Friday, December 18, 2015

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, why does the author talk of "east-west axis" and "north-south axis?"

Diamond talks about north-south and east-west axes because
they have a great impact on how much diffusion of plants there can be in any given area
of the world.


If an area of the world is like the Americas,
its long axis runs north to south.  That means that it is longer north to south than it
is east to west.  Eurasia is the opposite because it is longer east to west than it is
north to south.  It is easier for plants to diffuse along an east-west axis.  This is
because climate does not change east to west (outside of factors like elevation and
distance from an ocean) the way it does from north to
south.


This is important because a society that developed
agriculture could diffuse its domesticated plants along an east-west axis to other
cultures.  That means that civilizations could grow and could exchange new plants with
one another.  In a place with a long north-south axis, this could not
occur.


This is one major reason why Eurasia was so much
better suited to creating major civilizations than places like Africa and the Americas
were.

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