Guns, Germs and Steel
Eurasia and North Africa: Many crops and animals were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent and spread to these regions, as far west as Ireland and as far east as Japan. They also used crops and animals that were domesticated in other areas, such as rice from China and horses from the Steppes, a region in Central Asia. These areas had more crops than any other part of the world. This is why they had the best farming. Inventions and countries appeared in Eurasia and North Africa much earlier than anywhere else. Eurasia had so many people who lived near to each other and near to farm animals that many diseases like smallpox spread around the region.