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Theres a fascinating book called "Guns, Germs and Steel" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Stee
by jamii 18y ago
Theres a fascinating book called "Guns, Germs and Steel" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) which attempts to explain why Eurasia was a dominant force for almost the entire history of civilisation, despite that fact that humans evolved in Africa.
The main idea is that Eurasia had a massive advantage in farmable crops (that is crops which were amenable to farming after a small number of mutations) and domesticable animals large enough to replace manual labour. In addition, the climatic differences across Eurasia are smaller than in Africa or the Americas so domesticated species were useful over a larger area.
Agriculture supports higher population densities (larger armies) which in turn leads to specialisation (guns and steel) and highly evolved germs to which the local population is resistant (during Spanish colonisation of
Whether or not you agree with the specific ideas its amazing that its even possible to consider the question and produce an answer that is, at least in part, empirically falsifiable.
- olifante 18y agoProbably the best non-fiction book I read in the last 10 years. It puts forward many reasoned arguments for the Eurasian historical supremacy (the Guns, Germs and Steel of the title), but as you say, the crux of it is that Eurasia is the continent with the largest contiguous area of similar climate. In other words, Eurasia is wide, while North America is narrow, and South America and Africa are both tall and narrow, resulting in very large climatic diversity, and smaller ecosystems adapted to each of those climates.