Main Points

Geographical Isolation
Results of the Isolation
Domestication of Animals video

Geographical Isolation

The physical characteristics of the world are key to try to understand the history of the land we now call America, and that's why they are the starting point of this course.

The language this course is taught in, the political institutions and culture that dominate America today did not, mainly, originate in this part of the world, they came from Europe.

The numerous cultures that existed in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in the 1500s have mostly been destroyed, even historically erased.

Not only this, but Europeans were able to leverage the advantages derived from their conquest of the Americas to eventually dominate most of the world--a domination which, many would argue, still continues today, in one guise or another.

While some have sought to explain the conquests and domination of the Europeans as the product of 'fate', a divinely fore-ordained destiny, or, alternatively, as the result of the supposed--but scientifically untenable--theories of biological, 'racial' superiority of the Europeans, your instructor is convinced that the much more plausible, factually demonstrable, logical explanation is based on the observable, objective, verifiable facts of geography, and the consequences of this geography and its interplay with other factors.

To repeat this idea in more concise terms: I don't believe that the Europeans took over the planet because God wanted them to, and I don't believe that the Europeans took over the planet because they are biologically superior to peoples of other ethnicities.

Instead, I believe the Europeans took over the planet because of the coincidence of multiple physical environmental and historical factors.

The separation of one area from other areas--either because of sheer distance (for example, the 12,000 miles of ocean between Southeast Asia and South America) or difficult terrain/and or climate (the arctic regions of Siberia and the Bering Strait separating them from Alaska, or the nearly impenetrable jungle and swamp of the Darien Gap in Panama separating North from South America) have played--and continue to play--very important roles in history and current events.

The most obvious physical facts about our planet are its very large size, and the fact that seventy percent of it is covered with ocean--which is why Earth has often been called the 'Blue Planet', because there is so much water here that it can be seen from outer space.

a map of the world with all the continents moved to one side, underlining the fact that over 70% of the planet surface is covered by oceans

It took a long time for some human cultures to develop the tools and techniques necessary for building ships capable of crossing oceans, so for much of history and prehistory, the oceans separated human cultures from each other, so that before, let's say the year 1000 CE, two human cultures with one in what is today Peru and another located in what is today Australia might as well have been on different planets--because they had virtually no means of knowing of each other's existence, let alone interacting in any way.

Please look at the map below and observe the imbalance of domesticated animals across the ancient world, with eight clustered in Western Asia and Europe, while there are only one or two in the Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa, and none in Australia

link to text only version Origin of Crops and Domestic Animals

This imbalance of domesticated animals, with many available in Eurasia/Africa but barely any in the Americas, and none in Australia and Antarctica again relates to the fact of physical isolation via separation by oceans: horses, cows, elephants, sheep, pigs, or camels were unable to swim across the Atlantic or the Pacific, and it was not until Christopher Columbus' second voyage in 1493, that horses were brought over by ship to what is today the Dominican Republic.

This separation and isolation of the Americas meant that the cultures 'missed out' on most of the technological and cultural development that had been going on in the Eurasian-African core area.

Let's underline the fact that this geographical fact was not anyone's fault--it was luck or happenstance. Neither the Inca of Peru nor the Aborigines of Australia responsible for the layout of the planet's landmasses.

Had some giant hand switched the English people from their island near Europe to Australia, and switched the Aborigines from Australia to Europe, then I'm convinced some Aborigines would be ridiculing the English for their backwardness.

But relative levels of cultural development are not inborn physiological traits or characteristics programmed into human DNA. The English are not automatically born to sip tea from fine porcelain cups, nor are Australian Natives born to squat in the dirt to drink from rivers. They are a product of the situation, the land they are born into.

In our time, many continents, over aeons of time, have moved farther and farther apart. But it wasn't always so.

Two hundred and fifty million years ago, most of the continents were clustered together and physically adjacent, allowing plants and animals to move freely from one place to another, even the small, clumsy and slow proto-dinosaur Lystrosaurus which has been found in South America, Africa, India, and Australia

map and drawing of South America, Africa, India, and Australia clustered together with the zones where fossils of the same species have been found stretching across all four continents

WHAT IF THE CONTINENTS HAD NOT DRIFTED APART ?

Would humans have evolved more homogeneously, physically and culturally? Would the complexion of human skin, the variety of body types and facial features be less varied? Would the languages of people be less different, their cultures less distinct? And would greater cultural and physical similarity among people bring with it less conflict and more harmony? To me, it’s a fascinating question, but one, unfortunately we’ll probably never be able to answer.

But let's return to the facts: even though the continents were a very long time ago all scrunched together, by the time mammals, including humans, evolved, several of them had moved thousands of miles apart from each other.

California for millions of years has been more than 5000 miles away from Asia; Massachusetts is more than 3000 miles from Europe, and even Brazil is more than 1500 miles away from Africa.

Only at one point, in the far north, at the Arctic Circle, do the Americas come close to Asia: the Bering Strait, which today is 'only' 55 miles wide, separating Alaska and Siberia.

During the Ice Ages, sea levels dropped up to 400 feet, and the waters froze so sometimes it was possible to cross on foot, and this how we believe handfuls of humans, the ancestors of the Native Americans, crossed over from Asia into the Americas.

(Imagine for a minute, 400 foot lower ocean levels--this alone would have radically changed history: Europe would have been connected to Africa, and England connected to France, and, probably, Korea to Japan. Egyptian or Persian chariots could have rolled into Europe, Genghis Khan's archers would have galoped all the way to the Atlantic and to Mount Fuji, or Napoleon's regiments would have marched into London, and Hitler's panzers would have clanked down Picadilly Circus. The whole course of history would be completely changed: the influence of geography on history is enormous, almost incalculable.)

But, as it was, when temperatures rose, the ice began to melt and gradually flooded the land connection between Asia and North America, though movement between the two landmasses was still possible and took place, via boats or across the ice, with sleds.

Therefore it is incorrect to say that the Americas were totally isolated, however, the land and climate conditions in the Bering Strait, Siberia, and Alaska were, and are even today, so difficult, so forbidding, and the human population density in this region so low, that the utility and opportunities for long distance contact, trade and communication in this zone was as far as we know, negligible.

The natives of this area mostly were comparative handfuls of hunter gatherers struggling just to survive amid extremely difficult conditions.

Thus, while it's true there was one 'door' between Asia and the Americas, that 'door' was so far away, so inaccessible, that hardly anybody used it, except sometimes by accident, when a temporary change in climate made it a little less difficult.

So we return to the idea of two continents, North and South America, almost totally separated from the big three core of Africa, Asia, and Europe.

This isolation causes a 'chain of events' which we'll see has numerous important effects.

Results of the Isolation

Because of the isolation:

key domesticated plants wheat, barley, rice did not arrive in the Americas until after 1500
key domesticated animals cows, horses, pigs, chickens, sheep, goats, etc did not arrive in the Americas until after 1500
because these crops and animals didn't arrive in the Americas, the Native Americans' food production possibilities, using only human-powered farming and with less fertilizer from animal dung, were more limited in their ability to produce food, and especially, protein-rich foods
Less food ultimately means fewer people, and fewer people in turn mean less production, and therefore smaller or even no surpluses of production available for trade with neighboring human groups
With fewer farming-based cultures in the Americas, the spread of civilization, whether by imitation or by conquest, was lessened and more hunter-gatherers, especially in areas with rich ecosystems like the woodlands of the East and West Coasts of North America, or the tropical areas of North and South America
The rarity and dispersion of farming-based civilizations in the Americas means that there was much less synergy (but also less war) among civilizations in the Americas compared to what happened in the Africa-Asia-Europe which saw almost continuous trade and war for centuries which helped spread technologies, animals, (including deadly microorganisms), plants, and human DNA, ultimately resulting in more diverse cultures, as well as people inured to a variety of diseases
Because millions of people living in the highly urbanized civilizations of the Africa-Asia-Europe core constantly lived in close proximity with domesticated animals, devastating pandemics occurred, which killed tens of millions but eventually meant that surviving generations would develop immunity.
The peoples of the Americas, isolated by thousands of miles of open ocean and the freezing ice of the Arctic were spared these catastrophic epidemics...but without the constant stimulus of viral or microbiological attack, neither did they develop resistance to smallpox, salmonella, typhoid, hepatitis, or bubonic plague or the other terrible diseases that had ravaged the core area.
Aside from plants, animals, and microorganisms, the Americas were also missing out on: technologies and inventions. The constant interplay of trade, war, and migration among the Africa-Asia-Europe core civilizations, all leveraging agriculture and domesticated animals meant a quickening pace of innovation and knowledge sharing and spurring the development of techniques and inventions in metal tools and weapons, ceramics, textiles, ships, and firearms. Over time, these technologies gave the core area--and Europe specifically, a significant industrial-military edge.

Below, please click on the button to watch a short, somewhat funny--but factual--video about why some animals were domesticated and others not:

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