Jake

Idle Thumbs 197: What Happened To Us

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No one has photoshopped up the Keighley/Pagan Min thing yet. I am disappoint, y'all.

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Interesting things about quinine, the first European treatment for malaria: it's what gives tonic water its flavour. Also, the threat of malaria was one of the big things that prevented widespread European of settlement of Africa and Southeast Asia. Once quinine was developed, European powers were able to accelerate colonization.

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I totally understand why they didn't want to bring it up because it's definitely something outside of justin's control, but it might've been nice to hear them all discuss the idea of review scores when they were talking about justin's 7 for grim fandango. the whole part where he mentions having difficulty quantifying his review - why does it have to be this way! because now he feels like he has to apologise for his 7 because of the connotations the number has, not because of the way he actually felt about the game, which has even been echoed by people who love it dearly. again, the answer is probably business related. a number resonates quickly and easily with the majority. sucks though!

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I totally understand why they didn't want to bring it up because it's definitely something outside of justin's control, but it might've been nice to hear them all discuss the idea of review scores when they were talking about justin's 7 for grim fandango. the whole part where he mentions having difficulty quantifying his review - why does it have to be this way! because now he feels like he has to apologise for his 7 because of the connotations the number has, not because of the way he actually felt about the game, which has even been echoed by people who love it dearly. again, the answer is probably business related. a number resonates quickly and easily with the majority. sucks though!

 

For sure.  I remember when GFW was still a magazine as an April Fool's day joke they decided they weren't going to assign scores to anything, then they realized they actually really liked doing that & that a half page review of something could communicate more than any 1-10 integer could. People got real mad about it and they eventually had to switch back to including a score & I'm sure sites/publications before them were battling about this too. 

 

I know I'm guilty of scrolling past and looking at just a score, but it's almost always for a game I wasn't interested in anyway, but I think will be a point of conversation for others.

 

(Personally, I'm with Justin on the 7, having no nostalgia for the game. I think the complaints he raised were very valid and I think Broken Age Pt 1 does a really good job of avoiding them. What did that get Double Fine? A bunch of gamer babies complaining that it was too easy & short, and because it was too easy to those steeped in 'Adventure game' logic those people burned through it very quickly. I always knew what I was doing and why I was doing it in Broken Age which was not true for me in GF.)

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know I'm guilty of scrolling past and looking at just a score, but it's almost always for a game I wasn't interested in anyway, but I think will be a point of conversation for others.

 

Yeah I'll do that exact same scroll-to-the-end thing on games I know nothing about. If the score is high (or very low) then I'll take the time to go back and read it. I think it's worthwhile for a review to have something, a score or whatever, that indicates to the reader "Hey this is worth looking into!" Joystiq (RIP) was going that direction with some sort of excellence award. But people want an arbitrary metric to point to and say their favorite game is objectively the best. Bleh.

 

Anyway I thought this was a good 'cast. Justin's Destiny observations were interesting...a lot of the discussions I've heard boil down to people saying it's awful but they can't stop playing without providing any insights into what's actually compelling about it (or awful). And of course the theme song was great. All guest hosts should be required to provide the opening harmonies.

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Regarding malaria, I've taken the prophylactic on several trips overseas. The first pill, taken in Africa, made me hallucinate one night that there was a local dude in full ethnic regalia hanging out in my closet. I had to run my hand through him a few times to assure myself he wasn't real. The second pill, taken in S.E. Asia, made my skin turn lobster red after a couple hours in the sunlight.

Was totally worth it though.

 

I was lucky, but my wife reacted strongly to it at first. She felt very ill and when she went to the restroom it sounded like all of her insides had been liquified and were ejected out of two ends. That happened during our honeymoon, in Madagascar (south of Tulear), a long and bumpy ride away from the next hospital. She got better about 36 hours later.

 

I forgot the names, but you have the choice between at least two malaria suppressors. The cheapest had the possible side effect of making you depressed. We decided not to go with that for this special occasion :)

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I think basically every response I have to this episode involves Guild Wars 2 somehow. I'm not obsessed, honestly. 

 

It's just, well, the idea of it being difficult to actually have people be social and do things for each other, or have moments of discovery that people are constantly trying to rush through so they don't keep others waiting, and how GW2 has built its PvE so that players never have a reason to resent other players being present, not least because they can revive you if you die with an action that's just frictionless enough. The design of a game really influences its community.

 

And then the bit about how AAA games get coverage because it's assumed that the entire audience is interested in that, and then it's basically editor choice, and how Polygon's the only major site that really follows GW2 and that a lot of that decision is based on the preferences of the writers. It's weird that a lot of writers will talk about how the MMO space is moribund, and they'll list off as examples a half-dozen very samey games that all tried to make World of Warcraft and failed and not the ones that have been successful because they've done something different.

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Interesting things about quinine, the first European treatment for malaria: it's what gives tonic water its flavour. Also, the threat of malaria was one of the big things that prevented widespread European of settlement of Africa and Southeast Asia. Once quinine was developed, European powers were able to accelerate colonization.

 

This is a classic example I like to use with students when talking about colonialism.  A lot of my students carry some notions about the natural (or environmental dominance) of Europe of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  Most people are famailar with this argument in the form of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germ and Steel.  However, the quinine example is interesting because it showed that colonialism actually relied on indigenous technical and environmental knowledge to succeed. This knowledge was globalized via colonialism and essential to the colonial project.  Without the discovery of quinine in Lima the colonialism of Africa would not have been possible.  Similarly, without the colonialism of Africa the colonies of the Americas could not have succeeded because they brought labor in the form of slave sand technical knowledge about agriculture (e.g. African slaves knew how to grow rice and their captors didn't).  When we look at the actual practices of colonialism, the story becomes far more complicated than guns, germs, and steel.  Diamond forgot about the power of knowledge and how it radically changes the relationship between nature and society.  The malaria which Diamond argues prevented the development of Africa also would have made them impossible to conqueror (beyond the small European port cities) if it weren't for knowledge taken from the Americas.  The contextual historical explanations always buck the easy environmental narratives that capture our imagination.

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Yeah I'll do that exact same scroll-to-the-end thing on games I know nothing about. If the score is high (or very low) then I'll take the time to go back and read it. I think it's worthwhile for a review to have something, a score or whatever, that indicates to the reader "Hey this is worth looking into!" Joystiq (RIP) was going that direction with some sort of excellence award. But people want an arbitrary metric to point to and say their favorite game is objectively the best. Bleh.

 

Eurogamer recently "changed" to a 3 point "Essential"/"Recommended"/"Avoid" scale. And I put changed in scare quotes since the 10 point scale as pretty much always been a three point scale (at least in my head): 1-6 = Avoid, 7-8 = Probably OK if flawed and 9-10 = Great. Is there anyone who draws a finer distinction? 

 

Anyway I thought this was a good 'cast. Justin's Destiny observations were interesting...a lot of the discussions I've heard boil down to people saying it's awful but they can't stop playing without providing any insights into what's actually compelling about it (or awful). And of course the theme song was great.

 

Destiny is basically the NASCAR of video games. Taken at a distance, it seems bafflingly crass and simplistic yet, somehow, incomprehensible. But if you give it a chance and make an effort to understand it, you'll be blown away by how perfectly it captures what is enjoyable about the things it does, even with its apparent dearth of novelty compared to similar offerings. It also doesn't help that its perceived audience is composed of slack jawed simpletons and corporate dupes. 

 

Whenever people talk about how "awful" Destiny is, it typically means they don't like the story telling and they think there isn't enough "content". And when they enjoy playing a game for 60+ hours without those things, they assume they must be getting tricked. Or, they are using the same flawed reasoning Gators use when attacking indie games for their use of funds: Destiny cost a gorillian, briazillian dollars but it isn't better at every other thing that every other game that costs less does and is therefore bad.

 

That isn't to say that Destiny can't be improved. Getting upgrade materials has always been a chore but allowing you to buy them with vanguard and crucible marks has basically removed the need for hot moon loops to collect helium.

 

It certainly isn't the irredeemable mess people (who don't play it) seem to think it is. 

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Destiny isn't awful, and far be it for me to guess their original intentions, but it feels like storytelling stuff has been cut. I mean why do you even get Claudia Black to do a voice when the sum total of your interaction with her character is pretty much nil.

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Yeah the story was definitely cut way, way down, which is a shame because it's clear they put a lot of thought into the world building. The whole game is littered with signs of cut content. The aforementioned high profile voice actors that do nothing, factions that are glorified vendors, locations that are completely unused (the Reef), multiple player character races that have absolutely zero difference narrative differences between them, a totally nonfunctional clan system, and the list goes on. But what it does do it does really well. I give it a 7.

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This is a classic example I like to use with students when talking about colonialism.  A lot of my students carry some notions about the natural (or environmental dominance) of Europe of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  Most people are famailar with this argument in the form of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germ and Steel.  However, the quinine example is interesting because it showed that colonialism actually relied on indigenous technical and environmental knowledge to succeed. This knowledge was globalized via colonialism and essential to the colonial project.  Without the discovery of quinine in Lima the colonialism of Africa would not have been possible.  Similarly, without the colonialism of Africa the colonies of the Americas could not have succeeded because they brought labor in the form of slave sand technical knowledge about agriculture (e.g. African slaves knew how to grow rice and their captors didn't).  When we look at the actual practices of colonialism, the story becomes far more complicated than guns, germs, and steel.  Diamond forgot about the power of knowledge and how it radically changes the relationship between nature and society.  The malaria which Diamond argues prevented the development of Africa also would have made them impossible to conqueror (beyond the small European port cities) if it weren't for knowledge taken from the Americas.  The contextual historical explanations always buck the easy environmental narratives that capture our imagination.

 

Hear, hear.

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This is a classic example I like to use with students when talking about colonialism.  A lot of my students carry some notions about the natural (or environmental dominance) of Europe of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  Most people are famailar with this argument in the form of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germ and Steel.  However, the quinine example is interesting because it showed that colonialism actually relied on indigenous technical and environmental knowledge to succeed. This knowledge was globalized via colonialism and essential to the colonial project.  Without the discovery of quinine in Lima the colonialism of Africa would not have been possible.  Similarly, without the colonialism of Africa the colonies of the Americas could not have succeeded because they brought labor in the form of slave sand technical knowledge about agriculture (e.g. African slaves knew how to grow rice and their captors didn't).  When we look at the actual practices of colonialism, the story becomes far more complicated than guns, germs, and steel.  Diamond forgot about the power of knowledge and how it radically changes the relationship between nature and society.  The malaria which Diamond argues prevented the development of Africa also would have made them impossible to conqueror (beyond the small European port cities) if it weren't for knowledge taken from the Americas.  The contextual historical explanations always buck the easy environmental narratives that capture our imagination.

Two things. First, this is a great post.

 

Second, to the bolded: Oh god is that where Mike Huckabee got the idea for his latest book's title? "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy"

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Second, to the bolded: Oh god is that where Mike Huckabee got the idea for his latest book's title? "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy"

I think Huckabee's book is referring to "God, Guns, Guts, and Glory," the traditional schoolboy mnemonic for how the conquest of the New World happened. I can't say for sure, but Diamond seems to have been playing on the same.

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I find it a little weird ewokskick's argument is presented in opposition to Guns, Germs and Steel - far as I remember, Diamond only argues that the initial advantage comes from geographic factors. What comes after that is out of scope, mostly because he's more interested in taking down the idea of European genetic superiority than he is in explaining the broad sweep of human history.

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Personally I want Destiny to suck so I don't have to be sad about the PC being left out of the Destiny party.

 

Though I still strongly suspect that somewhere a little further down the line of the franchise PC users will be able to pick up either Destiny 2, if that's how they do things, or perhaps a bundled version of Destiny with all the DLC. I mean, it's 2015. PC may still not have the sales presence that consoles do (at least on available metrics), but it's a much more vital presence than it's been in the past and you leave a lot of money on the table by ignoring it.

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I find it a little weird ewokskick's argument is presented in opposition to Guns, Germs and Steel - far as I remember, Diamond only argues that the initial advantage comes from geographic factors. What comes after that is out of scope, mostly because he's more interested in taking down the idea of European genetic superiority than he is in explaining the broad sweep of human history.

 

I don't know how exactly to respond to this without giving a kind of a history/genealogy of the ideas in Diamond's book so bare with me if your interested in why environmental determinism isn't as subversive as you are making it out to be.

 

The idea of of racial superirority in geography was never based on genetics, but on environmental determinism.  If you go back to American Ellen Churchill Semple, she argued that harsh environments made for less civilized societies.  A similar argument was made by Ratzel a German geographer whose ideas influenced the Nazis.  Even McKinder, famous as the godfather of British geopolitics argued for an environmental determinism of sorts (he argued that central asia was the "geographic pivot of history"  and that controling it would establish Britain as the global hegemon).  In all three cases, the environmental dominance of Europe was taken as a given and need to control more land was implicit in their theories.  While none of them believed in inherent genetic racial differences, they all believed in European superiority and their ideas were used to justify colonialism.  If true civilization wasn't possible in the harsh environments of Africa and Asia then the only way to administer it would be through European control.

 

Jared Diamond is also drawing on environmental determinism in his book.  He argues that things like the shape of the continent or climate gives Europeans an inherent geopolitical advantage.  I think the quinine example shows how that view is simplistic because it ignores how advantages and disadvantages are context dependent.  That is, society and nature are co-produced through social and technological relationships.  That is, with the quinine case colonialism is creating the conditions for itself to succeed by appropriating indigenous technologies.  In other words, the advantage of disadvantage of any given environmental condition isn't set in stone, but produced between a combination of social relationships.  In that sense, he leaves out that fact that European societies dominance was in large part due to the moral failure that was colonial politics.

 

So why does it matter that Jared Diamond draws on environmental determinism?  Well, I think that the main reason I care is that a part of conclusion is that stable and powerful societies are in wet-er cllimates.  I have a problem with that and its implied political implications. Firstly, that has shades of the Euro-centrism of colonial era and we need to be critical of those stories.  If we told the same story 700 years earlier the dry climates and pastoral lifestyle was the source of the mongolian dominance and and an advantage in setting up complex trade networks rather than a disadvantage.  Secondly, something like 60% of the world's population currently lives in some form of dry-land climate (arid or semi-arid zones).  In the Africa and Asia these civilizations have often been pastoral rather than settled.  These livelihoods are especially attuned to the condition of those environments.  They don't degrade land or require water in an environment that brings little in naturally.  However, all accross the world today there is a great effort (largely driven by the West starting with colonialism) to settle pastoral populations and make them farm cereal grains.  The major drive of this is the belief that modern societies have to rely on settled agriculture.  Unfortunately, settled agriculture in dry climates requires either the mining of ground water or costly and destructive dam placement.  Additionally, it degrades soils and requires signficant chemical inputs.  The market implications are also severe, it causes former pastorialists to be more vulnerable to famine because their ability to eat is now tied to global market prices for the grains they are farming.  If you look at the source of much of sub-saharan hunger it is ironically tied to the drive for agriculture.  This is also politically difficult and in the background of many conflicts (e.g. Boko Haram in Nigeria).  Long story short, Diamond's story implies things about the way we should live in our environment that I disagree with and think we can see failing all over the world.

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I don't know how exactly to respond to this without giving a kind of a history/genealogy of the ideas in Diamond's book so bare with me if your interested in why environmental determinism isn't as subversive as you are making it out to be.

 

Oh no, that's fine! Thanks for another informative post.

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ewokskick, on 16 Feb 2015 - 12:14, said:

I don't know how exactly to respond to this without giving a kind of a history/genealogy of the ideas in Diamond's book so bare with me if your interested in why environmental determinism isn't as subversive as you are making it out to be.

The idea of of racial superirority in geography was never based on genetics, but on environmental determinism. If you go back to American Ellen Churchill Semple, she argued that harsh environments made for less civilized societies. A similar argument was made by Ratzel a German geographer whose ideas influenced the Nazis. Even McKinder, famous as the godfather of British geopolitics argued for an environmental determinism of sorts (he argued that central asia was the "geographic pivot of history" and that controling it would establish Britain as the global hegemon). In all three cases, the environmental dominance of Europe was taken as a given and need to control more land was implicit in their theories. While none of them believed in inherent genetic racial differences, they all believed in European superiority and their ideas were used to justify colonialism. If true civilization wasn't possible in the harsh environments of Africa and Asia then the only way to administer it would be through European control.

Jared Diamond is also drawing on environmental determinism in his book. He argues that things like the shape of the continent or climate gives Europeans an inherent geopolitical advantage. I think the quinine example shows how that view is simplistic because it ignores how advantages and disadvantages are context dependent. That is, society and nature are co-produced through social and technological relationships. That is, with the quinine case colonialism is creating the conditions for itself to succeed by appropriating indigenous technologies. In other words, the advantage of disadvantage of any given environmental condition isn't set in stone, but produced between a combination of social relationships. In that sense, he leaves out that fact that European societies dominance was in large part due to the moral failure that was colonial politics.

So why does it matter that Jared Diamond draws on environmental determinism? Well, I think that the main reason I care is that a part of conclusion is that stable and powerful societies are in wet-er cllimates. I have a problem with that and its implied political implications. Firstly, that has shades of the Euro-centrism of colonial era and we need to be critical of those stories. If we told the same story 700 years earlier the dry climates and pastoral lifestyle was the source of the mongolian dominance and and an advantage in setting up complex trade networks rather than a disadvantage. Secondly, something like 60% of the world's population currently lives in some form of dry-land climate (arid or semi-arid zones). In the Africa and Asia these civilizations have often been pastoral rather than settled. These livelihoods are especially attuned to the condition of those environments. They don't degrade land or require water in an environment that brings little in naturally. However, all accross the world today there is a great effort (largely driven by the West starting with colonialism) to settle pastoral populations and make them farm cereal grains. The major drive of this is the belief that modern societies have to rely on settled agriculture. Unfortunately, settled agriculture in dry climates requires either the mining of ground water or costly and destructive dam placement. Additionally, it degrades soils and requires signficant chemical inputs. The market implications are also severe, it causes former pastorialists to be more vulnerable to famine because their ability to eat is now tied to global market prices for the grains they are farming. If you look at the source of much of sub-saharan hunger it is ironically tied to the drive for agriculture. This is also politically difficult and in the background of many conflicts (e.g. Boko Haram in Nigeria). Long story short, Diamond's story implies things about the way we should live in our environment that I disagree with and think we can see failing all over the world.

I read that book a while ago so I'm...probably really really misinformed about a lot of things (I'm also not an anthropology or history person in any right so feel free to shred my post up). Also this is all coming from scattered readings and faded memories of AP World History so please take it all with an industrial pinch of salt.

I seem to recall that the argument was that environmental factors that led to the specific western colonial motivation were only advantageous in that the results gave European powers a predilection to adapt and evolve. One of the arguments I remember was that the close proximity and diversity of consolidated nation-units (which form because of the political structure enabled by surplus farming) made competing and adapting against neighboring, often hostile nation-units fairly frequent.

This was the result of fertile but limited agrarian resources and non-contiguous spaces, and acts against monolithic dogma of technology and military. Western political culture and military around the age of discovery is not monolithic, and its only internal similarity is its agility. If the only advantage that nation-states in the west had was this abstract notion of abundance and technological superiority, the Roman empire might've lasted a couple hundred years or more. It didn't partly because it overextended, couldn't mutate its once adaptive military culture to new conditions, and held onto an antiquated and disadvantageous political system.

The specific economic and geographical conditions that enabled organized nation-states were only instrumental to the development of a flexible, competitive, and atomized economic and political culture. It is context dependent in that this is but one way in which this is possible (your example of Mongolian dominance is a really cool instance of an adaptable and powerful society not based on bureaucracy or surplus farming), and I seem to remember that Jared Diamond hit upon that in the book but maybe didn't emphasize enough, probably because the first few chapters were admittedly really really focused on the differences in natural abundance and agrarian superiority between the West and the rest of the world.

The organization of competing nation-states also likely gave way to the morally abhorrent justification of expansion. If you try to expand an economy that's based on limited domestic diversity and relies on out-competing your neighbors, gaining trade superiority via colonizing areas with abundant non-european resources is essential. The western styled sedentary specialization/bureaucracy economy that Diamond outlines in the book and that Peter Stearns writes about in his textbooks is not actually sustainable as population increases, and so requires expansion to support itself, which I see as a huge disadvantage rather than an advantage. The way of life itself is not what fueled western "dominance" but the mindset it created. It doesn't exempt western powers from moral scrutiny or say that domination of non-Western civilizations was "meant to happen" (which is an interpretation I see a lot of this kind of thing), but it provides background on the specific twisted warmongering brainwaves that allowed it to happen.

Anyway I might be giving Diamond too much credit, but I seem to remember his book depicting the trend of western dominance to be a colossal, devastating, and almost coincidental fallout of a broken Western dogma trying to support itself, producing the worst human behavior possible.

I really hope I don't come off as way too confident with potentially wrong facts, because I'm super dubious about my own understanding and I'm looking forward to hearing from someone who actually studies this and knows what they're talking about.

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I really wish I'd taken notes when I read J.M. Blaut's Eight Eurocentric Historians last year, so I could better participate in this conversation. Looking now at an article by Blaut that provided the kernel for his chapter on Jared Diamond, the arguments against Diamond involve the premise that European civilization even was particularly prone to adaptation and evolution, and thereby to dominance, which has repeatedly been shown to be fallacious if the immense resources from Europe's exclusive access to the New World are discounted. Given unlimited sources, all societies will keep expanding, but only Europe was given anything approaching unlimited resources after 1492.

 

Really, in general, Diamond's impression of world history is shaped by a lot of post-hoc rationalization of Europe's dominance, which undermines the supposed takedown of European superiority through good ol' science. Most frustratingly, Diamond has an understanding of Asian history that's stuck in the fifteenth century and an understanding of Asian geography that doesn't extend beyond the North China Plain or the Indus River Valley, so he's not equipped at all to argue how environment affected the development of East Asian and South Asian societies except in relation to how they differ from the European model. Furthermore, whenever environmental causes fall short, as they sometimes do, Diamond's fine with falling back on Eurocentric ideas of Europe's unique individualism, freedom, and rationality in order to find environmental causes for them instead. It's hard to see as you're reading it, because we've all grown up with the idea that Europe's somehow special, but having it pointed out makes it painfully obvious.

 

Really, I can't recommend The Colonizer’s Model of the World and Eight Eurocentric Historians enough. I wish Blaut had survived to write the third book in the trilogy, proposing an antidote to Eurocentric history, but alas.

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It's been a long time since I've read Guns, Germs and Steel, but doesn't Diamond's argument start with the environmental collapse of the Fertile Crescent region? I mean, if the only thing that made Europe powerful was their exclusive access to the New World, why didn't one of the many countries better placed to make it to the New World have access to those resources? For instance, China was capable of trading with Kenya, so they were capable of making it to Central America.

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It's been a long time since I've read Guns, Germs and Steel, but doesn't Diamond's argument start with the environmental collapse of the Fertile Crescent region? I mean, if the only thing that made Europe powerful was their exclusive access to the New World, why didn't one of the many countries better placed to make it to the New World have access to those resources? For instance, China was capable of trading with Kenya, so they were capable of making it to Central America.

 

I mean, his argument is that the Fertile Crescent was the earliest and most successful example of intensive agriculture, which is only partially true at most, but he presents it as entirely (and indisputably) true in order to argue in turn that the Mediterranean, speciously asserted to be part of the same historical region as Mesopotamia, was able to capitalize on that earlier success in ways that the "tropical" civilizations of China and India were not. The problem with most of Diamond's work is that he builds assumptions on top of assumptions in order to get to the point where he can close that last bit of distance with "scientific" research, which is rarely wrong in and of itself but is almost always predicated on obsolete historiography.

 

As for early modern powers that were better placed to capitalize upon those resources, the distance from Spain to Central America is roughly five thousand miles, but the distance from China to Central America is roughly nine thousand miles. However, the distance from China to Kenya is roughly five thousand miles. Also, although the distance from West Africa to Central America is only forty-seven hundred miles, fifteenth-century West Africa was undergoing a prolonged period of strife from the collapse of the Mali, the rise of the Songhai, and the incursion of European slave traders, all of which Trastámara Spain and Ming China (and even Vijayanagara India) didn't have to deal with.

 

I don't mean to paint world history simply as a race to depopulate, colonize, and exploit the Western Hemisphere, but the proximity of Europe to the Americas is a much more robust explanation for the world in which we live today than anything involving societal or environmental determinism that stretches back to prehistoric times.

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Ah, thanks, that makes a lot of sense - I took it as given that the Fertile Crescent was a unique bounty for the people who lived there. Thanks to you both for having the patience to explain such a wide-ranging topic and doing most of the heavy lifting in this conversation.

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