guns, germs, and steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: A National Geographic Presentation looks very interesting.
Tuesday, July 12, 9 p.m. CHANNEL 15 (KPBS/Channel 15)

Based on Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, 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.

Inspired by a question put to him on the island of Papua New Guinea more than thirty years ago, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to understand the roots of global inequality.

• Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet?
• Why didn't the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead?
• Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East?
• Why did farming never emerge in Australia?
• And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?

As he peeled back the layers of history to uncover fundamental, environmental factors shaping the destiny of humanity, Diamond found both his theories and his own endurance tested.

The three one-hour programs were filmed across four continents on High Definition digital video, and combinied ambitious dramatic reconstruction with moving documentary footage and computer animation. They also include contributions from Diamond himself and a wealth of international historians, archeologists and scientists.