Bodin, keep in mind that fertile crescent was most fertile between 5000 to 1000 BC. Then the climate shifted and crescent became dryer than before producing fewer crops. The crescent become less agricultural with times. It was reversed in Europe where last 3000 years are most agricultural ever. Europe became extremely intense agriculturally in last 3000 years, and crescent become less. Basically it is the point in time when "glory" and history of Europe starts, and Babylon, Assyria, Egypt fade away.
If you can, find some statistics of agricultural production of Europe and Fertile Crescent, even from 100 or 200 years ago and you'll see what is intense agriculturalisem in Europe compared to crescent. Probably the population count will do the trick. There were always as many people in countries as they could feed. So you can compare number of cities or big cities in both areas.
Europe is roughly 10 times bigger than fertile crescent, therefore even in big disasters or wars, there are more pockets for farmers to survive and rebuild. There was no one ruler or army that conquered whole Europe ever, unlike Crescent which was under one ruler many times.
Europe is in very blessed position for agriculture. You can plan your crops year after year and expect similar weather conditions, and same results. There are rarely big droughts or locust killing your crops. Climate stability is the trick.
Now look at Africa. The only part of Africa with fairly stable climate is Zimbabwe, the former food basket of this continent. The rest can experience weather extremes that can last for decades, like droughts. Even in good years your good crops can be eaten away by locust or 10 000 strong flock of antelopes. You have desert in 1/3 of Africa, 1/3 a jungle and 1/3 not bad for crops, but everything alive wants to eat it too. That's why agriculture was always very sparse and in between in Africa. It is there but it is a far cry from intense European agriculture. There is a reason why Europe and East Asia are the most populated places on Earth. It is a food production. If not anti-conception, and population control, there would be twice as many, or more, Europeans and East Asians now.
There are always few phenomenons in the world, but this shows a general trend.
Greeks invented theater and actors, but who makes more money on it now? Who feeds millions from this invention at the moment? California. Can you say "intensity"?
Agriculturalisem gives people who embraced it a huge advantage in survival. There is no way people will missed or avoid this opportunity. If there are no agriculturalists in some regions of this planet, is just because the conditions are not suitable to lead this lifestyle. It is simple like this. If Japanese do agriculturalisem then it means that it works there, period. If Eskimos don't do it, we know they are not able. Heck, the Vikings tried it on Greenland, and we know the results. This is not a matter of free choice, this is a matter of surviving and natural selection, surviving of most adopted to the environment.
I wasn't arguing about how useful the knowledge was in communist schools. Even the pure memorization of useless material trains the brain and improves memory. It makes easier to memorize useful material in future when time comes. Same as training your muscles.
Also IQ tests don't test real world knowledge or skills. Mainly IQ tests logic with numbers, words and associations. In this regard socialistic schools were pretty good preparing pupils for IQ test.
