Archive for month: December, 2016

I’ve just added a new section to the popular version of the book, in chapter 14, which you can download free from the shop. It’s quite neat, in that it shows why Greece was so extraordinarily creative and Africa so backwards. The basic idea is that the more trade opportunities people have, the more likely they are to control infants which produces a character good at trade. The less trading opportunities, the more likely they are to focus on discipline of older children, which makes them less good at trade and better at forming large states. The geography of Greece is such that most people live very close to the sea, and when they colonized it was almost always coasts and islands. That it why they were great traders, highly creative, and tended to form city states – all aspects of high infant C. The Romans in Italy had good trading opportunities but not to the same extent, next were the ancient Indians and Chinese, and finally sub-Saharan Africa, which is peculiarly ill-suited to trade.

I’m finishing off an expanded version for the academic book, which I’ll also make a free download.