The book in question aside,

> Environmental Determinism is the ultimate racism.

I don't see how this is true, even somewhat? Saying that the environment you're in shapes your culture, progress, and overall development as a society, makes perfect sense. Saying that the environment does not play a huge factor in this leaves open only the option of that development being genetic/hereditary, doesn't it? You'd be blaming the failure or shortcomings of civilizations, current and previous, on the genetic predisposition of their peoples. That feels far more racist to me than saying, "This area did not have X resources in available and sufficient quantities to allow them to develop Y improvement".

I understand that this was often used to justify colonialism, which I want it to be very clear I strongly disagree with. But, it would feel deeply wrong to say that all things are possible to progress in all areas. For example, we could NOT expect some hypothetical area with very poor soil health and little water to become a great improver of early agriculture. Likewise, areas with no easy access to copper, tin, iron, etc, would be unlikely to begin using those resources for farming implements. An area with all of this in abundance would have a much EASIER time developing these things.