Geographical Determinism

Do you accept the idea of Geographical Determinsim (i.e Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel) for the reason that Europe achieved technological advancement compared to say Sub Saharian Africa

What about China or India compared to Europe?

No, it's a limiting idea...it's also quite a political concept

many leftist have a problem with the idea that there was something "unique" about Europe or the West that allowed it to be achieved so Diamond propagated this inane theory without any logical consideration for other factors

like the fact Europe during the middle ages was developing a highly functional University system..among many other things

You posted this shit in Veeky Forums already.

But yeah Geographical determinism would certainly be a factor.

>muh leftists

wew laddie

Geographical determinism falls somewhat into the Narrative Fallacy

It tries too hard to fit certain facts into its structure, but conveniently ignores others

if we accept "Geographical Determinism" as the reason

why did only Western Europe develop and not Eastern Europe? isn't the geography similar?

>Plains, therefore decisive and brutal wars
>Turks, Mongols and other pests
>Bad access to sea
>Far from Rome/Greece

Hell, you've just pointed the best argument for geographic determinism.

the choosing of geographical placement is based on genetics, just like an intelligent strategy player won't put his cities in bad terrain, intelligent people won't stay in shit areas

Looks like list of excuses.

Nope, see
You cut off good access to the sea and navigable water ways, and transportation is absolute shit. If all of Europe was like Slovakia and Bellorussia, we'd still be in the stone ages.

Well, Russians managed to become world's 2nd strongest superpower, I don't see why would they need to excuse themselves for anything.

>isnt the geography similar

How do I know already that you're an Ameritard

Geographical Determinism works only in Hindsight. Where are all this predictive theories that could simulate what country would be more developed based on pure geography?

It's an important factor, but not the only one.

Also, nice cherrypicking with that picture. There were Europeans living in straw huts 2000 years ago and there are Africans living in skyscrapers today.

If geographical determinism was true then Western Europe would've been dominate from the beginning of time instead of being raped by the outside world from 400 AD to 1500 AD

yeah in South Africa which was mainly the "whitest' African nation

imagine that

A good argument for geographical determinism is India vs pre-colonial Australia.

Both are inhabited by essentially the same race (Australoid).

Yet the Indians managed to create one of the world's great civilizations and influence the world in profound ways through numerous philosophies, inventions, discoveries, religions, art styles, etc.

While the Abbos literally sat there for 40,000 years and barely managed to invent a boomerang.

> India
> Australoid

No and it's a harmful ideology since it hinders other theories of human development. For example, people long held that the Amazon couldn't hold sophisticated and urban societies, but archeology now largely disproves this, but people like Betty Meggers who was a proponent of this way of thinking hindered advancement in the study of Amazonian archeology. The same is true of Sir Eric Thompson who while similar to Meggers was important in his field of archeology (in his case the ancient Maya) also refused to accept the Maya had a syllabic writing system and that they wrote about more stuff beyond dates. Just look at the rough terrain of the Andes region, somehow they mangaed to overcome their terrain and built states and empires among the most advanced in the Americas.

Evolution has two parts: random mutations and environmental selection.

You either get lucky with mutations somehow or get lucky with your environmental factions. There is pretty much no other way around and historians are idiots doing worthless soft sciences.

Finally, someone who isn't retarded. Obviously geography won't be the sole factor in a civilization's success, but pretending it plays no role is just lying to yourself.

In the past we used to have environmental determinism, but this has been rejected. The current understanding generally focuses on geographic possiblism, there are certain constraints which are placed upon how a society can evolve based on its environment, but within those constraints there are a range of different possibilities.

In such regards, Europe and Asia definitely did have an advantage. They had, for "cradles of civilization" the Nile, Mesopotamia, Indus, and Yangtze/Yellow River. There could be trade and communication between these; obviously it isn't anything as vast as modern day trade, but paper is a good example of a good that spread west from China, so was gunpowder. By contrast if South Americans invented that, it would be unable to reach the North Americans as they simply didn't know about each other. Africa meanwhile, was only intensively settled recently.

Eurasia also had more crops and animals; there are some proposals that beans/maize/squash were a decent agricultural base and potatoes workable for the Incas, but they were heavily lacking in domesticated animals (Llamas/Alpacas being the only large ones, and only for the South Americans, they also had dogs, may some chickens, guinea pigs in South America and turkeys in North America too), and comparing that to the large amount of animals that the Eurasians had domesticated… the eurasians had oxen, cattle, horses, donkeys, mules (not a species in of their own right I know), pigs, water buffalo in Southeast Asia, goats, sheep, bees, messenger pigeons, ducks, camels, silkworms, yaks in some regions in Asia; the list is much larger, and while partially the huge extinctions in the Americas can be blamed, its also partially because Eurasia is just so much bigger that more survives. The same process plays out with food crops. Yeah, maybe the triplex and potatoes can do it alone, but having a whole bunch of crops enables ones for specific regions, and hence increases in productivity.

to deny it as a major factor is pants on head retarded

Europe didn't have the environment conducive to the concentration of efforts to trade prestige foods and expand into grain subsistence or animal husbandry in dense wadi systems. However it is highly suitable to both with an ease of adaptability given these grains thriving in middle eastern cool and wet winters or warm springs.

With several valleys maintaining more than mesopotamia's population given its rich bottom land soils.
But that isn't because the theory. Its because a number of factors were not known. Terra Preta changed the game in understanding Amazonian society as was the understanding of silvicultural systems in the Amazon.
Well no. Extensive and intensive management of avaliabe resources existed everywhere on earth and throughout Australia. However the safety nets and securities most of the world developed did not exist in most of Oz. However a complex aquaculture developed from lava rock and mass labor that was constructed by aboriginals in one area. However it took the right conditions to occur to make that happen.

Climate, race and geography do determine everything but the smallpox thi ng is bullshit.

Your point is retarded because the argument is that Africa had an abundance of resources and therefore didn't need to advance technologically to survive. Europe and Asia took millennia of hard work and cultivation to become viable for sedentary life on a large scale, they were "shit" areas until the people living there changed it.

The balkans have some of the most ancient cities/proto-cities in Yurop mate. Heck, the Vinca symbols, if they were an alphabet (and they look like they could be one) would be the most ancient one in the world, pre-dating the Mesopotamian more than a thousand years..

I think geography determines the evolutionary pressures that infuence the genetic development of humans. Extreme geography does put a limit on what humans naturally can achieve. However the current year effects are some races have evolved over thousands of years to live in civil societies (Eurasians) and some have not (much of subsaharan Africa, Australian Aboriginals) this results in higher average genetic IQs among people from places civilization has been longer.

How does this theory account for the fact that China/India had gunpowder and didn't subjugate the entire world for more than half a millennium?

>It's an important factor, but not the only one.
YES HOLY SHIT THIS
Everybody's getting so worked up over this shit like it must be one or the other, Diamond must be vindicated or a hack, how about we all just agree to the obvious fact that OF COURSE geography will influence shit but it's ALSO CLEARLY not the only factor.

Why is this so hard for everyone? Is it just because this is the argument that's in vogue for the historical community right now?

Well the idea at least for China is that because most of the time it was united under an emperor and so one bad emperor could stop all progress at a whim as apposed to Europe where because of the different peninsulas you had many different empires competeing with one another so one king couldn't stop all progress on the continent like a Chinese emperor could. Doesn't explain India.

aren't you the same person who will also scream how africa didn't have an abundance of resources while europe and asia had?

which one is it, are they genetically inferior, or did they become inferior through the environment?

pick 1

No I wasn't you strawmanning mongoloid.

bait image thread?

this is the obvious logical connection that some people seem to be unable to make it baffles me.

I think it has a valid place in the discourse, but it has the possibility of laying too heavy an emphasis on the determinism part.

Geography as a significant factor is definitely worth considering, and I think determinists writing their books still provides good arguments even if you don't buy how much weight they place on them.

Phenotype = Genotype + Enviroment

The same applies to societies. Genotype being the people that compose them

>Veeky Forums will never discuss the Annales School by name
>it will never pull up the volumes and volumes of historiographical literature about the Annales School to help clarify and defend its points
>it will always just be references to not-historian Jared Diamond and his lack of historical rigor and other bait

I hate this board

>Your point is retarded because the argument is that Africa had an abundance of resources and therefore didn't need to advance technologically to survive. Europe and Asia took millennia of hard work and cultivation to become viable for sedentary life on a large scale, they were "shit" areas until the people livi

da fuq is that