i've been reading critiques saying some premises were wrong
The idea that the europeans were in closer proximity to each other which made the exchange of ideas and trade faster and quicker in freqency helping them to advance faster was something i been thinking about
Which ones exactly ?
IMO, some mistakes/errors were bound to happen considering the ambition of the author to explain the North/South disparity through a set of simple reasons. I'd be interested to know what was wrong in his explanation.
some anthropologists feel he was too reductionist...there was a huge thread on /r/badhistory about it with links/sources:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wd6jt/what_do_you_think_of_guns_germs_and_steel/
www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2x362w/guns_germs_and_steal/
war..war..war..
they had to develop technology to protect themselves from all the other nations around them
Elaborate
When I was in 10th Grade I think this book changed my life. Seriously. Even if people have issues with it, just the way it approached things
Honestly I'm a big proponent of this, as well as the resource curse, which essentially states that European countries with limited land, resources and growing population were forced to industrialize / adapt / go to war with othercountries and civilization to extract resources, to ultimately send back to their home country, to aide in its survival. Now a continent as vast as Africa which.can essentially fit every country in the world inside of it, with the exception of Russia is loaded with enriched land and resources, so outside of competition from local tribes there was an abundance of resources, and no.need for.the people to rapidly advance their civilization because generations of inhabitants were able to live off the land with minimal environmental pressure.....
Welfare is the contemporary resource curse
