Chapter 6 Ways of the World

Chapter 6

Africa benefited from its proximity to Eurasia. Eurasia had a great many wild animals that could be domesticated, which Africa lacked. However, once they became domesticated they became available in Africa. The proximity of North Africa to Eurasia allowed contact with Mesopotamia, which created cross pollination of their cultures. In addition, coastal North Africa was part of the Roman Empire and was used to produce crops, with slave labor. Camels came to Africa via Arabia and affected the development of a pastoral economy in North Africa and trans-Saharan commerce. The East African coast was an important port for trade between Africa and Eurasia.


The Americas, on the other hand, were isolated from Africa and Eurasia. The only domesticated animals were llamas and alpacas in the Andes Mountains.  Therefore, there were no animals to pull carts or plows. Being lightly settled, there was very little interactions between different cultures. Also the geography was not suitable to the development of large civilizations. In a very small area, one would go from a dry coast to rain forest to high plateaus with many mountains peaks and valleys.  This created many different languages, cultures and states.



Andes - Wikipedia



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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andes

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