There’s something to be said about how different grains impacted the social structures of many societies. Rice really incentivized massive families and communal structures. Wheat was easier to automate with tools and industry. North China and South China have a lot of interesting differences in societal habits as a result.
As a cook and history guy, food history is like…super informative. Who ate what during whatever period or place and how it got to the table is like the most historical materialism you can do. It’s something id really like to study in a formal capacity
Yeah the types of foods that societies relied on are a much stronger influence on culture and development than weather imo. Of course the weather itself plays a role in which foods are available though and this leads to people misattributing the behaviour to the weather instead of correctly recognising that everything we’ve ever done socially revolves around the survival need to eat.
China has some brutal winters and they have been continuously been one of the largest civilizations throughout all of history
China has every climate in the world pretty much. except maybe the mediterranean one.
So that’s why China has always been based and didn’t even need a cultural revolution.
Mainly because of rice being absolutely perfect to grow there and incredibly abundant in the correct conditions.
There’s something to be said about how different grains impacted the social structures of many societies. Rice really incentivized massive families and communal structures. Wheat was easier to automate with tools and industry. North China and South China have a lot of interesting differences in societal habits as a result.
As a cook and history guy, food history is like…super informative. Who ate what during whatever period or place and how it got to the table is like the most historical materialism you can do. It’s something id really like to study in a formal capacity
Yeah the types of foods that societies relied on are a much stronger influence on culture and development than weather imo. Of course the weather itself plays a role in which foods are available though and this leads to people misattributing the behaviour to the weather instead of correctly recognising that everything we’ve ever done socially revolves around the survival need to eat.
Rice can have multiple harvests in a year while wheat typically leaves a seasonal labor surplus that tended to be absorbed by military campains.