[cies]

I have a theory not listed here: harsh winters make a people calculative (and calculative people make more money).

If you can survive all year sleeping under a tree, you eventually end up with a different gene pool than in a place where you need to calculate how much grain you need to store for winter in order to feed you family.

Harsh winters kill people that cannot plan ahead. This, over time, changes the gene pool and the attitude toward planning.

[d_sem]

You're over indexing on the genetics impacts of these things over the cultural impacts.

[Gualdrapo]

As a colombian I feel like in current times that situation is pretty much the opposite - though I feel like most people here are "hot blooded", i.e. they're temperamental on many times they do not give critical thinking or learning stuff any value and take decisions on the moment.

On the other hand I reckon this feeling is happening a lot in "richer" countries. I just feel like though we gain political independence from Spain we are yet to gain "economical" independence. Add corruption and the same people ruling the country for more than 200 years and you got the current situation where kids in the northest part of the country were starving to death and at the same time some daddy's boys ask on r/Colombia or r/Bogota why the whole country does not have Netflix.

[dayjaby]

Not sure why this is being downvoted. Alexander von Humboldt did a similar statement in his "Buch der Begegnungen" where he compares and finds cultures from tropical areas to be more "lazy" as all the fruits just grow on their own without any human involved.

[foogazi]

For small settlements sure but not for civilizations: both Aztec and Incas had to invent ways to increase farm output and were still beholden to crops

North American cultures in harsher conditions were nomadic herders

[greazy]

It sounds like you haven't lived in the tropics. The heat exerts a different force than cold winters. Sure there's plenty of water and food (if you can find it), but where and how you sleep matters. For example in a rain forest you never sleep under a tree because they will randomly fall on you.

Weather can be chaotic and highly destructive and like winters, cyclone season will hit hard. Rain all the time sounds lovely until it rots everything. Food expires far quicker.

The tropics also gave rise to the best sea faring people; the polynesians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation

The gene pool comment is ignorance combined with misinformation. Our ancestors interbred with a number of hominins across the world and then with each other. Especially across asia-europe, everyone banged each other and other hominins.

To be honest your comment annoyed me a tad because I lived in the tropics and loved it. Wish I could go back. Wish the tropics had more jobs for me. Unfortunately my government doesn't spend enough.

[emmelaich]

> Weather can be chaotic ...

That's probably the difference. Seasons can be prepared for. Natural disasters no so much.

[cies]

I got this idea traveling. Going up the Himalaya from Bihar i saw major changes. I think that when I got the idea.