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Interesting point. Reminds me of one of the major arguments in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steels as to why the Old World conquered the New and not vice-ve
by klenwell 9y ago
Interesting point. Reminds me of one of the major arguments in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steels as to why the Old World conquered the New and not vice-versa.
Eurasia is a "landscraper" (oriented longitudinally) allowing for easier trade and exchange of innovations (especially related to agriculture and animal domestication) along a broad expanse of land.
The Americas are a skyscraper (more latitudinal orientation) with greater diversity of climate and topology that impeded the spread of some innovations and technologies.
- jcranmer 9y agoJared Diamond's thesis (rather like I feel the skyscraper/landscraper thesis is) is quite overstated. The climatic zones running from Mesopotamia to China are quite varied, and there's rather little evidence for technology transfer between these two endpoints. By contrast, the climatic zone from the northern edge of the Valley of Mexico to the boreal forests in Canada is basically one smooth temperature gradient, and we do know of rather extensive trading and tech transfer in North America (particularly, the introduction of maize to the independently-developed agriculture quite revolutionized developments in eastern North America). Not to mention the fact that the Americas don't seem so far behind Eurasia the more we do the archaeology: Norte Chico is now dated to at least 3200-3500 BC, a date competitive with Ancient Egypt and not too far behind Sumeria in terms of developing civilization.