Talk:Environmental determinism

" claim that we can look to simplistic patterns of environmental change or geographical difference (e.g. latitude) and from there we can see why some societies have flourished and will continue to flourish while others haven't and won't."

"Environmental determinism, like Social Darwinism, poisoned academic disciplines such as anthropology, economics and geography in the 19th century where it had a huge appeal among advocates of colonialism and slavery."

Now I'm curious, are you sure about this? Because instead "Environmental determinism" actually sounds like a theory for which some societies just didn't need to develop and "evolve" from an industrial and infrastructural standpoint (natives being the main example), because the climate already gave them what they felt they needed. An idea which seems opposed to the once prevalent theory that some population were less "civilezed" because their members were inherently less intelligent, genial or inventive. Seem rather this last one, to be the main leitmotif of colonialists, that savages where genetically impaired and less intelligent if not downright stupid as a race. For instance, is Jared Diamond ("Steel, guns and germs") an environmental determinist according to such description? As the description he can be read as such, besides this one seems a much more raw and less scientific theory. That's to say that at least you should go deeper about the dinstinctions, in this article. As you know by browsing the interned, Diamond's ideas started to be targeted by innatists and social darwinists, or "race realists" as politically correct, intellectual propaganda. --78.15.219.208 (talk) 16:11, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Wut? -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 16:19, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I'm Italian and I tried to make some corrections in this edit. I was curious on how is such vision different by the more modern sociological model of Jared Diamond. ^{— Unsigned, by: 78.15.219.208 / talk / contribs}

Okay, that makes a bit more sense but I don't think I quite get it. It seems like you have an issue with environmental determinism versus biological determinism. Biological is usually wrong as the idea of humans being in different stages of evolution has been disproven where environmental can be correct. If an area cannot support large amounts of people there aren't going to be large population centers, if there's no iron available in the environment around them using iron is kind of out of the question. I won't comment on the book since it's on my to do list but human beings can be limited or gain benefits from the environment around them. If there weren't differences trade wouldn't exist in the first place. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 19:13, 21 April 2016 (UTC)