I almost think it's the opposite, though, and the reason for humans ever becoming civilized was living in biomes where agriculture became necessary. Once that became necessary, then you had to invent all kinds of other technology to do things like keep that grown food from spoiling (like letting cats move in to control vermin since they also were entirely uninterested in your vegetable food), brewing alcohol, etc.
Many of the "primitive" cultures that still exist do so in biomes where food is abundant and hunting and gathering entirely sufficient to preserve life.
It's hard to talk about these specific issues without inadvertently coming across as racist somehow, and to be really clear, I don't think you did that. I do think, though, that it's kind of the opposite, and people living in very food-rich biomes tend not to be farmers and so long as their culture succeeds doing this, it just isn't going to change. This is why you have these really old cultures that never became "civilized" in the strictly modern sense.
(Nothing racist intended here, this isn't "better" or "worse," it's just something that is.)
A great example is ancient Babylon. In the middle of a fucking desert, with fuck all to do except herd sheep with your tribe bros. The ground fucking sucked for farming, prone to becoming salty, hard, cracked and dry with poor rainfall - thus they invented the plow. Good job Bablyonians. They turned their wasteland into Babylon, a name synonymous with fields of green and gold, the fertile crescent, the birthplace of civilization, despite having no minerals, forests or even stone for building their civilization. They did it anyways in spite of their dire situation, or perhaps, because of it, needing to go the extra mile to make up for their fucked up world that kept trying to fuck them over.
Another example is the Yellow river. Complete opposition of Babylon, where instead of a lack of water, there was too much water. The Yellow river had no defined banks, as it continually deposited silt and overran its own river banks, causing massive flooding that destroyed human attempts at forming civilization. One local King gets the bright idea to force all of his men to build dykes to contain the river, but after years of forced labour his efforts are in vain and flooding continues anyways. His son studies the river and finds out the river is depositing silt, and so will eventually overrun all of their dykes. Thus he forms irrigation canals to dredge the river instead of trying to contain it - this effort forms the basis of what becomes the Chinese civilization, with generation after generation concerned with authoritarian rule, bureaucracy and management of serfs to contain the river and stop it from destroying civilization, instead feeding it
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14457754 times)