Testing the Diamond Hypothesis
Why did the Old World discover the New World and not vice-versa? Jared Diamond argued in Guns, Germs, and Steel that the ultimate cause of the asymmetry evident in the 1492 encounter was the orientation of the axes of the geological continents or worlds. Whereas Africa and the Americas are vertically aligned, the orientation of the Eurasian axis is hori…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Policy Tensor to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.