Regarding the beginning of progress in 1200, there is a substantial literature on economic “efflorescence”, and Joshia Ober documents the case of Ancient Greece:
I am very interested in the case of Ancient Greece, particularly Athens. I seriously debated including it in a list of societies that experienced progress. Ultimately, I decided that there was not enough hard evidence for the material standard of living of the people who lived in the society to include it.
When I wrote my book, I was not aware of the book that you linked to. Perhaps if I had done so, I would have included it. I will be sure to take a look.
The main differences between Ancient Greece and later Commercial societies were:
1) Very inefficient agricultural system (two-field system) that produced much lower food surpluses
2) Widespread use of slavery, even in industries where free labor is common in other societies
It is obvious, however, that Ancient Greece shares many of the characteristics of Commercial societies. I am going to be writing many posts on Commercial societies, but here is a brief mention of the concept in an existing post.
I am very skeptical of the "Classical Greece had a real income similar to that of 1920 Greece" given the number of industrial technologies that were available (although were not necessarily owned by typical people). But maybe the linked book will change my mind.
I think that Ober is persuasive in the fact that Ancient Greece is competitive in terms of per capita welfare (not scale: progress is not only about per capita welfare, but also about population) with at least XVIII century Europe.
He also shows surprising equality among citizens, that were around half of Athenian population in the Classical period, and shows that beyond Athens, the ecology of Poleis was relatively democratic and substantially richer than any large area from that time to Modern Europe. For me is an important confirmation of the “competing jurisdictions” theory of efflorescence. You really need poltical competition al least for launching progress.
While I agree on the general thesis of biomes hugely influencing what kind of societies are possible, I believe you may be oversimplifying a few things, or perhaps that your claim is a bit too absolute.
Curiously, all the earliest civilizations did not in fact arise in these climate zones, save one or two. If we look at the earliest agrarian societies, or societies that independently developed writing, only Han Chinese heartland and parts of ancient Persia are the temperate zone.
Instead, the earliest civilizations arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, the Indus river valley (India-Pakistan border area), the Andes mountains (Incas and their pre-cursors), Central America (Olmec and Maya), the valley of Mexico (Aztecs and their pre-cursors).
Furthermore, once complex societies started getting underway, most of them were not in the temperate zone. If the temperate zone were the natural birthplace of Progress, then why was it only in the 1400s/1500s that (outside of China and Iran), these regions (Flanders, Netherlands, East England) started developing faster?
Indeed, when the early European colonizers travelled across the world, they often found societies that were more complex than their own. E.g. the Spanish who first entered Tenochtitlan concluded that in many aspects it was more advanced than their own society.
The same goes for the Asian societies they encountered. We also don't see sites like the Angkor Wat, the Borobudur or the Maya temples in European/North American temperate regions.
Also, compared to the Austronesians who settled areas as far flung as New Zealand, Hawaii, Magadascar and Easter Island, the West Europeans were quite late with ocean travel.
To say that only "Temperate Forest and Mediterranean biomes are capable of supporting vast expanses of productive agriculture" I think isn't quite accurate. The Central Mexico Valley, the Maya regions, the Andean cultures, ancient India and Sri Lanka, the Khmer civilization - these are just a few of the regions outside of these biomes that did in fact support vast expanses of productive agriculture, with civilizations more complex than their contemporary counterparts in Western Europe or North America at the time.
Again, I agree with the approach by looking at biomes, but I think the argument needs a bit more nuance.
Thanks for the comment, but if you read the article, it should have been obvious that this was just one snippet of many articles about the constraints of geography on human progress.
Didn't you notice the links to other articles?
One of the problems with writing short articles for Substack is that it is impossible to go into depth on every topic. Most people would be bored by the extra nuance that you are looking for. That is why I include hyperlinks to other articles on related topics.
Here is a link to just a few of the other articles that I have written on geography.
I think that you will find plenty of nuance there.
As the title of this article suggests, it is not about where agriculture evolved. It is about "Why Progress Started Where It Did." That was thousands of years after the evolution of agriculture.
And you are confusing Agrarian societies with Horticultural societies:
None of the regions that you mentioned had "vast expanses of productive agriculture." They were, in fact, geographically-compact societies on river deltas or small regions with volcanic soil. None of them experienced material progress before the 20th Century.
"The Spanish who first entered Tenochtitlan" were conquistadors largely from isolated regions who never encountered large cities before, so that is not evidence.
You can define "complex societies" however you want, but I make clear in my articles that I define them as "Complex societies = Agrarian + Commercial + Industrial societies." Those were all heavily restricted to the biomes that I discussed in this article, which the exceptions that I mentioned above and in other articles. Progress only occurred in the latter two society types.
Many of the societies that you mention were Horticultural societies, which lacked animal-traction plow. All of them were less complex with the possible exception of the Aztecs, as they had extremely productive chinampas and volcanic soil on a lake.
As you can see from the graphic in this article, I specifically included the Riverine biome as a geography that support the Agrarian society type. The difference is that they were much smaller in geographical scope:
Regarding the beginning of progress in 1200, there is a substantial literature on economic “efflorescence”, and Joshia Ober documents the case of Ancient Greece:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691140919/the-rise-and-fall-of-classical-greece
Modern estimates suggest that Classical Greece had a real income similar to that of 1920 Greece...
Thanks for the comment, Arturo.
I am very interested in the case of Ancient Greece, particularly Athens. I seriously debated including it in a list of societies that experienced progress. Ultimately, I decided that there was not enough hard evidence for the material standard of living of the people who lived in the society to include it.
When I wrote my book, I was not aware of the book that you linked to. Perhaps if I had done so, I would have included it. I will be sure to take a look.
The main differences between Ancient Greece and later Commercial societies were:
1) Very inefficient agricultural system (two-field system) that produced much lower food surpluses
2) Widespread use of slavery, even in industries where free labor is common in other societies
It is obvious, however, that Ancient Greece shares many of the characteristics of Commercial societies. I am going to be writing many posts on Commercial societies, but here is a brief mention of the concept in an existing post.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-you-need-to-know-about-society
I am very skeptical of the "Classical Greece had a real income similar to that of 1920 Greece" given the number of industrial technologies that were available (although were not necessarily owned by typical people). But maybe the linked book will change my mind.
Take care.
I think that Ober is persuasive in the fact that Ancient Greece is competitive in terms of per capita welfare (not scale: progress is not only about per capita welfare, but also about population) with at least XVIII century Europe.
He also shows surprising equality among citizens, that were around half of Athenian population in the Classical period, and shows that beyond Athens, the ecology of Poleis was relatively democratic and substantially richer than any large area from that time to Modern Europe. For me is an important confirmation of the “competing jurisdictions” theory of efflorescence. You really need poltical competition al least for launching progress.
Yes, I made the same point here (and throughout my book):
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-we-need-decentralized-government
While I agree on the general thesis of biomes hugely influencing what kind of societies are possible, I believe you may be oversimplifying a few things, or perhaps that your claim is a bit too absolute.
Curiously, all the earliest civilizations did not in fact arise in these climate zones, save one or two. If we look at the earliest agrarian societies, or societies that independently developed writing, only Han Chinese heartland and parts of ancient Persia are the temperate zone.
Instead, the earliest civilizations arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, the Indus river valley (India-Pakistan border area), the Andes mountains (Incas and their pre-cursors), Central America (Olmec and Maya), the valley of Mexico (Aztecs and their pre-cursors).
Furthermore, once complex societies started getting underway, most of them were not in the temperate zone. If the temperate zone were the natural birthplace of Progress, then why was it only in the 1400s/1500s that (outside of China and Iran), these regions (Flanders, Netherlands, East England) started developing faster?
Indeed, when the early European colonizers travelled across the world, they often found societies that were more complex than their own. E.g. the Spanish who first entered Tenochtitlan concluded that in many aspects it was more advanced than their own society.
The same goes for the Asian societies they encountered. We also don't see sites like the Angkor Wat, the Borobudur or the Maya temples in European/North American temperate regions.
Also, compared to the Austronesians who settled areas as far flung as New Zealand, Hawaii, Magadascar and Easter Island, the West Europeans were quite late with ocean travel.
To say that only "Temperate Forest and Mediterranean biomes are capable of supporting vast expanses of productive agriculture" I think isn't quite accurate. The Central Mexico Valley, the Maya regions, the Andean cultures, ancient India and Sri Lanka, the Khmer civilization - these are just a few of the regions outside of these biomes that did in fact support vast expanses of productive agriculture, with civilizations more complex than their contemporary counterparts in Western Europe or North America at the time.
Again, I agree with the approach by looking at biomes, but I think the argument needs a bit more nuance.
Thanks for the comment, but if you read the article, it should have been obvious that this was just one snippet of many articles about the constraints of geography on human progress.
Didn't you notice the links to other articles?
One of the problems with writing short articles for Substack is that it is impossible to go into depth on every topic. Most people would be bored by the extra nuance that you are looking for. That is why I include hyperlinks to other articles on related topics.
Here is a link to just a few of the other articles that I have written on geography.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/impact-of-geography-on-human-progress
I think that you will find plenty of nuance there.
As the title of this article suggests, it is not about where agriculture evolved. It is about "Why Progress Started Where It Did." That was thousands of years after the evolution of agriculture.
And you are confusing Agrarian societies with Horticultural societies:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-you-need-to-know-about-society
None of the regions that you mentioned had "vast expanses of productive agriculture." They were, in fact, geographically-compact societies on river deltas or small regions with volcanic soil. None of them experienced material progress before the 20th Century.
"The Spanish who first entered Tenochtitlan" were conquistadors largely from isolated regions who never encountered large cities before, so that is not evidence.
You can define "complex societies" however you want, but I make clear in my articles that I define them as "Complex societies = Agrarian + Commercial + Industrial societies." Those were all heavily restricted to the biomes that I discussed in this article, which the exceptions that I mentioned above and in other articles. Progress only occurred in the latter two society types.
Many of the societies that you mention were Horticultural societies, which lacked animal-traction plow. All of them were less complex with the possible exception of the Aztecs, as they had extremely productive chinampas and volcanic soil on a lake.
As you can see from the graphic in this article, I specifically included the Riverine biome as a geography that support the Agrarian society type. The difference is that they were much smaller in geographical scope:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/all-of-human-history-in-one-graphic