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VetLegion
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I was browsing through a list of significant inventions and discoveries of the last millenium and as we all know - the west is responsible for the majority of them.
As a result the west really dominated the last 500 years or so.
I'm not suggesting Europeans are superior or anything like that, but when they teach about world history say in China, how do they explain that?
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Bereta_Eder
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Or also east invents, west abuses.
example:
China invented gunpowder, europe made it into a weapon.
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debeest
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Guns, Germs, and Steel. Possibly the most informative book I've ever read. Anyone who thinks that one group achieved dominance because of its own innate superiority rather than because of its geographic inheritance really should read it. The reasons for specific groups' dominance are largely biological, but the reasons lie in the biology of local biomes, not inside the human species in all its modest variation.
And any Civilization player really should read it too, if only to understand what a good simulation of human history Civ really is.
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debeest
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Moreover, it's completely fallacious to state that most of the achievements of the last millennium have come from the West. But as they say, the winners write the history. Here in the West, ruling the world, we claim the achievements regardless of who actually achieved them. Think we'd be anywhere without the Arabic numeral system? Want to back up a second and consider whether you'd consider Arabs part of the Western world?
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:32
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The dominance really came out quite late. The Muslims had a great era of domination from Spain to India in the Middle Ages and provided lots of discoveries in mathematics (algorithm is a mispronounciation of the name of the Arab mathematician Al Kwarizmi for instance) and astronomy for instance.
The real domination of the West came from their being adventurous enough to explore the New World, when China, the only other power which was geographically in a position to do so, was land clad because of petty internal politics centuries ago. Japan was too busy internally and with Korea to do something else.
The biggest factor, as pointed out in GGS was probably the diversity of Europe: Many princes, many lands. So when Colombus request was rejected by a pronce, he could go and meet another one. The competition between the various countries/kings in Europe helped them become stronger. This can in turn be explained by geography (Italy, Spain, England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland for instance all have natural borders which make unification of these dificult). China on the other hand has no internal barriers to movement/conquest. Thus the Far East only had a few cultures which could have made progress, instead of many in the West.
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Jaguar
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Montgomery County, MD
Apr 2000
time: 00:32
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I think you can easily predict that the indigenous people of the Americas and Australia would never become powerful. The three continents no horses, camels, or elephants, and nothing close to them in usefulness.
The more interesting question is why Europe over North Africa and Asia? And that, I don't think you can explain geographically. I think there are some geographical features that are noteworthy (the Mediterranean Sea probably had much to do with it) but bany times, you can come up with one man that influences history so much that it clearly would have unfolded differently had they not existed. For example, if Alexander the Great, or Jesus Christ, or Confucius were never born, history would have gone far off the path it went down in real life. There's no way that geography can explain the effects of Genghis Khan. Occasionally, a single guy can change the world.
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Bereta_Eder
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quote:
Get caught wearing a Nike T-shirt while doing it |
Just Do It.
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Cruddy
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The west dominates the world?
How much oil are you burning?
Huh, just because you spend a lot on guns, tanks and nukes, you think that's superiority...
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Bereta_Eder
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it's an il il il illusion that the west (which doesnt exist. US is not a western country and europe is not affiliated with the US) controls anything.
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Bereta_Eder
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Even the US couldn't stand him.
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23-12-2003 06:01
Because we use arabic numerals we didn't invent the scientific method, the industrial revolution, the modern nation state (and the various ideologies that guide them) and all that follows? Hell, even China officially follows the doctrines of a German Jew who developed an ideology based upon his observances of British working conditions, never went East of Prussia his entire life, and didn't have much to say about Asiatic peoples.
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