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As I said, it wasn't the only factor. Perhaps the misfortune of expanding largely to desert areas held Islam back some.
That said, I'm not sure that in 1500 one could say that Islamic civilization was at least, or more, advanced than Christian civilization. To be sure they had their advancements, but I'd say by that time Christianity was already ahead. Though, Christianity had a ~600 year head start as well.
As I said, it wasn't the only factor. Perhaps the misfortune of expanding largely to desert areas held Islam back some.
That said, I'm not sure that in 1500 one could say that Islamic civilization was at least, or more, advanced than Christian civilization. To be sure they had their advancements, but I'd say by that time Christianity was already ahead. Though, Christianity had a ~600 year head start as well.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. The Christian West seemed to be mostly on par with or ahead of Islamics way before 1500 having stopped and halted the Islamic invasion into western Europe for the most part in the 700s.
There was a book about this called After Tamerlane by a Brit historian from about a year or two ago. The author does argue that the Islamic, Christian, (and far East) worlds were on a par in terms of commerce and technology until about 1500 (Tamerlane was a Muslim warlord from about 1400).
The Chinese had voyaged as far as East Africa around 1400, but stopped exploring due to isolationism. One point made by the author is that Europe's coastline is one peninsula after another from top to bottom. This facilitated sea travel which in turn led to exploration.
My pet theory is that the big factor was the individualism of Judaic thought from the time of Ezekiel. This was then reinforced by 'ye must be born again' (John 3:7) which underscored the primacy of free will and individual choice. In other cultures/civilizations the individual was always subsumed by the group.
Show me the part of human DNA where the " White genes " reside and I'll concur .
I suspect you actually do know something about this topic but are striking an ignorant pose here. Do you think pretending not to understand how humans can be grouped biologically is... cool?
I suspect you actually do know something about this topic but are striking an ignorant pose here. Do you think pretending not to understand how humans can be grouped biologically is... cool?
More advanced? In what way? I don’t consider modern technology to be the ultimate advancement of homo sapiens. It’s better to be connected to the Universe and not Verizon.
As far as Europe goes, by the 1500’s natural resources in Europe were depleted. If there was not the fortuitous discovery of the America’s, Europeans would have reverted back to the Middle Ages.
China and MesoAmerica would be the dominant civilizations now.
Question 2 - How many races do you think exist in the world and what common descents ( respectively ) do all these races have ?
Seems like you don't understand the term "common descent". It simply means having ancestors in common.
Trying to stick with the topic of the thread... Europeans, for instance, share more common ancestry with each other than they do with non-Europeans, so they can be called a "race" (or population group, or whatever term you prefer). The same might be said of Englishmen, or Swedes. They could be called races as well, or just subsets of the European race. Our traditional "social construct" ideas about this line up pretty well with recent data about genetic clusters.
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