Guns, Germs, and Steel
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Jared Diamond proposed that the availability of barley, along with other domesticable crops and animals, in southwestern Eurasia significantly contributed to the broad historical patterns that human history has followed over approximately the last 13,000 years; "i.e.", why Eurasian civilizations, as a whole, have survived and conquered others. Jared Diamond's proposition was criticized, however, for underemphasizing individual and cultural choice and autonomy.