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Alex Lo

Places well-endowed with natural resources don’t usually become great powers or world-conquering empires. If anything, many suffer from the “resource curse”, which corrupts the domestic elite and invites foreign intervention, exploitation or outright colonisation.
Like people, communities or nations that have fought to overcome adversity and disadvantages often become the most successful. Challenges – whether natural, geographical, social or military – make them fighters and winners.
New findings by archaeologists in central China make an analogous claim: early humans might have evolved towards making sophisticated tools in response to environmental challenges, not out of the Garden of Eden.
The site’s discovery in Henan province of remarkably inventive tools suggests that a harsh ice age drove technological innovation for an extinct human species, hypothetically named Homo juluensis.
Yuchao Zhao, lead author of a paper in the Journal of Human Evolution, noted that: “People often imagine creativity as something that flourishes in good times. Finding out that these stone tools were made during a harsh ice age tells a different story. Hard times can force us to adapt.”


He added: “The underlying logic of this system – and the cognitive abilities it reflects – shows important similarities to Middle Palaeolithic technologies often associated with Neanderthals in Europe and with human ancestors in Africa, suggesting that advanced technological thinking was not limited to Western Eurasia.”
Zhao’s idea that adversity is necessary to stimulate innovation among early humans is similar to a major theme running through historian and philosopher Arnold Toynbee’s famous multi-volume A Study of History about the emergence of civilisations: flourishing societies and powerful states usually emerged from adversity, not natural advantages or rich endowments. Toynbee calls it “the virtues of adversity”. The volumes were published around the mid-20th century.
“We have been led to reject the popular assumption that civilizations emerge when environments offer unusually easy conditions of life and to advance an argument in favour of exactly the opposite view,” he wrote.
“Ease is inimical to civilization … We have ascertained that civilizations come to birth in environments that are unusually difficult and not unusually easy, and this has led us on to inquire whether or not this is an instance of some social law which may be expressed in the formula: ‘the greater the challenge, the greater the stimulus’.”

Toynbee provides a great many examples, such as the Mayans who built a civilisation in Central America among jungles which resemble “some sylvan boa-constrictor”; ancient Chinese who contended with the fertile yet highly destructive Yellow River and the Yangtze; likewise, the Egyptians with the Nile.
But one example has particularly resonated with me over the years because it has to do with the Chinese and presents contrasting social outcomes.
Mass migration waves from China to Southeast Asia and North America in the mid-19th and 20th centuries presented a situation almost like a double-blind experiment: the same group of people ended up in one place that was challenging but not insurmountable and another in a sociocultural environment so harsh as to break them.
In the first case, “By facing the social ordeal of leaving his familiar home and entering an alien social environment [in today’s Malaysia and Indonesia] … he is apt to reap a reward for his enterprise … [and] is stimulated to better himself, and not infrequently he makes his fortune.” Many of those family fortunes still dominate those countries’ economies today.
But in what Toynbee calls “White Man’s countries”, “an ordeal of vastly greater severity” awaits the Chinese migrant, with “deliberate penalization in which the law itself will discriminate against him…”

There was, for example, the US’ infamous Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 19th century, and others followed well into the 20th century.
Toynbee wrote that the social severity was too harsh to overcome, “as we can see if we compare the levels of prosperity which are in fact attained by the Chinese in Malaya and Indonesia with the levels attained by immigrants of the same gifted race in Australia and California”.
There is a history lesson here, applicable to the current tech war waged by Washington and its allies against China. Its necessarily limited nature – stemming from America’s relative decline – presents a challenge: stimulating China’s ability to excel on its own technological terms rather than hindering it. It spurs innovation that might otherwise have eluded China if the US had taken it easy.


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How adversity has guided the path of Chinese civilisation through the ages

Descendants of Chinese railroad workers gather during a ceremony for 12,000 Chinese immigrant labourers who worked on the Central Pacific Railroad between 1865 and 1869 being inducted into the Labor Hall of Honor, at the Department of Labor, in Washington DC, on May 9, 2014. Photo: Xinhua

People sail down the River Nile past the Great Pyramids, in Cairo, Egypt, in August 2017. Photo: AP

A tourist pauses under lanterns prepared for Lunar New Year celebrations welcoming the Year of the Horse, at Thean Hou temple in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on February 11. Photo: Reuters

China’s next big leap: becoming a frontier science civilisation

Illustration: Craig Stephens

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the symposium on strengthening basic research, in Shanghai on April 30. Photo: Xinhua

China scientists argue that harsh settings, not warm climates, drive early human creativity

To survive harsh environments and support their communities, ancient humans developed group hunting and sophisticated tools. Photo: Wikipedia

Neanderthals engaging in a feast during prehistoric times, as depicted in L’Homme Primitif, published in 1870. Photo: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

These reconstructed rocks represent ancient tools, showing that while stone tools may seem simple, their creation required striking smaller stones against larger ones — a process that necessitated planning and the evolution of manufacturing techniques. Photo: Journal of Human Evolution

Researchers have used calcite crystals found in fossilised animal bones to accurately date ancient tools. Photo: Courtesy of Zhangyang Li, a professor at Shandong University in China

US quietly plays the long game on energy dominance against China

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a tea ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 20. Photo: Sputnik/Pool via AP

Birthright citizenship fight shows US identity debate is far from settled

Demonstrators rally in support of birthright citizenship outside the US Supreme Court in Washington on April 1. Photo: AFP

Michael Lin, chairman of the 1882 Project, a coalition of rights groups seeking a statement of regret over the Chinese Exclusion Act passed that year, speaks in front of a reproduction of a 19th century anti-Chinese poster in Washington in 2011. Photo: AFP

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Recent findings by archaeologists suggest the push for innovative solutions is often borne out of the struggle to overcome severe challenges


Recent findings by archaeologists suggest the push for innovative solutions is often borne out of the struggle to overcome severe challenges.


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How adversity has guided the path of Chinese civilisation through the ages

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Recent findings by archaeologists suggest the push for innovative solutions is often borne out of the struggle to overcome severe challenges

Recent findings by archaeologists suggest the push for innovative solutions is often borne out of the struggle to overcome severe challenges