Putting that huge issue aside for more fundamental ones: certainly climate impacts culture in the aggregate to some extent, but the overall framing here is way too overconfident. There’s about a million confounding variables when assessing different societies over large time scales, the largest of which are A) technology and B) to what extent GDP is even a primary goal. Asking if heat makes societies poorer is like asking if rivers make societies richer: it depends!
> 5. Race
> This theory is extremely contested, and I haven’t independently assessed it, so I won’t go into any detail, but for sake of completeness we must add the hypothesis that race also has influence in economic development. I might eventually make an independent assessment of the claim.
If you haven't "independently assessed" it and have zero details to add, please leave it out until you do!
Yeah, I'm open to the idea that women are made for the kitchen and are too stupid to participate in public life. You should keep an open mind!
Sounds like a "no I did not forget this" marker.
See also, "this page intentionally left blank".
That's about as specific as saying the U.S. is quite hot.. you'd be interested to compare the cultures of Darwin and Melbourne or Hobart.
You could just ask why those 2 regions are so rich right now and the answer i think has much to do with military dominance starting a few hundred years back.
The climate line seems to be artificially pushed by "Look the southern hemisphere below latitude -40 is as wealthy as europe/NA above latitude 40". There's literally <2million people below latitude -40... (that's the top of Tasmania, part of NZ and patagonia for reference) How can they suggest what they are suggesting without consideration of this? As in the data of "oh look southern hemisphere is rich near the poles too" is just based on a handful of people living there.
Human societies, viewed as systems, have changes occurring over decades and centuries. Taking short snapshots will fool you about the nature of these systems.
That doesn't seem as explanatory as much as it just pushes the explanation further away in time. How did Europe arrive at "military dominance starting a few hundred years back?" At which point we just start quoting Charles Mann and Jared Diamond and the more droll will make subtle remarks about how the North Americans' syphilis really did a number on the European monarchies.
Those societies which were further spread apart from this central region of cultural exchange, like many in Latin America, Africa, colder regions in North America and so on were less culturally developed by the time they met others or colonialists, that’s why you have funny things like the University of Oxford being older than the Incan empire.
There are many warm countries which aren’t poor, and the warm countries which are poor, are composed of people whose ancestors (meaning those who were there pre-colonialism and those who were there when borders were formed post-colonization) were spread out far from a region of central cultural exchange in the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and East Asia.
It's obvious that the roman empire contributed a huge amount towards the process of European progress. Come to think of it Europe has kind of been dominant over the middle east since Alexander the great.
From the fall of Rome until colonization and industrialization got rolling they were definitely not dominant.
“Air conditioning. … It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics.
Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency.”(I'm not saying that those are a Mafia hallmark, but I do wonder whether the robes would make sense in Brazil. As far as I'm aware they are the gold standard of heat-adapted clothing. They probably don't do much about humidity.)
And here's some Arab clothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dishdasha.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb#/media/File:Sheikh_Moham...
They don't look very different, to me.
I pulled this from a Bangladeshi newspaper's website: https://cdn.bd-pratidin.com/public/news_images/2025/09/29/17...
It is significantly easier to walk in 20C, 50% humidity than to walk the same distance in 28C, 100% humidity. You get lethargic really quickly in a hot humid area.
Every physical action just feels easier in a temperate climate than in a tropical one. Which is why air-conditioning is such a big deal - it lets you get temperate conditions in a tropical location.
https://www.habitat.org/emea/stories/how-excel-coolcoat-maki...
Revolutionary Paint: How to Make Surfaces Stay Cool in the Sun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNs_kNilSjk
For a while I've thought the first thing to coat with a fancy "Free AC" paint should be... the AC! For most sky-cooling rigs the main cost is pipes or panels on the roof to move heat from inside to outside, but AC is already moving heat. AC units operate at a higher temperature, so it should emit more IR radiation as T^4 (meaning a small increase makes a big difference). Most AC has a pretty good sky view, but maybe not as ideal as the roof.
It seems ironic to use "No AC" paint on your AC, but the physics and economics doesn't lie. Per square inch it's probably the most effective place!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1a2HkcVbmAWExiWT__qQ...
If you can survive all year sleeping under a tree, you eventually end up with a different gene pool than in a place where you need to calculate how much grain you need to store for winter in order to feed you family.
Harsh winters kill people that cannot plan ahead. This, over time, changes the gene pool and the attitude toward planning.
North American cultures in harsher conditions were nomadic herders
Weather can be chaotic and highly destructive and like winters, cyclone season will hit hard. Rain all the time sounds lovely until it rots everything. Food expires far quicker.
The tropics also gave rise to the best sea faring people; the polynesians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
The gene pool comment is ignorance combined with misinformation. Our ancestors interbred with a number of hominins across the world and then with each other. Especially across asia-europe, everyone banged each other and other hominins.
To be honest your comment annoyed me a tad because I lived in the tropics and loved it. Wish I could go back. Wish the tropics had more jobs for me. Unfortunately my government doesn't spend enough.
That's probably the difference. Seasons can be prepared for. Natural disasters no so much.
On the other hand I reckon this feeling is happening a lot in "richer" countries. I just feel like though we gain political independence from Spain we are yet to gain "economical" independence. Add corruption and the same people ruling the country for more than 200 years and you got the current situation where kids in the northest part of the country were starving to death and at the same time some daddy's boys ask on r/Colombia or r/Bogota why the whole country does not have Netflix.
Next question.
Another case in point, Rome and Greece were very successful and in hot climates while the people north them were not nearly as successful. Another case in point; Indian civilizations and the Bijang civilization among others, all in hot jungle climates. The Mayans, the Aztecs, etc.
It’s all just more constant rationalization and coping, i.e., trying to find some excuse and lie that can be maintained to justify the cult of everyone is the same. Its just moved on from magic dirt rationalization due to the cultural perspective of the early 20th century, to note adapted magic climate rationalization nonsense.
Bonus case in point; the Hispanics that conquered the middle and southern Americas didn’t have any problem being not poor in hot and tropical climates, especially when you exclude the non-Hispanic people of those regions.
Agreed
> It’s all just more constant rationalization and coping, i.e., trying to find some excuse and lie that can be maintained to justify the cult of everyone is the same.
You took a strange turn from acknowledging warm climate great civilizations to then implying people from warm climates lack abilities to form great civilizations
The amount of bullshit people can say for bullshit political correctness virtue signaling is absolutely insane.
At the same time there could also be some with natural flexibility to adapt to more extremes than others, realistically outside the realm of one extreme or another dominating, but instead for some the ability to adapt is what's extreme enough to be uncommon.
Sometimes maybe even beyond the range of both cold lovers and warm lovers combined.
TheCleric•4mo ago
DaveZale•4mo ago
Last night I watched several Rick Steves episodes about European art, and how it reflected society and culture over time. The Greeks set up the rationality in government, the Romans excelled at conquest and building infrastructure, while providing a good life, for centuries, and that progressed to other systems as Rome fell. So northern cultures have their ups and downs, but the past yields plenty of lesson in terms of engineering of government and infrastructure
darth_avocado•4mo ago
Those frameworks have evolved elsewhere in the world independently as well in a similar fashion. What you’re looking at is a specific time in history where due to a variety of reasons, some places are doing well relative to others. If you look at history across 2000 years, you’ll find that different parts of the world were doing better at different times.
tomalbrc•4mo ago