Jared Diamond emphasizes the importance of geography in the development of civilizations.
Does he adequately explain inequality?
Does he provide sufficient argument as to why in some regions, such as Malaysia, geography wasn’t as detrimental as in others?
Does he explain the pre-civilization effects on human development as they relate to understanding, taking advantage and exploiting the available resources or overcoming their deficiencies?
One would suppose that the interaction between environment and individual is fundamental and that as human migrations forced them into less hospitable and more alien environments that there would be a period of development, habituation/adaptation, and genetic isolation that might play some part in the subsequent exploitation of the available resources.
I’d say geography is a big factor, but not the deciding one. Any group of people can hold unto land chalked full of resources and still fail. I think there are other important factors, i.e. how smart the people are, how strong the people are, their work ethic, their social and moral thinking, etc.
Anybody can fly a NASA space shuttle, few can do it well.
I like the point that Diamond makes about the the fractured nature of Europe, with its numerous countries, and how that played to the innovativeness of humans. For instance, if Columbus could not find financing for a voyage in one country, like Italy, he moved on to another country and try there.
The competition that existed in Europe enabled human innovation. In contrast, Diamond points out, China was a closed society, which thwarted individual innovations and forbad the exploration that could have advanced them further.
And though Europe had not invented many of the major systems of the world, like mathematics and gunpowder it was very good at latching on to these ideas and using them like nobody else could.
Christianity had a lot to do with the rise of Europe. It encouraged decent and in turn democracy, an essential aspect of progress.
Diamond explains Eurasia’s progress contrasted with Africa’s failure to advance by the fact that Eurasia’s resources were situate along a horizontal axis that cut from Iberia past the Urals. Thus, a vast stretch of land was temperate, inhabitable and bore domesticable animals and crops. Africa, on the other hand, lay on a vertical axis, and was intemperate, with only one domesticable animal and few tillable crops.