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In Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond claims that a large contributor to the disparity between Europe and the indigenous New World was due to the North-South a
by wavefunction 10y ago
In Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond claims that a large contributor to the disparity between Europe and the indigenous New World was due to the North-South aligned axis of the Americas versus the East-West major axis of Eurasia. Crops can often grow at different longitudes as long as their along the same latitude but the converse is not true.
Thus the crops in the Americas were more specialized regionally because the folks who cultivated them and potential adopters had little reason to make any effort to spread the crops and reach the widespread diversity of foodstuffs available in the Eurasian continent.
Obviously he lays out his other argued sources but this seemed to be a big one as far as something that encourages trade and interaction between civilizations.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoWouldn't a variety of crops also encourage trade? Get your winter yams here, in exchange for summer squash (or whatever.) I recall there being a mention made of the fact that South America doesn't have very many domesticatable animals.
- usrusr 10y agoParticularly none that were really suitable for transport. Good luck trading along the Andes with your turkey-carts. Another thing I seem to remember from that book is that we do have occasional evidence of various discoveries of the wheel in the Americas, it just never caught on due to lack of cart-pulling beasts. (skimmed the book: evidence of wheels in Mexico, but no Llamas north of the Darien gap) Besides, preindustrial transport did not happen anywhere on the scale required to transport bulk goods like base nutrients over the distance between latitudes of different biomes. Luxuries and spices, sure, but not basic foodstuff with low value per unit. Even the roman empire never really left their comfort zone of wheat-producing regions.
- wavefunction 10y agoThe other issue is the bottle-neck of the Isthmus of Panama. _All_ trade between North and South Americas would have needed to transit this corridor, unless some more complex system involving Caribbean island-hopping was developed.