[swombat]

The Roberts explanation is subsumed by the Diamond explanation.

More fragmentation meant more competition. This helped ensure that states which, like China, might have sub-optimal belief systems (like "it's not worth trying to explain things") were outcompeted and conquered by states that did. Similarly, states with markets that were more free outcompeted those that were less free, and so the innovation spread. The Dutch invented the modern stock market and the public company, and ruled the world for 100 years with that, but soon enough that spread to the UK, and then rest of the western world, and gave them all a huge competitive advantage compared to countries that didn't have that.

And all that comes from the fragmentation. No need to postulate cultural differences - the cultural advantages come out of the fragmentation.

[WalterBright]

N & S America civilizations were quite fragmented, as well as African ones.

[swombat]

Yes but, as Diamond argues, they didn't have large enough animals to domesticate because large american mammals that hadn't co-evolved with humans were exterminated in about 1000 years when the Americas were colonised by humans about 11k years ago.

Not having cows and pigs and horses is a huge disadvantage.

[WalterBright]

Yes, I did read his book, and know about his argument about domesticated animals. That lack didn't prevent the Aztecs and Mayans from building an empire of stone buildings.

They did have moose and deer and llamas and bears and goats and bison. I don't know if there's any proof they can't be domesticated given enough generations, time and patience. Wolves and foxes can be domesticated.

The Finns domesticated reindeer.

[swombat]

The Aztecs and Mayas built an empire of stone buildings, sure. And they were still proudly building their stone buildings in the 1500s, almost 7000 years after the pyramids.

Lack of plough animals doesn't extinguish the human creative spirit, it just slows it down a lot.

It is curious why bison were not domesticated. I did a bit of research and could not find a clear reason (some suggestions that maybe Aurochs lived in forests and smaller herds, and that may have made them easier to domesticate... but that seems weak).

I'm wondering how much is due to what I'd call the Harari perspective, in Homo Deus - that Eurasians also invented the "god-centric worldview package" that shifted the view of the world from a more animistic perspective (where all beings share the world and so treating animals in the absolutely horrific ways that domestication and agriculture requires is just unthinkable, since they are seen as other beings sharing the world with us) to the "gods and humans" perspective (where god created humanity, and then every other being is just subservient and lacks a soul and therefore can be exploited, murdered, treated like goods, etc).

Mesoamerican religions, despite all the human sacrifice, did see animals and plants as intrinsically valuable and spiritually significant. Native Americans in the North definitely did that too (and they had more exposure to bisons). That would perhaps have led them not to seek to domesticate animals.

It is curious (to me) that no culture emerged that even tried, though (that culture would likely have outcompeted everyone else).

[worik]

And Africa has east west orientation too

Jarrad had to make North Africans "honary europeans" to make,e his theories work

[amateurCoder5]

Africa doesn't have East-West orientation, it extends across the tropics and into the North and South temperate regions.

[worik]

Look at a map

It has a huge east west extent

https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/1...

[haroldp]

You are being very silly. North Africa is oriented East-West in a way that allowed it to participate in the easy exchange of flora, fauna, culture and technology with the greater East-West zone that extends from Portugal to China. Saharan Africa is dominated by the Sahara Desert, which is a huge barrier to exchange. Sub-Saharan Africa is oriented mainly North-South, in comparison with the greater Mediterranean exchange region the Diamond outlines.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Eq...

[swombat]

There's a lot of silliness in this comments section. I guess it's what the article is talking about.

[worik]

Africa has more East West in the temperate zones than Europe. Africa has two of them.

It has North South as well