Why some civilisations grow more than others? A Geographic explaination.

I was watching a National Geographic documentary “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. It asked the question why some civilizations prospered and grow into might nations, while other remained in rural livings. Is it because one is smarter than the other? Professor Jared Diamond explore and explain what he sees as the reasons, and here are some points which I remembered from the show:

• Early civilization grow largely because of Geography (is he saying this because the show is sponsored by National Geographic? haha).
• The people have to move from mere hunting to farming so that food can be produced in large quantities. With this, men can have a lot more time to spend to develop higher level innovation
• Provision of nutritional crops is important to feeding the people well.

• There are thousands of animal species today, but only a selected few are useful for human domestication and farming. Cows, sheep, goats, horses, chicken, ducks, etc provided muscle power, meat, milk, skin, for men. The early days of cattle powered plough helps to increase farmer productivity greatly. These animals first appeared in Middle East and Asia, and thus help the civilization to grow. It is only when these animals are exported to Europe, America, other parts of Asia, etc, that these places can grow too.
• In the early days, it is easier to trade in East-West route than North-South because crossing latitude means crossing climatic zones as well. Thus, Asia and Middle East and Europe can trade, while North and South America didn’t.
• The development and use of guns and steel in swords helped the Europeans to conquer much of the New World (America) and Asia.
• The Europeans unknowingly brought germs like smallpox into New World, which killed most of the natives South American. The Europeans were somehow immured to these diseases because they have seen similar pandemic, and has grown some forms of immunity. On the other hand, Euporeans failed to colonize Africa because they fell under the local diseases like Malaria, which which plague of Africa till this day.
• Does this means that people living in the Equator is damned to curse of diseases like Malaria? Not so, countries like Singapore and Malaysia started as rural third-world countries just 50 years ago, but have spend great efforts to clean their environment to free themselves. Today, Singapore living condition and GDP is in the first world league.
  

However, may I also add a few points to this. Let's start on the factors which shaped our civilization in the ancient history. We also need to know that in this modern age of technology and connectivity, much of these advantages and disadvantages are normalized, although certain key factors will remain unchanged.

• Yes, the latitude does played a great part, because it affects the climate, animals, and human habits. The climate is important in shaping our advancement. We can clearly see that much the technology progress lied in the temperate countries rather than the hot topical or the cold arctic zones. Why so? In the hot topical climate, the temperature can rise to a hot and humid 35C in the afternoon, and this is extremely uncomfortable. As such, the people will then gets into a lazy, lethargic mood, and will probably wasted their time away sleeping in the afternoon. On the other hand, the extreme cold of arctic will get the people to hunker down in their houses. However, in the temperate climate, the people of the past will work on most of the day, thus increasing their productivity greatly. In modern days of airconditioning and heaters, these factors are clearly not as important.
• The four seasons of the temperate zones also means that the people then have months of good weathers and good crops, and months of harsh winter with no crops. As such, they were forced to plan for the future, to work hard, gathered and stored food for winter. These made the people forward-looking, hardworking, and smarter. On the other hand, people in the topics had food all year round, and the other difference in climate were the hot and wet seasons. There is no need to plan for winter. As such, their mindsets were to take thing easy.
• Natural resources like oil, gold, livestock, timber, water, rubber, etc have all helped many nations leapfrog their economic growth.
  

All said, I still believe there are some intrinsic differences in races which also led to civilizations rise and fall. Different mindsets, talents, culture, behaviors, religion, political systems, etc shaped the growth of different civilizations. I hope I don't sound racist, or advocating that one race is superior to another, but simply stating that there are differences in each's strength and weakness. We shall talk about this another day.