#politic #civilization #state # [[Epistemic status]] #shower-thought # Most important factor in a civilization fitness is food >As for Eurasia's head start, humans have occupied Eurasia for about a million years, far longer than they have lived in the Americas. According to the archaeological evidence discussed in Chapter 1, humans entered the Americas at Alaska only around 12,000 B.C., spread south of the Canadian ice sheets as Clovis hunters a few centuries before 11,000 B.C., and reached the southern tip of South America by 10,000 B.C. Even if the dis puted claims of older human occupation sites in the Americas prove valid, those postulated pre-Clovis inhabitants remained for unknown reasons very sparsely distributed and did not launch a Pleistocene proliferation of hunter-gatherer societies with expanding populations, technology, and art as in the Old World. Food production was already arising in the Fertile Crescent only 1,500 s after the time when Clovis-derived hunter-gatherers years were just reaching southern South America. >~ [[Jared Diamond]] #to-digest # External links