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CorrectCoyote926 t1_j40drvb wrote

Reply to comment by 2011StlCards in Why are coastlines crinkly near the poles but smooth in the tropics? by emsot

Can you say more about this?

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Baxters_Keepy_Ups t1_j40l6vb wrote

There’s a lot written about this. There’s a book called “Prisoners of Geography” which was a bestseller and touches on some of this.

In order to have advanced ‘quickly’ as a country/culture/people - it’s helpful to have load bearing animals (horses, donkeys, camels, llamas etc), deep straight rivers, and fertile land. Access to the sea is also hugely useful.

Much of the African continent simply doesn’t have the tools that European or Asian powers had, so that has made harder what was easier elsewhere.

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2011StlCards t1_j411p3z wrote

u/Baxters_keepy_ups already basically stated exactly what I was going to write.

Up until about the 16th to 17th century, Europe was not the world superpower that it would become.

The idea goes that Europe was able to advance in technology and power pretty quickly because of the interconnectiveness of the people on the continent

Large, navigable rivers. Arable land. Beasts of burden (i.e., horses, donkeys, camels). Deepwater ports (for trade). All of these aspects help to advance trade and, thus the connections between groups.

When large groups of people have connections like that, ideas and technology flow from one group to the next.

When you have that interplay between people (i.e. trade), you theoretically would advance quicker since someone in Portugal may have a ship design that is more efficient that the French may get to see and create for themselves or trade for.

It also helps that most of the large European powers had languages of either romance or Germanic origins, which makes talking to one another even easier.

This doesn't preclude conflict, of course, as we see countless European wars between neighbors throughout history. But between those conflicts, trade reigns Supreme.

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MillennialsAre40 t1_j41883b wrote

I want an alternate history where pre-Columbian Americans domesticated bison and Moose, and there are Moose knights

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BaldBear_13 t1_j41dc35 wrote

wars, or rather threat of them, can also contribute to development, as they encourage technological progress. E.g. gunpowder lead to cannons, and that lead to better metallurgy, which had all sorts of useful peaceful uses.

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2011StlCards t1_j41fo6y wrote

Yep, nothing better for weapons technology than requiring better cannons to stop your enemy

And you need Good taxation structure to be able to obtain the wealth necessary to pay for those cannons

And good taxation structure leads to stronger, more centralized governments

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BaldBear_13 t1_j41p68v wrote

also need active trade and industry to collect taxes from, which requires robust laws and property rights.

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UnarmedSnail t1_j44xnwd wrote

There's a fair amount of randomness to it as well. You need all these important pieces, but you need them to come together in the right way, the right time, and in the right place. The ancient Greeks had all they needed to jumpstart the industrial revolution 3,000 years ago, but the pieces were locked away as religious displays and secret knowledge in mystery cults.

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BaldBear_13 t1_j44xut2 wrote

do you have more detail on what the pieces were? A link is fine, or a name of a book or author.

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UnarmedSnail t1_j4527gk wrote

They had chemical batteries that would be connected to statues of Zeus that would shock when touched. They had primitive steam engines that would spin up when boiling water was heated inside them. They had the archimedes screw. Complex machines for milling,stamping, grinding. If someone had known of all these pieces and thought to combine these technologies to actually do work then you have an industrial revolution.

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UnarmedSnail t1_j459wed wrote

Europe was a boiling cauldron of death, plague, and blood since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Then it met China again.

Then Europe was a boiling cauldron of death, plague, blood and innovation as they used the cross pollination of ideas to find more efficient ways of death, plague, blood. WWII ended this...

for now.

Edit: Russia has unpaused the game.

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