Guns, Germs and Steel
The Americas: The Americas were too far away from Eurasia, so did not have their crops. Although many Eurasian crops are grown in North America today, there were few that the Native Americans could domesticate and those that could were not very useful. In some places, people domesticated more useful crops, such as maize in Central America and potatoes in South America. This led to inventions being made; Central America is the only place outside of Eurasia to invent writing on their own. They became home to empires like the Aztec Empire and Inca Empire. But this happened later than in Eurasia, and they did not have as many crops. Because they were too far away from Eurasia, they did not have Eurasian diseases like smallpox.