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.