The Geography of Domesticated Plants and Animals Decided Who Ruled and Who Fell

From the earliest human settlements, the range of local flora and fauna shaped every aspect of civilization's fate. Consider Europe and the Fertile Crescent, where wild wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cows thrived—transforming societies from scattered tribes to urban powerhouses. Meanwhile, in the lush forests or arid deserts of California, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa, the most promising wild plants were tough, slow-growing, or bitter. Some plants seemed ripe for farming, but couldn't be bred reliably or required difficult techniques unknown to Stone Age peoples.

Attempts to domesticate unlikely candidates—like North American wild apples, African zebras, or grizzly bears—repeatedly failed due to factors like slow growth, nasty dispositions, or biological quirks. The Anna Karenina principle captures this: every successful domesticate shares key traits (manageable reproduction, tameness, usefulness), but one missing piece means failure.

Thus, the uneven distribution of resources—not lack of imagination or work ethic—meant that Eurasia assembled a 'package' of crops and animals that fueled rapid growth, dense settlements, and potent technologies. When those resources diffused along similar climates (east-west axes), the pattern amplified; where geography blocked movement, societies stalled. Rigorous analysis of domestication history, genetics, and archaeological finds backs up these claims, shifting historical debates from cultural to biogeographic explanations.

By exploring which plants and animals grew or thrived in your area versus elsewhere, and by thinking about why some couldn't be domesticated, you'll start to see how success often rides on the quirks of nature. Dig into how these differences changed everything from how many people a land could feed to what inventions took root. Don’t blame culture or effort for every gap—sometimes, nature simply sets the stage.