We can not say that this areas are not civilized or to call them backwards. We may call them different. We can take for example the uses of animals in order to expand the commerce of their area. If we research about the use of camels, for example, we could see that it gained an special place within those who wanted to travel through many difficult areas like deserts. So in the case of camels they were not backwards, they used a different method to obtain success
This is false, as the equator does not run north-south. The equators is the line that goes all around the planet in equal distance from the two poles: so it runs west-east.
It is true however that it runs roughly through the middle of the continent of Africa, but rather on the west-east axis.
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I think the common between low-latitude countries would be people's skin color and If you compare the Philippines and its neighboring countries, they have more or less similar physical attributes. Typical Filipinos looked similar with Indonesians.
For Southeast Asia, i would also consider religion is common between the two. Both the Philippines and the other Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, they have a large number of Muslim settlers while other tropical countries in South America, these countries have similar Spanish ancestry just like the Philippines.
A wild plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants.
