Answers to Geography:
Europe and China
T
he unevenness of nature shows in the contrast between this un
happy picture and the far more favorable conditions in temperate
zones; and within these, in Europe above all; and within Europe, in
western Europe first and foremost.
Take climate. Europe does have winters, cold enough to keep down
pathogens and pests. Winter's severity increases as one moves east into
continental climes, but even the milder versions fend off festering mor
bidity. Endemic disease is present, but nothing like the disablers and
killers found in hot lands. Parasitism is the exception. Some have ar
gued that this exemption accounts for the vulnerability of Europeans
to epidemic plagues: they were not sufficiently exposed to pathogens
to build up resistance.
Even in winter, West European temperatures are kind. If one traces
lines of equal temperature around the globe (isotherms), nowhere do
they bend so far north as along Europe's Atlantic coast. The mean
winter temperature in coastal Norway, north latitude 58 to 71 de
grees, exceeds that in Vermont or Ohio, some 20 degrees closer to the
equator. As a result, Europeans were able to grow crops year round.
They were assisted here by a relatively even rainfall pattern, distrib
uted around the year and rarely torrential: "it droppeth as the gentle