What was Yali's question in Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond?

In the
book : The Fates of Human Societies, authorargues that some civilizations
acquired technology and power more rapidly than others not because of any inherent genetic
superiority but rather due to their geographical locations and other environmental factors. As
Diamond explains in the book'scalled "Yali's Question," the inspiration for the book
came from a question posed to him during an hour-long walk in New Guinea with a local politician
named Yali.

At the time, Diamond was working as a biologist and studying the
evolution of birds. They talked about birds and then about New Guinean politics. Yali eventually
posed the question that became the basis of Guns, Germs, and
Steel:

Why is it that you white people
developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of
our own?

By "cargo" Yali was referring to the
material goods that white colonizers brought to New Guinea such as clothing, steel axes,
matches,...