/lit/ - Literature

>>17308850
>Diamond blames "environmental conditions" for that even though Africa is a resource-rich continent.
You do realize those environmental conditions aren't about the supposed "resources" but the actual living conditions?
It wasn't called the Black Continent because there were niggers you know, but because it was actually fucking hard as shit to just explore, chart and survive in it for the most part, it was an absolutely brutal environment.
And natural resources are worth shit if they're impossible to harvest in the first place, we've been sitting on oil for millennia and only recently we've been able to harvest it.

The second implication about adverse environmental conditions is the following:
What happens when the territory doesn't lend itself to something as simple as travel? Isolation, limited cultural exchanges, limited commerce, all of which result in stunted development.
When you look at the history of mediterranean societies or really just the great empires of mankind, the first thing you notice is the circulation of resources, commerce and cultural exchange between different civilizations.
The roman empire grew up to be what it was not because human beings born on italian soil were somehow genetically predisposed to that, it was because the environmental factors were advantageous as hell, conversely, why do you think there was nothing like an Abo empire? Because they were stuck on a godforsaken rock in the middle of nowhere.
Seriously, aren't people being taught geography at school nowadays?