From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Why Cultures Are So Different, by Thomas Sowell   
   10 months ago, Time: 17:56   
      
   Soil, of course, has profound effects on the kind of agriculture that is   
   possible--and therefore on the kinds of societies that are possible.     
   A pattern of farms that are passed down through the same family for   
   generations is possible in fertile regions, but not in places where the soil   
   is exhausted in a few years and has to be abandoned and a new site found while   
   the first land recovers its    
   fertility.   
      
   Whole societies may have to be mobile when the land in any given location   
   can't premanently sustain them.  This means that there can't be cities and all   
   the cultural developments facilitated by cities.  Mobile, slash-and-burn   
   agriculture has been common    
   in those parts of tropical Africa and Asia where great cities failed to   
   develop and where the indigenous people long remained vulnerable to conquest   
   or enslavement by peoples from more urbanized societies and larger   
   nation-states elsewhere.   
      
   In early medieval Europe as well, Slavs in East Central Europe practiced   
   slash-and-burn agriculture, which necessitated very different forms of social   
   organization from those which emerged after the use of the plow enabled them   
   to create sedentary    
   societies.  Moreover, just as the nature of agriculture has influenced where   
   urban life is or is not feasible, so the economic and technological advances   
   associated with cities influence agriculture.  Thus, in the 16th century, the   
   hiniterlands of such    
   flourishing cities as Venice, Milan, and Genoa saw great improvements in   
   agricultural methods introduced.     
      
   Deserts and steppes, such as those of North Africa, the Middle East, and   
   Central Asia, have often produced societies on the move.  These nomads have   
   included some of the great conquerors of all time.  Wave after wave of   
   conquerors from Central Asia and    
   the Caucasus have pushed other peoples before them into eastern and southern   
   Europe over the centuries, creating a chain-reaction series of conquests in   
   the Ukrainian, Polish, and Hungarian plains and in the Balkans, as those   
   displaced moved on to    
   displace others.  Less dramatic and less extreme have been the seasonal   
   movements in places where sheep, goats, and other animals are herded in   
   different places at different times of the year, rather than exhaust the   
   vegetation in one place.  Here there    
   may be permanent dwellings where the women and children stay while the men   
   migrate seasonally with their herds, as in the Balkans, for example.     
      
   The significance of particular geographic features -- mountains, rivers,   
   climate, soil, etc. -- is even greater when these features are viewed in   
   combination.  For example, the effect of rainfall on agriculture depends not   
   only on how much rainfall there    
   is but also on the ability of the soil to hold it.  Thus a modest amount of   
   rainfall may be sufficient for a flourishing agriculture on the absorbent   
   loess soils of northern China, while rain falling on the limestone soils of   
   the Balkans may disappear    
   rapidly underground.  Similarly, the economic value of navigable waterways   
   depends on the lands adjacent to them.  Navigable rivers which go through land   
   without the resources for either industry or agriculture -- the Amazon for   
   example -- are of little    
   economic value, even though navigable waterways in general have been crucial   
   to the economic and cultural development of other regions more fully endowed   
   with other resources.    
      
   In Russia as well, waterways isolated from the major natural resources of the   
   country, as well as from each other, can't match the economic role of rivers   
   which flow into one another and into the sea after passing through   
   agriculturally or industrially    
   productive regions.  Conversely, harbors that aren't as deep, not as wide, nor   
   as well-sheltered as other harbors may nevertheless become busy ports if they   
   represent the only outlets for productive regions in the vicinity, as was the   
   case of Genoa in NW    
   Italy or Mombasa in East Africa.  Similarly, the port of Dubrovnik on the   
   Dalmatian coast, strategically located for the international trade routes of   
   the Middle Ages, flourished despite a harbor that was not particularly   
   impressive in itself.     
      
   Sometimes a variety of favorable geographical features exist in combination   
   within a given region, as in NW Europe, and sometimes virtually all are   
   lacking, as in parts of tropical Africa, while still other parts of the world   
   have some of these favorable    
   features but not others.  The consequences include not only variations in   
   economic well-being but, more fundamentally variations in the skills and   
   experience -- the human capital -- of the people themselves.  Given the   
   enormous range of combinations of    
   geographical features, the peoples from different regions of the earth have   
   had highly disparate opportunities to develop particular skills and work   
   experience.  International migrations then put these peoples with disparate   
   skills, aptitudes, and    
   outlooks in proximity to one another and in competition with one another in   
   other lands.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)