Why europe?

[Aardvark]

I was thinking the Europe had many different types of people, a lot of groups of people who lived in different places and spoke different lauguages. It seems the compitition between the people stimulated growth and made them more expantionistic.

 

That comes down to geography again.

 

Europe is split into peninsulars, criscrossed by mountain ranges and large rivers. This mitigates against any one group being able to wholy dominate the whole continent. Instead several groups will develop homelands and compete against each other without any one group ever gaining full domination.

 

That competition is what helped drive European civilisation forward.

[-Demosthenes-]

Agreed.

[Flareon]

As the thread is about European civilisation by definition the discusion wil be 'Eurocentric'.?

 

We aren't simply discussing Europe, we are discussing Europe compared to the rest of the world. That's the crucial difference.

 

Incidentially, you seem to be implying that 'Eurocentricism' is a bad thing? What does it actually mean and why would it be subject to implied criticism?

 

Eurocentrism is neither good nor bad...it just is. But what I meant by that was that anything can seem great when you offer no comparisons. Don't get me wrong, I agree that much advancement happened in and originated from Europe, and I even implicitly agreed that Europe was the most advanced. But it wasn't the only place that advancement occurred. Paper, silk, gunpowder, glass, even the concept of ZERO (math with Roman numerals? Yeah right.) did not originate from Europe, but these inventions had such a great impact on the world that you cannot make fair comparisons without bringing them up.

[JohnB]

While the discussion is about the last few thousand years, the forces that shaped those few thousand years are much older.

 

Europeans (and those of European descent) are more expansionistic than other sections of H. Sapiens. The Chinese for example had the crossbow as a standard infantry weapon around 1500 BC. If they had wished to, they could have conquered the world, but they didn't want to. Nor are the African peoples expansionistic.

 

Europeans are different, the question is "Why?". Why was there pressure to develope agriculture in Europe but not in Africa? Why was it necessary to have large surplusses on European farms?

 

One point so far not mentioned is the fact that when H. Sapiens went to Europe, they were competing against two great factors;

1. An established population of H. Neanderthalis.

2. A bloody great Ice Age that locked up half the continent in ice while giving the other half horrible winters.

 

The pressure was therefore on the settlers to get one years worth of supplies out of a six month farming period. Surplusses were required for survival, the bigger the better. In Africa this pressure did not exist, so subsistance farming and following the meat herds was enough to ensure the survival of the group. Hence, no similar agricultural development.

 

So given the pressures involved, more land and more complete use of the land was vital for the survival of the European tribes. (We're still talking some 40,000 years ago here.) I think this led to a form of mental evolution.

 

Those who were happy with subsistance level living died off in a few winters. Those that were left were the ones who wanted more land. They also needed to get every bit of use out of the land they had. They still farmed at "subsistance" level but subsistance level agriculture in the area of an Ice Age, if applied to a non Ice Age area gives large surplusses.

 

This led to a mental division of the Human race. One group thought "The land will provide all we need without effort, so we are happy here." The second group thought "The land will not provide all we need, so we need more and we need to use every bit of it." Because of the climatic conditions prevailing at the time, there was no other way for the second group to think and survive.

 

Fast forward now to around 8,000 years ago. The Ice Age is over, but the tribes spreading over Europe still have the mentality that "The bigger the surplus the better, you never know when there will be a hard winter." Whether by extra land or better technology. This is where the geography of Europe comes into play. If you want more land, then you need to find ways to allow your warriors to cross mountains or seas. Getting more land reqires more determination against the odds and better technology.

 

Also note that as you move from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age an extra pressure is introduced. The need for raw iron. If you don't have any, you need to find some. And when you find some you need to be able to get it home in large enough quantities to be useful. You also need to be able to defend your mines and shipping. This leads to the development of better shipping technologies as well as better weapons and battle techniques.

 

Also note that in Europe the climate changed dramatically. Therefore survival required new techniques and technologies. The people needed to do things in new ways to survive. They had to be willing to adopt (if necessary steal) new ideas from their neighbours. Those that did not, died. This pressure to embrace change was not present elsewhere.

 

As I pointed out above, subsistance level agriculture in an Ice climate has to be at least twice as productive as subsistance level agriculture elsewhere. With the end of the Ice Age this led to larger and larger surplusses for each tribe. This meant that a correspondingly smaller percentage of the population were required as farmers to feed the rest of the population. So a larger percentage was available for permanent division of labour. A Blacksmith could be a blacksmith all year without worrying about where his next meal was coming from.

 

I therefore submit that the mental makeup of those who formed the early European cultures and those that followed them was originally forged by the hard times of the Ice Age. That is why Europeans have a different outlook to other sections of H. Sapiens.

 

Please feel free to shoot me down in flames, but I think I've got the basic pressures about right.

[swansont]

The pressure was therefore on the settlers to get one years worth of supplies out of a six month farming period. Surplusses were required for survival' date=' the bigger the better. In Africa this pressure did not exist, so subsistance farming and following the meat herds was enough to ensure the survival of the group. Hence, no similar agricultural development.

 

So given the pressures involved, more land and more complete use of the land was vital for the survival of the European tribes. (We're still talking some 40,000 years ago here.) I think this led to a form of mental evolution.

 

Those who were happy with subsistance level living died off in a few winters. Those that were left were the ones who [i']wanted[/i] more land. They also needed to get every bit of use out of the land they had. They still farmed at "subsistance" level but subsistance level agriculture in the area of an Ice Age, if applied to a non Ice Age area gives large surplusses.

 

Agriculture post-dates the ice ages and started in the "fertile crescent," not Europe.

[JohnB]

Agriculture post-dates the ice ages and started in the "fertile crescent," not Europe.

You are of course correct.

 

Perhaps I should have put "farming" in inverted commas. I was not so much referring to farming as organised agriculture, but more in the sense of "food production as a whole". As in, while subsistance level agriculture is not farming as it was developed in the Fertile Cresent, it is still "farming".

 

Bottom line is that while they were operating at subsistance levels, productivity must be higher in an ice climate than one of more temperate latitudes.

 

Does that clear up my meaning?

[Guest Matheson]

Bit late posting on the matter but I think Aardvark got it in one right at the beginning. Although one of the strengths of Europe lies in the petty bickering and competition between its nations it's probably worth noting that it's a very dangerous way of promoting progress (e.g. WWI at which point the technology and mechanisation of warfare made it too costly to engage in all out war with ones neighbours). The next century will be interesting because technology has widened the playing field an enormous degree, it's no longer a case of individual nations like France and England competing with each other but whole blocs. Personally I'm hedging my bets with Asia coming out trumps. Europe faces an insufficent degree of population growth to maintain its economic position (although I could stand corrected, the same was said about France after WWII but then came the 'demographic miracle'), the US is just a mess (no offense) and Africa and South America are just too weak from US and European exploitation and internal disputes to catch up.

[ctc7752]

The intelligence of the Europeans goes back to the influx of genetic characters in the First Millenium. In the world today this is not so concentrated.

[Danny6777]

Why would alot of the mathematicians scientists and artist mostly come from the regions where germanic people had settled and remained pretty much in control? The celtic people had lived in pretty much all of Europe for a long period of time and they did not advance technology that much compared with what the germanic people had done once they had control of most of europe. In the book called "human accomplishment" the birth places of scientist are shown and most of them are born in places where germanic people are heavily settled. Also at a website titled mactutor it gives the birth places of mathematicians and most of them are were born in places where germanic people were heavily settled.

[JohnB]

From my reading, the Celts were probably the most advanced people of their time in certain areas. As they were (on the Eurasian landmass) pretty much nomads they did not have the time to sit down and ponder mathematics.

 

They did however have superior metalworking abilities, especially in weaponry. Makes sense if you think about it, they were always outnumbered wherever they went so survival depended on superior weapons not superior numbers.

 

Who are the "germanic people" anyway?

[cosine]

In a very broad sense' date=' as humans originated in Africa all human achievements could be considered to be based on the actions of the African progenitors.

 

However, it is clear that Europe did develop a highly distinctive and original culture and civilisation in the tens of thousands of years after the original settlers left Africa. Therefore it is fair to talk of European civilisation as an seperate cultural construct rather than a transplanted civilisation.

 

 

 

True. I fail to see your point, much of European civilisation is based on rediscovered Ancient Greek writings. As the Ancient Greeks were Europeans this in no way reduces the European nature of European civilisation.[/quote']

It sounds like your equating advanced with European, perhaps not conciously, but it is certainly implicit in your writing. Perhaps European seems more "advanced" because you are more influenced by it? Do you think the Native Americans thought Europe was advanced for colonizing their lands?

 

Unless you are equating widespread European power and influence as "advancedness," which, putting aside for a moment that this idea is debatable if not flat out wrong, its influence is probably only the result of its high population density. Sometimes I look out on the city skyline and wonder what structures the Native Americans would have built on Manhattan island if they crammed 8 million people onto it. Surely we would look at their structures and say "wow thats advanced" but only came into existence due to a high population density. And it wouldn't be advanced, because if you built an Empire State Building in the middle of the desert you would just be a fool wasting your resources.