrients.

We recommend keeping fertilizing simple and gentle. These plants evolved in nutrient-poor soils, so less is definitely more when it comes to feeding your beautiful Yucca.


Do yuccas need misting?

Yuccas don't need misting and actually prefer the dry indoor conditions that many other houseplants find challenging. These desert natives thrive in average home humidity and excessive moisture can sometimes lead to fungal issues on their leaves.

Save your spray bottle for other plants - your Yucca is perfectly content with the natural humidity levels in your home and will thank you for respecting its low-moisture preferences.


How long do yuccas live for?

Your Yucca can become a treasured long-term companion, often living for several decades with proper care and sometimes reaching fifty years or more. We love knowing that these plants can grow alongside families, becoming more beautiful with each passing year.

This makes them wonderful investments for anyone looking to create lasting beauty in their space. There's something deeply satisfying about nurturing a plant that can be part of your home for decades.


Are yuccas good indoor plants?

Yuccas make absolutely wonderful indoor plants thanks to their striking sculptural presence, remarkable resilience, and refreshingly low maintenance requirements. They bring that perfect combination of dramatic visual impact and easy-going personality that works beautifully in modern homes and offices.

We particularly appreciate how well they adapt to typical indoor conditions that challenge many other houseplants. Your Yucca will thrive in the dry air and bright light that most homes naturally provide.




Pet-friendly?

Yuccas are not pet friendly. They contain compounds called steroidal saponins that are harmful to pets if ingested. For the wellbeing of your furry family members, please keep these beautiful plants safely out of reach of curious paws and mouths.


Are yuccas poisonous to dogs?

Yuccas are toxic to dogs due to steroidal saponins found throughout the plant. If your pup decides to sample the foliage, they may experience drooling, vomiting, diarrhea, and weakness that requires immediate veterinary attention for their safety.

We always recommend positioning your Yucca where even the most curious dogs can't reach it - perhaps on a high plant stand or in a room that's typically off-limits to your four-legged friends.


Are yuccas toxic to cats?

Yuccas are definitely harmful to cats, potentially causing drooling, vomiting, diarrhea, and weakness if your feline friend decides to investigate with their teeth. Since cats are natural climbers and plant explorers, extra care is needed with placement.

Consider a high shelf or hanging arrangement where your kitty can admire your Yucca's beautiful form from a safe, non-nibbling distance. Your cat's safety is always worth the extra planning.



Factoids

What is a yucca plant?

A Yucca plant is a perennial evergreen with rosettes of sword-shaped leaves and occasional tall spikes of fragrant white or cream flowers. These beauties belong to the asparagus family and are native to arid regions throughout North and Central America.

 

Is a yucca a cactus?

A Yucca isn't actually a cactus, despite their shared appreciation for dry conditions and desert landscapes. While cacti belong to the Cactaceae family, Yuccas are proud members of the asparagus family, making them botanical cousins rather than siblings.


Is yucca a perennial or an annual?

Your Yucca is definitely a perennial plant, meaning it will grace your home for many years rather than completing its life cycle in just one season. This long-term commitment makes it such a rewarding choice for anyone wanting to build lasting relationships with their plants.


Are yuccas poisonous to humans?

Yuccas contain saponins that can cause stomach upset, vomiting, and diarrhea in humans if consumed in significant quantities. The naturally bitter taste usually prevents accidental consumption, but it's wise to keep them away from curious children and adults who might experiment.

We always recommend treating all houseplants as "look but don't taste" and washing hands after handling any plant, just to be safe and maintain good plant care habits.


Do yucca plants multiply?

Yucca plants naturally multiply by producing small offshoots or pups around the base of the mother plant. You can separate them when they're large enough. Many species spread through underground rhizomes, while others can grow from stem cuttings with patience.

This natural tendency to produce new plants makes them wonderful for sharing with friends or expanding your own collection over time. There's something magical about watching a single plant become many.


Can you eat yucca?

You cannot eat the Yucca plant root, which contains high levels of toxic saponins. It’s often confused with edible yuca or cassava. Some Yucca flower varieties are used in traditional Central American and Mexican cuisines when prepared by experienced cooks.

We always recommend leaving any food preparation involving plant materials to experts and treating your houseplant Yucca as purely ornamental for safety and peace of mind.


Do Yuccas purify the air?

Yuccas help improve your indoor air quality by naturally filtering toxins like formaldehyde and benzene from your environment, contributing to a healthier home atmosphere. Those broad leaves work quietly to process the air around them throughout the day and night.

While they're not the strongest air purifiers in the plant world, every little bit helps, and you get the added bonus of stunning architectural beauty alongside their air-cleaning benefits.


What part of yuccas are medicinal?

The root of certain Yucca species, particularly Yucca schidigera, contains beneficial compounds that have been studied for their anti-inflammatory properties. However, the raw root itself isn't safe for home consumption and requires professional preparation for any medicinal use.

We always recommend leaving medicinal plant preparation to qualified professionals and enjoying your beautiful houseplant Yucca purely for its ornamental qualities and air-purifying benefits.



Buy a Yucca

Your perfect Yucca is waiting to transform your space into something extraordinary. These remarkable plants bring decades of beauty with surprisingly little effort – exactly what busy plant lovers need.

We help you discover the Yucca that matches your vision perfectly. 

Our live video calls mean you'll actually see your chosen plant growing in our greenhouse before we carefully pack it for the journey to you. There's something wonderful about knowing exactly which plant will be arriving at your door. We believe the best plant relationships start with the right match, and we're excited to help you begin this beautiful, long-lasting partnership.

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Jessica Jarrett
Lexington, US
★★★★★ 5
Kickstarts your knowledge of game dev
Format: Hardcover
This book hits on all cylinders, condensing decades of actionable knowledge about game development into a single source. There's a lot more to game dev than what's in this book, but this gives fantastic usable detail on many subjects and gets you oriented with and pointed in the right directions for the few it doesn't.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2021
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gloine36
Omaha, US
★★★★★ 5
One of my favorite books and the inspiration for my World Regional Geography courses that I teach.
Format: Hardcover
Two decades ago when I served in the Missouri National Guard we had an extended drill weekend at Ft. Leonard Wood for a live fire artillery exercise. This was a three day drill and I remember it clearly because it was the same weekend as Princess Diana’s funeral on September 6, 1997. I had been at the local library the day before we rolled out and saw an interesting book that promised to explain why western civilization had been the one to colonize the New World and rise to ascendency over much of the world for a long period of time. That had always been an interesting question for me and one which many people do not know the answer to. I checked out the book and during some downtime I began to read. To say that the book grabbed my attention is an understatement. I started it on Friday and finished it on Saturday. My whole conception of how history had seen the rise of Western Civilization was fundamentally altered and would never be the same. At the time I thought that using Guns, Germs, and Steel as an educational tool would be a great idea. My dream of teaching history had never been realized and in 1997 seemed like it would never happen. However, history is full of strange things and in 2009 I got the chance to return to college and pick up my degrees. I began teaching American History in 2013 and was then asked to teach World Regional Geography for the Spring 2014 semester. They handed me a textbook and said, “Good luck.” As I drove back home I considered how I would teach this course and my mind recalled Jared Diamond and his Pulitzer Prize winning book. To make the story short, I built a course that used the textbook, Diamond’s book, and the National Geographic series based on the book. Obviously I take what Diamond said in Guns, Germs, and Steel seriously. I think Diamond did some outstanding work in doing three decades of research and then writing a book which to me is resonates with readers. For many years the idea that Western Civilization was superior to any other form has been the dominant world view. Diamond rejects that completely by saying Western Civilization had advantages that others did not have due to geography, or literally where it was. When you stop and think about it, why were the Europeans so superior to others for so long? Was it their race, their ideals, or what? Diamond said it was because of where they started that they developed into the world spanning civilization we know. What advantages did the Europeans have over others? They arrived with technology superior to all others, were better organized, and had the lethal gift of germs which in the Americas killed over half the population and was the biggest reason as to why the Europeans took those lands over. When Diamond explored the germ theory he realized that these germs came from contact with domesticated mammals such as horses, cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, and goats. These same mammals were what enabled Europeans to transport materials as well as have a convenient food supply and a power source such as horses pulling plows. This idea works when you look at the Americas and Australia, but not when you look at Africa and Asia. The lethality of germs did not affect the people in those regions like it did the Americas. In fact, some of the diseases in Africa killed the Europeans and prevented them for exploiting Sub-Saharan Africa for centuries. Some of these germs are now known to have come from Asia as well along with domestic animals that came from there. Many of the larger mammals Europe had were also found in Asia. In fact, some of the technology such as gunpowder came from Asia as well. Diamond acknowledged this in his book and sought to explain why Europe was able to expand while Asia did not. This is something I really stress in my class and it is something which the book and National Geographic series does not explore as deeply as it should. Diamond saw a decision made in the 15th century by a Chinese emperor as being the decisive event that altered human history. At that point China was the leading power in the world. It had a great navy, the largest country, gunpowder, advanced technology and far more people thanks to its agricultural practices than any other nation at that time. The decision by emperors in China’s Ming dynasty led to China losing its technological advantage over Europe although no one had any idea that this was happening. These decisions or orders are called Haijin. Diamond did not explore this in any depth other than to point to it and say that China’s inward looking policies which had existed for centuries were the result of its location, its geography. Its singular form of government used Haijin to build up its power at the expense of expanding China’s culture and boundaries. There is a lot here to work with, but Diamond seems to casually bring it up in the book’s epilogue. Instead he focuses heavily on the Americas where his theory of environmental determinism is the strongest. I think he gets the theory right, but in the case of Asia he needed to go deeper. Since Diamond is an ornithologist by education, and his world journey’s focused on New Guinea, I think his point of view was heavily influenced through his contact with hunter-gatherers. His theory is at its weakest in Asia and specifically China. That again reflects his preference for focusing on one type of people versus another. This does not mean his theory is wrong. It just needs expansion and I do not think Diamond will be doing that any time soon. His recent works have dealt with different ideas. Even with this glaring problem, I think this book is outstanding. It does answer the question of why Western Civilization dominated the world for the most part. For my geography class it is a wonderful tool. I focus heavily on how man domesticated two grains from the Middle East, wheat and barley, and built Western Civilization upon them. Coupled with the domestication of large mammals, the forerunners of Western Civilization spread through Europe. Geography played a huge role in why it went west and why there are so many differences between East and West on a cultural level. It also explains why there are such huge differences between North Africa and the lands to the south of the Sahara. The role of geography in shaping mankind is without a doubt the single underlying reason as to why history occurred like it did. This is really hard for students to understand because they seem to have been taught a much different concept prior to taking a geography course. Only by explaining the human-environment interaction do students begin to realize that geography caused man to make decisions which would reverberate for millennia. The people of the Middle East followed the Tigris and Euphrates rivers northwest into Anatolia and out of the desert. Man’s movement west, north, and south with the crops and animals of the Middle East were shaped by geographical barriers. Diamond points out how man overcame these barriers over time. The civilization that was able to do so developed greater technologies than others. He points to both European and Chinese naval developments in this regard. China’s need to continue to build its naval forces was negligible due to a lack of naval enemies while in Europe those enemies were often themselves as nations competed for resources and trade. Since China controlled all of its trade which was mostly internal or land based, its need for a navy was reduced. Europe surged ahead while China languished. In my classes I point to the barriers as we explore the world’s regions. I show how these barriers played such big roles. We play a board game by Avalon Hill that helps to illustrate this as well. Diamond’s book plays a big role in my class and so do his theories. I find it really helps students take the principles and ideas from the first part of the class and begin to apply them to the world regions we study. They are able to make the mental leap to the realization that the people of the world are different for many reasons, the foremost being the place in which they live more than anything else. It helps them to break down and discard the erroneous belief which many of them have regarding their place in the world. Using Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel I am able to use Transformative Learning Theory to overcome the disorientating dilemma they find themselves in at the beginning of class. I could build a new class out of Diamond’s book that encompasses geography, history, and sociology if my school would let me. In fact, I could build two classes out of it. One would focus on why Western Civilization developed like it did and expanded to the Americas while the second one would focus on the development of Eastern Civilization and its failure to expand beyond Asia itself. While courses exist that dive into those ideas, they are built around history more than anything else. Few instructors use environmental determinism in explaining how early mankind developed in the places it did. The ultimate objectives of these courses would be why they developed like they did, not just their history. Diamond has written several other books such as Collapse, The Third Chimpanzee, and The World Until Yesterday. He is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been awarded all kinds of prizes and awards for his research and work in multiple fields. I find it interesting that he began to study environmental history in his fifties which led to this book and many others. This to me is proof that you are not bound by formal rules regarding your education, but rather by using your interests coupled with the research capabilities your education has provided you new careers beckon. This book is a testament to following one’s interests and using one’s intellect. I highly recommend it to all readers. It is one of my favorite books and I have read through it multiple times.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2015
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Tim F. Martin
Whiting, US
★★★★★ 5
Outstanding work of history, one of the best ever
_Guns, Germs, and Steel_ by Jared Diamond is one of the most informative, epic, well-written, and fascinating "macrohistory" books I have ever read. In this book, Diamond discussed the rise of complex human societies in the last 13,000 years, seeking to answer one fundamental question; why did some civilizations come to dominate others? Why did the Fertile Crescent and China for instance develop advanced societies with, as the title suggests, guns, germs, and steel, while other areas of the world, such as Polynesia, Australia, and the Americas, did not? Or in those cases where some civilizations were beginning to acquire such things, why did they get off to such a late start? Why did the Spanish conquer the Incans instead of vice versa? In a nutshell, he concluded that societies developed differently on different continents not because of racial differences in attitudes or intelligence, but because of differences in continental environments. Advanced technology, centralized political organizations, writing, and professional armies (or simply put the military advantage of simply having large numbers of people), etc. could only emerge in dense, sedentary populations capable of accumulating food surpluses. Unfortunately, domesticable wild plant and animal species needed for agriculture to arise were very unevenly distributed around the world, with the most valuable species concentrated in only nine small areas of the globe (Southwest Asia, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes and the adjacent Amazon basin, the eastern U.S., Africa's Sahel, West Africa, Ethiopia, and New Guinea), all of which became the earliest homelands of agriculture and thus regions that got a head start on developing guns, germs, and steel. Animals were vital to a society as a source of meat, milk products, fertilizer, transportation, leather, for military use, plow traction, and wool and those areas that lacked suitable animals to domesticate suffered accordingly in terms of societal development. The Late Pleistocene extinctions of large mammals in the Americas and Australia deprived humanity in those areas of potentially very valuable domesticable species. Of the big (over 100 pound) herbivores and omnivores, 148 potential candidates for domestication, they are mostly located in Eurasia (72 candidate species, versus 51 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 24 in the Americas, and 1 in Australia). Further, out of those candidates, only 14 were actually domesticated, 13 of them in Eurasia; what he called the "Major Five" - sheep, the goat, cow, pig, and horse, and the "Minor Nine" - the Arabian camel, Bactrian camel, donkey, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, Bali cattle, mithan (wild ancestor the gaur, found primarily in India and Burma), and the one American one, the llama and alpaca (two well-differentiated breeds of the same species). The other 134 potential candidates were eliminated due to problems with diet, growth rate, problems of captive breeding, nasty disposition, tendency to panic, and/or social structure, any one problem enough to preclude domestication even in modern times. Of further interest, Southwest Asia had seven of the wild ancestors naturally occurring, a huge advantage. In the world of plants there were similar disparities in distribution; of the 56 species of grass with the heaviest seeds, at least 10 times heavier than median species, Eurasia's Mediterranean zone had 32 of them, with barley and emmer wheat 3rd and 13th respectively in seed size. In contrast, of the 56 species, only 6 were found in East Asia, 4 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 11 in the Americas, and 2 in Australia. Another set of differences lead to a variation in societal evolution in the case of plant and animal domestications as well as in technological innovations and political institutions, as most societies acquire much more from other societies than they invent themselves (his discussion on the evolution of writing and in particular the alphabet in this regard was fascinating). Diffusion and migration within and between continents played a very important role in the development of a society, and in some continents diffusion and migration was considerably easier, most rapid in Eurasia because of its east-west major axis and its relatively modest ecological and geographical barriers. As crops and animals depended strongly on climate and hence on latitude, huge areas ranging almost from the Atlantic to the Pacific were open to the movement of domesticated plants and animals. Diffusion was slower in Africa and especially in the Americas due to those continents north-south major axes (traveling just a few hundred or a thousand miles north or south can render a society's crops and animals completely unsuitable for use) and much more pronounced geographic and ecological barriers (such as the Sahara Desert in Africa). Similarly, diffusion in the last 6,000 years has been easiest from Eurasia to sub-Saharan Africa, while long completely absent between Eurasia and the Americas (isolated at low latitudes by broad oceans and at high latitudes by geography and by a climate suitable just for hunter-gatherers). The last set of major factors he analyzed related to continental differences in area or total population size. A larger area or population meant more inventors, more competing societies, more innovations that exist to be adopted, and more pressure to adopt and retain those innovations, as those societies that fail to do so tend to be eliminated or absorbed by competing societies. Among the world's landmasses, area and the number of competing societies were greatest for Eurasia, while considerably smaller for Australia for instance. The Americas, despite their rather large total land area, were in effect fragmented by ecology and geography into a series of poorly connected smaller continents. Relating to both population size and the "Eurasians' long intimacy with domestic animals" was the development of germs. Crowd diseases could not sustain themselves in small bands of hunter-gatherers or slash-and-burn farmers, nor perhaps would they develop at all, as only human association with cattle gave us for instance measles (evolved from rinderpest) and smallpox (evolved from cowpox). Obviously I have just scratched the surface in my review. This is an excellent book that ties together findings in history, archaeology, paleontology, epidemiology, and linguistics in an extremely readable and informative format.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2005
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mtspace
San Leandro, US
★★★★★ 4
Monumental Thesis, Richly Researched & Carefully Argued
Motivating this book are two questions 1) When Spanish conquistador Pizzaro encountered Inca emperor Atahualpa, how did the former, with fewer than two hundred men overwhelm the latter with over 80,000? and 2) When the Europeans set up colonies on the island of new Guinea, why was it that they had so much stuff to trade, but the natives of the island had so little? The answer to the first question is, of course, that the Spanish had Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond does an outstanding job arguing for the pivotal importance of Germs in the equation. He clearly explains - using the idea of germs - why Europeans overran the Americas and Australia but not Africa. His agument regarding steel is notably weaker; but I think it does support his thesis adequately. I failed to detect a compelling argument for why Europeans had guns but others did not. The book's primary focus is on how civilization got started. He looks first at the cultivation of plants and then at the domestication of animals. Examining areas in Africa, Eurasia, the Americas, and Australia, he totes up the lists of suitable flora and fauna and evaluates their merits. He notes that it was the fertile crescent that harbored the most suitable grains, legumes (or pulses), and domesticable animals. No other location comes close to having this rich combination of natural resources. He shows that this explains the very early appearance of agricutlure and therefore of writing, religion, and law in this area (and in China). He also shows how any human advancement would spread more quickly in Eurasia than it would within the Americas and Africa. This gives Eurasia a double advantage; it can harbor more people by virtue of its agricultural practices and each person has greater access to new ideas because of strong east-west trade currents. Thus cultures in Eurasia could easily adapt ideas based on those of other societies instead of creating them from scratch. He concludes that any person who accepts his thesis of the forces shaping civilization - at least the necessary precondition to get started - would necessarily conclude that civilization's advances must inevitably run quickest on the Eurasian continent. A large portion of the book is focussed on the factors influencing the establishement of an agricultural system that is capable of supporting a whole large class of non-agricultural workers. The assumption, I believe, is that we already know that this is the primary requirement for the birth of a civilization. Still I was looking forward to Diamond's take on what happens after we all learn to read and write. I was hoping he might explain the ascent of the west since 1000 BC or 1500 AD. But he does not. He does not, for instance, argue why it was the British and Spanish, not the Turks and Indians who settled Australia and the Americas. This, perhaps is a different question. Yet it seems to be linked to the idea of frontiers and access to resources. For it is always when the full set of advanced cultural practices reach populations in the richest, most uncultivated frontiers and these ideas cast anew in the light of a new environment that civilization seems to gain its greatest momentum. He uses Polynesia as a microcosm for the world. In this laboratory, a group of people with the same genetic cross-section and same cultural practices embarked on a grand venture to settle all the islands of the Pacific some two millenia ago or so. The systems of government they set up and the level of civilization they reached were highly dependent upon the agricultual productivity of their citizens. Colonists on small islands unsuitable for agriculture became hunter-gatherers and lived in egalitarian societies. Those in productive lands organized into small states with strong chiefs or kings, each with their own little standing armies. The book is richly researched and solidly argued as far as it goes. But there are a handful of quibbles one might raise. 1) The author tends to repeat himself. As the book progresses, the portion of prose that is a restatement of something said before becomes so high that this reader found himself skipping whole chapters. 2) The author fails to provide a compelling argument about why China lagged Europe at some point after 1500. One wonders why the author did not simply use the argument at hand. Colonialism provided to Europe the raw materials necessary for industrial production. China was closed until two or three decades ago and so did not have adequate access to the raw materials that vaulted Europe and North America to their current place. The opening of China to the world has quickly closed this gap. In other words, the cultural practice that gave frontier states the advantage was the high value they realized in trade: of getting required natural resources and finished goods from other places instead of being closed off. The book's central thesis is that the first and most necessary condition for the success of a society lies in its access to the required resources, and that transport of goods and ideas is crucial to the success of this enterprise. For this book to fail to make this connection I find to be an astonishing lapse. 3) Unless it is hidden in one of the skipped chapters, Diamond never starts to answer the second motivating question about 'stuff', even though it is a simple and direct extension of his fairly robust argument. This book is of crucial importance in counter-balancing our Darwinian view of the world. It was not that Europeans were better people by some genetic measure. (Darwin seemed to assume a single measure of fitness. But each environmental variable provides a different metric of fitness so the whole notion of one group being generally 'more fit' is utter nonsense.) It was that they had a body of technologies, cultural practices and diseases that naturally tended to overwhelm other groups. And that these ideas and practices (and sometimes diseases) are an inevitable advantage any agrarian or post agrarian society has over a less highly organized one. Europeans simply got a head start thanks to geography. There is much to learn, and much to contemplate in this book. Read It.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2005
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Verified Purchase
A.C.E
Battle Creek, US
★★★★★ 5
You may never see the world the same way again
Format: Hardcover
Ok I got a lot out of this book. Like Yali, the charismatic New Guinean local politician who quizzed the author 25 years before the book was written wanting to know why Europeans developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea which had little cargo of theirs, I bought this book in a bid to understand why Africa and its inhabitants developed at a much slower pace than other continents. Was it a matter of fate? Or was the politically incorrect charge that Africans are innately inferior to their fairer skinned counterparts somewhat justified ? Jared Diamond makes a strong case for Geography's deterministic role in the evolution of societies. In other words, the rich societies of today simply won the geographical draft lottery (in terms of who got the largest continental pie/size, who got the most ideal conditions for farming, who got the most number of wild mammals suitable for domestication, and who got the widest variety of wild plant species ideal for agriculture) played over 13,000 years ago when modern man began to settle into village life in a few parts of the world. That decisive edge, reinforced over the last 13,000 years is what led to the emergence of an indomitable Europe that eventually came to lead the world due to its development of guns, germs, and steel. According to the Author, Eurasia got decisively lucky in more ways than one: The Late Pleistocene extinction decimated Eurasia's competitors by felling wild mammal species of most of North and South America and those of Africa that may have facilitated intensive farming instead of the hunter-gathering lifestyle which eventually became a big impediment to the development of rapidly evolving complex societies on those continents. Those extinctions left Eurasia with many more wild candidates for domestication than the Americas and Africas offered. Agriculture and Continental Size were huge enablers. Eurasia is twice as large as the next largest continent, Africa, and had a wide extensive landmass of fertile soil amidst a variety of wild life that were easily domesticated for animal herding and valuable crops that facilitated the development of intensive farming techniques that helped serve denser populations and formed the basis for the formation of complex organized societies. Denser populations tend to rise only under conditions of food production, populations served by food surpluses from intensive farming techniques were more likely to have non-farming specialists, technocrats, warriors and bureaucrats. In contrast, poorer societies such as hunter-gatherers without such advantages remained as hunter-gatherers living in bands which were far from ideal to produce crop surpluses available for redistribution or storage, and hence could not support and feed non-hunting craft specialists, armies, bureaucrats, and chiefs to enable them evolve complex societies. In turn, agriculture spawned lethal germs emanating from Eurasian's long advantageous exposure to domestic Animals which was as decisive in eliminating local populations in conquest as guns and steamboats were. As illustrated by the New world's conquest of almost 95 percent of the 20million American Indians; exposing the Indians to strains of germs the Indians had never been exposed to, and against which they therefore had neither immunity nor genetic resistance to. The development of writing was another essential agent in assisting the conquests of Eurasian Societies: by fostering the development of maps that were beneficial to sailors exploring new lands to conquer, by providing a new way of communicating and (through preserved records) inspiring later generations to conquest, writing played a crucial role in the course of civilization but could not have been possible without food production. Writing emerged independently only in the Fertile Crescent, Mexico, and China because those were precisely the first areas were food production arose in their respective hemispheres. I already told you that what brought me to this book was to understand why as an African, we've evolved rather slowly compared to everyone else? I got my money's worth somewhere in pg 399 where the author states that "the factor behind Africa's slower rate of Post Pleistocene development compared with Eurasia's is the different orientation of the main axes of thee continents. Like that of the Americas, Africa's major axis is north-south, whereas Eurasia's is east-west. As one moves along a north south axis, one traverses zones differing greatly in climate, habitat, rainfall, day length, and diseases of crops and livestock. Hence, crops and animals domesticated in one part of Africa had great difficulty in moving to other parts. In contrast crops and animals moved easily between Eurasian societies thousands of mile apart but at the same latitude and sharing similar climate and day lengths". In a nutshell, geography, and not biology, ultimately did us in. I found this book a bit of a slog to get through due to the author's interdisciplinary approach ( history, archaeology, evolutionary biology, sociology, cultural anthropology etc) which mirrors his career trajectory so far. One of the few bones I have to pick with the book, as so many other reviewers have already mentioned, is its lack of sources. I also thought the author strove, quite frequently, a bit too hard for political correctness in for example, sounding a bit patronizing to the plight of poor societies like mine. I admit it may amount to career suicide for a tenured professor to have done otherwise; but to my mind any reader who can't handle a little intellectual honesty no matter how inconvenient isn't ready to address the fundamental questions about the human condition. For some reason, the kindle version I purchased didn't have images due to copyright issues. A bit of a setback because I didn't have any maps handy to make sense of the strange locations that pop up at various points in this read and no thanks, I like to read with an internet connection as far from me as possible. Then lastly, there was the glossy treatment of why different parts within Eurasia developed differently which he addresses scantly in a later edition of the book. But GGS ultimately proved to be a great read for me, and highly recommended for anyone who wants a keener appreciation of the world we live in today. But be forewarned, you may never see the world the same way again which surely is a good thing.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2012

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