The New Africa

Africa is were we say everything started out. But what changes would have happened if instead of Africa it all started in Mesoamerica? How different would things be? I've thought about this for a while after having read the question. And I have come to the conclusion that not much would have changed.

The only thing different would have been the animals. There are different types of animals in Africa and Eurasia than there are in the Americas. But still I don't believe that could have made a difference because Diamond says that animals evolved alongside humans and so whatever animals were there were the ones that would have evolved with the human.

Eurasia would have still been dominating because they still would have had the animals like horses and cows and others that would have really impacted their community. The Americas wouldn't know much about civilizations while the Eurasians would have.

It stared in Africa and it still didn't become the dominating county so why would things if it all stared in the Americas. The fertile crescent would have still been on the other side of the world so it still would have been hard for them to produce crops even if they did have the animals to do so.

It all comes down to alignment

What determined history and the fates of humans on different continents was geography, as Diamond makes clear. However, the most important factor within the geographical category was the alignments of the major continents. Eurasia and its early inhabitants had an advantage over Mesoamerica and Africa because it is lined up in an east-west axis instead of a north-south one. This leads to remarkable differences in determining which region can spread its people, animals, and crops faster or at all. Diamond explains that, "Localities distributed east and west of each other at the same latitude share exactly the same day length and its seasonal variations. To a lesser degree, they also tend to share similar diseases, regimes of temperature and rainfall, and habitats or biomes"(p.183). With this said, it should be clear to many of why Eurasia received the better part of the deal in geographical terms to be able to sustain faster advancin early societies. In Eurasia farming just had to begin spontainiously in one place, such as the fertil crecent, and from the spread to other places east and west of it and the plants that were farmed spntainiously could survive in those other localities. However, when it comes to Mesoamerica and Africa, they too have areas that are est and west of each other but to a much lesser extent not enough I believe to compete with that of Eurasia. Their alignments from north to south bring about the complication for farming to begin spontainiously in ares north or south of each other due to the differences in climate, day length, and seasons. Perhaps the idea of farming could spread but not the plants because they wouldn't survive since they are used to those specific factors and how they play out in their specific areas. Once the idea arrived to a different location, the process of domesticating local plants had to begin over and over again unlike in Eurasia where the same plant could survive.

Plants are food and food is needed for life. Hence, it makes sense that animal domestication in an area would most of the time come after there was food to feed those animals. As for language and writting, these can only come once a society has become a sedentary society in which some produce food and other have time to develop such systems. Sedentary societys can only exist once there is enough food grown to feed many and in order to produce enough food, animal help is needed. This means that farming is the root of civilizations. Aparently, the east-west alignment of Eurasia spread farming faster, which made societies or civilizations spring up faster.

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.

The fate of Neil Diamond

Diamond is guilty. It’s obvious; most of what he talks about in his book, the fall of the Native Americans, the stone tool usage of the Aborigines Australians, China’s decent into technological inferiority, Europe’s rise to technological superiority, etc. he credits to geography.

His reasons as to why the Native Americans were conquered by the Spanish were Guns, Germs, and Steel. He then later claims that the reason the Spanish had all these things and that the Native Americans didn’t was geography. Europe was on an East-West alignment with the Fertile Crescent, which is where crops and animals were domesticated. These animals lead to germs and the animal crop package lead to sedentary lifestyles which produced the guns and the steel. On the contrary the Americas were on a North-South alignment. They did not produce domesticated animals (other than the llama) nor did they domesticate many plants. The llama (because it is not a herd mammal) did not lead to germs and the crops, although they did lead to sedentary lifestyles, did not lead to guns or steel.

Australia, because it was so isolated from the rest of the world never developed past stone tools. China’s technology, because the country was so unified, never went through the autocatalytic process whereas European technology, because it was so divided, did.

He even states that “the continents differ in innumerable environmental features affecting the trajectories of human societies” (406) he then later goes on to explain the four geographical differences that lead to history as we know it, which include differences in plant and animal species on different continents, diffusion and migration within those continents (think East-West vs. North-South), followed by diffusion within continents, and lastly the area and total population size of a continent.

Everything he says throughout his book can somehow be traced back to geography, and for that reason he is a geographical determinist and should be sentenced as such.

The East-West determinent

I believe that the East-West alignment of Eurasia is what lead to the European conquest of the Americas. Sure it was the diseases that arose from animal domestication that thinned the ranks of the Native Americans, but had it not been for the East-West alignment of Eurasia the Spanish never would have received the animals or crops that they did from the Fertile Crescent. Had that been the case they never would have developed the diseases which aided in their campaign against the Native Americas.

If the Americas had an East-West alignment and Eurasia didn’t then history would be very different indeed. Of course the Americas wouldn’t be the spitting image of what was Europe at the time of the Spanish conquest, but it would be much more advanced. Let us consider what was present in the Americas when the Spanish arrived. In Mesoamerica they domesticated corn, invented a wheel, developed a writing system and an empire. In the Andes they domesticated the llama and had widespread metal tools (as well as an Empire) (362). These were only a number of things these two Empires managed to accomplish, and I’m not including the Indians of the Eastern U.S. either. But imagine what could have happened if these isolated ideas and objects had the chance to spread. Perhaps plants domesticated in one area could be widespread throughout the Americas. The llama could travel and even be used for plowing, increasing the efficiency of agriculture. This increase in agriculture could lead to more sedentary societies in turn leading to more specialists which meant better technology. Perhaps the wheel developed by the Aztecs could be put to use as more than just a mere child’s toy. The writing system would spread and possibly even, through blueprint borrowing and idea diffusion, give rise to new languages spoken by more than just temple scribes. The metal tools could have developed into metal weapons. The once isolated areas would soon become enemy states which would lead to competition, in technology, between them. As Diamond says “technology begets more technology” the technology that would now be spreading throughout the Americas would constantly be improved by the autocatalytic process.

Now what would Spain, and the rest of Eurasia, have looked like if it were on a North-South alignment. Yes perhaps there would have been plant domestication, animal domestication, and even writing systems but all of these things would be in isolation from each other. Plants and animals that could live in one latitude cannot live in another. Due to the inability of language to spread it would likely remain a language used only for the scribes. So Eurasia would look a bit like the Americas did different technologies arising here and there, but in isolation and with little chance of spreading which also means with little chance of growing.