[namaria]

Where would this cultural specialty sit? We're all the same naked apes everywhere. Culture develops on the resources available. The human particles are too homogeneous for a group of special human behaviors to cause development. It is much more likely that the overall configuration of economic forces to cause the storms of extra value falling somewhere to give rise to the development and following cultural assertiveness.

Kinda like the rain forest. It's the global rain patterns that cause them. It's not that the rain forests have a special rain attracting power.

[FredPret]

It’s the opposite of a rain forest in every interesting way.

Development springs from us, it doesn’t appear out of the sky like rain.

Having personally experienced the humans in various places, I’m astonished at how differently people see and engage with the world. The difference in outcome, however, is all too predictable.

[namaria]

No, it's not special people that develop civilization. Civilization development is a higher order phenomenon that doesn't depend on personalities. The Whig narrative that special personalities drive development is a post hoc explanation with no basis in evidence.

[jacobr1]

The narratives around how such cultural traits evolve is not clear, and I agree are unlikely to be the post-hoc rationalization of "Great Men" setting them up.

Yet there do seem to be some traits that enable more "success" in at least something close to industrial, market-oriented societies. For example having a high-trust or risk-tolerant cultural values seems to have some success correlations.