Greetings, Holla Forums
I'd like to take a look into the reasons why continents/regions like Europe and Asia have historically done much better at building and maintaining advanced civilizations than the Americas or Africa.
But actually look at it instead of going
I've only come to this conclusion after sitting down and really thinking about it, but here's a few of the reasons why I think this may have been the case.
Eurasia seems to have had many more crops and natural resources that could cultivated in a much larger amount than in places like Africa. I believe this abundance of food is what helped European settlers eventually form large villages and sub-states.
We know that when people live comfortably, they treat those around them comfortably as well. I believe having an abundance of supplies helped engineer more cooperative social behaviors that led to the formations of sub-states and actual states.
Africa seems to have had the trouble of sparse materials that had to be grown by individuals or family units. The scarcity of these materials in comparison to places in Europe or Asia is probably what led to the formation of smaller, tribal societies. It may have also contributed to making Africans more violent and competitive in order to secure land and resources, even if it means killing people that aren't very far away from you. This would probably help explain why Africa has such a wide history of tribes and clans overtaking other tribes and clans through violence, with very few of them being able to unify everyone with a comfortable lifestyle into a larger sub-state
Then, there's the winter. These conditions are exacerbated during the winter when there is no harvest. Along with longer storage times and sheer volume of crops, Eurasian societies had a better chance of surviving the harsh months of winter, at least where food was concerned.
When you aren't busy worrying what the fuck you're going to eat, you have more time to do things like make art, invent things, think about things, produce a language, make some friends, and all of that good stuff.
This may have been the root of the reason why such good art, music, tools, and philosophers came out of Eurasia. Chinese people were even able to sit around and develop an entire calligraphic writing system since they had fuck tons of rice and other crops.
When you can develop these things, you can start to form an identity and culture associated with your people and form a stronger societal unit. Africa was sort of able to do this in their own way, but so many people were still split into smaller tribes or kept going to war with each other. I supposed the Inca, Maya, and Aztecs could be considered exceptions to this, since those civilizations were still able to get pretty big for what they were.
With more natural resources, crops, and the development of tools and arts, Eurasians could trade with the people around them. The result of that is technology diffusion
I will give Africa in particular some credit here. Contact with Middle Eastern civilizations really helped them out. If anything, Africa has the guaranteed legacy of one of the most lucrative and long-running slave trades in the world. If you had slaves, you had free labor and a token for foreign goods.
This might be an interesting thing to consider, but I don't think Africa really had any access to coal fires that were hot enough to make proper forges. What the fuck are you supposed to do when you can't melt iron?
These were available in Eurasia however, and so people were able to make durable tools and weapons over the years.
What do you think? Why did Europe and Asia do so much better than the rest of the world?