Look, I’m not disagreeing with you or Diamond. Just trying to point out further details.
Musta been too long, because I don’t recall Diamond bringing this up. It certainly is in Gonick’s books.
Is there some theory that there is something about Christianity that aided in European dominance, such as rugged individualism or something?
When I think of European Christian dominance, I think of Catholic monks forcibly converting Central and South America to the faith. Not exactly a prime example of rugged individualism IMHO.
Not sure, but having a large religion with lots of subjects supporting the priests & monks, would give the clergy more leisure time to sit around and study things, contemplate the universe, make copies of texts, etc.
Of course, another factor is simple luck. Even if all parts of the world were on an equal footing (which, of course, they’re not), someone would end up on the top of the tech race. It just so happens that, the way history actually played out, it happened to be the European societies.
And the fact that humans originated in Africa doesn’t give the Africans any particular advantages. The African peoples haven’t been around any longer than those who eventually settled elsewhere; they just stayed in the same place for longer. And I’m not aware of any particular reason why a settled people should advance any more quickly than a mobile people.
What the fuck is this?
There are some major problems with this theory, such as that low IQs are to a high degree caused by bad nutrition. And the data is not that good.
But why does that allow an attack on the poster? I don’t think its terribly stupid to consider that IQ might be a factor. And if IQ is a factor it is certainly not stupid to point to some data about it, which may or may not be correct.
Considering how christianity’s rule halted scientific research, I think it is rather a huge factor against european dominance. But that is not a discussion for this forum I suspect.
Yeah, they made a lot of copies of religious texts, and studied a lot of religious texts. They probably also did some research of small value. But if we consider that these were intelligent and educated people, it is certain that they could have achieved much more researching proper stuff.
True. I just seem to recall reading somewhere that there was some aspect of Christianity that was more condusive to technological growth or expansion than other religions. I could be mistaken.
Also, in addition to the Guns Germs theory, I have read elsewhere on the Boards that the European powers that dominated South America and Africa were less British and more exploitative of what they found there, whereas the British tended to bring an ethic that invested more in infrastructure, and these reverberations can be felt today.
I also vaguely recall reading stuff in college about how Africa and South America tend to be stuck in an economic cycle that depends on cash crops, and as the value assembled goods increases relative to the value of cash crops worldwide, these continents find it harder and harder to compete or break the cycle, growing ever more shackled by Western loans.
I also seem to recall reading about the fact that the birth rate remains high but the infant death rate has dropped, causing over-population problems, further depleteing resources.
The AIDS epidemic may play a part. Does the World Bank contribute to problems?
I suppose what I’m getting at is that in addition to the Guns Germs stuff, which may be ultimately at the root of the issue, there are more contemporary factors that contribute to the current status and act as barriers to advancement. As you can tell, I’m hardly an expert and maybe someone with some actual knowledge can expand on these thoughts beyond my vague recollections of things I read 15 years ago in a superficial college class.
There is this theory by Max Weber about the spirit of protestantism. But the countries who looted most were Portugal and Spain, and those were always the poorer of the countries within Western Europe.
But we’re not really discussing why Europeans didn’t advance technologically, even faster. It seems a given Europeans advanced faster, and further than Africans.
Depends. Sure, certain ideas were banned, but because the church never really had much wordly power, it couldn’t actually kill the ideas.
Perhaps it is the enormous diversion and competition within pre-modern / early modern Europe? There was a lot of competition, diversity, war, no unifying things whatsoever. Especially where warfare was concerned countries couldn’t afford to get behind with the latest developments.
Ehm, yeah. You were saying christianity was helpful in this aspect because of the monks, Im saying its not so.
Yes, and more specifically, Dimond notes that the Darian Gap (the thin little piece of land separating Meso-America from the Andes) prevented the union of the llama and the wheel. The llama was the only beast of burden left in the Americas after the previous ice age. All the others had died out (presumably because they were hunted to extinction).
My main point is, it seems to me, to make technological advancements, you need a leisure class to make them. It was usually priests. Christians had them. Egyptians had them. Aztecs had them.
Are there any civilizations that appeared to be on the path towards technological advancement that didn’t, at least initially, have lots of leisurely priests doing most of the advancing?
What scientific advancements did the christian priests make?
Hmm, you might want to look into that middle ages thing again.
Sorry, I tend to forget about the “originally posted by” thing. Is there a clever way to make it?
They invented liqueurs, for one thing, as can be guessed from names of drinks like “Benedictine”. Isn’t that enough? 
If it’s not, there was Roger Bacon, who, when he wasn’t pissing the church hierarcy off, did a bunch of stuff with gunpowder, optics, and physics. There was also Copernicus, who developed the heliocentric theory of the solar system.
There were also people like William of Ockham, who, while he didn’t really make any scientific discoveries, did work in logic that helped contribute to later scientific method.
[hijack] Don’t forget the great contributions of Isidore of Seville [/hijack]