Ancient centres of origin of plant and animal domestication — the nine homelands of food production — are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map. The most agriculturally productive areas of the modern world, as judged by cereals and major staples, are indicated by the yellow-shaded areas. Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted, except that China appears on both distributions, and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of the eastern United States where domestication originated. The reason why the two distributions are so different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable crops and animals were native, but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable domesticates reached them.
Source: "Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication"
Jared Diamond. Nature 418, 700-707(8 August 2002) doi:10.1038/nature01019
In studying humans, a variation of aspects is used to understand behavior and the empirical world we’ve created. In a recent article by ScienceNOW, information originally used to track moth development was refined and retooled to see how humans used the land. Looking at several aspects of climate and soil, the simulation looked at how the four main subsistence types (farming, sedentary animal husbandry, nomadic wandering, and hunting and gathering) had played out in reality to what the soil and climate could supposedly bear. The study had an error of about one-third, with modern day culture coinciding with a majority of their findings.
This plays along with many theories about the development of agriculture and its effect on human “advancement.” Jared Diamond, for example, in “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies,” describes the importance of geography in cultural and even genetic change. Lands on the East-West axis (i.e. Eurasia) versus the North-South axis (i.e. Africa) would have quicker advancements and population booms because of the availability of domesticable plants and animals. This holds true when compared to how many plants and animals have been domesticated in these regions historically. These areas have shifted slightly to other more hospitable climates as it has changed, such as from eastern United States to western. But it does show an implication of why we see technological, economical and agricultural development in the patterns that we do.
One large problem, however, is that the article claims the finding, “may help explain why some regions are more prone to violence than others.” It is one thing to assert that the environment was a large contributing factor to how cultures developed their subsistence strategies and technologies across the world. However, in no way does this assert that violence would occur less on the East-West axis – a formidable study would need to be done because this assumes geography is a superior factor to the formation of culture. This is called geographical determinism. Violence cannot be understood from geography alone or as the determining device, and it would absurd to think competition for resources can be reduced to the sole reason for the world’s problems. Backing up to the fact that the study failed to present current land uses with what the model projected one-third of the time is evidence that biology, culture and psychology are also triggering reasons for human behavior.
Thankfully, the researchers of the study acknowledged this in their study, however, headlines led readers a different direction. At the very end of the study, the researchers write: “[W]e know that human societies and economies went through historical development, so ignoring history may not always be the best strategy to understand causalities. … Nevertheless, our ‘null model’ will be a useful tool in identifying regions that require further investigation to understand additional processes that shape the distribution and performance of human economic traits.
