| bigjon said: Another topic to add to this why has there there never been an all black successful civilization? I mean had the ancient African built a great empire and subjugated the Europeans it would all look different now. My theory is civilized development is tied to external requirements. If a tribal hunter gatherer society is adequate than you never advance. (For instance, I live in Hawaaii and I can see why they never modernized, it's perfect all year round) The earliest civilians evolved around flood plains(Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus River) in order to properly use the limited resources people were forced to work together. Then as people populated temperate climates learning how to essentially survive the winter pushed people toward technological advances. None of these scenarios existed in Africa or even the Amazon. |
This is a popular leftist rationalization for the apparent inequality among historical groups (notably expounded in Germs, guns & steel). However, as I pointed out before, the hypothesis doesn't preclude biological factors, instead it actually suggests a mechanism whereby we would expect biological differences to be created. Eg if Europeans needed planning and more sophisticated technology to survive, then that pressure would result in the more intelligent members of European societies having a reproductive advantage, and we would thus expect the population to become,on average, more intelligent. Absent these pressures, or given different pressures that instead emphasized other traits, we would expect different genetic shifts. Therefore, while environment can explain historical inequities, there is every reason to believe that those differences are now expressed in the genetic code of these various populations regardless of environment.
