Friday, August 26, 2011

Little change

As we know human evolution began in Africa, yet Africa still came behind Eurasia in the production of guns, germs, and steel. It was europeans who conquered and colonized africans instead of vis-versa even though Africa received such a head start. With this said, I believe that if humans would have taken their first steps in Mesoamerica, there would be little difference in the modern turn of events. I don't feel as though this thought should be surprising because if we simply place these three areas in order of alignment of human migration, Afrcia came first, then Eurasia, and third came Mesoamerica. Now supposing humans began in Mesoamerica first, they would most likely then have spread to Eurasia and finally to Africa. There is something here that doesn't change. Eurasia always stays in the middle. Africa came first and still got conquered by Europe so I believe then that if Mesoamerica would've came first, Europe would have still conquered and the only thing that would have change would be that Mesoamerica would be the new Africa. I believe this because the animals would've evolved alongside Mesoamericans would have been afraid of them and wouldn't have been able to be domesticated so wouldn't be useful to help out in farming. However, once arriving in Europe, homosapiens would have probably killed many of the animals there but in Eurasia there were many more locations suitable for farming so more farming would have evolved in Eurasia still. Also more of the same farming because of the alignment of Eurasia and the fact that most of it is in the same region and climate unlike the americas which vary much in climate. It would have been a close race between Eurasia and Mesoamerica only because Africa would have dropped out of the race because it was the last and because of its sahara desert. I don't think it would have been as easy for europe to conquer the americas under those circumstances as it was in reality but it would have still won.

3 comments:

  1. I like the way you say that life expanded to Eurasia after Africa, and probably it would happen again if life began in Mesoamerica. This makes a lot a sense, but I think that actually it would be a little different since it would take a lot more time to get from the Americas to Eurasia than from Africa to Eurasia. This might mean that it would give a little more time for them to create or develop civilization. I think your point is great I actually never thought about that and I think is a good argument. I think also maybe the animal domestication might of been different, and like Tim said the animals in Europe might of gone extinct, and Americas might of been able to domesticate their big animals.

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  2. I also believe that things wouldn't have been different, but for another reason. I think it's the animals that humans evolutionized alongside that eventually made the difference in our modern society. Animalsdon't affectus much now for we don't spend a lot of time with them. Back then was a different story because farming was very big in all societies and domesticating different animals is what eventually developed complex societies. It all depends on how early human life began in Mesoamerica and was it enough time to get to Eurasia, domesticate their animals, and then bring the animals back to their continent. Seems like a very difficult task to do, since most didn't even have a clue that there were other people out there in this world.

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  3. I am in some sense in agreement with Brian; time would have played a big role in animal domestication as well. Due to the Americas North-South alignment it would have taken much longer for humans to arrive to Eurasia and Africa. That time lapse could have done any number of things I, like Brian, think that we wouldn’t have domesticated Eurasian animals because the time lapse was just too great. The animals wouldn’t have known what to do with humans around and Africa and Eurasia would have lost most of their large mammal species to hunting. But what I do think would have been drastically different is what would occur with animals in the Americas. These animals would act like Africa’s animals act like today, with hostile tendencies towards humans as a result of evolving alongside them. So maybe we wouldn’t have even been able to domesticate animals in America if humans evolved from Mesoamerica, perhaps there wouldn’t be any domesticated animals at all.

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