How did the area of Europe advance so quickly?

[Bereta_Eder]

History has a way of coming back to bite you in the ass but I guess you can sleep safely for tonight
Goodnight

[Urban Ranger]

Poor Sn00py. His thread has been spammed to death.

[Q Classic]

even if europe has the powers of industry and what not, it will never, and i mean never, have the powers of honor, tradition, or culture.

[Urban Ranger]

Well some European countries have got a bit of culture, though.

[Q Classic]

[Velociryx]

Three things, working in tandem:
1) Natural barriers and challenges. Europe has two things here....rough seas (as has been pointed out), and cold. Cold makes you innovate if you want to survive, and parts of Europe are....damned cold. (or course, if this was the whole picture, then the eskimoes would be the most technoligically advanced folks in the world, so there's gotta be more).

2) Resource base - Civilizations need the basics to thrive. Food (in variety...grains, fruits, beef, etc), domesticatible animals (esp. horses and cattle), and other raw materials (lossa trees and ore and stone for construction). Other areas have some of these in combination, but the "total package" is right there in Europe.

3) Limited space/rapidly growing population - Leads to competition (as has been mentioned), but it also means faster transfer of knowledge between groups. There are no significant barriers to slow it down (ie- nothing like a vast desert, or a mountain range that isolates Europe into disparate halves, etc.

So....good resources, macro-level challenges, relatively confined area with a rapidly growing population and tons of resources to play with....it was nigh-on inevitable.

-=Vel=-

[St Leo]

even if europe has the powers of industry and what not, it will never, and i mean never, have the powers of honor, tradition, or culture.

How is that bad thing?

honour == tradition == religion == new age == libertarianism == bad

[FrostyBoy]

Thanks Vel, best answer I have heard yet, and it only took 3 pages.


America has 300 million right? And England has about 80 Million doesn't it? Does this make any difference in terms of discovery/invention and production?

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by paiktis22
nah, the basics of today's human rights is clearly french thinkers' texts. america didnt have much influence in europe's thinking (still dont)

Well, the French philosophers were in turn inspired by the ideas they heard from the civilizations they had met in the New World, so a lot of influence did come to Europe from across the Atlantic.

[JohnT]

Sothern euros work to live, northern euros live to work.

Something very wrong w/ the latter

In your opinion, of course.

[Inverse Icarus]

Re: How did the area of Europe advance so quickly?

Originally posted by Sn00py
I want to keep this on the off topic forum, but most of us are civers here, and we all know that playing a european civ can limit your ability to grow, as quick as, say the American Indians or the Aboriginies even!

So what was it exactly that gave the Europeans the edge?

superior genetics. fairer skin.

[JohnT]

I think y'all forgot about the effects of Christianity...

I mean, yes, of course the regurgitation of Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel as done by a number of posters on this thread does have something to do with it... but materials and the way they are used are effected as well by the mindset and the beliefs/attitudes of those within a culture.

Let me quote Oxford don John Morris Roberts (emphasis mine (except the word in bold, that is from the original.)):

It is very hard to say exactly how such changes affected Europe's role in the coming era of world history. By 1500, there was certainly much to give confidence to the few Europeans who were likely to think at all about these things. The roots of their civilization lay in a religion which taught them they were a people voyaging in time, their eyes on a future made a little more comprehensible and perhaps a little less frightening by contemplation of past perils navigated and awareness of a common goal. As a result Europe was to be the first civilization aware of time not as endless (though perhaps cyclical) perssure, but as continuing change in a certain direction, as progress. The chosen people of the Bible, after all, were going somewhere; they were not simply people to whom inexplicable things happened which had to be passively endured. From the simple acceptance of change was before long to spring the will to live in change which was the peculiarity of modern man. Secularized and far away from their origins, such ideas could be very important; the advance of science soon provided an example. In another sense, too, the Christian heritage was decisive for, after the fall of Byzantium, Europeans believed that they alone possessed it (or in effect alone, for there was little sense among ordinary folk of what Slav, Nestorian, or Coptic Christianity might be). It was an encouraging idea for men who stood at the threshold of centuries of unfolding power, discovery and conquest. Even with the Ottomans to face, Europe in 1500 was no longer just the beleaguered fortress of the Dark Ages, but a stronghold from which men were beginning to sally back-and-forth in counter-attack. Jerusalem had been abandoned to the infidel, Byzantium had fallen. Where should be the new centre of the world?

The men of the Dark Ages who had somehow persevered in adversity and had built a Christian world from the debris of the past and the gifts of the babarians had thus wrought infinitely more than they could have known.

...

Perhaps the key to that (the Europeans') future with the past can be located in the fundamental Christian dualism of this life and the world to come, the earthly and the heavenly. This was to prove an irritant of great value, secularized in the end as a new critical instrument, the contrast of what is and what might be, of ideal and actual. In it, Christianity secreted an essence to be utilized against itself, for in the end it would make possible the independent critical stance, a complete break with the world Aquinas and Erasmus both knew.*

And let's not forget the printing press and the 26-letter alphabet!

*J.M. Roberts, History of the World, 1993 printing, Book 6, Chapter 11, pages 432-433.

[Panag]

Re: How did the area of Europe advance so quickly?

Originally posted by Sn00py
I want to keep this on the off topic forum, but most of us are civers here, and we all know that playing a european civ can limit your ability to grow, as quick as, say the American Indians or the Aboriginies even!

So what was it exactly that gave the Europeans the edge?

I'm asking this because I believe that the game Civilization needs to change dramatically in order to function better (and I also think that would be more fun too - this is for those "but real doesn't mean fun" type of ppl )

hi ,

one of the great things that happend in europe is without doubt napi and his wars , .....

everywhere he went he left behind the "code de Napoleon" , till today the base of most european constitions and laws , .... he also brought schools , elections , tax , federal police , etc , .....

without him europe would definatly not be the same , they would be at least 50 years behind on the us , ...

have a nice day

[Odin]

The advantage Europe had was that during the enlightenment people questioned religion and brough freedom of ideas to Europe, that was why Russia was so behind the times untill they kicked out the czar.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Odin
The advantage Europe had was that during the enlightenment people questioned religion and brough freedom of ideas to Europe, that was why Russia was so behind the times untill they kicked out the czar.

Europe's advantages were evident long before the Enlightenment.