Quotes About Development

The Americas span a much greater distance north–south (9,000 miles) than east–west: only 3,000 miles at the widest, narrowing to a mere 40 miles at the Isthmus of Panama. That is, the major axis of the Americas is north–south. The same is also true, though to a less extreme degree, for Africa. In contrast, the major axis of Eurasia is east–west. What effect, if any, did those differences in the orientation of the continents' axes have on human history?

Different rates of development on different continents, from 11,000 B.C. to A.D. 1500, were what led to the technological and political inequalities of A.D. 1500.

A horizontal arrow indicates that the attribute varies between less and more complex societies of that type.

Thus, we can finally rephrase the question about the modern world's inequalities as follows: why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents? Those disparate rates constitute history's broadest pattern and my book's subject.

That contrast between the immediate virtues of wheat and barley and the difficulties posed by teosinte may have been a significant factor in the differing developments of New World and Eurasian human societies.

Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?

1885 did engines improve to the point that Gottfried Daimler got around to installing one on a bicycle to create the first motorcycle;

he waited until 1896 to build the first truck.

3) Modern industrial societies provide extensive opportunities for technical training, as medieval Islam did and modern Zaire does not.

Each year, the United States issues about 70,000 patents, only a few of which ultimately reach the stage of commercial production.

Inventors often have to persist at their tinkering for a long time in the absence of public demand, because early models perform too poorly to be useful.

One reason why technology tends to catalyze itself is that advances depend upon previous mastery of simpler problems.

In this long history of accelerating development, one can single out two especially significant jumps. The first, occurring between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, probably was made possible by genetic changes in our bodies: namely, by evolution of the modern anatomy permitting modern speech or modern brain function, or both. That jump led to bone tools, single-purpose stone tools, and compound tools.

Larger populations mean more inventors and more competing societies.

Thus, the crops and animals of the Fertile Crescent's first farmers came to meet humanity's basic economic needs: carbohydrate, protein, fat, clothing, traction, and transport.

Why did history unfold differently on different continents?

Societies with effective conflict resolution, sound decision making, and harmonious economic redistribution can develop better technology, concentrate their military power, seize larger and more productive territories, and crush autonomous smaller societies one by one.

IN SHORT, SOME COUNTRIES are much richer than are other countries. The reasons why are multiple and complicated. If you insist on a simple answer to this important question, you'll have to find some place in the universe to inhabit other than our planet Earth, where life is really complicated.

Glorious Revolution overthrew King James, made William king in his place, weakened the king's power, increased Parliament's power, and thereby promoted the development of institutions more favorable for economic growth.

Descendants of those societies that achieved centralized government and organized religion earliest ended up dominating the modern world. The combination of government and religion has thus functioned, together with germs, writing, and technology, as one of the four main sets of proximate agents leading to history's broadest pattern.

technology was less advanced in western Europe than in any other "civilized" area of the Old World until the late Middle Ages.

Until the end of the last Ice Age, around 11,000 B.C., all peoples on all continents were still hunter-gatherers. Different rates of development on different continents, from 11,000 B.C. to A.D. 1500, were what led to the technological and political inequalities of A.D. 1500.

For instance, the mass production of bronze tools, which was just beginning in the South American Andes in the centuries before A.D. 1500, was already established in parts of Eurasia over 4,000 years earlier.

Peoples of the Fertile Crescent domesticated local plants much earlier. They domesticated far more species, domesticated far more productive or valuable species, domesticated a much wider range of types of crops, developed intensified food production and dense human populations more rapidly, and as a result entered the modern world with more advanced technology, more complex political organization, and more epidemic diseases with which to infect other peoples.