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Old thread, but this poses a question of why ancient civilizations started in subtropical regions of the world (southwest Asia, eastern Asia, Mediterranean Europe and of course north Africa)? Not to mention, places dubbed the cradle of civilization had arid to semi-arid climates with very hot summers and mild/coolish winters (such as what is now Baghdad).
Countries partially in the tropics, like Taiwan, or Australia, don't count, nor does Hong Kong which is both a city state and now part of China.
Why are you not counting Taiwan as a tropical nation? The coldest month in Taipei, the capital, in the north of the island, is January. The daily mean temperature in January in Taipei is 16.6 Celsius (61.9 F). In Kaohsiung, in the south of the island, south of the Tropic of Cancer, the daily mean temperature in January, also the coldest month there, is 19.7 Celsius (67.5 F). In the seven months from April to October the daily mean in Kaohsiung is above 25 Celsius.
This tropical nation is the world leader in semiconductors, home to TSMC.
There was no lack of agriculture and civilisation in the tropical south of India and in Sri Lanka since around the same time when Plato was alive in Greece.
If you could go back 700 years in time, to around the year 1324 you would see that there was nothing in Europe at that time that would make it "more civilised" than the Sukhothai Kingdom in tropical Thailand at that same year, that had a writing system.
What about the Aztecs and the Incas? Some historians consider them great agriculture-based civilizations. But my understanding is that they did not invent the wheel or even writing, as far as we know.
But what is this fascination with Euro-centrism?
What we call Europe today, whose main roots are in the era of Charlemagne, was one of last regions to develop agriculture after around 10,000 or so years ago starting in the eastern Mediterranean and in the pre-industrial world it was a relatively poor, backward and not-much-thought-about region compared to the more advanced regions of the southern and especially eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, India and China, and so on.
Europe's relative wealth has to do with shipping technology (starting around the 1100s) and industrialization (starting around 1750), not agriculture. What did the Europeans do as soon as they had that power: they attacked, racially profiled, enslaved, genocided, and colonized the southern and eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, India, China and so on (i.e. the Americas and sub-Sahara Africa). And you or I would do the same if we had that kind of power and our rivals didn't.
You know, Japan is relatively poor in industrially relevant natural resources, yet it is an industrial powerhouse. The same can be said for Italy, for example, to a certain extent. The Soviet Union was extremely rich in industrially relevant natural resources, yet, according to some analysts, they actually destroyed value in their manufacturing system, not created it, and that's why Russia today is mainly a commodity-export power, not a manufacturing-export power like Japan and Germany.
This "geographical chance" or geographical determinism thing has been debated to death for decades now, even more than a century.
Human beings, societies and civilizations are complex creatures and, in the end, either/or type questions are usually not very interesting.
It seems that social organization, managerial skills, creativity and inventiveness, as well as ambition, among other characteristics, are at least just as important as natural resources readily available: it's not so much what you have as what you do with it.
Good Luck!
To cite shipping in the 1100s for promoting Europe's wealth seems to discount the entire Roman Empire, and before them the Hellenistic Greeks. Up to 456 AD, to even much later with the Holy Roman Empire. I would say that was a valuable head start on European wealth predating the 1100s.
The ancient Romans didn't use agriculture? News to me.
The construction of Angkor Wat in the tropical jungle of Cambodia was finished in 1150. At that time Europeans were fighting with swords in their temperate forests because they didn't have gunpowder yet.
(sorry, but as someone born and raised in the tropical world I take the idea that the tropical world lacked civilisation as a personal insult)
The Pali Canon, the standard collection of scriptures in Theravada Buddhism, were written in the first century BCE in Sri Lanka, an island fully in the tropical region of the globe. Just one example of the rich Pali literature.
The tropical world had plenty of civilisation, from the ancient kingdom of Sheba to the island of Bali.
Mayan civilization was in the tropics, they had agriculture and big cities.
Exactly!! The Mayan city states of modern day Guatemala and Mexico figured out how to develop agriculture in a tropical climate with poor soil. They grew enough food to support large urban centers like Tikal, Calakmul, Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen-Itza, Tulum, Mayapan, Bonampak, Copan, etc. Collectively the Maya city states developed forms of government, complex religions, social hierarchies, a writing script, architecture, and art.
Saying that warm climates make people lazy is blatant ignorance, yes I said it. Like seriously, California, while not a tropical climate, enjoys a warm/mild Mediterranean climate and it is one of the most productive regions on the planet. California alone ranks as the 5th or 6th largest economy.
Don't forget the newly industrialized countries like Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. They are tropical nations with ascendant economies.
I mean Europe etc have had agricultural societies for a long time now, and their relative wealth is a legacy of this past history. Nothing to do with them being smarter, just to do with geographical chance.
Europe and the US are relatively wealthy because of earlier modernization. Asia also has agricultural societies for a long time,had many powerful empires but was modernized later so most of it are still not high in income.
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