Many hypotheses have been put forward which have mostly to do with (obviously) geographic and economic factors. However, the main factor may be genetic: the admixture of hunter-gatherer genes in a population.
If we turn back time 8.000 years the situation was generally reversed: the south that had a lot of arable lands was settled by farmers who pushed hunter-gatherers northwards.
The early civilizations were all located in the south whereas the northern areas often were way backwards. Hunter-gatherers were assumed into farming-herding societies only much later during the Bronze Age, often probably reluctantly, either as poor labourers or as slaves.
The genetic map of Europe shows that in European democratic countries the North tends to be richer than the south. How the heck did it happen that the once so rich countries in the south have become the poorest countries in Europe? I have argued that people tend to fall into temperament types according to subsistence strategies.
Farmers tend to be high in conscientiousness and industriousness, i.e. they are high in productivity. However, they also tend to be conservative and not very innovative. The innovative force comes from hunter-gatherers who have been integrated into a farmer-herder society. Hunter-gatherers generally tend to live very modestly but are happy. However, they are evolutionarily not adapted for life in a competitive farmer-herder society. This is proven by the struggles of contemporary foragers that include high rates of unemployment, homelessness and suicide. Hunter-gatherer types who have to live in a farmer-herder society will try to make their environment more according to their evolutionary programming. They can do so by
- Technological innovation
- Egalitarian universal laws
Technological innovations could significantly reduce work hours. Whereas early farmers often had to work 40+ hours per week, foragers typically don’t work more than 20 hours per week. Countless famous innovators like Benjamin Franklin said of themselves that they were lazy (they only worked hard when they had a passion for something).
Egalitarian universal laws undermined segmentary kinship lineages, the basic social organisation of food producers and therefore nepotism and corruption. There is a solid correlation between the level of corruption in a country and its general wealth and the presence of a healthy middle class.
These two factors were highly important in producing advanced societies in which not only the rich profited from labour but all people. If hunter-gatherer types were able to innovate both technologically and legally depended a lot on the political circumstances. In Eastern Europe, they were less able to do so than in Western Europe where science and technology flourished after the French Revolution.
The same is true for the USA. The southern US states were settled mainly by farmer and pastoralist (=cowboys) types, whereas the northern US had a much higher percentage of hunter-gatherer type people. This manifested itself in industrialization and the abolition of slavery. The south resisted both.
If you check the above map, you will find that Northern Italy (richer) has more HG gene admixture than Southern Italy (which also has much higher levels of corruption).
Two of the most innovative countries in Europe are Finland and Estonia, two countries with extremely high hunter-gatherer admixture. Other innovative countries in Europe, like Britain and Switzerland, provide the necessary incentives for forager types (scientists, engineers) to work in them.
Check out my book on how these three tribes, foragers, farmers and pastoralists have shaped history:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZR3KPVH
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