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[Tack]

The Egyptians: inventing Furries, 4,000 years before the advent of the internet.

They did the world a favor that day.

Some comedian:
Ever considered that the bigfoot sightings were just some guy rolling in his gorilla suit, looking for a good time, and he's just been too ashamed to come forward about it?

[Arcvasti]

Decided to look up theories as to why the Native Americans (North and South) never advanced as much as the Europeans did.
First thing I found sounded reasonable, up until it started going on about how modern crops produce less than 500 years ago, and how the wheat chaff is toxic.

The main thing is that progress builds on itself. Make one advancement and it makes other advancements easier. Plus they were geographically isolated from Eurasia, which meant that they couldn't piggyback off of another more advanced nation/culture/whatever via trade or war. Like, the Chinese, IIRC, invented gunpowder, but some other nation first figured out how to use it to make guns and such. Sharing knowledge and ideas between geographical and cultural borders is how quite a bit of progress is made and being limited on that front is a major disadvantage. Not to say that they didn't do their fair share of neat stuff. Like, the Aztecs had this whole hydroponicsesque thing going where they grew crops in compost box-things floating in the water because of a relative shortage of good farmland. Their society, and that of the Incas and similar[I'm really bad at South American empire names], would totally have advanced farther if they hadn't been rudely interupted by Spain & friends.

[Sonlirain]

Would totally have advanced farther if they hadn't been rudely interupted by Spain & friends.

Funny thing that we can't even really tell how advanced they were because the spaniards burned most of their scritures.
Altho some say they were good at astrology.

Besides they had to know metalworking. Or at least how to work with gold because those tales of "cities of gold" had to be at least partially true.

[Loud Whispers]

Plus they were geographically isolated from Eurasia, which meant that they couldn't piggyback off of another more advanced nation/culture/whatever via trade or war. Like, the Chinese, IIRC, invented gunpowder, but some other nation first figured out how to use it to make guns and such. Sharing knowledge and ideas between geographical and cultural borders is how quite a bit of progress is made and being limited on that front is a major disadvantage.

Yeah but that doesn't adequately explain why Europe, because Eurasia is heavily divided. Deserts and mountains in plentiful supply ensure that neighbours would have great difficulty in exchanging information, and that's assuming they weren't openly hostile with one another and that they were actually capable of transferring information in the first place. This slowed things down incredibly, besides the Mongolians or the Alexandrians there would never be large scale information transfer from Europe to India or China until the age of colonialism. And the obvious, obvious question - why not Arabia, or Persia, or India, or above all - China? Why did these nations not industrialize and take over the world first? And certainly, look at China now - imagine if they had industrialized first, their colonial exploits would have been without opposition.
Strife breeds innovation, at least in the right amounts. You got to tear your muscles before they can grow back stronger. A bunch of smart people competing with one another to be the smartest, trying to solve a myriad of many problems inflicted upon them by circumstance - Arabia, Persia, India and China were rich and wealthy. They had no need to innovate, no motivation after the Mongolians stopped Mongoliaying everywhere. Ok that's also bollocks in a lot of places, but it's a generalization what do you expect.

Would totally have advanced farther if they hadn't been rudely interupted by Spain & friends.

Funny thing that we can't even really tell how advanced they were because the spaniards burned most of their scritures.
Altho some say they were good at astrology.
Besides they had to know metalworking. Or at least how to work with gold because those tales of "cities of gold" had to be at least partially true.

Well they had some bronze armour and weapons, so they were probably on a level with ancient Greeks.

[Calidovi]

Decided to look up theories as to why the Native Americans (North and South) never advanced as much as the Europeans did.
First thing I found sounded reasonable, up until it started going on about how modern crops produce less than 500 years ago, and how the wheat chaff is toxic.

If you want to know more about this, I recommend reading Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's required reading for our class, but I find it rather interesting. It changes your view of human development.

Jared Diamond's a bit of an academic fool or idealist, whichever is better in your eyes. A lot of his history is wrong, underplayed or just dust not connect with what he's saying. The tl;dr is everything is an accident, native cooperation with Yurop is meh, the wills of nations and statesmen is meh, you don't domesticate animals to get domesticated animals, everything is caused by Yurops adaption to deadly pathogens.
Honestly the most likely reason is that Native Americans in the North never had populations large enough to form urban societies and begin creating the specialized roles in society that eventually lead up to scientists, scholars and scribes, or they had the agriculture, the populations but did not yet develop written language to keep information safe and build upon it. The South? Well, it was just a matter of time. Civilization was born in Mesopotamia 8,000 years ago, the Romans brought it to Europe 2,000 years ago and the Incan civilization was born 1,200 years ago. And whilst they lacked the technological discovery of Europe, they had the societies and governments which would have allowed such discovery to accrue from generation to generation - and indeed, when the Spanish did take over, its was made much easier by the assimilation of the local peoples disgruntled at their Incan overlords and they just took over the already existing governmental systems.
He tells a good story though.

I admire his storytelling, but I think he condensed human development as to give it a bit of followable linearity. It's wrong in the grand details, but it manages to otherwise cleanly tie things up into a presentable idea.

[Sonlirain]

China did some exploring early on. They even got to africa before europeans started running amok over there.
However due to some political power struggles they suddenly decided to drop the seafaring and focus on internal affairs because there was nothing practical to acquire overseas. Only valuable trinkets.

So the fleet ended up being burned down along with the ship plans...

Or so they say.

[Orange Wizard]

"It's wrong but it reads nicely" = appropriate for a story and not an historiography

[Putnam]

or a reddit post

edit: in a bigger wtf, i passed my 20,000th post

and checking what it was

it was league of legends news

like not even riot fuck-ups, it's just straight up a link to their webpage on some skins they're making

[Loud Whispers]

I admire his storytelling, but I think he condensed human development as to give it a bit of followable linearity. It's wrong in the grand details, but it manages to otherwise cleanly tie things up into a presentable idea.

You need the grand details though, the fine details rest on them and are irrelevant without them. It's a nice story, I'd read GG&S for fun but I wouldn't read it as a "clean tie-up" of human history, because it doesn't get humans or history right. Or domesticated animals for that matter. I liken him to Dave Goulson because he manages to make boring things animated and entertaining, but whilst Dave Goulson writes both personally and objectively, Jared has got his conclusions and is working backwards to reach it. Granted it probably helps that Dave's writing about insects and not people. I'd see GG&S as a fun introduction but not the end-all to the eternal squabble of why.

China did some exploring early on. They even got to africa before europeans started running amok over there.
However due to some political power struggles they suddenly decided to drop the seafaring and focus on internal affairs because there was nothing practical to acquire overseas. Only valuable trinkets.
So the fleet ended up being burned down along with the ship plans...
Or so they say.

That's not or so they say, that's the treasure fleets. They even reached Mecca. The Eunuchs backed the fleets, but when the reigning Emperor died a new Emperor rose who favoured more the civil bureaucrats, who were not so favourable to the treasure fleets. The few voyages the fleets made wiped out some pirates and their absence left an empty void the Portuguese eventually filled.

[Calidovi]

I admire his storytelling, but I think he condensed human development as to give it a bit of followable linearity. It's wrong in the grand details, but it manages to otherwise cleanly tie things up into a presentable idea.

You need the grand details though, the fine details rest on them and are irrelevant without them. It's a nice story, I'd read GG&S for fun but I wouldn't read it as a "clean tie-up" of human history, because it doesn't get humans or history right. Or domesticated animals for that matter. I liken him to Dave Goulson because he manages to make boring things animated and entertaining, but whilst Dave Goulson writes both personally and objectively, Jared has got his conclusions and is working backwards to reach it. Granted it probably helps that Dave's writing about insects and not people. I'd see GG&S as a fun introduction but not the end-all to the eternal squabble of why.

Undoubtably. Do you know of an alternative that provides more depth? I like Jared's tone, but it doesn't matter too much as long as the content is factual to the smallest points.

"It's wrong but it reads nicely" = appropriate for a story and not an historiography

Well, it's not entirely wrong.

[Sonlirain]

That's not or so they say, that's the treasure fleets. They even reached Mecca. The Eunuchs backed the fleets, but when the reigning Emperor died a new Emperor rose who favoured more the civil bureaucrats, who were not so favourable to the treasure fleets. The few voyages the fleets made wiped out some pirates and their absence left an empty void the Portuguese eventually filled.

I war refering to the ship blueprints.

[LordSlowpoke]

i just noticed you can casually modify the thread title and it puts that in "most recent post" at mainboard

interesting

[Loud Whispers]

Undoubtably. Do you know of an alternative that provides more depth? I like Jared's tone, but it doesn't matter too much as long as the content is factual to the smallest points.

Nope! I don't normally even read anthropology books or anything, I only read it on the recommendation of a gay heathen irishman, whose suggestions always yielded entertaining reads. I'd probably just look into Portugal since they were the first Empire to hold distant territory across the world without any connection beyond the sea. History of Portugal, developments in Portugal, what obstacles Portugal faced and what the Portuguese wanted and ended up with (for example, a great many STDs). It is very amusing to see how hard Venice fought Portugal's attempts to build their trade Empire. The greatest enemy of one ascendant European Empire was usually another European Empire yet to rise. And to be honest I wouldn't even be able to find a good history book in the sea of history books.
I think the best, holistic way would be to look at how geography shapes a nation and its people, how technology was spread (contrast the Islamic world spreading paper through captured Chinese or Ancient Greek-Indian exchanges with the great Eurasian Steppes that brought gunpowder to Europe), the cycle of civilizations (nomads conquer, become builders, builders get conquered by nomads who then become builders e.t.c.) and well... Shit the list goes on. Religion, nationalism, historical rivalries, one of the things I forgot about was the European schooling systems and the creation of Universities - no point having a nation of geniuses if they're not being used, and there's a reason Universities like Oxford and Cambridge are still in the top 5 Universities in the world and notable inventors/generals/scientists weren't all exactly self-taught.
Tl;dr it's easy to say something's wrong but it's considerably harder to pin down one good cause. I wouldn't say there's an alternative to Guns Germs and Steel so much as you need many, many, many more informations. At least 20 informations.

[NJW2000]

i just noticed you can casually modify the thread title and it puts that in "most recent post" at mainboard

interesting

Aha, now I know how my ISG shall achieve the success it deserves

Gay heathen Irishman

So now I know where he gets his information...

[TheBiggerFish]

Whaddaya hafta say ta THIS, LS?