this shit reads like a 4th grade project but i had a lot of fun researching it so comment any things i did wrong so i can hopefully improve Why did the europeans and chinese prosper while the Americans and Africans failed to build and modernize even though they had the same amount of time?
Geography.
I like the geography theory since it's non negotiable, you can't say that moutains or forests is a 'racist conspiracy' since it's a blatant fact of our world.
Now, what even is geographical determism? It's the theory that where your civilization is built basically determisms where your going to end up civilization wise.
To build a civilization you need 4 things,
1) Prime, arable, defendable land
2) Rivers
3) A staple crop
4) A working animal
Now, by 10,000BC (the agricultural revolution) humans had already been everywhere except for some islands and frozen wastes
View attachment world-map-continents-oceans.webp
PART ONE, PRIME LAND.
Sadly, all land is not created equal. Some places are too cold and others too hot. Jungles like the amazon and the congo have decent temperatures but litterally every fucking deadly animal lives in those places, and even if you can fight off a tiger or two you can never fight off mosquitos and malaria. Beaches suck too since you can't grow food in them, and even if you did fish, you can never support a whole civilization off of chance, village sure, but never an empire. Now we're left with shurblands and plains with aren't too bad but since it's all flat your enemies can charge right in as well, so we need a defensive. Building your own wall is inefficent and takes way too much effort so our next best bet is natural defenses like hills and valleys. Deserts and Jungles are great for defense but they suck as previously stated, but nothing beats mountains and oceans. No competent leader would dare try to cross over one and even if they did half of their army wont even be alive to fight the battle.
So to review, you need flat rolling hills defended by mountains and the ocean.
Literally every successful civilization had these traits.
PART 2: RIVERS
Okay so let's look at our new map
But Land isn't the whole picture, you also need water and food! Animals need plants, plants need water, and people also need water so a steady supply of H20 is a must. People can't drink sea water so we have to resort to rivers, which constantly flow fresh water 24/7. You still want to live in the amazon? Just stay by the amazon! you still want to live in the sahara? Just stay next to the nile! If you control the rivers, you control the civilization. The 4 earlisest civilizations were next to a river, the Egyptians, the Harrapans, the Chinese and the Mesopotamians, and all of them survived to this day, right? WRONG! Only the chinese survived to this day! Why? Becuase they had an OP combination of defensible land + a river.
All 4 sides completely OK!
THE only other region on earth that compares to china is the Eastern US.
The Rockys to the west, the sonoran desert to the south, The mexican gulf and the atlantic to the south and east, and frozen canada in the north. They also have the Mississippi river. If i had to go back in time to pick a civilization, the eastern US and China are the perfect places to go.
FOOD
Defense and Rivers aren't the only thing the US and China share, they also both have a staple crop!
Having a staple crop is far more efficent then having a bunch of different crops since they all have different methods of preparing and growing them.
Europeans and Mesopatnia had wheat, the aztecs had corn, the northern americas had yams, the southern americans had potatos, the africans had sorgum and china had the most OP food of all, rice. Corn is pretty OP since it's the easiest to grow and high in calories but most of the world didn't have access to it yet. Rice became the most OP crop since you can grow it in fucking water, no need to deal with watering or defending from animals! Why waste time toiling in the fields for wheat when you can just throw some rice paddies and harvest the superior crop?
ANIMALS
Now, if the eastern US was so OP, why was there no American empire? It's because there was no working animals. North America had the bison and turkey but they didnt have corn, and Central america had Corn but no working animals. Without working animals they were far behind other societies since they actually had to work to do shit. Very slow and inefficent.
@GeckoBus @WorthlessSlavicShit thoughts?
