[paulorlando]

This being a snapshot in time, how would the claim change if we looked at the past? Do the explanations fade if you look back in history at empires in hot parts of the world, like the Egyptian, Mauryan, Persian, Akkadian, Mesopotamian, Carthaginian, Songhain, Incan, Aztec, Mayan...

[nis0s]

The seat of civilization is in Mesopotamia, so no this hypothesis doesn’t exactly hold up. The cultural exchange and wars between the ancient eastern and western civilizations aided their evolution before colonization took place. People used to travel far east as well during these time periods, which spread cultural influence in a three-way direction.

Those societies which were further spread apart from this central region of cultural exchange, like many in Latin America, Africa, colder regions in North America and so on were less culturally developed by the time they met others or colonialists, that’s why you have funny things like the University of Oxford being older than the Incan empire.

There are many warm countries which aren’t poor, and the warm countries which are poor, are composed of people whose ancestors (meaning those who were there pre-colonialism and those who were there when borders were formed post-colonization) were spread out far from a region of central cultural exchange in the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and East Asia.

[AnotherGoodName]

I think the fact that the majority of the 'rich' nations population consisting of Europe and North America (Japan/SK/AU/NZ are a smaller population base) speaks to this.

You could just ask why those 2 regions are so rich right now and the answer i think has much to do with military dominance starting a few hundred years back.

The climate line seems to be artificially pushed by "Look the southern hemisphere below latitude -40 is as wealthy as europe/NA above latitude 40". There's literally <2million people below latitude -40... (that's the top of Tasmania, part of NZ and patagonia for reference) How can they suggest what they are suggesting without consideration of this? As in the data of "oh look southern hemisphere is rich near the poles too" is just based on a handful of people living there.

[abdullahkhalids]

Don't worry. In 20 years, people with no knowledge of history will be writing articles asking why are the richest countries those with some random fact that unites China and India.

Human societies, viewed as systems, have changes occurring over decades and centuries. Taking short snapshots will fool you about the nature of these systems.

[adolph]

> You could just ask why those 2 regions are so rich right now and the answer i think has much to do with military dominance starting a few hundred years back.

That doesn't seem as explanatory as much as it just pushes the explanation further away in time. How did Europe arrive at "military dominance starting a few hundred years back?" At which point we just start quoting Charles Mann and Jared Diamond and the more droll will make subtle remarks about how the North Americans' syphilis really did a number on the European monarchies.