Several provocative "big questions" essays recently appeared in full, on-line. These span over world history, east to west, and cover prehistory as well. I wonder how many other historians who read Ian Morris's, "Latitudes not Attitudes: How Geography Explains History," History Today, 20 October 2010, are wondering, as I am: Don't ideas matter?! Anyhow, his
essay and these other two got the rusty gears in my head a'turnin'. (Hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily for the great culling work it does. Click image to enlarge this map of Asia in the 15th century.)Ian Morris, "Latitudes not Attitudes: How Geography Explains History," History Today, 20 October 2010.
Explaining why the West rules calls for a different kind of history than usual, one stepping back from the details to see broader patterns, playing out over millennia on a global scale. . . .
You may have noticed that all the historical examples I have mentioned – Italy, Greece, Israel, India, China – lie in a narrow band of latitudes, roughly 20-35° north, stretching across the Old World. This is no accident.>>>
Matthias Schulz, "How Middle Eastern Milk Drinkers Conquered Europe," Speigel Online, 15 October 2010.
* At around 7000 BC, a mass migration of farmers began from the Middle East to Europe.
* These ancient farmers brought along domesticated cattle and pigs.
* There was no interbreeding between the intruders and the original population.
Mutated for Milk
The new settlers also had something of a miracle food at their disposal. They produced fresh milk, which, as a result of a genetic mutation, they were soon able to drink in large quantities. The result was that the population of farmers grew and grew.>>>
Geraldin Fabrikant, "Hunting for the Dawn of Writing, When Prehistory Became History," New York Times, 19 October 2010.
The new exhibition by the institute, part of the University of Chicago, is the first in the United States in 26 years to focus on comparative writing. It relies on advances in archaeologists’ knowledge to shed new light on the invention of scripted language and its subsequent evolution. . . .
To Christopher E. Woods, associate professor of Sumerology at the University of Chicago and the curator of the show, it was important to include examples from all four cultures because the goal of the exhibition was “to present and describe the four times in history when writing was invented from scratch.”>>>
