Anyone who wants to understand southern Italy should read "Il Gattopardo" (The Leopard) by one of the last peers of Sicily.
Not sure about the malaria cause, but it is true that the South of Italy has traditionally been far less free and far more dependent on agriculture than the north. It has a history of being conquered over and over again by different foreign powers which led many times to extractive regimes (and inevitably less innovation - some parallels to the American south before the abolition of slavery). Such an environment led to them invent something even worse than a disfunctioning state, namely the mafia.
Until reunification in the 1860s Italy had a bunch of city-states in the North, tight fisted control by the Church in center Italy, and an extractive / agriculturally dominant economy in the south ruled by the aristocracy.
One of my parents is from Ragusa and I've spent more than half of my life in Sicily. The answer can be summed up in "Culture, Corruption, Infrastructure, in this order".
I can see the last point improving over time. I give absolutely 0% chances to the first two points changing over time, bar some apocalypse-level destruction and rebuilding of society.
This phenomenon isn’t confined to Italy. You see it across Europe, the US, and (reversed) in Australia. Charitably, you could chalk it up to sunnier regions being better for agriculture and not cities, but I think that heat simply causes the human brain to thermally throttle, which makes humans in hotter climates slower (and dumber). And less enterprising, and wealthy. And certainly humans need to be more resourceful to survive in areas with less food available. Is it a coincidence that the last uncontacted tribes are all in the equatorial belt? Coelacanths of the modern world!
More speculatively, Europeans in particular could have been subject to extreme selection pressure during ice ages. Glaciers made it all the way to central Italy, which would have definitely shaped the evolution of humans, both biologically and socially, in those areas.
Finally, humans are less fertile at higher ambient air temperatures, and the risk of death greater than in milder climates. A population boom spurs all kinds of cultural and evolutionary and epigenetic changes.
What about Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Roman Empire, India, Maya civilizations, Islamic Golden Age societies, Singapore etc? Northern regions have also historically been poor, isolated, and technologically stagnant. Seems pseudoscientific racial/climatic determinism to me.
We got a 3000m tall volcano in the middle of Sicily (currently full of snow unless it changed somehow since I last saw it this morning) and the Appennini in Umbria and Marche (800-2400m elevation) whose temperatures are roughly on par with those in most of northern Europe.
People living in those areas are not particularly smarter than those living on the coast, I'm afraid. Correlation is not causation, yadda yadda.
Some people in the wealthy countries of the world use a large portion of their income on rent, have to own a car to commute 1h+ to work because they have to live on the urban periphery—because of rent—and can spend their free time doomscrolling about how their lavish lifestyle of commuting and eating processed food is causing climate change. Making the uncontacted tribes look like anti-civilizational geniuses in contrast.
yup, this applies worldwide with some exemptions (Singapore), the closer you are to equator less motivation you have to develop various ways to survive since the land provides you with everything, further you are from equator more hostile the enviroment, thus you need to develop to survive
Why is there such a rich history of now-wealthy countries colonizing the Global South? Could their enterprising nature not provide for themselves without stealing?
That low-effort Forbes article just talks about correlation. With some groundbreaking speculation thrown in.
> If I saw a six-month Swedish winter coming around the corner, I'd probably be pretty quick to get my act together and start laying in supplies
Anyone who wants to understand southern Italy should read "Il Gattopardo" (The Leopard) by one of the last peers of Sicily.
Not sure about the malaria cause, but it is true that the South of Italy has traditionally been far less free and far more dependent on agriculture than the north. It has a history of being conquered over and over again by different foreign powers which led many times to extractive regimes (and inevitably less innovation - some parallels to the American south before the abolition of slavery). Such an environment led to them invent something even worse than a disfunctioning state, namely the mafia.
Until reunification in the 1860s Italy had a bunch of city-states in the North, tight fisted control by the Church in center Italy, and an extractive / agriculturally dominant economy in the south ruled by the aristocracy.
One of my parents is from Ragusa and I've spent more than half of my life in Sicily. The answer can be summed up in "Culture, Corruption, Infrastructure, in this order".
I can see the last point improving over time. I give absolutely 0% chances to the first two points changing over time, bar some apocalypse-level destruction and rebuilding of society.
Very interesting read!
Long shot - but I wonder if climate also plays a part, as in the development of Singapore: https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew...
In response to this question, my Sicilian grad school roommate says:
"Sicilians are horny and lazy, it's not complicated, I'm not reading this."
He now works in banking. Much to think about.
This phenomenon isn’t confined to Italy. You see it across Europe, the US, and (reversed) in Australia. Charitably, you could chalk it up to sunnier regions being better for agriculture and not cities, but I think that heat simply causes the human brain to thermally throttle, which makes humans in hotter climates slower (and dumber). And less enterprising, and wealthy. And certainly humans need to be more resourceful to survive in areas with less food available. Is it a coincidence that the last uncontacted tribes are all in the equatorial belt? Coelacanths of the modern world!
More speculatively, Europeans in particular could have been subject to extreme selection pressure during ice ages. Glaciers made it all the way to central Italy, which would have definitely shaped the evolution of humans, both biologically and socially, in those areas.
Finally, humans are less fertile at higher ambient air temperatures, and the risk of death greater than in milder climates. A population boom spurs all kinds of cultural and evolutionary and epigenetic changes.
What about Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Roman Empire, India, Maya civilizations, Islamic Golden Age societies, Singapore etc? Northern regions have also historically been poor, isolated, and technologically stagnant. Seems pseudoscientific racial/climatic determinism to me.
Yes, that's precisely the reason why California is one of the poorest states in the US. People are just dumber there, it's the heat you see.
What a load of pseudoscientific garbage disguising racism.
For 99% of human history the warm places did everything in the world. The current 1% blip is in the process of being reverting.
There's got to be more to this. Otherwise Russia wouldn't exist as is.
We got a 3000m tall volcano in the middle of Sicily (currently full of snow unless it changed somehow since I last saw it this morning) and the Appennini in Umbria and Marche (800-2400m elevation) whose temperatures are roughly on par with those in most of northern Europe.
People living in those areas are not particularly smarter than those living on the coast, I'm afraid. Correlation is not causation, yadda yadda.
Some people in the wealthy countries of the world use a large portion of their income on rent, have to own a car to commute 1h+ to work because they have to live on the urban periphery—because of rent—and can spend their free time doomscrolling about how their lavish lifestyle of commuting and eating processed food is causing climate change. Making the uncontacted tribes look like anti-civilizational geniuses in contrast.
yup, this applies worldwide with some exemptions (Singapore), the closer you are to equator less motivation you have to develop various ways to survive since the land provides you with everything, further you are from equator more hostile the enviroment, thus you need to develop to survive
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/03/20/why-is-there-s...
related thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1aqbcpy/countrie...
Why is there such a rich history of now-wealthy countries colonizing the Global South? Could their enterprising nature not provide for themselves without stealing?
That low-effort Forbes article just talks about correlation. With some groundbreaking speculation thrown in.
> If I saw a six-month Swedish winter coming around the corner, I'd probably be pretty quick to get my act together and start laying in supplies
> Could their enterprising nature not provide for themselves without stealing?
Oh no, it could. Stealing is just easier, you see.
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So you're saying it's a bad thing that the US has spent most of my lifetime squandering its social capital?