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If you ever interested in this sort of stuff then the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" [1] explores all these trade-offs in great depth (and places them in the larger context of the development of human societies in general.)

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1842.Guns_Germs_and_Stee...

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I thought academic anthropology was moving away from ideas like Diamond's "Geographic determinism" and towards a more "Historical particularism" view of civilizations progress?

G,G,S is focused on why civilizations arise in the first place, and also why it is that Eurasian civilizations became so more powerful over the long term than any others, and for that he has a good explanation. He agrees there are many other factors involved in particular cases.

Yeah the entire 'trilogy' of his (this was the first part so to speak) on this matter is brilliant.

Now I'm curious what the 'other two' are...

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