fabio guillermo rojas wrote:
> Observation: A lot of cultures close to the equator seem to have been
> wealthy compared to Europe before the rise of the West aftyer 1500. The
> conquistadors compared Technotitlan to Cordoba (the wealthy Spanish
> coastal city) and various Arabic cultures close to the equator seem to
> have been wealthy.
Certainly in per capita income terms the Aztecs were way below Spanish
standards, though the royal displays might have been very impressive to
the Spaniards. And the Arab countries are really quite far from the
equator if you look at a globe. Istanbul is around the latitude of NYC,
and even Mecca is about even with Florida.
> I think that the wealth/race/latitude thing might be artifact of
> colonialism.
>
> Think about it: cultures near the equator exhibit a lot of variation
> in wealth before colonialism.
Circle the globe. The only civilization I can see that ever emerged
around the equator was the Inca. And their effective climate was not
equatorial due to high elevation, as far as I understand.
> Then the West expands into the Americas
> and other places. A lot of wealthy cultures near the equator are wiped out
> due to conquest or disease (the Aztecs), others are just in general
> decline (the Ottomans) and some were very poor to start with (like many in
> Central Africa).
"A lot" is a big overstatement. There was definitely a period when
Chinese and Arabic civilizations were more advanced than in Europe, but
all three were in temperate zones. When were the tropics more advanced
or richer per capita?
> So before regressing wealth on racial composition and then making
> sweeping conclusions, one should remember that the current concentration
> of wealth in the North is really just something that happened in the
> last 500 years.
Sweeping conclusions? You're way ahead of me. All I'm saying is that
we've got a stylized fact that income level increases with distance from
the equator, and that racial composition is a potential confounding
variable. You seem to want to challenge the robustness over time of the
first finding, but in spite of a few exceptions is seems very strong.
--
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics George Mason University
http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"A man should be sincere, and nobly shrink
From saying anything he does not think."
-- Moliere, _The Misanthrope_
