Originally posted by Putinbot1That said the reasons for that are cultural rather than intellectual as are Asians high test scores at present.
Yes, they had gunpowder and did nothing with it etc. Yes 0 allowed proofs of Greek Geometry etc. Actually the civil service etc. came from the Fertile Crescent and north Africa, all of these ancient things were stagnent and unchanging for thousands of years, it was Europe and particularly the two periods of the enlightenment and the first Industrial revolution that allowed the British Empire and English to dominate the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th Century and the Americans and to a lesser extent Europe to dominate the second half of the 20th and the 21st. Your Language, dress, week, way of telling the time, legal system, political system, music (scales etc.) all has it's roots in Europe.As for Science, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Brunel, Bohr, Tesla, Gauss, Hook, Mercedes, Oppenheimer etc. all sound pretty European to me, hell, even Americans like the Wright Brothers and Ford sound pretty European.
It's very similar to why heavyweight boxing was once dominated by Black Americans and no isn't dominated by Americans or Blacks. Environment is key.