This is environmental determinism isn’t it? I’m far removed from my attempt at a history degree these days but I know it’s controversial among historians for its roots in eurocentrism and imperialism. Not that it isn’t always useful analysis (and your thought process isn’t wrong), but it also ignores human agency and cultural differences.
Can’t really go into much more since I’m not very well read on this stuff though.
I mean it's sort of that, but when you're talking about this scale of change... there aren't many decisions individual hunter-gatherers could have made 5,000 years ago that would have made agriculture not suck in their area, or individual decisions that a modern day hunter-gatherer could make today that will move anything tomorrow.
All historical figures we talk about had some connection to real power - either they directly wielded it or they had some influence over it. Individual decisions could change the course of history, flip power dynamics, etc. but only to a certain degree. The environment can be a strong limiter on human choices. If you can't eat or can't drink, you die.
I think that controversy must be centered around specific applications of environmental determinism, where it's deemed to be over applied. Nobody would argue that like, getting hit by a tsunami doesn't matter and it's really down to the individual choices of the people getting hit by a tsunami.
There's other environmental factors like not having the metals readily available that you can forge to mine other metals, etc. that can hold back an area from advancing.
I could definitely see where people could get obsessed with this deterministic line of thinking and totally mis-analyze all kinds of situations.
This is environmental determinism isn’t it? I’m far removed from my attempt at a history degree these days but I know it’s controversial among historians for its roots in eurocentrism and imperialism. Not that it isn’t always useful analysis (and your thought process isn’t wrong), but it also ignores human agency and cultural differences.
Can’t really go into much more since I’m not very well read on this stuff though.
I mean it's sort of that, but when you're talking about this scale of change... there aren't many decisions individual hunter-gatherers could have made 5,000 years ago that would have made agriculture not suck in their area, or individual decisions that a modern day hunter-gatherer could make today that will move anything tomorrow.
All historical figures we talk about had some connection to real power - either they directly wielded it or they had some influence over it. Individual decisions could change the course of history, flip power dynamics, etc. but only to a certain degree. The environment can be a strong limiter on human choices. If you can't eat or can't drink, you die.
I think that controversy must be centered around specific applications of environmental determinism, where it's deemed to be over applied. Nobody would argue that like, getting hit by a tsunami doesn't matter and it's really down to the individual choices of the people getting hit by a tsunami.
There's other environmental factors like not having the metals readily available that you can forge to mine other metals, etc. that can hold back an area from advancing.
I could definitely see where people could get obsessed with this deterministic line of thinking and totally mis-analyze all kinds of situations.