Thank you for your well researched article. I think there is an important point that was missed:
Cold weather forces individuals to delay consumption and save for the future. The incentive structure completely changes or you die which is a self selection in itself. In warm climates with abundant food year round, there are strong physical demands but there is less thought required. In colder climates, the entire culture needs to be built around protecting yourself from the weather and saving food. This creates a culture that is more adept to the modern economy of specializing. That is the number one determinant of why warm countries are poorer.
I remember my father telling me, probably around 1970, that countries with colder climates were more developed because people have to build solid houses to protect themselves from the cold weather. He actually said that the men had to build these houses because the women wouldn’t stop complaining about the cold.
Intuitively, I see how this comes across at face value. I personally thrive in colder climates, I feel more alert and regulated. But, you are disregarding non-temperature related seasonal changes in warmer climates that humans have had to use as much if not more foresight to prepare, store, and protect their food sources, shelter, and infrastructure.
Monsoon and rain seasons are followed by severe drought periods every single year in most warm climates. Hurricanes and typhoons batter coastal areas seasonally, every year, bringing large amount of rain, wind, and destruction.
But wait a minute. In places that have winter, the growing/harvest season when there's anything to eat at all is often literally just 3 to 5 months a year. Meaning people had to spend those months saving up an entire roughly 8 months worth of food -- that is a ton! And also keep any dairy or meat animals themselves sheltered from the cold for months at a time so they wouldn't die too. Is there *any* tropical country where people needed to save up 2/3 of a year's worth of food?? Plus shelter stock animals in this manner. I have a hard time believing there was, if only because there would be no way to keep most food from going bad for that long, if it isn't cold. I totally grant you that there were environmental challenges and hurricanes and monsoons are not nothing, but this seems very different to me than regularly, every single year your entire life, having to save up an entire 2/3 of your annual consumption.
I think you’re making quite a few assumptions about non-temperate climates that are important to address.
Just to be clear, cold weather is not a prerequisite for yearly storage of food. There are numerous ways to store food without cold year round: grains can store in dry sealed vats, meat can be salted, etc.
Another assumption you are making is that only cold climates have a short growing/harvesting windows, and I’m demonstrating that tropical climates - especially ones where large amounts of humans have lived - also have short growing/harvesting windows due to heavy rainfall followed by long droughts. Hence the agricultural shift from perrenial species to annuals towards the end of the last ice age.
To illustrate this with an example since you asked for one, although some have already been provided, the very first large scale societies emerged in the Fertile Crescent and Indus Valley, among other similar climates. Not temperate climates, where humans still subsisted through foraging and hunting mega-fauna (which also requires foresight by the way, for example by paying attention to migratory herding patterns).
Back to the argument - large amounts of yearly rainfall inundate a floodplain, which require an immense effort in organizing human labor to construct the infrastructure necessary to divert, maintain, and repair irrigation for agriculture. Notwithstanding the development of writing, arithmetic, a legal system, and urban planning required to facilitate all of this.
It is frustrating, and I feel like calling out the elephant in the room, which is that the top comment and your argument contain within them an implicit bias - and I will give you both the benefit of the doubt here that you are not explicitly holding this bias - that there is this need to emphasize there must be something so important about humans living in cold weather that is qualitatively different from humans who do not - which begs the following question:
WHY is it so qualitatively important to maintain that only winter peoples have a kind of foresight that is necessary to exercise that is distinctly different from humans inhabiting non-temperate climates?
I’ll call a spade a spade and say it implicitly reinforces this racialized correlation that is both unscientific and simpleminded. And no, it’s not Occams Razor, because the claim simply does not fit the evidence.
If you are unaware of the bias you are implicitly holding than take this opportunity to question yourself a little bit, and if you are aware and are afraid to be explicit about it, just do so, so we can see it for what it is and make do with a waste of time.
I don’t think that’s comparable… the winter is predictable overall. And you *can* save and prepare for it. A monsoon or hurricane will destroy whatever is in its path and is unpredictable overall over the course of the year. Get yourself out of the path, wait it out, and then take stock of the damage is about the best you can do. These are natural *disasters*… nobody ever called winter a disaster unless it was epically severe maybe. Predictable seasons of drought might be better able to be prepared for…
Hi Hannah, thanks for your reply. Monsoon and Hurricane seasons are predictable overall as well. I live in Hawaii, and like most other warm climates around the world, our year tends to generally be divided between a rainy and a dry season, pretty consistently, every single year, around the same time periods. There are variations of course, just like in societies experiencing winters. Some are colder, some arrive later than expected, some earlier, some are very mild etc. But winter does arrive, every year, however it might look, just as our rainy season arrives, every year, however it might look. Warm climate societies were organized around these cycles, just as winter-bearing societies were organized around their cycles. So my main argument remains the same, which is that winter weather is not a sole determinant for human beings developing a sense of communal foresight, planning, and large scale organizing, and that warm climates have cyclical weather patterns that require foresight and planning in order to live in them.
I totally disagree with the crux of your argument.
While the cold weather absolutely has absolutely played a crucial role in innovation that has furthered human development, the idea that the colder the weather, the more you specialize is false at its core.
The endurance of the human species all across the globe is a result of innovation and specialization, Just because people in warm, bountiful, tropical climates didn't need to innovate to find ways to survive in the cold, doesn't mean they weren't innovating ways to keep cool in the heat through clothing and architecture, how to manage the bounty responsibly through good governance, and how to sustain giant populations of diverse, rich cultures if they didn't innovate language and society.
Writing began in Mesopotamia because people needed a way to keep track of food and goods. They had warm weather, but dealt with floods and droughts that made it imperative to prepare too. It's not so much about weather, it's the need to organize and evolve that other places with an abundance of food didn't have.
Then why was economic output so much higher in India than in Europe through most of history? And why are the greatest pre modern structures all built in tropical or hot environments?
Opposing your construct, US was as poor as any tropical country, when 85%+ of Americans lived on the land. A pickle barrel was a big feature while you looked for something to eat. It would be easy to prove that countries like Nepal are just as poor as Ethiopia since they don't have access to fossil fuels. It's also easy to show the crop carrying capacity of tropical lands is significantly lower than, say, temperate grasslands, regardless of 'incentive structures' theory.
I don’t this is a cultural distinction, food is just objectively harder to store in warmer climates. Many African countries did develop ways to preserve their foods because of this. Additionally, the country that is probably the best at preserving their foods, Iceland and Russia, were feudal peasant states until heavy external investment and transmission of developed culture from the west.
Even further, in cold and hostile climates, over hundreds of generations, you *have* to be smarter to adapt and survive. Simply: if you can't save, strategies and innovate, the environment will kill you and your DNA. The environment itself selects for higher General Intelligence
I disagree with this take. Across the globe, cultures and communities have consistently had to innovate, save, and strategize to adapt to diverse "hostile" environments that go beyond just the "cold."
One could make the same argument that in extreme hot climates over hundreds of generations you *have* to be smarter to adapt and survive, and yet we do not see the global south experiencing the same monetary success so this must suggest that other factors are at play than the “hostile” environments selecting for “higher general intelligence”. I’m not a geo-historical expert by any means, but this argument is not logically sound.
The way we frame a question already shapes the outcome.
By choosing indicators like per-capita income, crop yields, or mortality rates, the analysis locks itself into a particular worldview (that perhaps can be called modernist or reductionist) while sidelining other forms of richness (It's a bit like humans think humans are the most intelligent coz we define what intelligence is). Even leading economists (Stiglitz–Sen–Fitoussi, OECD) have shown that these indicators tell us little about actual human flourishing.
Temporality matters, let's don't flatten the history. We judge societies through today’s numbers, but modern urbanization (even the idea of nation-state) is only a few centuries old. Look instead at Egypt, Mesopotamia, or the Maya in their prime — all in hot or arid regions — and the neat story of geography falls apart.
And if we measured what has been lost — languages, ecological knowledge, indigenous ways of life — the conclusions would shift again. The same logic that celebrates “development, modernisation, or what need to be done to be wealthy ” also delivered mass extinction, cultural erasure, and looming planetary breakdown. That’s not a side effect; it’s baked into the categories we choose to explain why things are like that now.
Also, asking ChatGPT to validate the theory's uniqueness is a short circuit — LLMs tend to mirror assumptions in prompts rather than challenge them.
So the real problem isn’t the data points themselves, but the lack of reflection on the way we look at the world and explain things. Without that, any tidy theory risks reproducing the very mindset that got us here.
These indicators tell us a lot! GDP per capita is correlated dramatically with all sorts of human outcomes, like HDI, healthcare, happiness, education, spend in arts, and many more! Is it perfect? No. But it's the best we have to quantify human flourishing. Alternatives are welcome!
I agree these metrics do tell us a lot but I think it’s a bit (?) of a stretch to explain the entire history of human civilizations with them.
Just to make my point a bit clearer (please excuse the simplification for the sake of the analogy):
Imagine a dental researcher who works with the DMFT index (Decayed, Missing, Filled Teeth), a real measure used by the WHO for about 75 years to assess dental health in populations. He notices that countries with low DMFT scores (fewer cavities, stronger teeth) tend to be wealthy, politically stable, and healthy overall. This sparks a brilliant idea: civilizations succeed when their people have strong teeth.
So he writes a sweeping theory of history. Ancient Egypt, Rome, the British Empire — all must have risen on the strength of their molars. Decline? Clearly, rampant tooth decay. He even recommends bold national policies: if countries want to thrive, they should invest in dentistry as the centerpiece of their development strategy. Massive orthodontics programs, nationwide flossing campaigns, tooth-friendly agriculture — the path to prosperity runs through the mouth.
At first glance, the charts look convincing. But there are cracks:
* The US and Canada, both very wealthy, don’t score especially well on DMFT compared to some less affluent countries. The neat pattern starts to wobble.
* Worse, the DMFT index only exists for the last ~75 years. We have no reliable data on the teeth of the Pharaohs or the Mayans. To make the story work, the researcher has to assume those civilizations had perfect DMFT when they thrived and terrible DMFT when they declined — an assumption disguised as evidence.
* And of course, the researcher has to lower the agency of all the other factors that might complicate the hypothesis — institutions, trade, technology, war, — because his chosen metric already defined the terms of the story.
The problem is not that teeth don’t matter (they do, just as altitude or temperature might). The problem is that by starting from a single index, the researcher guaranteed that history would look dental. He confused the convenience of his metric with the complexity of the world.
That’s the same risk I see in Pueyo’s essay. By committing to particular indicators (GDP per capita, crop yields, altitude), the theory is locked into explaining history through that lens. The maps line up, just as they would with DMFT — but the neatness of the pattern is produced by the choice of metric, not by a deep truth about why civilizations rise and fall.
And that’s why the essay feels less like an explanation and more like an intellectual parlor trick. It flatters itself as uncovering the hidden motor of history, but in reality it’s closer to our dentist with his DMFT charts — mistaking the limits of his tools for the shape of the world.
• Teeth don't matter that much compared to all the dimensions illustrated by GDP/capita
• Your teeth example is one of correlation vs causation. Clearly teeth don't cause wealth or poverty, hence they're irrelevant. If they caused them, though, they would be incredibly relevant. What I'm claiming here is causality.
Excellent! I actually re-read your article looking for the point where you clearly distinguished correlation from causation but what I mostly found were the studies you cite about heat being unhealthy. Nearly all of them are quite specific (particular places, particular populations, often recent), which makes them hard to generalize across different geographies or historical periods. For instance, do they control for whether people born and raised in warmer climates might adapt differently? I don’t know, but that’s the point: it’s more of a speculation then a generalising theory.
This reminds me of my DMFT analogy. For a dental researcher, it would be very hard not to see teeth everywhere, because teeth really do matter! But that’s precisely why it’s so easy to slip into overreach and start seeing them as the master key to history.
And that’s what I see happening here. Your starting point was frustration with people being over-deterministic about colonialism. Fair enough. But then aren’t you doing something similar by elevating temperature and altitude above all else — despite the unmatching examples, the historical blind spots, and the rrelience on an only narrow group of metrics ?
To me, this would be a stronger and more credible essay if framed as: “here’s a neglected factor worth considering alongside others” rather than “here’s the hidden driver of history.” Presented this way, it reads less as careful reflection and more as a speculative leap.
Hum the graph is explicit about the causation? People live in mountains because they want to avoid heat / disease (or simply survive and reproduce more in mountains), then these mountains cause higher transportation costs and more conflict, which link to less trade and more poverty directly and indirectly?
If you're asking if each one of these points is supported quantitatively, the answer is no because many of these are simple, pretty established facts, and this is not an academic paper trying to prove this beyond any doubt.
But this is definitely not a correlation thing. Each arrow in that graph is a statement of causality. You can if you want challenge any of them independently!
Also the subtitle of the article is *the most UNDERRATED factor"...
What I’m still missing is: where do these causal arrows actually come from? Did you draw them from specific human geography studies? From anthropology on settlement patterns? Or is it more personal inference? Because to me, the chain “heat → mountains → transport costs → fragmentation → poverty” feels obvious only once you already believe it. For the rest of us, the link isn’t self-evident, and I can’t see where it has been shown to hold across regions and times. And when we test it against real cases, it's not holding at all:
Angkor (Cambodia, 9th–13th c.): vast lowland tropical urbanism built on water engineering, not mountain refuge. Decline linked to water/climate management failures.
Indus / Harappan cities (2600–1900 BCE): hot, arid plains with sophisticated urban grids, craft industries, and long-distance trade. Rise and fall tied to monsoon variability and river systems.
Swahili Coast (9th–15th c.): thriving tropical coastal city-states (Kilwa, Mombasa) enriched by Indian Ocean trade. Prosperity through maritime links, not altitude.
Tiwanaku / Inca (Andes, 500–1500 CE): highland polities with monumental architecture and agricultural innovation. Shows mountain settings can host powerful empires as well as marginal regions.
Bengal (18th–19th c.): major textile exporter in hot lowlands until colonial trade policy dismantled it. Decline driven by political economy, not climate.
So rather than obvious causal arrows, these look more like one partial lens among many possible ones. Which of these five cases do you think doesn’t contradict your graph?
Tomas's approach is hard to argue with. Median income, crop yields, and mortality rates, are important outcomes, and GDP per capita is highly correlated with median income, especially outside of Petro states and tax havens.
These indicators are paramount. People are absolutely free to go live like an indigenous nomad if they want in the modern age and essentially no one has chosen to. If enough people decided to do that the economy would reconfigure to support that lifestyle -- but whatever grandiose idea you have about how the "noble savage" lives or how superior it is, actual people with jobs and families don't really want to live under the elements, without food or services, in a degrowth economy.
You really can't go live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in what were for centuries the nicest places to do so. They've all been conquered and changed.
Just try hunting bison on the Great Plains, or fishing Great Lakes area "rivers so full of sturgeon that a person could walk across the water on the backs of the fish." They don't exist anymore. If you do manage to find a bison it's privately owned or federally protected. And if you do manage to catch fish in those rivers, they will probably be contaminated with chemicals.
Most remaining HG societies now live in marginal lands that are harder to eke out any sort of living in, including HG.
I was hoping to read this answer! This view is only based on todays capitalist standards. My mayan and aztec people were not poor, on the contrary, we were wealthy (in traditions, food, culture, astronomy and medicine) and even more so civilized than when our colonizers came, a simple history outlook can tell us that. This essay, even if overall interesting to read, is not taking into account that our current standards on what rich/poor mean are based on our capitalist society and doesn't actually serve in a panoramic of our human history. (Btw not native english speaker, so I can only hope my point came accross lol)
General intelligence, g, is well defined and understood by now.
I know the IQ tests you're thinking of, they had questions like "how many innings in a baseball game?"
Today's IQ tests are completely nonverbal and mostly rely on the ability to rotate shapes in one's mind. I can testify, I had a brain surgery and before I was great at using maps, back when we had paper maps. I was always the one who did navigation on road trips. But now? I get lost in familiar places and even with GPS that tells me go right, go straight, go left it's still difficult. I can't rotate shapes in my mind easily any more.
If "indigenous ways of living" are so great, why do people get the hell out of there and come here where we have a fascist dystopian shithole led by genocidal Christian nationalists?
A shot in the dark here, but abased on your verbiage, are you in Antifa? Or sympathetic to them?
Do you have that mushy face that they always have?
Cognitive science increasingly treats “intelligence” as multifaceted and context-dependent, not a single universal scalar.
I think my previous mention of it fits there because we define intelligence based on our human business. Still, the way trees communicate through their roots is an intelligence we have not much clue about. Likewise, no matter how sophisticated we measure IQs, it most likely describes and measures it in terms of the people/organisations' perception of intelligence. I mentioned this only to not mix up our own assumptions with the ultimate truth about the human culture or even beyond how the complex life on earth, with all its plants, animals, bacteria, and mushrooms, thrives. If we assume that by relying on an IQ test we could rank all the intelligence in the world, we would not be aware of our own cultural assumptions and the limitations of our toolset. Which wouldn't be so intelligent, right?
Migration often follows structural pressures: land loss, lack of options, environmental collapse — not because modern cities are inherently “better.”
I'm not Antifa, and I think I do smile often and genuinely :)
You've obviously never been to a trailer park. I can assure you the people who live there are all under 85 IQ, some much lower. Has nothing to do with "cultural assumptions" and it's not context-dependent. One of my childhood friends went to jail after getting drunk and firing a rifle through the wall. It went through several trailers and could have killed someone. He was evicted and was in a weekly rental last I heard.
Yes, cities are better. They're where smart people go. If you ever found yourself cursed to be born in such a shithole, you'd leave as soon as possible and never come back.
So interesting to read this ... I have had a similar view about the impact on temperature on culture and human behavior and productivity for decades and I have thought — at some point someone needs to explore this properly ... and now you have. I think there may be a book in here.
The approach -- talking about geography to understand human behavior -- reminds me Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond which had a huge impact on me and others when it came out some twenty years ago.
Italy is a great example -- look at the culture difference between southern italy and northern italy. Radically different lifestyles and sensibilities.
And yes, air conditioning and the impact of air conditioning is a perfect way to test the thesis that temperature profoundly impacts human behavior and productivity.
I would argue that warmer climates have positive impacts as well -- there is a sense of connectedness and intimacy and shared delirium in warmer temperatures that may (?) cause people to feel more connected and reflective. I would argue that we are all different people at warm temperatures than we are at cool one. Note how large companies tend to turn the AC down to 68 and provide free coffee -- it results in a faster pace of activity. Meanwhile, warmer temperatures make humans more langorous and philosophical, perhaps. Think of southern literature in the US - Faulkner, Twain. Think of the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Then think of writers / thinkers associated with more northern US climates -- Ben Franklin (industrious), William James and all the scientists in northern regions.
The big take away for me is that we humans are animals who behave differently in different environments, and as you say we are inadequately aware of the degree to which context (including temperature) changes our behavior. We are quick to tell stories about ourselves that are self-congratulatory or defeatist without awareness of the subtle inputs to behavior change.
Love this and look forward to hearing about your further explorations of this idea. I will spend more time with it.
Ah, how geography impacts culture is one of my favorite topics, but so unexplored! The next topic I’ll tackle there is how they shape institutions and politics. Massive topic!
Can I ask if you could research Papua New Guinea? PNG would be the ideal subject matter for this question. We have the geography, we have the diversity in our cultures - 840+ languages on half an island and we have the corruption in our government. The best case study you can find. I promise you.
Funny, we used to be unified here in AmeriKKKa, one language and one people. Now our federal courthouses are on fire and neo-Confederate state governors nullify the laws of our land like it's 1864.
"Italy is a great example, -- look at the culture difference between southern Italy and northern Italy. Radically different lifestyles and sensibilities."
Hence the reason why northern French and Italians consider their southern counterparts more lazy! It's the same pattern in my home country of Cameroon. Douala, the metropolitan and extremely hot region, is considered lazier, than the cooler mountainous city of Bamenda.
I recall attending the state fair on a very hot day. I was exhausted and slow in mind and body. I recall a man telling my parents "it's the heat, it affects the brain."
This is a very cool (no pun intended) theory and I wonder why no one else has explored it. Thank you for this.
Hi Rhea, I think the suggestion that no one else has explored this idea is a bit mis-guided, particularly due to rhetoric that the writer puts forward. In fact, much of these ideas were created between the 16th and 20th centuries to support colonial domination and race theory. Academic discourse is pretty familiar with the fact that this type environmental determinism (aka the idea that warm places are poor because they're warm) is a disproved and outdated ideology.
I thought you were about to feed idea that into North and South US economy! I remember there was a paper about Irish indentured workers dropping from Malaria in the south, and African stock having more resistance. Not sure if it got picked up, probably not very popular with existing climate (the other kind). Interesting idea though - with the states approaching a historical pivot point both politically and economically the way the US was split aligns with the thesis. Any thoughts on this?
Guns, Germs and Steel was basically a giant FUCK YOU to the west's superiority and a Leftist effort to say it was all dumb luck and not anything we did.
Reddit's /r/history used to have a bot that would reply with a whole list of reasons that book was bunk whenever anyone mentioned it.
But it delighted the Left to believe it, so they swallowed it without question.
This is why they are so dead-set on massive illegal immigration of People of the Sun into the lands of People of the Ice.
Hey Thomas, congratulations for a fascinating article! A couple of questions about the Nairobi/Lisbon comparison:
- Shouldn’t you compare temperature data from the 16th century, where Lisbon was indeed the capital of a global empire? Lisbon climate was likely colder back then, given the European Little Ice Age and discounting the impact of climate change in the recent years.
- Following that idea, do you think the increase of temperatures after the Little Ice Age could have contributed to the decline of Southern Europe in favor of the North?
- Even accepting the current comparison, couldn’t it be argued that Nairobi spends more time during the year above the optimal 22º temperature than Lisbon, making it potentially less productive? Lisbon does get warmer than Nairobi but only during summer, leaving the rest of the year to compensate. That'd also fit the popular observation in Southern Europe that everything slows down in summer!
1. The Little Ice Age probably didn't change that much. It was a fraction of a degree (like 0.25ºC) so I don't think it changes the argument
2. Northern Europe's growth precedes the Little Ice Age. In fact, it was during the Medieval Warm Period (eg Vikings). So that might have helped (but little). I think the biggest factor for Northern Europe's growth was technological, not climate. Specifically, the agricultural revolution (horse, horseshoe, horse collar, iron heavy plow) made northern populations explode where they could barely grow any grain before
3. Yeah but 15-26ºC all year long, without 100% humidity, is quite livable! This is not a bad temperature! Easy to work! Conversely, Lisbon's extremes make it harder.
1. Oh, I thought the Little Ice Age had a bigger effect, although if you add 0,5ºC from climate change the difference with the 16th century would be around 0,75ºC. But yes, I think the argument still holds.
2. I was thinking more of the warming making southern countries less productive, but 0,25ºC doesn't sound large enough to have such an impact.
I think climate that changes throughout the year also inevitably produces more innovation because you basically have to adapt to 2-4 different climates and thus are forced to come up with more "things" and that will give you a statistical advantage
I agree with your take Martin! I also think that the "prepare for winter" mentality incentives accumulation and capitalization in the different societies.
As someone who lives in a hot humid low lying country...
1. Respiratory diseases spread rapidly but the people recover far faster (e.g. severe flu lasts 3 days).
2. Parasitic diseases are endemic.
3. People are smaller. A higher ratio of surface area to volume implies better cooling.
4. The indigenous races do not sweat much.
5. Labour happens in the very early morning, Lunch breaks are very long, and everyone sleeps after lunch.
6. Sleeping at night can be difficult unless you have a draught (or air-con) and this can leave you with low energy. People will often sleep on a hard bed (i.e. a wood slab) because it is cooler than a mattress. But sleeping without covers implies extensive mosquito bites.
I wonder how your theory explain the Southeast Asian region before the European colonization. There were several very successful Southeast Asian empires, such as Srivijaya in Sumatra, Shailendra dynasty and Majapahit in Java, or Khmer in Cambodia. All of them can be considered as 'rich' in their respective era, some with grandiose monuments like Angkor Wat and Borobudur. All of them existed in low land very hot places.
The thing is that Africa's geo is especially bad, which I'll write about in the future. In comparison, low-lying areas like the regions you mention, as well others like the Irrawaddy and Ganges deltas or the Yucatan, are much better.
But not as good as more temperate regions!
Still rich enough to have societies and the taxation needed to pay for these monuments, but not rich enough to be able to develop as much as temperate areas.
I would say that these empire may be successful due to maritime trade. They are located in areas full of islands, and in a half way of maritime route between east and south Asia.
I would also argue that they are as successful as European kingdom during the European middle ages (600-1300 AD).
Yes they were definitely thalassocracies, that's for sure. Unsure they were as productive as Japan, Venice, Genoa, Aragon, Constantinople, or the Hanseatic League though. I'll have to look at evidence, valid hypothesis, thanks!
I think these are some really valid gaps that you've pointed out. I also felt as though it was unable to explain the histories and economies of various Asian countries.
I'd also add in some of the Indian and Sri Lankin kingdoms. Come to think of it Timbucktoo?
Also, bark about 2000BC the Egyptians were probably sneering at those fur-clad barbarians from the steppes.
I suspect Tomas has a point at the extreme heat level but OTOH, I don't remember any great civilizations evolving even in Scandinavia let alone Lapland or the Canadian North.
I found that this theory was deeply flawed. Going through the comments, it seems as though there's a million exceptions that this theory does not hold up against. This theory is actually also not at all "ground-breaking" and was actually a pretty foundational ideology between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Sweden used to be a great power before the defeat by Russia at Poltava in 1709. They've essentially never recovered from it and after a couple more tries gave up their ambitions completely. Regarding Lapland or the Canadian North, extreme cold is also bad for the civilization growth. Even now with all the technology people don't want to live there
There's a big difference between having a 4 month growing season and saving up for winter, and having essentially no growing season at all, and only maybe 2 months of thawed ground, like you get in those very northerly regions. It is also either all dark or all light at different times of year and neither of those are suitable living conditions for people.
Dear Thomas, this is fascinating and a very useful addition to the debate, replacing some of the nonsense arguments. Having lived in several countries of Asia and now Latin America, I have heard one additional argument from the locals reflecting on their own countries: In countries without severe winters or long dry seasons, food is available all year round, as long as there is no overpopulation. What that means is that people do not need to plan long-term, they do not need to store food for winter or water for the dry season. This shapes cultures that live more in the moment and don't really invest much thought in planning ahead, which is obviously not a recipe for eonomic development. One other point that occurred to me is that in the Indian Ocean, there was a thriving ecosystem of trade, mainly by city states, that stretched from South India to the Philippines, and that area produced also some serious maritime empires like that of The Cholas or the Srivijaya empire. You also had the Khmer empire in hot, humid and low-lying Southeast Asia. The trading ecosystem in the Indian Ocean did fall victim to European colonialism in the shape of the Portugese and later the Dutch, so I think the story merits a few more nuances. The main argument, however, sounds pretty convincing to me. Thanks again!
This sounds right to me. I think another reader commented it. It also coincides with the evidence that civilizations emerged in the last 10k years or so because changes in the earth’s rotation exacerbated seasons.
This theory doesn’t predict that empires are impossible in sea-level areas. It predicts they will be poorer! Notice none of these empires sprung up locally, and all were weaker than their temperate counterparts.
Yes, I saw too late that another reader had made a similar point about the Southeast Asian empires, sorry. I am not sure the Khmer empire, which lasted for some 600 years, was weaker than the temperate ones. For the Chola and Srivijaya ones I'd agree.
No no, don't apologize! It wasn't meant as a quib, just as more reinforcement to the theory.
The Khmer lasted a long time, so did the Mayans. I don't think it means too much? But maybe I'm not reading enough into it. WDYT? How can we measure their performance vs competitors?
I'm not sure there is a good way to measure it because we do not have enough solid data about the economies and the quality of life in those times. Maybe archaeology could help by giving us more data about life expectancy and general health of the polulation - like they did with the transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers, where hunter-gatherers were clearly bigger and healthier, but far fewer. The Khmer were clearly able to put up impressive monuments, and the duration says something about internal stability and military power, I suppose.
I have often wondered whether most of the post-agricultural technology and infrastructure which Europe and China (both mostly-temperate regions) developed, and which Europe exported to the rest of the World, was "temperate-zone" specific.
As in, this technology often fails in warmer climates due to material incompatibility. Meaning humidity, moisture, light, plant life, fungus, and heat act too quickly upon materials in hotter climates, and destroy them too frequently, or too greatly, to replace or maintain.
And that it would then require a higher level of maintenance, repair, and preventative measures to maintain temperate infrastructure in tropical or sub-tropical regions (Either equatorial, or between the Tropics).
Even in regions which are closer to the equator, but cooler, elevation and lack of sufficient transportation infrastructure would prohibit deep development of modernized society, due to high maintenance costs, and lack of sufficient GDP.
Close to sea level, it's too hot and humid: technology and infrastructure rot quickly. Too expensive to maintain.
Higher elevation, it's too costly to transport: technology and infrastructure can't be invested. Too expensive to begin.
This become cyclical: You can't extract and process materials and components needed to develop resilient technology and infrastructure closer to the Equator, because you can't generate enough capital to invest in the extraction. You can't generate enough capital, because your society can't, because of climate, become active enough. And because your society isn't active enough, you can't extract and produce enough to generate capital.
Modern technology (anything past the 1600s) was developed in temperate climates, for temperate climates, and works best in temperate or temperate-capable societies. This includes North America, Europe, China/Korea/Japan, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, and the cooler southern border of Australia.
The closer you get to the Equator, the more investment it takes to establish and maintain 20th and 21st century infrastructure and technology. But the closer you get to the Equator, the poorer the countries, who can't afford to invest.
I have this theory that a lot of the better crops from temperate regions are better simply because they underwent more human selection for thousands of years. So I think what you say makes sense.
There is, of course, the issue that warmer + more humid = more decay though, so part of the difference is indeed absolute.
Your vicious cycle is indeed what's happening: bad geo, less wealth, less infra, less wealth, less infra...
I agree. Temperate crops indeed underwent selection to become better performers, because we had the tech to force the adaptation.
But (and I'm going on a 'Jared Diamond'-related tangent here...) these crops had to have an initial reproduction strategy which better suited human population growth and innovation in the first place, so that the population could rise to the point that technical progress could take place.
Wheat, barley, oats, rye, etc. (the Pooideae subfamily) and maize (Zea mays), are easily cultivated by scattering or simply dropping into furrows. They're temperature tolerant, low in water, high in calories, protein, and startch. They cross-breed well, store well, and grow quickly, too. And as their output is by unit, very small, they can be easily divided and still stored well.
The saying goes, "Did humans tame the grasses, or did the grasses tame humans?"
The wheat growers were also blessed with pack animals to help till the land, so that accelerated the grain's domestication and adaptation.
Rice (the Oryza genus) is an oddball, because while it is a grain, it has an all-year production cycle with exacting methods, lifelong social learning, and an aversion to technical innovation. Which meant that it required far more social stability and know-how to keep going.
If you slaughter wheat peasants, you simply get more peasants to throw the grain. But if you slaughter rice peasants, you lose lifelong knowledge, and then lose your crops.
However, unlike the grains, root-based staple crops (yams, taro, potato, etc.), often need to be manually buried (similar to rice), and are more suceptible to rot (but not drought). They are often far higher in water, but lower in protein. They also store poorly, cannot be so easily divided without damage, and are often lower in calories.
If all things were equal at the start, then whomever got their hands on grain (wheat and relatives) and pack animals (Eurasia) were almost guaranteed to outpace the rest of humanity.
To paraphrase Jared Diamond's main theory: "Whomever entered Eurasia and settled there, won the civilization lottery."
Yet to try and transfer these temperate grains, pack animals, and tech... to the tropics, or to high elevation? It would be similar to trying to grow oranges in Alaska, or raise toucans in Mongolia. You theoretically can, but you need to severely adapt the climate to do so (often by doing so indoors).
Transfering temperate culture, society, crops, and technology to the tropics, was guaranteed to either partially or completely fail the local societies, without massive investment and alteration.
Still, the World seems to blame the tropics for failing to "get with it" and somehow magically succeed with temperate civilization, and do so with a much decreased cash flow.
Hunter-gatherer societies were essentially the result of the climate and the relative abundance of food in the temperate zones of Africa. The people of the time generally had enough to eat and had no need to store food for long periods of time. The relatively warm climate meant they did not need elaborate clothing or dwellings. However, it did mean family units needed to remain small (mothers carried their children on their backs while gathering) and "tribes" battled for resources, further limiting population growth.
The out-migration from Africa, first to the north, then from there to the east and west, introduced humans to a more diverse range of climates that, as mentioned in many comments here, necessitated the development of agriculture, shelter, and clothing.
It is important to note that there was essentially no reverse migration to sub-saharan Africa until the colonial period.
This also helps explain the recent progress of agriculture in Brazil: the country created a research center (Embrapa) to, among other things, develop seeds better suited to the local climate and soil, and then made them available to local farmers. With abundant land and appropriate seeds, agricultural productivity skyrocketed.
The issue is that agriculture is a relatively small sector: about 6.5% of GDP (considering agriculture strictly, only what happens “inside the farm”). So, agricultural GDP can grow significantly (as it did, by 15% in 2023), but this has little impact on total GDP.
The broader agribusiness GDP (everything that comes before and after the farm) is larger, around 23%, but its growth is nowhere near that of agriculture: it hovers around 3.5%. Nothing exceptional.
Moreover, agriculture does not generate enough well-paying jobs for this wealth to spread to a large portion of the population. And since there is still a lot of land to be improved, the wealth generated is directed toward improving these lands—instead of financing industry, for example - since farmers simply get a higher return by buying more land or improving the land they already own. Thus, Brazilian agriculture may break productivity records, but this does not really translate into a broader transformation of the economy.
I think this may only start to improve once there is no more land left to be developed and farmers begin channeling the capital generated on their farms into financing other sectors of the economy. One example would be infrastructure, since the lack of efficient logistics for transporting agricultural output hurts their profit margins. Another example would be industries within the agribusiness value chain, which could benefit from the farmers’ familiarity with the sector.
Agriculture USED to be the most fundamental industry, because it was something like 60% of global GDP around 1500. It's much less so the case now, as you say. Still very important for balance of payments, state finances, and strategic independence.
Every great society (Aztec, Inca, Egyptian, Zimbabwe, Timbuktu, to name but a few, developed technologies that far exceeded anything what had come before. But when we look at development as an evolutionary process we begin to understand why some societes thrived, and expanded while others declined or at least failed to prosper.
Intelligence is also an evolutionary process. The phenomenon of a slow but steady increase in intelligence over generations is called the Flynn effect. This is something that is measured and observed around the world through standardized intelligence tests. This is relevant here because it would appear that economic development over time has the effect of speeding up this effect within populations. Put another way, we all have essentially the same genes, but environmental conditions affect the evolution of those genes over time, and that process is aided by intermingling of cultures.
Have you come across work that explored the relative benefit in the northern latitudes of Eurasia where cultures could move either eastward or westward relatively quickly and settle new land with the same crops without too much new learning on their part?
Vs the relatively narrow bands in the southern latitudes in Africa and Latin America.
There are just fewer sqkm of contiguous land with similar climates to plant your crops you take with you when you settle new land so the marginal effort of doing so is higher than an Indo-European tribe moving west.
Tomás, thanks for the essay. I agree that countries whose population centers lie in mountainous regions often face growth constraints for the reasons you outline. I do, however, see things differently on the institution's story and on a few Colombia examples.
1) Colonial origins and institutions matter more than the essay suggests.
Yes, many Europeans, in this case Spaniards, settled in Mexico and Colombia, but the type of colony shaped the institutions that followed. The Spanish Empire largely designed extractive colonies, while the British tended toward settler-commercial colonies. Extractive colonies prioritized resource transfer to the metropole while settler-commercial colonies sought to develop local markets for imperial products and to integrate colonial production and trade into the wider imperial economy. These different objectives have clear consequences on the institutions instilled. In Spanish America the tax base focused on commerce and output—alcabala (sales), quinto real (mining), diezmo (agriculture), and almojarifazgo (tariffs). This tax structure maximized the short term earning at the expense of the market growth . In contrast, British colonies were financed more through property and head/poll taxes collected locally, which aligned with funding local public goods like schools and poor relief (especially in the U.S.). Because this tax system was more complex, states had to build cadastral surveys, civil registries, and robust assessment and collection systems. In doing so, they developed state capacity and competency—and ended up with stronger states. These patterns persist today: many former Spanish domains still tilt toward taxing transactions, while many former British domains continue to lean on property, similar local taxes and now income tax.
Also, Britain developed stronger property and intellectual-property rights protections and institutions that protected open commercial practices (the free market), while Spain maintained monopolies and privileges that hindered innovation. British settlers were more likely to carry and replicate pro-growth institutional norms in their colonies, whereas Spanish arrangements protected monopolies and privileges that dulled market incentives.
2) Settlement followed hierarchical, settled, and densely populated societies (and labor needs), not altitude per se.
Spaniard colonizers concentrated where hierarchical, settled, and more densely populated civilizations already existed—Muiscas (Bogotá), Tayronas (Santa Marta), Pubenses (Popayán), etc. Controlling hierarchical societies was easier by co-opting the leaders and their higher population density made available the supply of labor required for resource extraction. By contrast, areas with less centralized groups—e.g., the Pijaos in Tolima or groups east of Santa Marta—were less hierarchical and more fragmented, harder to control without a single coerceable leader, and less densely populated, thus a smaller labor pool. Mexico fits this logic too: the Spanish chose Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital to found their main city, Mexico City
3) Medellín and Cali rose after independence; key colonial hubs were hot, lowland ports
You cite Medellín and Cali (Colombia’s #2 and #3 cities) as mountainous examples, but their national prominence is largely mid-to-late 19th century. During the colonial period, warmer lowland cities tied to imperial trade—Cartagena, Santa Marta, Honda, Socorro, and Mompox—were more central. In the broader region, a plausible prominence ordering was Bogotá, Cartagena, and Caracas, with Cartagena and Caracas both very hot cities. This weakens the claim that Spaniards preferred mountains for survival advantages; the crown’s key hubs weren’t primarily mountain cities.
4) On “balcanization”:
The Medellín cartel emerged in a mountain city—Colombia’s second most important at the time—where the state did have meaningful presence and capacity; but its goal wasn’t territorial, ideological, or regionalist control, but defending an illicit business. By contrast, modern cartels/armed groups (guerrillas and paramilitaries) do seek territorial control, and their presence today is mostly in lowlands, better predicted by drug routes/corridors toward export points.
Geography matters because rugged terrain and distance raise transport costs and times, lowering state capacity at the periphery and generating dissatisfied, disaffected citizens—which in turn pushes people toward illegal markets or rebellion. That’s a plausible mechanism for “balcanization”, but the Medellin cartel is not one.
5) Regionalism remains real.
Still, Balcanization is a present phenomenon in Colombia. City elites historically prioritized their own interests, and strong regionalisms persist. In the early republic, Colombia cycled through around a dozen constitutions (each city drafted their own) as city juntas competed to dominate the national project.
Bottom line. Geography sets costs and capacity, but the initial extractive vs. settler-commercial institutional setup goes a long way toward explaining long-run divergence. Several Colombian “mountain city” examples turn on timing, density, labor needs, corridors, and logistics, not altitude alone.
Completely agree the essay misses so much and reads like a defense of neocolonialism. I was particularly bothered by the statistic-dumping and then just stating an unsubstantiated claim afterwards, just not how theories should be presented imo. But thanks for doing the research I neglected, as I cannot directly recall history as well as I can intuitively understand I am being manipulated when it doesn’t match what I know. You said it better than I could, thanks.
Very cool and original. But, OK, that the pattern doesn't quite fit South and East Asia, i.e. 60% of the world population is a bit of an issue with this take.
Your article addressed this issue pretty well near the end. "So people in warm countries could pick their poison: Either be on the lowlands with lower productivity and more disease, or move to highlands with less trade and more conflict. Most of LatAm and a big chunk of Africa gravitated towards the highlands type of poverty, while East and South Asia gravitated towards the lowlands type."
This ties the 2 options together nicely and I think is a major part of why it's a great theory. Those factors -- productivity, disease, transport, war -- are all important to GDP growth and people had to choose.
Great article and interesting ideas. A whole other dimension is fleshed out in great detail by Thomas Sowell with respect to geography. Africa is mountainous, has few navigable rivers, poor resources to extract for industrialization, and so there’s less to trade, and it’s harder and more expensive to trade. Ideology thrives in a vacuum of abstractions that doesn’t consider the actual details of planet earth. The US has the Great Plains, Great Lakes and Erie Canal, incredible soil and resources, Texas and California oil and gold, and a train network to connect it all. It helped that our brains weren’t overheating too, as the tech innovation happened mainly in cold northern industrial cities. There’s a reason steel and grain were processed in Chicago (like plentiful Michigan iron ore), and why we don’t think of Libya when we imagine a blast furnace..
I was thinking of Thomas Sowell and the lack of navigable rivers in Africa that hinder trade while I was reading this too. I will never think of the continent the same way after hearing his explanation
Very interesting article,but it’s hard not to offer critique. I think it’s unfair to a country like Congo,whose resources are being stolen and her people killed to attribute her poverty to climate. I live in Africa and I tell you without a doubt that our underdevelopment can be traced to colonialism and neocolonialism. I loved reading this article because it has opened my eyes to a whole new perspective. Thank you for sharing.
I had read something along these lines before as well. There is probably more correlation than direct causation. But there probably is some indirect causation. Singapore has a lot of air conditioning but it does not have much innovation. I think ideas and innovation are mostly a function of social dynamics and peer pressure. And AC does not solve this. One long shot theory could be that warm climates make people gather to the same cool places which are indoors. People spend a lot of time in proximity to other people which increases the social part of life (think extended families and detailed words for chachu and mamu as opposed to uncle for both in cultures where social dynamics are not that important. Words reflect importance of things in cultures. Eskimos have a shit ton of words for different types of ice where we only have a few like ice, snow etc because eskimos use ice for a lot more reasons like insulation building material and what not).
This proximity in turn is what causes people to not have enough time to themselves which is needed for ideas. Most countries that have closer social dynamics like this are not good at innovation and mostly good at structured improvement. Korea is an example. They dont invent things. They make them better. Inventions or ideas are a function of individuality which these cultures lack including the Pakistani one. If you try to note the density of thoughts family social dynamics have in the lives of these cultures, you will see that they are very high. Everyone knows everyone in the extended family and what is going on with them. Because there is excessive involvement, there is excessive focus of thougths and therefore time on these things even if unintentional.
Places that are colder allow more individuality because you dont have to be in a specific place to stay warm, you can just add more layers and be anywhere. This means more time spent away from the proximity of other people and less importance of social dynamics and less thoughts and discussions about them. Which means more individual thoughts and opinions which sometimes means more innovation. Odd behaviour is more acceptable in these cultures than in cultures where everyone spends most of their time together.
I think it's very early for Singapore. We'll see what happens. Japan and Korea are both quite innovative, technologically and culturally, even though not yet in disruptive technologies.
Culture and genetics probably have an influence too, although these are hard to parse.
Interesting hypothesis re socialization. I wonder what that was like 500y ago though.
Agreed that it might be too early to tell for Singapore and even over a long enough time frame and the population may not be large enough to get inventors (who are usually a small ratio)
But the underlying variable of social proximity is something I do believe has a lot of effect on how conforming people there are. Korea, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore all have this problem that comes out of this closeness.
One well documented example is how people older than you or senior in position are treated. In all of these places, what elders say goes and theyre owed a lot of "respect". So much so that disagreeing is seen as a sign of disrespect. All of this is socially enforced. And is only possible because your neighbor knows your parents on a routine and personal level etc.
A relatively popular example of the above is the one mentioned Gladwell's book Outliers about Korean Air Flight 801 where a crash was caused because of this senior respect. I'm particularly sure about this specific example but as someone who is part of this culture in Pakistan and who consumes a lot of Korean and Japanese vlogging type content on YouTube and who has spent a few months in Singapore, the incidence is believable. This is not at all the matter with innovative cultures and cultures that are wealthier (at least the ones I've had exposure to)
This kind of a structure discourages independent thinking (all thinking technically) which causes them to not do anything that creates a lot of value beyond what is expected of them. These cultures have a socially enforced cultural aversion to risk and following the old paths. Wealth is a function of creating value. If you only do what people have been doing for a while, you're going to be poorer on average than those who do new things.
Fantastic article, Tomas! Your theory on mountains as the underrated factor in tropical poverty is fresh and eye-opening—love how it shifts focus from blame to actionable geography. That said, while mountains do impose trade-offs like high transport costs and balkanization, the story isn't universally grim. Let me contrast a few conclusions with some counterpoints:
1. Not all mountain cultures are doomed to poverty and conflict—they can thrive through decentralization. You highlight how mountains lead to fragmentation, less trust, and ethnic strife (e.g., in Colombia or Ethiopia), making institutions harder to build. But look at Switzerland: a highly mountainous country far from the tropics, yet one of the richest on Earth (GDP per capita ~$100k). Its success comes from embracing independence and decentralization—cantons with strong local governance, direct democracy, and neutrality, the opposite of centralized empires like Russia or Spain. This suggests mountains don't inherently cause poverty; they reward federalism and bottom-up integration over top-down control. Tropical mountains could follow suit if institutions adapt, rather than assuming geography locks in failure.
2. Cold, resource-rich countries like Russia show poverty isn't just a tropical/mountain issue—it's about leveraging ports and trade hubs. Russia is far from the equator, with vast arable land, natural resources (oil, gas, minerals), and no equatorial heat/humidity woes. Yet it's relatively poor (GDP per capita ~$14k) and commodity-dependent, with corruption and autocracy stifling growth. Its capital, Moscow, isn't an economic hub like historical St. Petersburg was under Peter the Great, who built navy/ports to unify Russia internally and connect it to Europe via the Baltic. Reviving that—focusing on maritime/river integration—could transform it. This ties into why Ukraine (a land of river/sea ports like Odessa on the Black Sea) resists centralist, autocratic influences: they're antithetical to commercial trust and integration. Your theory nails tropical geography, but Russia's case shows institutions and poor infrastructure choices (e.g., ignoring ports for land-locked centralism) can replicate "mountain-like" isolation even in flat, cold expanses.
3. In tropical mountains like Colombia's, the real missed opportunity isn't just transport costs—it's ignoring water as a natural asset. As a Colombian, I see how our history and choices exacerbate geographic challenges. You rightly note how Spaniards settled highlands for cooler climates, but they (and descendants) worsened geography by hating/draining water: rivers, lagoons, wetlands turned into pavement. Colombia has two massive valleys/rivers (Cauca and Magdalena) slicing south-to-north—perfect logistical hubs like the Erie Canal, Mississippi, or Dutch/German/Chinese waterways that kickstarted development in the North. Instead, we pave them over! Mountains aren't just barriers; they're "water factories" (like expansion valves in AC/refrigerators, condensing moisture into rivers). A developing country should prioritize cheap rivers first, then trains, then expensive highways—as Europe/US did initially. Jumping to highways racks up debt (high capex/opex) without sustainable returns, condemning us to failure by ignoring context. Colombia has two cardinal sins, inherited from Spain: centralism in the face of a diverse geography, and distance from the hubs that connect it to global trade. If Panama were part of our territory, we would lose it again. Rivers could decentralize Colombia, boost internal/external trade, cut corruption (governance closer to territories), and foster organic growth. But politicians chase commissions on bloated loans for prestige projects. This contrasts your call for mountain infrastructure: yes, invest, but start with water to make it affordable and adaptive.
4. Northern tech like AC isn't a silver bullet—it needs bottom-up adaptation to local geography. You praise AC as key for lowlands (e.g., Singapore's rise under Lee Kuan Yew). But AC didn't single-handedly make Singapore competitive; its success stemmed from leveraging geography as a port/hub, strict governance, and trade focus—much like the Dutch, masters of topology/logistics who turned flat, flood-prone Netherlands into a powerhouse via canals/ports/dikes. Tropical countries import Northern infrastructure (designed for cold/dry contexts) without tweaking, leading to inefficiency. We need organic, bottom-up approaches: adapt tech to humid/mountain realities, like bio-inspired cooling or river-based logistics, rather than top-down electrification that burdens grids. This could flip your "pick your poison" framing—mountains/lowlands aren't traps if we design with, not against, the land.
Overall, your piece brilliantly spotlights geography's role, but adding these nuances shows poverty often stems from maladapted choices, not inevitable curses. Thoughts? Would love to hear if you've explored Swiss-style federalism for tropical mountains!
1. Switzerland is a special type of country—a buffer country. Buffer countries work because they can leech on bigger powers around them. Switzerland had 4 such powers around it historically: France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. It leeches on them by arbitraging taxes, and by taking advantage of the fact that no power can take on Switzerland, for the other 3 would jump at them.
Nepal and Bhutan are similar buffer countries, except they only play 2 powers against each other, and both are poor per capita. I'm pretty sure if you put Switzerland in the Himalayas, it would be poor.
For a similar reason, Switzerland is united: Without the union, they would have been torn to pieces.
Agreed! The parts of Russia that are poor are not temperate though, they're cold. The temperate parts are much wealthier.
But this theory is not saying "all warm countries are poor, all cold countries are rich". It's saying "Sea-level countries are more viable in temperate areas than in tropical ones", which I don't think Russia's example disagrees with?
3. I agree. This is one of the poor side-effects of jump-starting a civilization with Medieval / Modern tech rather than letting it grow organically. CDMX has the same problem.
On the subject of Switzerland, I am reminded of the Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Massoud, who long advocated for Afghanistan to adopt a Swiss style political system with radical decentralization, because he saw that mountainous, land-locked country as somewhat analogous to his own. He was killed by al-Qaeda days before 9/11, and his idea went nowhere. Instead, Afghanistan was pushed towards a model of a more conventional, centralized democracy, for all the good that did. Iraq ended up down a similar “a fractious state must need a strong central government” path.
There may be a reminder here about why importing Western institutions often fails, whether imposed by colonial governments or voluntarily imitated by local leadership. Cultural incompatibility is frequently cited and a real issue. Steve Sailer’s essay on the eve of the Iraq war predicting that Western democracy would necessarily fail in Iraq because of the extremely high-rate of cousin marriage (proving it was still operating along clan lines) remains insightful. But maybe geographic incompatibility is an under-appreciated constraint, and itself can shape culture in very sticky ways?
Perhaps more controversially, it is not evident to me that there is any clear institutional model or path to prosperity for an independent country with a population in the many millions concentrated in dense, mountain megapolises far from the coast and disconnected from navigable rivers. Switzerland notwithstanding (its river situation is not so isolating and it is integrated into larger, wealthy, non-mountain neighbours) this is not what major rich countries look like at any temperature.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I had never thought of the connection between cousin marriage and democracy, but it's obvious once you mention it
Thank you for your well researched article. I think there is an important point that was missed:
Cold weather forces individuals to delay consumption and save for the future. The incentive structure completely changes or you die which is a self selection in itself. In warm climates with abundant food year round, there are strong physical demands but there is less thought required. In colder climates, the entire culture needs to be built around protecting yourself from the weather and saving food. This creates a culture that is more adept to the modern economy of specializing. That is the number one determinant of why warm countries are poorer.
This is the most salient hypothesis from the comments so far. This rings true!
I remember my father telling me, probably around 1970, that countries with colder climates were more developed because people have to build solid houses to protect themselves from the cold weather. He actually said that the men had to build these houses because the women wouldn’t stop complaining about the cold.
Intuitively, I see how this comes across at face value. I personally thrive in colder climates, I feel more alert and regulated. But, you are disregarding non-temperature related seasonal changes in warmer climates that humans have had to use as much if not more foresight to prepare, store, and protect their food sources, shelter, and infrastructure.
Monsoon and rain seasons are followed by severe drought periods every single year in most warm climates. Hurricanes and typhoons batter coastal areas seasonally, every year, bringing large amount of rain, wind, and destruction.
Coasts connect you by the ocean to the entirety of the rest of the world. Island nations are wealthy and prosperous for a reason.
The USA, a continent-sized nation with three coasts, became #1, or was until recently.
But wait a minute. In places that have winter, the growing/harvest season when there's anything to eat at all is often literally just 3 to 5 months a year. Meaning people had to spend those months saving up an entire roughly 8 months worth of food -- that is a ton! And also keep any dairy or meat animals themselves sheltered from the cold for months at a time so they wouldn't die too. Is there *any* tropical country where people needed to save up 2/3 of a year's worth of food?? Plus shelter stock animals in this manner. I have a hard time believing there was, if only because there would be no way to keep most food from going bad for that long, if it isn't cold. I totally grant you that there were environmental challenges and hurricanes and monsoons are not nothing, but this seems very different to me than regularly, every single year your entire life, having to save up an entire 2/3 of your annual consumption.
I think you’re making quite a few assumptions about non-temperate climates that are important to address.
Just to be clear, cold weather is not a prerequisite for yearly storage of food. There are numerous ways to store food without cold year round: grains can store in dry sealed vats, meat can be salted, etc.
Another assumption you are making is that only cold climates have a short growing/harvesting windows, and I’m demonstrating that tropical climates - especially ones where large amounts of humans have lived - also have short growing/harvesting windows due to heavy rainfall followed by long droughts. Hence the agricultural shift from perrenial species to annuals towards the end of the last ice age.
To illustrate this with an example since you asked for one, although some have already been provided, the very first large scale societies emerged in the Fertile Crescent and Indus Valley, among other similar climates. Not temperate climates, where humans still subsisted through foraging and hunting mega-fauna (which also requires foresight by the way, for example by paying attention to migratory herding patterns).
Back to the argument - large amounts of yearly rainfall inundate a floodplain, which require an immense effort in organizing human labor to construct the infrastructure necessary to divert, maintain, and repair irrigation for agriculture. Notwithstanding the development of writing, arithmetic, a legal system, and urban planning required to facilitate all of this.
It is frustrating, and I feel like calling out the elephant in the room, which is that the top comment and your argument contain within them an implicit bias - and I will give you both the benefit of the doubt here that you are not explicitly holding this bias - that there is this need to emphasize there must be something so important about humans living in cold weather that is qualitatively different from humans who do not - which begs the following question:
WHY is it so qualitatively important to maintain that only winter peoples have a kind of foresight that is necessary to exercise that is distinctly different from humans inhabiting non-temperate climates?
I’ll call a spade a spade and say it implicitly reinforces this racialized correlation that is both unscientific and simpleminded. And no, it’s not Occams Razor, because the claim simply does not fit the evidence.
If you are unaware of the bias you are implicitly holding than take this opportunity to question yourself a little bit, and if you are aware and are afraid to be explicit about it, just do so, so we can see it for what it is and make do with a waste of time.
Overlay iq data on the the world and see how that correlates with development.
Maybe your bias from years of being told “racism bad” took away your ability to just see the world for what it is by using basic pattern recognition.
I don’t think that’s comparable… the winter is predictable overall. And you *can* save and prepare for it. A monsoon or hurricane will destroy whatever is in its path and is unpredictable overall over the course of the year. Get yourself out of the path, wait it out, and then take stock of the damage is about the best you can do. These are natural *disasters*… nobody ever called winter a disaster unless it was epically severe maybe. Predictable seasons of drought might be better able to be prepared for…
Hi Hannah, thanks for your reply. Monsoon and Hurricane seasons are predictable overall as well. I live in Hawaii, and like most other warm climates around the world, our year tends to generally be divided between a rainy and a dry season, pretty consistently, every single year, around the same time periods. There are variations of course, just like in societies experiencing winters. Some are colder, some arrive later than expected, some earlier, some are very mild etc. But winter does arrive, every year, however it might look, just as our rainy season arrives, every year, however it might look. Warm climate societies were organized around these cycles, just as winter-bearing societies were organized around their cycles. So my main argument remains the same, which is that winter weather is not a sole determinant for human beings developing a sense of communal foresight, planning, and large scale organizing, and that warm climates have cyclical weather patterns that require foresight and planning in order to live in them.
I don't agree with this. Monsoon is predictable, and cultures around the world have innovated and developed ways to endure hostile conditions.
Think of architecture, rain water management, irrigation, nomadic use of animals to predict and prepare for weather events, and more.
Perhaps you will find my response to this article of interest: https://dhowjones.substack.com/p/your-ground-breaking-theory-is-old
I totally disagree with the crux of your argument.
While the cold weather absolutely has absolutely played a crucial role in innovation that has furthered human development, the idea that the colder the weather, the more you specialize is false at its core.
The endurance of the human species all across the globe is a result of innovation and specialization, Just because people in warm, bountiful, tropical climates didn't need to innovate to find ways to survive in the cold, doesn't mean they weren't innovating ways to keep cool in the heat through clothing and architecture, how to manage the bounty responsibly through good governance, and how to sustain giant populations of diverse, rich cultures if they didn't innovate language and society.
Perhaps you will find my response to Tomas's article interesting; https://dhowjones.substack.com/p/your-ground-breaking-theory-is-old
Writing began in Mesopotamia because people needed a way to keep track of food and goods. They had warm weather, but dealt with floods and droughts that made it imperative to prepare too. It's not so much about weather, it's the need to organize and evolve that other places with an abundance of food didn't have.
Then why was economic output so much higher in India than in Europe through most of history? And why are the greatest pre modern structures all built in tropical or hot environments?
Opposing your construct, US was as poor as any tropical country, when 85%+ of Americans lived on the land. A pickle barrel was a big feature while you looked for something to eat. It would be easy to prove that countries like Nepal are just as poor as Ethiopia since they don't have access to fossil fuels. It's also easy to show the crop carrying capacity of tropical lands is significantly lower than, say, temperate grasslands, regardless of 'incentive structures' theory.
I don’t this is a cultural distinction, food is just objectively harder to store in warmer climates. Many African countries did develop ways to preserve their foods because of this. Additionally, the country that is probably the best at preserving their foods, Iceland and Russia, were feudal peasant states until heavy external investment and transmission of developed culture from the west.
Cold weather means you have to plan. Prior planning prevents piss poor performance.
Even further, in cold and hostile climates, over hundreds of generations, you *have* to be smarter to adapt and survive. Simply: if you can't save, strategies and innovate, the environment will kill you and your DNA. The environment itself selects for higher General Intelligence
I disagree with this take. Across the globe, cultures and communities have consistently had to innovate, save, and strategize to adapt to diverse "hostile" environments that go beyond just the "cold."
Perhaps you will find my response to Tomas's article of interest: https://dhowjones.substack.com/p/your-ground-breaking-theory-is-old
One could make the same argument that in extreme hot climates over hundreds of generations you *have* to be smarter to adapt and survive, and yet we do not see the global south experiencing the same monetary success so this must suggest that other factors are at play than the “hostile” environments selecting for “higher general intelligence”. I’m not a geo-historical expert by any means, but this argument is not logically sound.
The way we frame a question already shapes the outcome.
By choosing indicators like per-capita income, crop yields, or mortality rates, the analysis locks itself into a particular worldview (that perhaps can be called modernist or reductionist) while sidelining other forms of richness (It's a bit like humans think humans are the most intelligent coz we define what intelligence is). Even leading economists (Stiglitz–Sen–Fitoussi, OECD) have shown that these indicators tell us little about actual human flourishing.
Temporality matters, let's don't flatten the history. We judge societies through today’s numbers, but modern urbanization (even the idea of nation-state) is only a few centuries old. Look instead at Egypt, Mesopotamia, or the Maya in their prime — all in hot or arid regions — and the neat story of geography falls apart.
And if we measured what has been lost — languages, ecological knowledge, indigenous ways of life — the conclusions would shift again. The same logic that celebrates “development, modernisation, or what need to be done to be wealthy ” also delivered mass extinction, cultural erasure, and looming planetary breakdown. That’s not a side effect; it’s baked into the categories we choose to explain why things are like that now.
Also, asking ChatGPT to validate the theory's uniqueness is a short circuit — LLMs tend to mirror assumptions in prompts rather than challenge them.
So the real problem isn’t the data points themselves, but the lack of reflection on the way we look at the world and explain things. Without that, any tidy theory risks reproducing the very mindset that got us here.
These indicators tell us a lot! GDP per capita is correlated dramatically with all sorts of human outcomes, like HDI, healthcare, happiness, education, spend in arts, and many more! Is it perfect? No. But it's the best we have to quantify human flourishing. Alternatives are welcome!
I agree these metrics do tell us a lot but I think it’s a bit (?) of a stretch to explain the entire history of human civilizations with them.
Just to make my point a bit clearer (please excuse the simplification for the sake of the analogy):
Imagine a dental researcher who works with the DMFT index (Decayed, Missing, Filled Teeth), a real measure used by the WHO for about 75 years to assess dental health in populations. He notices that countries with low DMFT scores (fewer cavities, stronger teeth) tend to be wealthy, politically stable, and healthy overall. This sparks a brilliant idea: civilizations succeed when their people have strong teeth.
So he writes a sweeping theory of history. Ancient Egypt, Rome, the British Empire — all must have risen on the strength of their molars. Decline? Clearly, rampant tooth decay. He even recommends bold national policies: if countries want to thrive, they should invest in dentistry as the centerpiece of their development strategy. Massive orthodontics programs, nationwide flossing campaigns, tooth-friendly agriculture — the path to prosperity runs through the mouth.
At first glance, the charts look convincing. But there are cracks:
* The US and Canada, both very wealthy, don’t score especially well on DMFT compared to some less affluent countries. The neat pattern starts to wobble.
* Worse, the DMFT index only exists for the last ~75 years. We have no reliable data on the teeth of the Pharaohs or the Mayans. To make the story work, the researcher has to assume those civilizations had perfect DMFT when they thrived and terrible DMFT when they declined — an assumption disguised as evidence.
* And of course, the researcher has to lower the agency of all the other factors that might complicate the hypothesis — institutions, trade, technology, war, — because his chosen metric already defined the terms of the story.
The problem is not that teeth don’t matter (they do, just as altitude or temperature might). The problem is that by starting from a single index, the researcher guaranteed that history would look dental. He confused the convenience of his metric with the complexity of the world.
That’s the same risk I see in Pueyo’s essay. By committing to particular indicators (GDP per capita, crop yields, altitude), the theory is locked into explaining history through that lens. The maps line up, just as they would with DMFT — but the neatness of the pattern is produced by the choice of metric, not by a deep truth about why civilizations rise and fall.
And that’s why the essay feels less like an explanation and more like an intellectual parlor trick. It flatters itself as uncovering the hidden motor of history, but in reality it’s closer to our dentist with his DMFT charts — mistaking the limits of his tools for the shape of the world.
Thanks!
2 issues with your example:
• Teeth don't matter that much compared to all the dimensions illustrated by GDP/capita
• Your teeth example is one of correlation vs causation. Clearly teeth don't cause wealth or poverty, hence they're irrelevant. If they caused them, though, they would be incredibly relevant. What I'm claiming here is causality.
Excellent! I actually re-read your article looking for the point where you clearly distinguished correlation from causation but what I mostly found were the studies you cite about heat being unhealthy. Nearly all of them are quite specific (particular places, particular populations, often recent), which makes them hard to generalize across different geographies or historical periods. For instance, do they control for whether people born and raised in warmer climates might adapt differently? I don’t know, but that’s the point: it’s more of a speculation then a generalising theory.
This reminds me of my DMFT analogy. For a dental researcher, it would be very hard not to see teeth everywhere, because teeth really do matter! But that’s precisely why it’s so easy to slip into overreach and start seeing them as the master key to history.
And that’s what I see happening here. Your starting point was frustration with people being over-deterministic about colonialism. Fair enough. But then aren’t you doing something similar by elevating temperature and altitude above all else — despite the unmatching examples, the historical blind spots, and the rrelience on an only narrow group of metrics ?
To me, this would be a stronger and more credible essay if framed as: “here’s a neglected factor worth considering alongside others” rather than “here’s the hidden driver of history.” Presented this way, it reads less as careful reflection and more as a speculative leap.
Hum the graph is explicit about the causation? People live in mountains because they want to avoid heat / disease (or simply survive and reproduce more in mountains), then these mountains cause higher transportation costs and more conflict, which link to less trade and more poverty directly and indirectly?
If you're asking if each one of these points is supported quantitatively, the answer is no because many of these are simple, pretty established facts, and this is not an academic paper trying to prove this beyond any doubt.
But this is definitely not a correlation thing. Each arrow in that graph is a statement of causality. You can if you want challenge any of them independently!
Also the subtitle of the article is *the most UNDERRATED factor"...
What I’m still missing is: where do these causal arrows actually come from? Did you draw them from specific human geography studies? From anthropology on settlement patterns? Or is it more personal inference? Because to me, the chain “heat → mountains → transport costs → fragmentation → poverty” feels obvious only once you already believe it. For the rest of us, the link isn’t self-evident, and I can’t see where it has been shown to hold across regions and times. And when we test it against real cases, it's not holding at all:
Angkor (Cambodia, 9th–13th c.): vast lowland tropical urbanism built on water engineering, not mountain refuge. Decline linked to water/climate management failures.
Indus / Harappan cities (2600–1900 BCE): hot, arid plains with sophisticated urban grids, craft industries, and long-distance trade. Rise and fall tied to monsoon variability and river systems.
Swahili Coast (9th–15th c.): thriving tropical coastal city-states (Kilwa, Mombasa) enriched by Indian Ocean trade. Prosperity through maritime links, not altitude.
Tiwanaku / Inca (Andes, 500–1500 CE): highland polities with monumental architecture and agricultural innovation. Shows mountain settings can host powerful empires as well as marginal regions.
Bengal (18th–19th c.): major textile exporter in hot lowlands until colonial trade policy dismantled it. Decline driven by political economy, not climate.
So rather than obvious causal arrows, these look more like one partial lens among many possible ones. Which of these five cases do you think doesn’t contradict your graph?
Tomas's approach is hard to argue with. Median income, crop yields, and mortality rates, are important outcomes, and GDP per capita is highly correlated with median income, especially outside of Petro states and tax havens.
These indicators are paramount. People are absolutely free to go live like an indigenous nomad if they want in the modern age and essentially no one has chosen to. If enough people decided to do that the economy would reconfigure to support that lifestyle -- but whatever grandiose idea you have about how the "noble savage" lives or how superior it is, actual people with jobs and families don't really want to live under the elements, without food or services, in a degrowth economy.
You really can't go live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in what were for centuries the nicest places to do so. They've all been conquered and changed.
Just try hunting bison on the Great Plains, or fishing Great Lakes area "rivers so full of sturgeon that a person could walk across the water on the backs of the fish." They don't exist anymore. If you do manage to find a bison it's privately owned or federally protected. And if you do manage to catch fish in those rivers, they will probably be contaminated with chemicals.
Most remaining HG societies now live in marginal lands that are harder to eke out any sort of living in, including HG.
Hi Kuntay, I completely agree on your take on this post. I wrote a post pointing out some methodological flaws and historical flaws. I think you will resonate with it: https://open.substack.com/pub/dhowjones/p/your-ground-breaking-theory-is-old?r=4egnwu&utm_medium=ios
I was hoping to read this answer! This view is only based on todays capitalist standards. My mayan and aztec people were not poor, on the contrary, we were wealthy (in traditions, food, culture, astronomy and medicine) and even more so civilized than when our colonizers came, a simple history outlook can tell us that. This essay, even if overall interesting to read, is not taking into account that our current standards on what rich/poor mean are based on our capitalist society and doesn't actually serve in a panoramic of our human history. (Btw not native english speaker, so I can only hope my point came accross lol)
General intelligence, g, is well defined and understood by now.
I know the IQ tests you're thinking of, they had questions like "how many innings in a baseball game?"
Today's IQ tests are completely nonverbal and mostly rely on the ability to rotate shapes in one's mind. I can testify, I had a brain surgery and before I was great at using maps, back when we had paper maps. I was always the one who did navigation on road trips. But now? I get lost in familiar places and even with GPS that tells me go right, go straight, go left it's still difficult. I can't rotate shapes in my mind easily any more.
If "indigenous ways of living" are so great, why do people get the hell out of there and come here where we have a fascist dystopian shithole led by genocidal Christian nationalists?
A shot in the dark here, but abased on your verbiage, are you in Antifa? Or sympathetic to them?
Do you have that mushy face that they always have?
Cognitive science increasingly treats “intelligence” as multifaceted and context-dependent, not a single universal scalar.
I think my previous mention of it fits there because we define intelligence based on our human business. Still, the way trees communicate through their roots is an intelligence we have not much clue about. Likewise, no matter how sophisticated we measure IQs, it most likely describes and measures it in terms of the people/organisations' perception of intelligence. I mentioned this only to not mix up our own assumptions with the ultimate truth about the human culture or even beyond how the complex life on earth, with all its plants, animals, bacteria, and mushrooms, thrives. If we assume that by relying on an IQ test we could rank all the intelligence in the world, we would not be aware of our own cultural assumptions and the limitations of our toolset. Which wouldn't be so intelligent, right?
Migration often follows structural pressures: land loss, lack of options, environmental collapse — not because modern cities are inherently “better.”
I'm not Antifa, and I think I do smile often and genuinely :)
(again, assumptions)
You clearly don't seem antifa, and in fact engage with honesty and curiosity. Thank you!
I haven't independently revised the literature on intelligence, so won't comment on it (for now!)
General intelligence, g, is well understood.
We're not trees.
You've obviously never been to a trailer park. I can assure you the people who live there are all under 85 IQ, some much lower. Has nothing to do with "cultural assumptions" and it's not context-dependent. One of my childhood friends went to jail after getting drunk and firing a rifle through the wall. It went through several trailers and could have killed someone. He was evicted and was in a weekly rental last I heard.
Yes, cities are better. They're where smart people go. If you ever found yourself cursed to be born in such a shithole, you'd leave as soon as possible and never come back.
How many great writers in NYC started that way?
Tomas,
So interesting to read this ... I have had a similar view about the impact on temperature on culture and human behavior and productivity for decades and I have thought — at some point someone needs to explore this properly ... and now you have. I think there may be a book in here.
The approach -- talking about geography to understand human behavior -- reminds me Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond which had a huge impact on me and others when it came out some twenty years ago.
Italy is a great example -- look at the culture difference between southern italy and northern italy. Radically different lifestyles and sensibilities.
And yes, air conditioning and the impact of air conditioning is a perfect way to test the thesis that temperature profoundly impacts human behavior and productivity.
I would argue that warmer climates have positive impacts as well -- there is a sense of connectedness and intimacy and shared delirium in warmer temperatures that may (?) cause people to feel more connected and reflective. I would argue that we are all different people at warm temperatures than we are at cool one. Note how large companies tend to turn the AC down to 68 and provide free coffee -- it results in a faster pace of activity. Meanwhile, warmer temperatures make humans more langorous and philosophical, perhaps. Think of southern literature in the US - Faulkner, Twain. Think of the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Then think of writers / thinkers associated with more northern US climates -- Ben Franklin (industrious), William James and all the scientists in northern regions.
The big take away for me is that we humans are animals who behave differently in different environments, and as you say we are inadequately aware of the degree to which context (including temperature) changes our behavior. We are quick to tell stories about ourselves that are self-congratulatory or defeatist without awareness of the subtle inputs to behavior change.
Love this and look forward to hearing about your further explorations of this idea. I will spend more time with it.
Ah, how geography impacts culture is one of my favorite topics, but so unexplored! The next topic I’ll tackle there is how they shape institutions and politics. Massive topic!
Can I ask if you could research Papua New Guinea? PNG would be the ideal subject matter for this question. We have the geography, we have the diversity in our cultures - 840+ languages on half an island and we have the corruption in our government. The best case study you can find. I promise you.
it’s true! I had forgotten about it!
Tropical, mountainous, poor, and conflict-prone!
And multicultural.
Funny, we used to be unified here in AmeriKKKa, one language and one people. Now our federal courthouses are on fire and neo-Confederate state governors nullify the laws of our land like it's 1864.
Had a friend who taught English there for a year. I asked him about it: "NEVER AGAIN! Fucking cannibals, man"
Oh wow
"Italy is a great example, -- look at the culture difference between southern Italy and northern Italy. Radically different lifestyles and sensibilities."
Hence the reason why northern French and Italians consider their southern counterparts more lazy! It's the same pattern in my home country of Cameroon. Douala, the metropolitan and extremely hot region, is considered lazier, than the cooler mountainous city of Bamenda.
I recall attending the state fair on a very hot day. I was exhausted and slow in mind and body. I recall a man telling my parents "it's the heat, it affects the brain."
This is a very cool (no pun intended) theory and I wonder why no one else has explored it. Thank you for this.
Thanks for the anecdote and pattern in Cameroon!
Hi Rhea, I think the suggestion that no one else has explored this idea is a bit mis-guided, particularly due to rhetoric that the writer puts forward. In fact, much of these ideas were created between the 16th and 20th centuries to support colonial domination and race theory. Academic discourse is pretty familiar with the fact that this type environmental determinism (aka the idea that warm places are poor because they're warm) is a disproved and outdated ideology.
I wrote about this more in my post, which I think you will find of interest: https://dhowjones.substack.com/p/your-ground-breaking-theory-is-old
I thought you were about to feed idea that into North and South US economy! I remember there was a paper about Irish indentured workers dropping from Malaria in the south, and African stock having more resistance. Not sure if it got picked up, probably not very popular with existing climate (the other kind). Interesting idea though - with the states approaching a historical pivot point both politically and economically the way the US was split aligns with the thesis. Any thoughts on this?
I wrote extensively on this 2 weeks ago! I just don’t refer to it. I should have!
Note that the Appalachians are indeed dirt poor, but most ppl didn’t settle them in the U.S. though
That's the Scots-Irish, they were dysgenic before they ever set foot in the USA.
The English wanted them gone and implemented the Highland Clearances to get rid of them.
Unfortunately, they ended up here and their descendants are stupid, racist and vote Trump.
This made me crack up!!
Its so true! The very Irish who were displaced from their land, and upon their arrival, were barely considered white, are now racist!
Its sad because they do such a disservice to the resilience of their ancestors.
Guns, Germs and Steel was basically a giant FUCK YOU to the west's superiority and a Leftist effort to say it was all dumb luck and not anything we did.
Reddit's /r/history used to have a bot that would reply with a whole list of reasons that book was bunk whenever anyone mentioned it.
But it delighted the Left to believe it, so they swallowed it without question.
This is why they are so dead-set on massive illegal immigration of People of the Sun into the lands of People of the Ice.
That’s true of modern Italy but Rome is very warm, no?
You've discovered Pierre Gourou and Tropicality
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=related:X2mgatl6SscJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&t=1759004723118&u=%23p%3DX2mgatl6SscJ
Hey Thomas, congratulations for a fascinating article! A couple of questions about the Nairobi/Lisbon comparison:
- Shouldn’t you compare temperature data from the 16th century, where Lisbon was indeed the capital of a global empire? Lisbon climate was likely colder back then, given the European Little Ice Age and discounting the impact of climate change in the recent years.
- Following that idea, do you think the increase of temperatures after the Little Ice Age could have contributed to the decline of Southern Europe in favor of the North?
- Even accepting the current comparison, couldn’t it be argued that Nairobi spends more time during the year above the optimal 22º temperature than Lisbon, making it potentially less productive? Lisbon does get warmer than Nairobi but only during summer, leaving the rest of the year to compensate. That'd also fit the popular observation in Southern Europe that everything slows down in summer!
Interesting points! Let me ponder:
1. The Little Ice Age probably didn't change that much. It was a fraction of a degree (like 0.25ºC) so I don't think it changes the argument
2. Northern Europe's growth precedes the Little Ice Age. In fact, it was during the Medieval Warm Period (eg Vikings). So that might have helped (but little). I think the biggest factor for Northern Europe's growth was technological, not climate. Specifically, the agricultural revolution (horse, horseshoe, horse collar, iron heavy plow) made northern populations explode where they could barely grow any grain before
3. Yeah but 15-26ºC all year long, without 100% humidity, is quite livable! This is not a bad temperature! Easy to work! Conversely, Lisbon's extremes make it harder.
1. Oh, I thought the Little Ice Age had a bigger effect, although if you add 0,5ºC from climate change the difference with the 16th century would be around 0,75ºC. But yes, I think the argument still holds.
2. I was thinking more of the warming making southern countries less productive, but 0,25ºC doesn't sound large enough to have such an impact.
I think climate that changes throughout the year also inevitably produces more innovation because you basically have to adapt to 2-4 different climates and thus are forced to come up with more "things" and that will give you a statistical advantage
Very possible!
Changing climate also requires long term planning which selects for abstract reasoning and other kinds of skills and habits.
Planning for how to survive winter requires having a long term plan and following through on it.
After centuries of such pressures you get a gene/culture evolutionary spiral.
I tend to believe it’s all carried by genes now. Israel, Singapore, Texas, and Florida are all richer than the UK.
I agree with your take Martin! I also think that the "prepare for winter" mentality incentives accumulation and capitalization in the different societies.
As someone who lives in a hot humid low lying country...
1. Respiratory diseases spread rapidly but the people recover far faster (e.g. severe flu lasts 3 days).
2. Parasitic diseases are endemic.
3. People are smaller. A higher ratio of surface area to volume implies better cooling.
4. The indigenous races do not sweat much.
5. Labour happens in the very early morning, Lunch breaks are very long, and everyone sleeps after lunch.
6. Sleeping at night can be difficult unless you have a draught (or air-con) and this can leave you with low energy. People will often sleep on a hard bed (i.e. a wood slab) because it is cooler than a mattress. But sleeping without covers implies extensive mosquito bites.
Very interesting article tor read, Tomas.
I wonder how your theory explain the Southeast Asian region before the European colonization. There were several very successful Southeast Asian empires, such as Srivijaya in Sumatra, Shailendra dynasty and Majapahit in Java, or Khmer in Cambodia. All of them can be considered as 'rich' in their respective era, some with grandiose monuments like Angkor Wat and Borobudur. All of them existed in low land very hot places.
The thing is that Africa's geo is especially bad, which I'll write about in the future. In comparison, low-lying areas like the regions you mention, as well others like the Irrawaddy and Ganges deltas or the Yucatan, are much better.
But not as good as more temperate regions!
Still rich enough to have societies and the taxation needed to pay for these monuments, but not rich enough to be able to develop as much as temperate areas.
I would say that these empire may be successful due to maritime trade. They are located in areas full of islands, and in a half way of maritime route between east and south Asia.
I would also argue that they are as successful as European kingdom during the European middle ages (600-1300 AD).
Yes they were definitely thalassocracies, that's for sure. Unsure they were as productive as Japan, Venice, Genoa, Aragon, Constantinople, or the Hanseatic League though. I'll have to look at evidence, valid hypothesis, thanks!
I think these are some really valid gaps that you've pointed out. I also felt as though it was unable to explain the histories and economies of various Asian countries.
There were also a lot of historical inaccuracies regarding the soil. I wrote about this in my recent post. If you check it out, I think you might enjoy it: https://dhowjones.substack.com/p/your-ground-breaking-theory-is-old
I'd also add in some of the Indian and Sri Lankin kingdoms. Come to think of it Timbucktoo?
Also, bark about 2000BC the Egyptians were probably sneering at those fur-clad barbarians from the steppes.
I suspect Tomas has a point at the extreme heat level but OTOH, I don't remember any great civilizations evolving even in Scandinavia let alone Lapland or the Canadian North.
I found that this theory was deeply flawed. Going through the comments, it seems as though there's a million exceptions that this theory does not hold up against. This theory is actually also not at all "ground-breaking" and was actually a pretty foundational ideology between the 16th and 19th centuries.
I wrote more about how this theory is old news here: https://dhowjones.substack.com/p/your-ground-breaking-theory-is-old
Sweden used to be a great power before the defeat by Russia at Poltava in 1709. They've essentially never recovered from it and after a couple more tries gave up their ambitions completely. Regarding Lapland or the Canadian North, extreme cold is also bad for the civilization growth. Even now with all the technology people don't want to live there
There's a big difference between having a 4 month growing season and saving up for winter, and having essentially no growing season at all, and only maybe 2 months of thawed ground, like you get in those very northerly regions. It is also either all dark or all light at different times of year and neither of those are suitable living conditions for people.
I was wondering about same thing, wrt Central and South America empires like Aztec and Maya.
Dear Thomas, this is fascinating and a very useful addition to the debate, replacing some of the nonsense arguments. Having lived in several countries of Asia and now Latin America, I have heard one additional argument from the locals reflecting on their own countries: In countries without severe winters or long dry seasons, food is available all year round, as long as there is no overpopulation. What that means is that people do not need to plan long-term, they do not need to store food for winter or water for the dry season. This shapes cultures that live more in the moment and don't really invest much thought in planning ahead, which is obviously not a recipe for eonomic development. One other point that occurred to me is that in the Indian Ocean, there was a thriving ecosystem of trade, mainly by city states, that stretched from South India to the Philippines, and that area produced also some serious maritime empires like that of The Cholas or the Srivijaya empire. You also had the Khmer empire in hot, humid and low-lying Southeast Asia. The trading ecosystem in the Indian Ocean did fall victim to European colonialism in the shape of the Portugese and later the Dutch, so I think the story merits a few more nuances. The main argument, however, sounds pretty convincing to me. Thanks again!
This sounds right to me. I think another reader commented it. It also coincides with the evidence that civilizations emerged in the last 10k years or so because changes in the earth’s rotation exacerbated seasons.
This theory doesn’t predict that empires are impossible in sea-level areas. It predicts they will be poorer! Notice none of these empires sprung up locally, and all were weaker than their temperate counterparts.
Yes, I saw too late that another reader had made a similar point about the Southeast Asian empires, sorry. I am not sure the Khmer empire, which lasted for some 600 years, was weaker than the temperate ones. For the Chola and Srivijaya ones I'd agree.
No no, don't apologize! It wasn't meant as a quib, just as more reinforcement to the theory.
The Khmer lasted a long time, so did the Mayans. I don't think it means too much? But maybe I'm not reading enough into it. WDYT? How can we measure their performance vs competitors?
I'm not sure there is a good way to measure it because we do not have enough solid data about the economies and the quality of life in those times. Maybe archaeology could help by giving us more data about life expectancy and general health of the polulation - like they did with the transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers, where hunter-gatherers were clearly bigger and healthier, but far fewer. The Khmer were clearly able to put up impressive monuments, and the duration says something about internal stability and military power, I suppose.
I have often wondered whether most of the post-agricultural technology and infrastructure which Europe and China (both mostly-temperate regions) developed, and which Europe exported to the rest of the World, was "temperate-zone" specific.
As in, this technology often fails in warmer climates due to material incompatibility. Meaning humidity, moisture, light, plant life, fungus, and heat act too quickly upon materials in hotter climates, and destroy them too frequently, or too greatly, to replace or maintain.
And that it would then require a higher level of maintenance, repair, and preventative measures to maintain temperate infrastructure in tropical or sub-tropical regions (Either equatorial, or between the Tropics).
Even in regions which are closer to the equator, but cooler, elevation and lack of sufficient transportation infrastructure would prohibit deep development of modernized society, due to high maintenance costs, and lack of sufficient GDP.
Close to sea level, it's too hot and humid: technology and infrastructure rot quickly. Too expensive to maintain.
Higher elevation, it's too costly to transport: technology and infrastructure can't be invested. Too expensive to begin.
This become cyclical: You can't extract and process materials and components needed to develop resilient technology and infrastructure closer to the Equator, because you can't generate enough capital to invest in the extraction. You can't generate enough capital, because your society can't, because of climate, become active enough. And because your society isn't active enough, you can't extract and produce enough to generate capital.
Modern technology (anything past the 1600s) was developed in temperate climates, for temperate climates, and works best in temperate or temperate-capable societies. This includes North America, Europe, China/Korea/Japan, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, and the cooler southern border of Australia.
The closer you get to the Equator, the more investment it takes to establish and maintain 20th and 21st century infrastructure and technology. But the closer you get to the Equator, the poorer the countries, who can't afford to invest.
I have this theory that a lot of the better crops from temperate regions are better simply because they underwent more human selection for thousands of years. So I think what you say makes sense.
There is, of course, the issue that warmer + more humid = more decay though, so part of the difference is indeed absolute.
Your vicious cycle is indeed what's happening: bad geo, less wealth, less infra, less wealth, less infra...
I agree. Temperate crops indeed underwent selection to become better performers, because we had the tech to force the adaptation.
But (and I'm going on a 'Jared Diamond'-related tangent here...) these crops had to have an initial reproduction strategy which better suited human population growth and innovation in the first place, so that the population could rise to the point that technical progress could take place.
Wheat, barley, oats, rye, etc. (the Pooideae subfamily) and maize (Zea mays), are easily cultivated by scattering or simply dropping into furrows. They're temperature tolerant, low in water, high in calories, protein, and startch. They cross-breed well, store well, and grow quickly, too. And as their output is by unit, very small, they can be easily divided and still stored well.
The saying goes, "Did humans tame the grasses, or did the grasses tame humans?"
The wheat growers were also blessed with pack animals to help till the land, so that accelerated the grain's domestication and adaptation.
Rice (the Oryza genus) is an oddball, because while it is a grain, it has an all-year production cycle with exacting methods, lifelong social learning, and an aversion to technical innovation. Which meant that it required far more social stability and know-how to keep going.
If you slaughter wheat peasants, you simply get more peasants to throw the grain. But if you slaughter rice peasants, you lose lifelong knowledge, and then lose your crops.
However, unlike the grains, root-based staple crops (yams, taro, potato, etc.), often need to be manually buried (similar to rice), and are more suceptible to rot (but not drought). They are often far higher in water, but lower in protein. They also store poorly, cannot be so easily divided without damage, and are often lower in calories.
If all things were equal at the start, then whomever got their hands on grain (wheat and relatives) and pack animals (Eurasia) were almost guaranteed to outpace the rest of humanity.
To paraphrase Jared Diamond's main theory: "Whomever entered Eurasia and settled there, won the civilization lottery."
Yet to try and transfer these temperate grains, pack animals, and tech... to the tropics, or to high elevation? It would be similar to trying to grow oranges in Alaska, or raise toucans in Mongolia. You theoretically can, but you need to severely adapt the climate to do so (often by doing so indoors).
Transfering temperate culture, society, crops, and technology to the tropics, was guaranteed to either partially or completely fail the local societies, without massive investment and alteration.
Still, the World seems to blame the tropics for failing to "get with it" and somehow magically succeed with temperate civilization, and do so with a much decreased cash flow.
And that's...insane.
Hunter-gatherer societies were essentially the result of the climate and the relative abundance of food in the temperate zones of Africa. The people of the time generally had enough to eat and had no need to store food for long periods of time. The relatively warm climate meant they did not need elaborate clothing or dwellings. However, it did mean family units needed to remain small (mothers carried their children on their backs while gathering) and "tribes" battled for resources, further limiting population growth.
The out-migration from Africa, first to the north, then from there to the east and west, introduced humans to a more diverse range of climates that, as mentioned in many comments here, necessitated the development of agriculture, shelter, and clothing.
It is important to note that there was essentially no reverse migration to sub-saharan Africa until the colonial period.
This also helps explain the recent progress of agriculture in Brazil: the country created a research center (Embrapa) to, among other things, develop seeds better suited to the local climate and soil, and then made them available to local farmers. With abundant land and appropriate seeds, agricultural productivity skyrocketed.
You have already written a bit about this (another article that touches on the subject is this one: https://substack.com/home/post/p-173889164).
The issue is that agriculture is a relatively small sector: about 6.5% of GDP (considering agriculture strictly, only what happens “inside the farm”). So, agricultural GDP can grow significantly (as it did, by 15% in 2023), but this has little impact on total GDP.
The broader agribusiness GDP (everything that comes before and after the farm) is larger, around 23%, but its growth is nowhere near that of agriculture: it hovers around 3.5%. Nothing exceptional.
Moreover, agriculture does not generate enough well-paying jobs for this wealth to spread to a large portion of the population. And since there is still a lot of land to be improved, the wealth generated is directed toward improving these lands—instead of financing industry, for example - since farmers simply get a higher return by buying more land or improving the land they already own. Thus, Brazilian agriculture may break productivity records, but this does not really translate into a broader transformation of the economy.
I think this may only start to improve once there is no more land left to be developed and farmers begin channeling the capital generated on their farms into financing other sectors of the economy. One example would be infrastructure, since the lack of efficient logistics for transporting agricultural output hurts their profit margins. Another example would be industries within the agribusiness value chain, which could benefit from the farmers’ familiarity with the sector.
Super interesting, thanks!
Agriculture USED to be the most fundamental industry, because it was something like 60% of global GDP around 1500. It's much less so the case now, as you say. Still very important for balance of payments, state finances, and strategic independence.
Every great society (Aztec, Inca, Egyptian, Zimbabwe, Timbuktu, to name but a few, developed technologies that far exceeded anything what had come before. But when we look at development as an evolutionary process we begin to understand why some societes thrived, and expanded while others declined or at least failed to prosper.
Intelligence is also an evolutionary process. The phenomenon of a slow but steady increase in intelligence over generations is called the Flynn effect. This is something that is measured and observed around the world through standardized intelligence tests. This is relevant here because it would appear that economic development over time has the effect of speeding up this effect within populations. Put another way, we all have essentially the same genes, but environmental conditions affect the evolution of those genes over time, and that process is aided by intermingling of cultures.
Have you come across work that explored the relative benefit in the northern latitudes of Eurasia where cultures could move either eastward or westward relatively quickly and settle new land with the same crops without too much new learning on their part?
Vs the relatively narrow bands in the southern latitudes in Africa and Latin America.
There are just fewer sqkm of contiguous land with similar climates to plant your crops you take with you when you settle new land so the marginal effort of doing so is higher than an Indo-European tribe moving west.
That is the biggest insight from Guns, Germs, and Steel!
Ah, yes! I had read Collapse but never got around to reading that one. Thank you 🙏🏻
Tomás, thanks for the essay. I agree that countries whose population centers lie in mountainous regions often face growth constraints for the reasons you outline. I do, however, see things differently on the institution's story and on a few Colombia examples.
1) Colonial origins and institutions matter more than the essay suggests.
Yes, many Europeans, in this case Spaniards, settled in Mexico and Colombia, but the type of colony shaped the institutions that followed. The Spanish Empire largely designed extractive colonies, while the British tended toward settler-commercial colonies. Extractive colonies prioritized resource transfer to the metropole while settler-commercial colonies sought to develop local markets for imperial products and to integrate colonial production and trade into the wider imperial economy. These different objectives have clear consequences on the institutions instilled. In Spanish America the tax base focused on commerce and output—alcabala (sales), quinto real (mining), diezmo (agriculture), and almojarifazgo (tariffs). This tax structure maximized the short term earning at the expense of the market growth . In contrast, British colonies were financed more through property and head/poll taxes collected locally, which aligned with funding local public goods like schools and poor relief (especially in the U.S.). Because this tax system was more complex, states had to build cadastral surveys, civil registries, and robust assessment and collection systems. In doing so, they developed state capacity and competency—and ended up with stronger states. These patterns persist today: many former Spanish domains still tilt toward taxing transactions, while many former British domains continue to lean on property, similar local taxes and now income tax.
Also, Britain developed stronger property and intellectual-property rights protections and institutions that protected open commercial practices (the free market), while Spain maintained monopolies and privileges that hindered innovation. British settlers were more likely to carry and replicate pro-growth institutional norms in their colonies, whereas Spanish arrangements protected monopolies and privileges that dulled market incentives.
2) Settlement followed hierarchical, settled, and densely populated societies (and labor needs), not altitude per se.
Spaniard colonizers concentrated where hierarchical, settled, and more densely populated civilizations already existed—Muiscas (Bogotá), Tayronas (Santa Marta), Pubenses (Popayán), etc. Controlling hierarchical societies was easier by co-opting the leaders and their higher population density made available the supply of labor required for resource extraction. By contrast, areas with less centralized groups—e.g., the Pijaos in Tolima or groups east of Santa Marta—were less hierarchical and more fragmented, harder to control without a single coerceable leader, and less densely populated, thus a smaller labor pool. Mexico fits this logic too: the Spanish chose Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital to found their main city, Mexico City
3) Medellín and Cali rose after independence; key colonial hubs were hot, lowland ports
You cite Medellín and Cali (Colombia’s #2 and #3 cities) as mountainous examples, but their national prominence is largely mid-to-late 19th century. During the colonial period, warmer lowland cities tied to imperial trade—Cartagena, Santa Marta, Honda, Socorro, and Mompox—were more central. In the broader region, a plausible prominence ordering was Bogotá, Cartagena, and Caracas, with Cartagena and Caracas both very hot cities. This weakens the claim that Spaniards preferred mountains for survival advantages; the crown’s key hubs weren’t primarily mountain cities.
4) On “balcanization”:
The Medellín cartel emerged in a mountain city—Colombia’s second most important at the time—where the state did have meaningful presence and capacity; but its goal wasn’t territorial, ideological, or regionalist control, but defending an illicit business. By contrast, modern cartels/armed groups (guerrillas and paramilitaries) do seek territorial control, and their presence today is mostly in lowlands, better predicted by drug routes/corridors toward export points.
Geography matters because rugged terrain and distance raise transport costs and times, lowering state capacity at the periphery and generating dissatisfied, disaffected citizens—which in turn pushes people toward illegal markets or rebellion. That’s a plausible mechanism for “balcanization”, but the Medellin cartel is not one.
5) Regionalism remains real.
Still, Balcanization is a present phenomenon in Colombia. City elites historically prioritized their own interests, and strong regionalisms persist. In the early republic, Colombia cycled through around a dozen constitutions (each city drafted their own) as city juntas competed to dominate the national project.
Bottom line. Geography sets costs and capacity, but the initial extractive vs. settler-commercial institutional setup goes a long way toward explaining long-run divergence. Several Colombian “mountain city” examples turn on timing, density, labor needs, corridors, and logistics, not altitude alone.
Completely agree the essay misses so much and reads like a defense of neocolonialism. I was particularly bothered by the statistic-dumping and then just stating an unsubstantiated claim afterwards, just not how theories should be presented imo. But thanks for doing the research I neglected, as I cannot directly recall history as well as I can intuitively understand I am being manipulated when it doesn’t match what I know. You said it better than I could, thanks.
Very cool and original. But, OK, that the pattern doesn't quite fit South and East Asia, i.e. 60% of the world population is a bit of an issue with this take.
Yes and no. The pattern that doesn’t work is that people don’t live on mountains, not that people aren’t poor. The area is super poor.
As per mountains, there aren’t that many livable mountain ranges.
Southern China does have them, and does have ppl living in them. Farther south they are too jungly.
I think the question is rather why not in the Himalayas and Tibet, and I think the answer to that is pretty obvious.
So I haven’t touched on it too much because the *mountain* aspect isn’t as present.
Your article addressed this issue pretty well near the end. "So people in warm countries could pick their poison: Either be on the lowlands with lower productivity and more disease, or move to highlands with less trade and more conflict. Most of LatAm and a big chunk of Africa gravitated towards the highlands type of poverty, while East and South Asia gravitated towards the lowlands type."
This ties the 2 options together nicely and I think is a major part of why it's a great theory. Those factors -- productivity, disease, transport, war -- are all important to GDP growth and people had to choose.
Great article and interesting ideas. A whole other dimension is fleshed out in great detail by Thomas Sowell with respect to geography. Africa is mountainous, has few navigable rivers, poor resources to extract for industrialization, and so there’s less to trade, and it’s harder and more expensive to trade. Ideology thrives in a vacuum of abstractions that doesn’t consider the actual details of planet earth. The US has the Great Plains, Great Lakes and Erie Canal, incredible soil and resources, Texas and California oil and gold, and a train network to connect it all. It helped that our brains weren’t overheating too, as the tech innovation happened mainly in cold northern industrial cities. There’s a reason steel and grain were processed in Chicago (like plentiful Michigan iron ore), and why we don’t think of Libya when we imagine a blast furnace..
Yeah I need to publish the African Geo articles!
I was thinking of Thomas Sowell and the lack of navigable rivers in Africa that hinder trade while I was reading this too. I will never think of the continent the same way after hearing his explanation
Very interesting article,but it’s hard not to offer critique. I think it’s unfair to a country like Congo,whose resources are being stolen and her people killed to attribute her poverty to climate. I live in Africa and I tell you without a doubt that our underdevelopment can be traced to colonialism and neocolonialism. I loved reading this article because it has opened my eyes to a whole new perspective. Thank you for sharing.
I had read something along these lines before as well. There is probably more correlation than direct causation. But there probably is some indirect causation. Singapore has a lot of air conditioning but it does not have much innovation. I think ideas and innovation are mostly a function of social dynamics and peer pressure. And AC does not solve this. One long shot theory could be that warm climates make people gather to the same cool places which are indoors. People spend a lot of time in proximity to other people which increases the social part of life (think extended families and detailed words for chachu and mamu as opposed to uncle for both in cultures where social dynamics are not that important. Words reflect importance of things in cultures. Eskimos have a shit ton of words for different types of ice where we only have a few like ice, snow etc because eskimos use ice for a lot more reasons like insulation building material and what not).
This proximity in turn is what causes people to not have enough time to themselves which is needed for ideas. Most countries that have closer social dynamics like this are not good at innovation and mostly good at structured improvement. Korea is an example. They dont invent things. They make them better. Inventions or ideas are a function of individuality which these cultures lack including the Pakistani one. If you try to note the density of thoughts family social dynamics have in the lives of these cultures, you will see that they are very high. Everyone knows everyone in the extended family and what is going on with them. Because there is excessive involvement, there is excessive focus of thougths and therefore time on these things even if unintentional.
Places that are colder allow more individuality because you dont have to be in a specific place to stay warm, you can just add more layers and be anywhere. This means more time spent away from the proximity of other people and less importance of social dynamics and less thoughts and discussions about them. Which means more individual thoughts and opinions which sometimes means more innovation. Odd behaviour is more acceptable in these cultures than in cultures where everyone spends most of their time together.
I think it's very early for Singapore. We'll see what happens. Japan and Korea are both quite innovative, technologically and culturally, even though not yet in disruptive technologies.
Culture and genetics probably have an influence too, although these are hard to parse.
Interesting hypothesis re socialization. I wonder what that was like 500y ago though.
Agreed that it might be too early to tell for Singapore and even over a long enough time frame and the population may not be large enough to get inventors (who are usually a small ratio)
But the underlying variable of social proximity is something I do believe has a lot of effect on how conforming people there are. Korea, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore all have this problem that comes out of this closeness.
One well documented example is how people older than you or senior in position are treated. In all of these places, what elders say goes and theyre owed a lot of "respect". So much so that disagreeing is seen as a sign of disrespect. All of this is socially enforced. And is only possible because your neighbor knows your parents on a routine and personal level etc.
A relatively popular example of the above is the one mentioned Gladwell's book Outliers about Korean Air Flight 801 where a crash was caused because of this senior respect. I'm particularly sure about this specific example but as someone who is part of this culture in Pakistan and who consumes a lot of Korean and Japanese vlogging type content on YouTube and who has spent a few months in Singapore, the incidence is believable. This is not at all the matter with innovative cultures and cultures that are wealthier (at least the ones I've had exposure to)
This kind of a structure discourages independent thinking (all thinking technically) which causes them to not do anything that creates a lot of value beyond what is expected of them. These cultures have a socially enforced cultural aversion to risk and following the old paths. Wealth is a function of creating value. If you only do what people have been doing for a while, you're going to be poorer on average than those who do new things.
That sounds like it comes from Confucianism though?
I wonder whether innovation will decline given how much time people now spend online rather than with their own thoughts.
You can think while you pick berries. You can think while you plow fields. You can think while you mend clothes.
Can you think while you play World of Warcraft or scroll Instagram? No. Can you think while being flattered by ChatGPT? Maybe?
Fantastic article, Tomas! Your theory on mountains as the underrated factor in tropical poverty is fresh and eye-opening—love how it shifts focus from blame to actionable geography. That said, while mountains do impose trade-offs like high transport costs and balkanization, the story isn't universally grim. Let me contrast a few conclusions with some counterpoints:
1. Not all mountain cultures are doomed to poverty and conflict—they can thrive through decentralization. You highlight how mountains lead to fragmentation, less trust, and ethnic strife (e.g., in Colombia or Ethiopia), making institutions harder to build. But look at Switzerland: a highly mountainous country far from the tropics, yet one of the richest on Earth (GDP per capita ~$100k). Its success comes from embracing independence and decentralization—cantons with strong local governance, direct democracy, and neutrality, the opposite of centralized empires like Russia or Spain. This suggests mountains don't inherently cause poverty; they reward federalism and bottom-up integration over top-down control. Tropical mountains could follow suit if institutions adapt, rather than assuming geography locks in failure.
2. Cold, resource-rich countries like Russia show poverty isn't just a tropical/mountain issue—it's about leveraging ports and trade hubs. Russia is far from the equator, with vast arable land, natural resources (oil, gas, minerals), and no equatorial heat/humidity woes. Yet it's relatively poor (GDP per capita ~$14k) and commodity-dependent, with corruption and autocracy stifling growth. Its capital, Moscow, isn't an economic hub like historical St. Petersburg was under Peter the Great, who built navy/ports to unify Russia internally and connect it to Europe via the Baltic. Reviving that—focusing on maritime/river integration—could transform it. This ties into why Ukraine (a land of river/sea ports like Odessa on the Black Sea) resists centralist, autocratic influences: they're antithetical to commercial trust and integration. Your theory nails tropical geography, but Russia's case shows institutions and poor infrastructure choices (e.g., ignoring ports for land-locked centralism) can replicate "mountain-like" isolation even in flat, cold expanses.
3. In tropical mountains like Colombia's, the real missed opportunity isn't just transport costs—it's ignoring water as a natural asset. As a Colombian, I see how our history and choices exacerbate geographic challenges. You rightly note how Spaniards settled highlands for cooler climates, but they (and descendants) worsened geography by hating/draining water: rivers, lagoons, wetlands turned into pavement. Colombia has two massive valleys/rivers (Cauca and Magdalena) slicing south-to-north—perfect logistical hubs like the Erie Canal, Mississippi, or Dutch/German/Chinese waterways that kickstarted development in the North. Instead, we pave them over! Mountains aren't just barriers; they're "water factories" (like expansion valves in AC/refrigerators, condensing moisture into rivers). A developing country should prioritize cheap rivers first, then trains, then expensive highways—as Europe/US did initially. Jumping to highways racks up debt (high capex/opex) without sustainable returns, condemning us to failure by ignoring context. Colombia has two cardinal sins, inherited from Spain: centralism in the face of a diverse geography, and distance from the hubs that connect it to global trade. If Panama were part of our territory, we would lose it again. Rivers could decentralize Colombia, boost internal/external trade, cut corruption (governance closer to territories), and foster organic growth. But politicians chase commissions on bloated loans for prestige projects. This contrasts your call for mountain infrastructure: yes, invest, but start with water to make it affordable and adaptive.
4. Northern tech like AC isn't a silver bullet—it needs bottom-up adaptation to local geography. You praise AC as key for lowlands (e.g., Singapore's rise under Lee Kuan Yew). But AC didn't single-handedly make Singapore competitive; its success stemmed from leveraging geography as a port/hub, strict governance, and trade focus—much like the Dutch, masters of topology/logistics who turned flat, flood-prone Netherlands into a powerhouse via canals/ports/dikes. Tropical countries import Northern infrastructure (designed for cold/dry contexts) without tweaking, leading to inefficiency. We need organic, bottom-up approaches: adapt tech to humid/mountain realities, like bio-inspired cooling or river-based logistics, rather than top-down electrification that burdens grids. This could flip your "pick your poison" framing—mountains/lowlands aren't traps if we design with, not against, the land.
Overall, your piece brilliantly spotlights geography's role, but adding these nuances shows poverty often stems from maladapted choices, not inevitable curses. Thoughts? Would love to hear if you've explored Swiss-style federalism for tropical mountains!
Hey! Thanks for this!
1. Switzerland is a special type of country—a buffer country. Buffer countries work because they can leech on bigger powers around them. Switzerland had 4 such powers around it historically: France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. It leeches on them by arbitraging taxes, and by taking advantage of the fact that no power can take on Switzerland, for the other 3 would jump at them.
Nepal and Bhutan are similar buffer countries, except they only play 2 powers against each other, and both are poor per capita. I'm pretty sure if you put Switzerland in the Himalayas, it would be poor.
For a similar reason, Switzerland is united: Without the union, they would have been torn to pieces.
Switzerland is also a plateau BTW!
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/what-you-want-switzerland-and-how
2. Russia
Agreed! The parts of Russia that are poor are not temperate though, they're cold. The temperate parts are much wealthier.
But this theory is not saying "all warm countries are poor, all cold countries are rich". It's saying "Sea-level countries are more viable in temperate areas than in tropical ones", which I don't think Russia's example disagrees with?
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/problem-of-russia
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/future-of-russia
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/6-fascinating-facts-about-moscow
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-is-moscow-so-weird
3. I agree. This is one of the poor side-effects of jump-starting a civilization with Medieval / Modern tech rather than letting it grow organically. CDMX has the same problem.
How navigable are these rivers though?
4. Agreed!
On the subject of Switzerland, I am reminded of the Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Massoud, who long advocated for Afghanistan to adopt a Swiss style political system with radical decentralization, because he saw that mountainous, land-locked country as somewhat analogous to his own. He was killed by al-Qaeda days before 9/11, and his idea went nowhere. Instead, Afghanistan was pushed towards a model of a more conventional, centralized democracy, for all the good that did. Iraq ended up down a similar “a fractious state must need a strong central government” path.
There may be a reminder here about why importing Western institutions often fails, whether imposed by colonial governments or voluntarily imitated by local leadership. Cultural incompatibility is frequently cited and a real issue. Steve Sailer’s essay on the eve of the Iraq war predicting that Western democracy would necessarily fail in Iraq because of the extremely high-rate of cousin marriage (proving it was still operating along clan lines) remains insightful. But maybe geographic incompatibility is an under-appreciated constraint, and itself can shape culture in very sticky ways?
Perhaps more controversially, it is not evident to me that there is any clear institutional model or path to prosperity for an independent country with a population in the many millions concentrated in dense, mountain megapolises far from the coast and disconnected from navigable rivers. Switzerland notwithstanding (its river situation is not so isolating and it is integrated into larger, wealthy, non-mountain neighbours) this is not what major rich countries look like at any temperature.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I had never thought of the connection between cousin marriage and democracy, but it's obvious once you mention it
Insane work as always man