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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age

It would even fairer to say that that region had advanced civilization, huge riches, stable organization, culture (music, poetry, literature), science (math, chemistry, engineering), and so on, at times when America was still inhabited by the Native Americans, and Western Europe was a bunch of barbarian tribes living in shitholes, and well after it started turning into medieval shithole fiefdoms (and then started using the loot of the Americas and the advantage of gunpowder to dominate).

Rome and Byzantium excluded of course.

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> even fairer to say that that region had advanced civilization, huge riches, stable organization, culture (music, poetry, literature), science (math, chemistry, engineering), and so on

Yes. This is the entire point of the article. It was an advanced civilisation. Then it fell to the point that it could be colonised by its former inferiors. How that happens is objetively interesting.

>Yes. This is the entire point of the article. It was an advanced civilisation

Nowhere as back as "the bronze age" though. More like "well into the 14-15th century".

>Then it fell to the point that it could be colonised by its former inferiors.

Not very difficult since they eventually had the looting of the Americas and gunpowder to their advantage. Even with that, they came close to being conquered themselves when the Ottomans went westwards (not to mention the Caliphate of Cordoba).

> Nowhere as back as "the bronze age" though

The Hittites. (The Sea Peoples?) The Parthians. The Romans. You're talking about a fertile patch near the birth of civilisation, of course it's going to have had an old and violent history.

> since they eventually had the looting of the Americas and gunpowder to their advantage

Gunpowder was invented in China. The Arab world had vastly superior maritime capabilities in its heyday. (To the extent that it single handedly enabled Europe's blue-ocean capabilities.) Its empires were also colonising powers, so it's not like in an alternate timeline they wouldn't have expanded across the Atlantic.

And in case it needs to be stated, the Arabs were successful colonisers and conquerors [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayyubid_dynasty

> You're talking about a fertile patch near the birth of civlisation

Near --a-- birth of civilization.

> Near --a-- birth of civilization

I was referring to Ur, but fair enough, I haven't tracked recent discoveries in other cradles.

>The Hittites. (The Sea Peoples?) The Parthians. The Romans. You're talking about a fertile patch near the birth of civilisation, of course it's going to have had an old and violent history.

I contested the "Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos" similar to the colonial era situation "since the Bronze Age" claim. The arab world (speaking of the areas) did quite well for close to a millenium before the colonial era. And Europe itself had a huge bloody history of course both until Westphalia (and, unfortunately) well after it - so if the arab world having wars and disputes before the colonial era can be said to be "managed chaos", then the same can be said of it.

>Gunpowder was invented in China.

It was still put to use for guns in a large scale in the west first. This just says that the Chinese and the Arabs missed the opportunity to adopt it first - it doesn't disprove that gunpowder was a key advantage for the european rise and dominance.

>Its empires were also colonising powers, so it's not like in an alternate timeline they wouldn't have expanded across the Atlantic.

In an alternative timeline they could even go to the moon first. In this timeline, they didn't benefit from the looting of a whole new continent with easy to defeat locals dying of gunpowder and sickness.

> This just says that the Chinese and the Arabs missed the opportunity to adopt it first

On a slightly unrelated tangent, I recommend reading "The Rise and Fall of E.A.S.T" by Yasheng Huang [0].

He's a Professor at MIT Sloan who has advised the Chinese, Israeli, and Indian governments on Human Capital Development, and provides a pretty interesting take on the development of management and institutional capacity within China, and how it's impacted R&D capacity.

[0] - https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300266368/the-rise-and-f...

When Muslims rule over anywhere, they don't exploit, loot, and abuse their resources for their own selfish advantage. That's the biggest difference that has led the West to remain powerful and prosperous while the Arab and Muslim world have been in this situation for so long.

Muslims also don't murder adversaries' scientists.

That's not even close to true. Look at the massive growth of slavery and religious violence under Arab and Muslim conquest across Asia and Africa.

Arab and Western conolialism have different flavors but enormous exploitation and abuse.

> It would even fairer to say that that region had advanced civilization, huge riches, stable organization, culture (music, poetry, literature), science (math, chemistry, engineering), and so on

Religion hampered all this progress still. Those things would have happened far quicker without religion dragging humanity down.

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