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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1901944" data-attributes="member: 6533">Right, to go back to the original question, they didn't develop it precisely because it was an "evolutionary" step.And what I mean by that is that the European technology explosion was, to continue an awkward metaphor, a surprisingly beneficial and succesful mutation.    You can ask why that mutation thrived and did well, but it doesn't really make sense, in terms of the course of human history, to ask why noone else did.  Steady technological advancement is really sort of freak.  Some fringe cultures do it, Inuits have amazingly sophisticated tools and clothing and we'd be nowhere without nomads, but otherwise it just doesn't happen.It amazes me when I see people complaining about the long periods of slow tech advancement in fantasy.  Our species spent, what?, close to a million years figuring out the intricacies of rocks and fire and doing just fine.  All the evidence seems to point to agriculture as a pretty common step, but certainly not an inevitable one.  And then civilized agricultural itself is probably an 'evolutionary phase' we haven't really mastered.Guns, Germs, and Steel is an awesome book but it's one point of view, I wouldn't stop with it.Before you consider the Aztecs that far behind technologically, ask yourself what percentage of the most important domesticated crops in the world came from Central and South America.  Even before you do that:Check out the Valley of Mexico in the Aztec and pre-Aztec era.  That place was a freaking agricultural miracle.  The food that could be produced in that small valley was among the greatest weapons the world had ever seen.Technology helped in the conquest of Mexico, but it was culture and politics that decided the conflict.Peru, on the other hand, well coming in just after a nasty civil didn't hurt the Spanish.  That and the Incans may have had a bit of a Persia vs. Alexander the Great problem going on.  Too much territory and too much dependence on a great organization.  That and Pizarro was CRAZY.  I'd say 20th level crazy at the least.So in terms of a homebrew, the real question is:  Do you want the freak?  If so how do you simulate it actually doing well?  And, really, do you want the freak?As a side note, if you do have the freak, don't forget to include the Ottoman empire in your model of Europe.  They're role in the whole issue, and that of the Middle East and Northern Africa in general, is terribly underemphasized.</blockquote>

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