February 4, 2011

The Fertile Crescent was home to some of the best crops and farm animals in the ancient world. The Fertile Crescent had a huge head start because of their geographical surroundings. There were rows of houses in a place in The Fertile Crescent and people found it to be very technological because they were developing houses. As the villages grew, more people could grow crops and help out on the farm. Making plaster for homes out of limestone was a huge technological advance since they knew how to use fire and how to make it useful. Since the food surplus in New Guinea was basically non existent it was hard for them to advance technologically because they spent too much time trying to figure out how to feed themselves. The Fertile Crescent has now lost its head start, it was abandoned because they had a weakness. Their climate was too dry and too hard to farm, the water was overused and the trees has all been cut down. Places to the east and west of The Fertile Crescent such as the Mediterranean and other Asian places were good places for them to migrate to. The Fertile Crescent had similar weather and climate as to the places they migrated to. Once the crops and animals of the Fertile Crescent reached Egypt there was an "explosion" of civilization. Suddenly, there was enough food to feed armies of people, the rich, the princes, and various other people. In the 16th century the same crops and animals were taken to the new world (Americas). The modern America would have been impossible to achieve without the concepts of farming and animals. Diamond has been criticized for not noticing the huge aspects that people played in the technological advance in America. New Guinea did not have the same raw materials as other countries, which is one of the reasons they did not advance. The people of New Guinea have the ingenuity to advance in the world, but their geographical luck was not good.