why did ancient cultures develop at different rates?

Question

All ancient cultures basically began at the same place, a small group of people in an environment separated from other groups by location but access to most of the same raw materials, so why did some develop at quicker rates?

Answer 1

A very great and Pulitzer Prize winning book called Guns Germs and Steel by Jerrod Diamond sought to answer that question. The answer is pretty complex. The availability of certain crops is very useful. Wheat, barley, and oat evolved in the semi-desert area of Iraq and was highly suitable for agriculture. They remain the best crops. When a society can acquire agriculture, it can then specialize in certain things such as soldiers, scientists, etc. A society in Africa cannot do this because the grain crops are not grown very successfully there. There are no animals there that can be successfully domesticated. There are not great navigable rivers where a successful iron and steel industry can develop. Even though there is good ore and raw materials, it is not enough. There can be cultural things that limit a society as well and the corrupt governments of Africa are a good example. When the highly evolved culture from China moved to the jungles of Burma, they could no longer grow their rice and had to revert to a hunter gatherer society to survive. Those cultures that took up agriculture and industry developed fastest. I wonder why Islamic countries in the middle east haven't kept up. It probably has to do with their tribal feudal society but I am not sure. The Lebanese have been very successful, perhaps because they value hard work and education very highly.

Answer 2

I think you've already received the text-booked answers to your question, but there's another theory (oft criticized for being racist) that also makes sense: environmentalism.

Because the lifestyles of groups of people are dictated by their environment, peoples develop their culture accordingly. The British, during their expansionist colonization days, used this as a racist hammer to promote their liberalism, saying that they were far superior than those who are "lazy" due to environment. This may not be the case, but I believe there's something to the theory that the cultures which lived closest to the equator tended to develop less technology. It's simply true, at least after the rise of the classic ancient civs.

The other reason, if you're looking at the classic ancient civs, is the proximity of cultures with other diverse cultures, which leads to trade and the quick spread of ideas. Thus, you have the Americas developing far more slowly than Eastern cultures.

Answer 3

I am going to try and make this brief however there are multiple theories and so hopefully I make it understandable. V. Gordon Childe says it was due to advancement in technology and full-time artisans, which is called the Urban Revolution. This lead to food surpluses, diversified farming economies, and irrigation agriculture. Esther Boserup believes that population growth was the incentive for intensified agriculture and eventually more complex societies. Julian Steward and Karl Wittfogel proposed that it was the development of irrigation. Robert Carneiro proposed coercive theory which argued that the amount of agricultural land in areas was liimited and surrounded by environmental circumscription that made it difficult to relocate in other areas as populations grew more, which lead to more land being taken up. This lead to warfare which either the defeated village surrended and incorporated themselves into the victorious village or were killed off by the victorious village.

Of course all of this is a condensed version of the theories however you can read the second chapter of Ancient civilizations by Scarre and Fagan who go into more detail and more theories of state development.

Answer 4

I'd say that the civilzations that developed more quickly than the others- like the Romans, Egyptians etc- had access to other developing civilizations and thus could skip some steps of the process because they had the benefit of their neighbour's experience as well as trade which allowed them to import technologies developed by other cultures.

Answer 5

People were basically doing different things in different places. And some had developed a special skill at doing certain things within their culture.

Answer 6

THIS ANSWER IS IN THE WIND

BE IT KNOWN THAT WHEN THE TRUTH IS KNOWN IT WILL BE SELF EVIDENT=(AN EASY ANSWER THAT IS UNDERSTANDABLE)

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