
A long view of globalisation in short: The agricultural revolution (2018) - Osiris30
https://voxeu.org/content/long-view-globalisation-short-agricultural-revolution-part-3-5
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eastbayjake
There isn't a good option in the UI to view the next or previous entries in
this five-part series, so here are the rest if anyone is interested:

[Part 1]: [https://voxeu.org/content/long-view-globalisation-short-
part...](https://voxeu.org/content/long-view-globalisation-short-part-1-5)

[Part 2]: [https://voxeu.org/content/long-view-globalisation-short-
huma...](https://voxeu.org/content/long-view-globalisation-short-humanisation-
globe-part-2-5)

[Part 4]: [https://voxeu.org/content/long-view-globalisation-short-
grea...](https://voxeu.org/content/long-view-globalisation-short-great-
divergence-part-4-5)

[Part 5]: [https://voxeu.org/content/long-view-globalisation-short-
new-...](https://voxeu.org/content/long-view-globalisation-short-new-
globalisation-part-5-5)

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RajuVarghese
Reading through the article there were a few things that irritated me:
referring to the Indus valley civilization as India/Pakistan, the city of
Kolkata didn't exist until the 17th century and Kochi on the Western coast of
India gained in prominence only after the earthquake of 1341. The map shows
both those places in the year AD 1.

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arethuza
That does seem a bit weird - especially as Mesopotamia is also included in
that list rather than the modern countries in that area.

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RajuVarghese
He does mention the Fertile Crescent and the modern-day countries but seems to
suggest that agriculture then moved to Mesopotamia. Not true.

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PaulDavisThe1st
It would have been nice to see a bit more inclusion of what was happening in
the Americas during this same period, since they were already fairly
populated. He also mentions the impact of Bubonic plague, but neglects to
mention the early initial impact of smallpox in the Americas - some estimates
are that it killed roughly 10% of all human life on the planet in less than
100 years.

>"Our new data-driven best estimate is a death toll of 56 million by the
beginning of the 1600s — 90 percent of the pre-Columbian Indigenous population
and around 10 percent of the global population at the time. This makes the
“Great Dying” the largest human mortality event in proportion to the global
population, putting it second in absolute terms only to World War II, in which
80 million people died — 3% of the world’s population at the time."

[https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-01-31/european-
colonization...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-01-31/european-colonization-
americas-killed-10-percent-world-population-and-caused)

Given that the "discovery" of the "New World" was a pivotal feature of the
period alluded to in the article, the fact that it had just been massively
depopulated and was then taken over by new settlers seems hugely relevant to a
"long view on globalization".

In addition, there is good evidence that agriculture was independently
invented in the Americas, in addition to its advent in the fertile crescent
and early china.

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atomi
I don't know if the incredible agricultural diversity coming out of the Valley
of Mexico has an equal[1].

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_plants_of_Mesoa...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_plants_of_Mesoamerica)

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int_19h
Raw calories matter a lot more for development, though.

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reedwolf
"Climate scientists don't know why, but, starting 20 millennia ago, the
earth’s climate began to warm."

Maybe it's just something the Earth does.

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MereInterest
While true, I would recommend reading this comic, showing the different rates
of warming.

[https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

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tigasis
that was a long post but amazing

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szczepano
Don't forget about amber road that moved amber to other side of the world.
They didn't go back with empty hands.

