Networks and Knowledge Systems: An Alternative to “Race or Place”

1. The book by no means describes an experiment; there are no controls or definitions of variables. So too, what if we had declared the “experiment” complete in 1491? 2075? Who would have been declared the global “winner” then? 2. The fertile crescent was not the most important center of domestication; nutrition from wheat and millet is by no means superior to that of rice and maize complex diets. 3. Nothing about European topography naturally enhances differentiation, social diversity, state-building, or exchange, whether relative to China or to anywhere else; criteria used to support Europe’s “advantages” (isolated capes and bays, etc) are also used to suggest disadvantages of other regions.