J.diamond, etc. just interesting.
utter crap
italy is a north-south land formation.
The fertile crescent is a north-south land formation.
England is a north-south land formation
japan is a north south land formation
scandinavia is a north-south land formation
the americas are a north-south land formation
greece is a north-south land formation
And the statistics on this small “effect” are significant at what level?
Modelling studies are pretty much programmed to support the thing the researcher is hoping they support. Not always consciously, but I think it is an inherent tendency. This is why the Global Warming modelling studies always show ... ta da! ... Global Warming.
Science is rarely science. Science is usually a quest for grant money.
A fat country should never wear vertical stripes -— they make the country look even wider and dumber.
Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs and Steel” has many great points, such as the number of cultivatable plants and domestic-able animals animals giving us reasons why civilization did and did not arise in many places. South east Australia and northern California are major farming regions today, but had no local potential crops, so civilization waited until Europeans arrived.
The Eurasian civilizations dominated the world because, to borrow John Stossel’s quote, “ideas had sex”. Asian inventions spread to India and the Middle East and on to Europe. It took hundreds of years, but it happened. Animal domestication and crops also spread, along the east-west axis, albeit often slowly.
In contrast, the Maya and the Inca were nearly isolated, despite relative proximity. The lack of an east-west climate axis is also why the Mississippi mound builders, Anasazi, Aztec and Maya never spread across the rest of the continent.
The downside of “Gun, Germs and Steel” is that, frankly, Jared Diamond is a racist. Ironically, he thinks the hunter-gatherers of Papua New Guinea are smarter than “civilized” folk and plainly states it in the book.
Correlation is not causation.
;-)