re: #272 wrenchwench

I have not read Wade’s book, but from the critical reviews I can gather the first half is decent science reporting and the second half is Wade speculating for answers to the age-old puzzle of why Europeans, and not some other culture, ended up dominating the world. Looking for genetic answers is just wishful thinking, though. A lot of European expansion amounts to dumb luck. China had a decent navy at one point, but the emperor scrapped naval exploration to divert those funds to defending against the Mongolian hordes. Columbus stumbled into a new continent. The Spanish stumbled around looking for gold, and found the Pacific Ocean. It was more a question of being in the right place at the right time, and not being terribly bothered with ethics and morality.