[Cronos]

One wonders how some cultures were so brilliant and some are the same as they were maybe 10s of thousands of years ago. Some tribes in Africa and South America.

I think it depends on:

• the environment -- if it's too cold (think the Yenisian peoples who remained the same for millenia) or too hot (Saharan) or too much jungle (Amazon rain forest), then it is difficult to evolve beyond hunter-gatherer. Alternatively -- if the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is too easy (i.e. food is readily available), then why change (think of the Amazon rainforest -- they evolved poison arrows, no need for anything else when food is easy to get)
  
• Beasts of burden: In eurasia you have cattle, horses, sheep, etc. that were relatively easy to domesticate -- in the Americas there were few animals that would be suitable to domesticate -- the llamas are what I can think of. Or in Australia with no suitable domesticable animals. Or in Africa where I can't imagine a wildebeest being domesticated
  
• Neighbors: From what I know (which is not much), circa 5000 BC you only have civilisations in the lands that are now eastern Turkey and Iraq, and then extending across Elam (south-eastern Iran) to the Indus valley in India -- probably all Dravidian peoples. And you have Chinese Zhou civilisation. From the Sumerian-Dravidians you have the first ideas of culture -- agriculture, irrigation that spread to Egypt and India etc. -- these peoples created the idea of civilisation that then spread to the Semites (c. 2000 BC) and to the indo-europeans (1200 BC). But for centuries, this idea of civilisation was spread by contact (peaceful or violent) with neighbors -- think of the fact that Estonians and Finns were hunter-gatherer primitives as recently as 1000 years ago and Slavs the same just 1600 years ago and Germanics the same 2300 years ago and even the Greeks were barbarians (oxymoron alert!) in 2000 BC when the Amorites were at their heights of civilisation

Genes play a role, but the circumstances play a bigger one -- much like Sun Tzu's opening sentence says :)

[dp0622]

Thanks for the reply. Hunter gatherers only 1000 years ago. wow.