SESSION 3: PLENARY GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OVER THE LONG RUN
探讨不同大陆发展路径差异的原因，指出地理环境而非种族差异决定了各民族的命运，对理解长期经济发展和地理经济学有价值。
History's broadest pattern, and its biggest unsolved problem, are its very different course on different continents. Why did Aboriginal Australians remain stone-age hunter-gatherers, while agriculture and empires were arising among Native Americans, and while widespread literacy and metal tools were arising in Eurasia? Why were Europeans the ones to conquer Africans, Aboriginal Australians, and Native Americans, instead of vice versa? For lack of an accepted explanation, many people fall back on racist explanations. I shall show instead how the different fates of different peoples were stamped by differences in continental environments.