Scratching the Surface: How geology shaped American culture | Hacker News Reader

Scratching the Surface: How geology shaped American culture

chronicle.com

29 pointsPetiver16 comments

That link lacks the article text, as do archive.is’ other snapshots of it.

I could not read the article either, but one example is the Alabama Black Belt. Geologically that part of the deep South and its neighboring states is chalk, which over time has become covered in incredibly rich black soil. Perfect for growing things like cotton. Which, back in the not very recent past, was brutally made the responsibility of slaves. When the slaves were emancipated after the Civil War, many freedmen stayed on and ended up as sharecroppers, ultimately maintaining a deep well of Black American culture that persists to this day.

Edit: unpaywalled article on the human history[1], wikipedia[2], and geology[3]

[1] https://southernspaces.org/2004/black-belt/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Belt_in_the_American_Sou...

[3] https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/black-belt-region-...

That's just the intro. This is from the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is mostly about university administration issues. Anyone read the whole thing? I'll bet that's a lead-in to something about how universities differ depending on location.

Geology shapes culture in many places.

Simple example: the Netherlands and bikes or dried up lakes and the way Dutch people hold meetings

Okay i get the flat is good for bikes.. but meetings, curious about that one?

I suspect he was referring to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model#Historical_backgr...

Interesting read. Quote:

> Ever since the Middle Ages, when the process of land reclamation began, different societies living in the same polder have been forced to cooperate because without unanimous agreement on shared responsibility for maintenance of the dykes and pumping stations, the polders would have flooded and everyone would have suffered. Crucially, even when different cities in the same polder were at war, they still had to cooperate in this respect. This is thought to have taught the Dutch to set aside differences for a greater purpose.

Yep, that one

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