[shiroiushi]

It would have been completely different: geography has been an enormous factor in human history and culture. Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" book makes the case that the main reason for Europe's historical success as a seat of civilization over other places is mainly due to geography: stable, warm-enough (but not too warm) climate with a very large amount of arable land for farming.

[delta_p_delta_x]

Guns, Germs, and Steel is not well-received by actual historians.

It cherry-picks and manipulates facts to make its Euro/Anglo-centric perspective work, and even attempts some Anglo-exceptionalism. It completely disregards the vast majority of human civilisation where Europe was—for lack of a better word—a decayed backwater.

Europe saw several civilisational collapses, including as recently as ~1500 years ago with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Six hundred years ago Europe was still reeling from the effects of the Black Death, and it took another five hundred for hygiene to be taken seriously by Europeans, which they had forgotten all about since the Romans.

By sheer population numbers, the various river systems South, Southeast, and East of the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau have been the most successful and productive human civilisations. Nearly half of humanity lives in and around these river valleys. (And it can be argued from a biological perspective that population quantity is the only factor contributing to 'success'). These civilisations have endured for significantly longer than the European.

It's an alright book to read with a fairly critical lens, but its claims should not be taken as gospel. There's something to be said about a slippery slope leading from the claims in that book to outright Übermensch/Untermensch racism.

[Y_Y]

What claim are you refuting? I've read the book, as well as several critical reviews and I don't understand what your point is.

I'll also echo your advice not to take that book (or any other) as gospel, nor to slide into racism.

[MrVandemar]

Completely different, but probably still full of the same basic wars, bigotry, tribalism, brutality and all the other shining facets of our basic human nature.

[shiroiushi]

Maybe, maybe not. Human history has been drastically shaped by geography, causing humans to leave wherever they first evolved and travel across the world, becoming by far the dominant species.

Perhaps with different geography, humans would have gone extinct long before figuring out how to make fire or the wheel.

[Y_Y]

I was wondering how difficult it might be to modify Earth's geography to ensure humans went extinct, while still having them evolve in the first place.

I think the answer is barely, if at all. Using the power of known population bottlenecks (e g. [0]) and chaotic dynamics we can say that any trivial change might lead to a brief existence for humanity. Specifically I'm thinking of something like Lotka-Volterra leading to Gambler's Ruin.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h...