[logicchains]

>The class argues that a lot of the big changes we remember in human history came from environmental changes.

Of course it's going to argue that, it's an environmental studies class. But those environmental changes were global, while changes like the enlightenment and the industrial revolution only happened in a small number of countries that had the political and economic systems to support them.

[jkaplowitz]

Both statements could be right, no? The environmental changes could have been necessary (or greatly probability-increasing) for the human history changes but not by themselves sufficient to trigger those without the right societal context. Most changes like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution have multiple causes or prerequisites.

[dash2]

… And one of the others might have been literacy?

[coliveira]

> political and economic systems to support them

This is circular reasoning. How developed political and economic systems could arise before educational and economic development? They both rose at the same time.