"With regards to Eskimos, there is actually a balance required. Agriculture isn't really possible that far north as the growing season is too short (and not that productive due to lower light levels) so they wouldn't have invented it."
Fair enough, my understanding of your point was that the greater the environmental restriction on a human population, the more cortical development they experience and thus the more intelligent and advanced they can become- I just don't think it's that simple. Africans, for instance, may have not had the food shortages necessary to develop agriculture; but there was more than enough incentive to develop more sophisticated means for shelter, cleaner water, etc. Yet the population still (to my knowledge) experienced no civilized development of any kind for thousands of years.
No, it's more that the environment must be harsh in such a way that ideas like agriculture are optimal strategies. With regards to Africa, that's actually not true. You're thinking like a white person; we innovate for the sake of innovating, only because our evolutionary history has created brains that innovate. For Africans, they don't have that background, and thus do not innovate unless required. They survived just fine with huts and such, and do not have that instinct to innovate, so they have lived the same for the last few thousand years. Innovation requires forward thinking, which is a meme that Africans didn't need for survival, as implied by the fact that don't even have a future tense in their languages.
Good context on Africa, thank you.
"With regards to Eskimos, there is actually a balance required. Agriculture isn't really possible that far north as the growing season is too short (and not that productive due to lower light levels) so they wouldn't have invented it."
Fair enough, my understanding of your point was that the greater the environmental restriction on a human population, the more cortical development they experience and thus the more intelligent and advanced they can become- I just don't think it's that simple. Africans, for instance, may have not had the food shortages necessary to develop agriculture; but there was more than enough incentive to develop more sophisticated means for shelter, cleaner water, etc. Yet the population still (to my knowledge) experienced no civilized development of any kind for thousands of years.
No, it's more that the environment must be harsh in such a way that ideas like agriculture are optimal strategies. With regards to Africa, that's actually not true. You're thinking like a white person; we innovate for the sake of innovating, only because our evolutionary history has created brains that innovate. For Africans, they don't have that background, and thus do not innovate unless required. They survived just fine with huts and such, and do not have that instinct to innovate, so they have lived the same for the last few thousand years. Innovation requires forward thinking, which is a meme that Africans didn't need for survival, as implied by the fact that don't even have a future tense in their languages.
"For Africans, they don't have that background, and thus do not innovate unless required."
Fair enough, man. But I would consider the constant risk of being eaten by lions sufficient risk to innovate shelter beyond mud huts.
I agree with you for the most part, just devil's advocating.