by Wayland Blue

Created on: October 03, 2008

Time and time again I have been drawn to ask the question of why some societies fail while others prosper. Many explanations have surfaced over the years. Some of the worst address supposed inherent differences in intelligence between ethnic groups. Apart from this being evil it is totally lacking in any logic or evidence. Throughout my time with so called "primitive peoples", such as the Lahu and Karen of Mainland Southeast Asia who only recently adopted intensive agriculture and a permanently settled life style, I have seen no evidence for this claim of a genetic difference in mental abilities. If anything, they are, on average more intelligent when it comes to innovation and problem solving than people from more "civilized" societies.

In reality the best long term explanations for the marginalization and domination of some populations by others lay in the history of which group got agriculture and writing before the other and this in turn was determined by the geographical location of these groups. Did they live in areas with many readily domesticateble species and good land for growing or did they live close to people who did? The Thai and Burmese people whose original home lands are the Yuanan region of China and the Tibetan plateau respectively, did. Some researchers claim that this area may contain the earliest sights of plant domestication. They lived in low lands and river valleys that were ideal for the kind of high intensity agriculture that is needed to support large populations, which in turn can support complex political power structures that can fund things like scribes that develop writing to keep records of who owes what to those in power as well as to promote the propaganda of those in power. Even more significantly, Complex, centralized power structures can fund thing like armies that go out and build empires.

This is exactly what the Thai and Burmese peoples did as they expanded into what are now Thailand, Burma, and Laos. Before them, the destroyed the Khmer and Mon empires that once dominated the area. These empires had become weak through environmental overexploitation and mismanagement. Also, the Thai and Burmese encountered smaller, and less advanced societies of semi nomadic or settled, hunters and agriculturalists who had adopted rice growing from their more advanced neighbors. These small groups were joined by others from south and southwest China fallowing the many political and social upheavals in that empire. These groups lived

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