Zar

Why were Eastern and Middle-Eastern empires (China, Muslim Empire) essentially technologically ahead of or equal to european peoples for certain time periods? Was it genetic then, but not now? What happened? Did their genetic advantage/equality just evaporate?

And also, not every immigration/emigration of people produces a wonderous empire or ruling/superior subgroup in their new land, do they? Sometimes they just...migrate.

Finally, when the people from Europe first landed in America, they struggled to survive in a place where the natives were quite adept and sometimes had to be helped by the natives, if I remember correctly. For this help, rather than just letting the newcomers starve, they of course were eventually annihilated.

Amen-Moses

LOL, it's just a pity you got fat, stupid and gullible as well!

Amen-Moses

Aerion

If you're implying that the United States has grown decatant in the last 50 to 100 years, I agree with you.

Aerion

Looking at this quote...

...and this quote...

...and this quote...

...and this quote from another thread ...
is a blatant obsession to prove me wrong. It is also treading very close to harrassment. Why are you so obsessive about proving me wrong?

You need to head down to the pub with a mate for a few Sheafs and take it easy for a while. This isn't a personal attack, mate. It's a sincere and polite request for you to calm down a little and back off on the obsessions.

seanie

Or more desperate.

It should maybe be pointed out that the bulk of people who emigrated to the US were extremely poor. They weren't all captains of industry. They were seeking to escape poverty, degradation, and starvation.

The same sort of conditions many in the third world face today.

So if you are going to posit special genetic or cultural traits as to why these people were so successful in the US you're gonna have to give some sort of explanation why these special genetic or cultural traits did them so little good in their home countries, where by and large they were at the bottom of the social and economic pile.

Aerion

I'm not suggesting that Americans are genetic super-humans. But here is an example to try and explain my point.

Lets say I wanted to breed a subbreed of dalmations without spots. I would go out and find say a dozen breeding pairs of dalmations that had relatively few spots. I would breed them and cull all of the offspring that have lots of spots and leaving all of those who have few spots. If I continued this practice of selective breeding long enough, eventually I would produce dalmations where most, if not all, did not have any spots.

Now suppose I had selected those same 12 breeding pairs and allowed only those 12 to mate only amongst themselves. But I never culled any that had lots of spots. The offspring of those 12 dalmations would still probably have on average fewer spots than dalmations taken from the general population of dalmations. The difference might be slight (like maybe only 5 to 10 spots) and it would only be an average. Probably slight enough that most people wouldn't even notice. But the difference would be there.

The last example is my theory on what happened with America in the early days. No, the "Industrious gene" difference isn't huge and by itself wouldn't make a big difference. But when taking in combination with all the other factors, it made a difference.

If as Gurdur suggested that the land itself was the reason then the native americans would have been a superpower long before the Europeans settled the Americas.


I think Elwood is right here on both counts. I think his "Cultural Work Ethic" point is another significant factor and probably has as much, if not more, to do with America as my genetic suggestion. I hadn't thought about this angle before. Thanks, Elwood!


There has been lots of research into whether behavior is a product of genes or environment. Unless there has been some new data I haven't seen, the general consensus is that both are factors in varying degrees depending on circumstances.


I also think whatever genetic benefit early Americans might have had is probably largely gone now. Too many immigrants coming here have a different set of priorites and backgrounds and the present culture has changed the dynamics.

Aerion

Those who immigrated probably did better than those who stayed behind to starve. That would have been the "Cull".

Amen-Moses

No I'm saying that if you think that the population of the US is somehow genetically superior then you are mad, the only thing driving innovation in the US is a constant supply (or brain drain as we call it) of new bodies from Europe and Asia. Those who can trace their families back more than a generation or two are fat, greedy, stupid and extremely insular.

Amen-Moses

seanie

Is this supposed to explain something?

Most emigrants to the US didn't have a pot to piss in. They were illiterate peasants. Certainly the Scots, Irish and Italians were.

If you're insisting that their success in the US has a significant genetic component, then you're gonna have to explain why these genes were so spectacularly unsuccessful in their home countries, where most of them were dirt poor.

The desperate of Europe undertook the difficulties and dangers of emigration. The rich, successful ones stayed where they were.

Monkeybot

Native Americans may have had the land... but what good is that when there's nothing to farm?

Europe was geographically close to, and heavily influenced by, the Fertile Crescent (thousands and thousands of years ago). The Fertile Crescent had an overwhelming number of grains (wheat, barley, etc.) and domesticable animals. Hence, it was easy for agriculture and livestock to spread throughout Europe, from Iran to Ireland, in a relatively short period of time. This gave rise to non-nomadic peoples, which in turn allowed for all the goodies that come with a sedentary society -- technology, writing, greater political complexity, etc. Additionally, the proximity to livestock caused numerous diseases in humans -- bad in the short term, but in the long term, giving Europeans much greater resistance to the common infections that would later kill off the Native Americans in droves.

Meanwhile, the Native Americans (and I'm including Central and South America here) were relatively isolated from each other. You had pockets in North America separated from pockets in Central America by a huge desert. In turn, the Central American Indians were separated from the great Incan civilization by the Andes Mountains. Their isolation was so extreme that some one civilization (the Mayans, I think, but I could be wrong) developed the wheel -- and the other civilizations never picked it up.

Unlike Europe, North America was not adjacent to any sort of fertile crescent. There were few large domesticable animals (buffalo in the north, llamas in the south) and few domesticable grain crops. Corn, beans and squash were the first real staple diet, and they were developed by the Central American Indians. It is no coincidence that two of the greatest Native American civilizations arose here -- the Aztecs and the Mayas. The kicker, however, is that the extreme latitudinal differences between the three groups made borrowing from the other cultures extremely difficult. For example, the North American Indians (located near the Mississippi, I believe) eventually imported corn from their Central American counterparts, but it was difficult to domesticate because of different weather, sunlight patterns, etc. etc.

The lack of domesticable animals, meanwhile, meant that few diseases were transmitted to humans, and the Native Americans didn't develop the monstrous immune system that the Europeans did. They didn't have the advantage of "germ warfare" -- which the Europeans did, intentional or no.

So even if, over North and South America, there had been a great number of grains and potentially domesticable animals... the extreme latitudinal differences and isolation of the different groups ensured that no one group got the benefit of them all. And since domestication was not feasible, a hunter-gatherer lifestyle was simply the most optimal choice available.

Africa, as I understand it, is similar; there's a wide range of climates, from the desert of the Sahara, to rainforests, to the Mediterranean climate of South Africa. Every new climate effectively halted the spread of domestic agriculture, even if only temporarily.

No, it doesn't. But America's suitability to Europe's bounty (grains, livestock, other crops) does.

Australia was even worse off than North and South America in terms of grains and livestock. For starters, there's a huge desert in the middle of the continent. That would probably hamper agricultural growth, no? Furthermore, IIRC, there were no suitable domesticable animals, and few if any suitable crops, either. Worse, Australia was effectively severed from the rest of the world, especially the southern parts (where, of course, some of the most suitable land for farming existed). So it would have been difficult to import crops from their neighbors and domesticate them. In short, the Aboriginal Australians may have had the land, but they didn't have the crops. You need both.

Yes, because in both cases, the land was suitable for European crops, allowing them to gain a foothold in those nations. (Not to mention a strategic interest.) Southeastern Australia and some parts of the U.S. have what's called a Mediterranean climate... so Mediterranean crops tend to do well there.

It's no coincidence that the Europeans haven't really "moved in and developed" places like the Amazon or the Arctic tundra the way the Native Americans have.

You also fail to take into account that as humans migrated out of Africa, it took them a while to get places. The Fertile Crescent was relatively close to Africa, and it was the first place to develop domestic agriculture. It would have been relatively easy for humans to get from Africa to Europe, certainly compared to getting from Africa to North America (via Siberia) and then South America; ditto for the Pacific islands and Australia. We're basically talking about a 1000-year headstart for Europeans, along with a jumpstart on plant and animal domestication.

See Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel for an extremely thorough treatment of this topic. (This is where most of my information comes from.)