Fun reading, thank you! But I would suggest you redact this sentence: “country that is politically, religiously, linguistically, and ethnically uniform,….” China is no more uniform than Spain…… maybe it’s less uniform than Mexico, but not by much….. lots of religions and cult practices exist underneath the surface as well as Taoism and historic Buddhism as well as Confucianism and lots of different language groups. Most of them are same language family as Han Mandarin but certainly Cantonese is not mutually intelligible and there’s many other languages that are similarly different.
~20% of people living in Spain were born abroad, and that doesn't even take into consideration 2nd & 3rd gen ppl.
Spain has several co-official languages (Basque, Catalan, Asturian, Galician...), some of which aren't mutually intelligible. All Chinese understand and share written Chinese.
80% of Chinese share that they have no religion.
And yet most Chinese share a mix of Buddhist / Confucianist culture.
In Spain, 20% are Catholic, 37% only culturally, 16% Atheists, 5% are Muslim...
China has been united politically for thousands of years, although with periods of breakage in between.
Spain was "only" united in 1492.
So yes, of course, no country that big will be culturally uniform!
But China is *remarkably* uniform for its size.
For the purpose of what we are trying to do here, it's as good as it gets, because it allows us to control for many other variables. Is it perfect? No, no natural test is perfect. But it's remarkably good!
When I lived in California, it was across the street from a rice field, and I was astonished to discover they planted the fields with airplanes. Wonder what that will do for culture going forward.
I would agree with chayote tacos that China is much more diverse than it seems from the outside. The language is different region to region up to a point where one cannot understand the other.
Your maps of U. S. rice production are somewhat misleading. More acreage in California is devoted to rice production than any state other than Arkansas.
I understand that nowadays rice cultivation is already automated to the point of eliminating these historical differences (not that these automation techniques are thoroughly disseminated, but they have proven their large-scale viability; where I come from there is little difference between rice-production culture and soy-production culture, they're both practiced at industrial scale). That makes me believe that this "Rice Theory of Culture", while a very interesting way of looking at past and present, might become irrelevant in a near future.
I wonder if you can check your conclusions against the First Nations people in Ontario and Manitoba who harvested wild rice as a staple vs others who had farmed maize or were itinerant hunters?
The Anishinaabeg who lived around the Great Lakes did use it as a staple, whereas others in drier regions did not.
Interesting to know if there are differences, but wild rice (Zizania palustris) was not cultivated, but just gathered as seeds from naturally growing aquatic grasses, where rice (Oryza sativa) is only cultivated. They are also dietarily different, but I expect the sociological differences stem from the actual cultivation practices, and these are very different (gatherers vs growers).
This argument is also examined at length in the French historian Fernand Braudel's "Les Structures du Quotidien" (volume one of Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme). He makes most of the same points, and extends the reasoning to maize (corn) in the new world. Traditional maize crops also yield substantial calories per hectare, but require even less work than wheat, so you have a well-fed, healthy population with time on its hands. Your land use graph above makes this point implicitly. I'm not sure the dots connect as well as they do for rice and wheat - the influence of the Black Death on labor availability in the 15th century bears mention as well - but it's definitely interesting.
I think potatoes might have been the real game-changer anyway, but those became widespread much more recently, because they originate in the new world. But they are historically cultivated in ways that are complementary to other crops, such as raised beds in Ireland prior to the famine in the 1840s. The Irish ate as much as ⅔ of their calories from potatoes in the 1830s and were among the healthiest people in Europe. This dependence is why the famine hit them so hard.
Charles C Mann in 1493 makes the point that potatoes introduction to China also had devastating effects, deforestation, overpopulation, and flooding…. Interesting!
Ireland has never reached the same recorded population that it grew to pre-famine, afaik.
How about populations dependent upon corn vs soybeans (and other protein sources like meat/fish) and strength/size differences in populations since corn lacks an essential protein (lysine)? How about the debate over the origin of civilization after moving from hunter/gathers to agriculture being due to bread or beer? Unfortunately, the strongest evidence points to the need for warfare as being the origin of civilization.
Fun reading, thank you! But I would suggest you redact this sentence: “country that is politically, religiously, linguistically, and ethnically uniform,….” China is no more uniform than Spain…… maybe it’s less uniform than Mexico, but not by much….. lots of religions and cult practices exist underneath the surface as well as Taoism and historic Buddhism as well as Confucianism and lots of different language groups. Most of them are same language family as Han Mandarin but certainly Cantonese is not mutually intelligible and there’s many other languages that are similarly different.
China has 1.4B people.
Spain has less than 50M.
Yet:
~92% of Chinese are Han.
~20% of people living in Spain were born abroad, and that doesn't even take into consideration 2nd & 3rd gen ppl.
Spain has several co-official languages (Basque, Catalan, Asturian, Galician...), some of which aren't mutually intelligible. All Chinese understand and share written Chinese.
80% of Chinese share that they have no religion.
And yet most Chinese share a mix of Buddhist / Confucianist culture.
In Spain, 20% are Catholic, 37% only culturally, 16% Atheists, 5% are Muslim...
China has been united politically for thousands of years, although with periods of breakage in between.
Spain was "only" united in 1492.
So yes, of course, no country that big will be culturally uniform!
But China is *remarkably* uniform for its size.
For the purpose of what we are trying to do here, it's as good as it gets, because it allows us to control for many other variables. Is it perfect? No, no natural test is perfect. But it's remarkably good!
Appreciate the reply!
When I lived in California, it was across the street from a rice field, and I was astonished to discover they planted the fields with airplanes. Wonder what that will do for culture going forward.
https://www.abc10.com/article/life/food/rice-fields-airplane/103-0d898650-6416-4cd1-a0e9-489c3b881e4c
Oh wow! I had no idea
Great post, thank you.
I would agree with chayote tacos that China is much more diverse than it seems from the outside. The language is different region to region up to a point where one cannot understand the other.
But the point is not that it's uniform, but rather that it's as uniform as we can get for the purposes of our test!
Fun read! Can you expand more on how wheat cultivation helped accelerate industrial revolution?
I will, in an upcoming article!
Your maps of U. S. rice production are somewhat misleading. More acreage in California is devoted to rice production than any state other than Arkansas.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/rice-yearbook
These are global maps, for dozens of crops, probably not perfect of fully updated! Thanks for the link and correction
I understand that nowadays rice cultivation is already automated to the point of eliminating these historical differences (not that these automation techniques are thoroughly disseminated, but they have proven their large-scale viability; where I come from there is little difference between rice-production culture and soy-production culture, they're both practiced at industrial scale). That makes me believe that this "Rice Theory of Culture", while a very interesting way of looking at past and present, might become irrelevant in a near future.
What's crazy is that culture is still defined by this to this day!
I wonder if you can check your conclusions against the First Nations people in Ontario and Manitoba who harvested wild rice as a staple vs others who had farmed maize or were itinerant hunters?
The Anishinaabeg who lived around the Great Lakes did use it as a staple, whereas others in drier regions did not.
I'd need to know 10x more!
Interesting to know if there are differences, but wild rice (Zizania palustris) was not cultivated, but just gathered as seeds from naturally growing aquatic grasses, where rice (Oryza sativa) is only cultivated. They are also dietarily different, but I expect the sociological differences stem from the actual cultivation practices, and these are very different (gatherers vs growers).
This argument is also examined at length in the French historian Fernand Braudel's "Les Structures du Quotidien" (volume one of Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme). He makes most of the same points, and extends the reasoning to maize (corn) in the new world. Traditional maize crops also yield substantial calories per hectare, but require even less work than wheat, so you have a well-fed, healthy population with time on its hands. Your land use graph above makes this point implicitly. I'm not sure the dots connect as well as they do for rice and wheat - the influence of the Black Death on labor availability in the 15th century bears mention as well - but it's definitely interesting.
I think potatoes might have been the real game-changer anyway, but those became widespread much more recently, because they originate in the new world. But they are historically cultivated in ways that are complementary to other crops, such as raised beds in Ireland prior to the famine in the 1840s. The Irish ate as much as ⅔ of their calories from potatoes in the 1830s and were among the healthiest people in Europe. This dependence is why the famine hit them so hard.
Charles C Mann in 1493 makes the point that potatoes introduction to China also had devastating effects, deforestation, overpopulation, and flooding…. Interesting!
Ireland has never reached the same recorded population that it grew to pre-famine, afaik.
Added to the reading list! Thx!
How about populations dependent upon corn vs soybeans (and other protein sources like meat/fish) and strength/size differences in populations since corn lacks an essential protein (lysine)? How about the debate over the origin of civilization after moving from hunter/gathers to agriculture being due to bread or beer? Unfortunately, the strongest evidence points to the need for warfare as being the origin of civilization.
Wholly interesting and fun read!!
Thanks Tomas. This explains the "Highest Ideal" for different cultures I've noticed.
China: harmony
USA: Freedom (but increasingly pursuit of happiness/equality of outcome)
Spain: celebrate life
Japan: honor
Tanzania: hierarchy
Kenya: family
Europe: prestige
Awesome