Whence came European Civilization?

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Actually if you read the article you will see that the Romans could have conquered Germany - see Germanicus' mission to avenge the Battle of the Teutoburger Wald -if it had been worth the trouble. It wasn't, because the heavy clay soils of the North could not be worked by light Roman ploughs. That took the heavy plough, which seems to have been a Slav invention in 6th century along with the horse collar/ox yoke (essential to pull it) which gradually spread west. Hence why the seat of classical civilisation was the Mediterranean and why a medieval population explosion shifted the centre of gravity to the North. Even within Italy, the heavy soils of the Po valley were sparsely settled until the Middle Ages.

So it wasn't inherent culture - just a simple piece of technology.

Interestingly a similar thing happened in China, but this time southwards. The heartland of the Han empire was the light loess soils and dry agriculture of north China; China's population soared and shifted south in Tang days when the Yangtze valley and points south were settled when rice paddy spread north from SE Asia.

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