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I have read some of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel in the past, so the idea that physical and cultural evolution might be linked is not new to me. I remember feeling mind-boggled though, at the thought of agriculture arising in the fertile crescent and spreading laterally, enabling the rapid growth of civilizations in Eurasia. I also remember thinking how unfair this seemed to me. I want to hold to the belief that the harder one fights for something, the greater the reward. It makes sense, but seems so unfair that people born in areas with arable land, domesticable animals, and farmable crops benefit far more from their labors than those who come from areas with arid land, animals that cannot be tamed, and low-yielding crops. But perhaps this is further example of the "randomness" that we had talked of in class with physical evolution; fairness and justice had nothing to do with it. Yet, when humans are involved, it seems as if they should. Isn't that why there are charities that send out seeds, and develop irrigation for less fertile areas?

I wonder if this difference in agriculture also bleeds into other areas of culture. For example, the creation myths that we were exposed to in the beginning. These myths from outside the Fertile Crescent area involved the production/obtaining of food as central parts for explaining creation:

• Aijingwen's myth from the Phillipines had human's planted as seeds.
• Christine's myth, "Ainu" involved oceans and hunting; when I searched for "Ainu" on Wikipedia, I found that they had indeed been an island-dwelling, hunting-gathering people.
• In Karina's Mayan myth, men were created out of corn -- the staple crop that Diamond wrote of for that region.

Contrarily, stories such as Hillary's Greek myth, or Valentina's analysis on science vs. Judaic creation story (both from the Fertile Crescent area) have little or, arguably, no emphasis on food, or crops, but rather on human/god motivations, or empirical explanations.

These are just five samples from our myths, so obviously this doesn't bear as any sort of technical analysis, but it does seem like an interesting correlation.