computer parts posted:

That's not really true today because outside of the "officially recognized minorities" or whatever China has never pretended to be anything but a single empire. They have agitators but those live off in the hinterlands.

It also helps that China hasn't really grown from this point 200 years ago (it's shrank with Mongolia et all leaving) whereas the Soviets had the addition of Eastern Europe to their empire.

ekuNNN posted:

Pakled posted:

Heh, everyone laugh at Maine, Delaware, North Dakota, and Alaska, they don't even have any billionaires.

This is a pretty lovely color scale, though.

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

How can Delaware not have any billionaires when so many corporations are incorporated there

System Metternich posted:

To add to my post in the pictures thread: where do the last uncontacted people on earth live?



This map appears to be a bit out of date, though. As far as I can see, the estimated number of uncontacted peoples has risen throughout the last couple of years. For Papua-New Guinea, the number of 40 tribrs ist most often mentioned, for example. Also: "uncontacted" mostly mustn't be taken literally. Many of these tribes know very well that civilisation exists, and intermittently have contact with it via forest workers, missionaries and ethnologists. "Uncontacted" in this context only means that the contacts never became more than sporadic. Many tribes even actively refuse to engage outsiders, as previous experiences left some bad memories.

Some of those people are even citizens of the EU, as one tribe (estimated at ~100 people) lives in the very south of French Guiana. Keep in mind that most of these groups are very small, ranging from maybe 20 (in some cases even less) members to the the outlier of the Hi-Merima tribe in Brazil, which numbered over 1,000 in 1943.

Honj Steak posted:

This is extremely fascinating but equally depressing. Why can't we leave these people in peace?

Honj Steak posted:

This is extremely fascinating but equally depressing. Why can't we leave these people in peace?

quote:

From his balcony the corrugated iron slums of the provincial capital can be seen stretching down the harbour where the smell of dried fish and raw sewage keeps tourists away. 'My son Pandit got his own justice. He was breaking the law, poaching and trespassing on land that wasn't his own and he was murdered. What more is there to say?'

The 74-year-old father of seven continues: 'As far as I am concerned the Sentinelese are the victims in this, not my son. They live in constant terror of heavily armed poachers from Myanmar [Burma] and Port Blair. They were only defending themselves with bows and arrows and rocks in the only way they know how. What I do want is my son's body back so my wife and I can bury him; we don't want retribution. It is an impossible case to prosecute anyway.'

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

How can Delaware not have any billionaires when so many corporations are incorporated there

fade5 posted:

Sentinelese

Phlegmish posted:

They sound kind of like assholes. Don't knock civilization until you've tried it.

Phlegmish posted:

The right move is to take the parts of modernity that you like, and them use them to keep that from happening to you. Kind of like Japan. Right now they're screwed if the Indian government ever finds out about valuable natural resources on their island. Honestly though, considering their numbers they're vulnerable regardless.

fade5 posted:

Since this is the map thread, a map:

Shbobdb posted:

If you put people next to each other, they're gonna bone. That's human nature. I imagine that is how the Ashkenazim came to be. Especially during that wild period from 70-~600AD. When you've got migrations all over the place, you grab what you can get.

MeinPanzer posted:

Just one other point on Ashkenazichat...


It's not just this. People often seem to miss the fact that during the 1st c. BC and the first few centuries AD (note that the idea of a Roman "exile" of the Jews after the first revolt of AD 66-73 is a myth - there were large numbers of Jews living in the diaspora before the first revolt in AD 66-73 and the Bar Kochba revolt in AD 132-6, and the Romans never had a policy of exiling entire peoples), many Jewish communities in Europe, and especially in Italy, were heavily proselytizing. There is good reason to think that many whole gentile families converted to Judaism.

Mister Adequate posted:

We uh... mostly do, these days?

Numerical Anxiety posted:

Who knows how effectively it was enforced, but Hadrian did at least forbid Jews from residing in the city of Jerusalem/Aelia Capitolina, no? The rest of Syria Palestina, yeah, they were almost certainly still around. And even if there was never an official policy of exiling entire peoples, one does have to acknowledge that the Jews disappear from the historical record in Egypt after the revolts in the second century - whether they were killed, exiled, sold into slavery or something else is an open question, but they do effectively vanish from the territory until new Jewish communities settle there in subsequent years.

Phlegmish posted:

They sound kind of like assholes. Don't knock civilization until you've tried it.

DuckHuntDog posted:

Aren't a number of the uncontacted tribes in Brazil remnants of collapsed civilizations?

"This site posted:

At first, it was believed that the Lacandón were an undiscovered Maya tribe, living in the lush, dense Lacandona jungle, away from the influence of the Spanish conquistadors. This was true, as far as it went, but it transpired that the Lacandón knew all about the Mexicans. Some especially selected people had even traded with Mexican ranchers, over the centuries, though none had suspected how many lived out there nor even that those individuals were part of an unknown tribe.

The Lacandón began as a composite people, made up originally of survivors from Maya villages. Their ancestors might have been women and children, hidden away, as the Spanish appeared on the horizon; or men limping away from the horrors of an uneven battle. Or there could have been other reasons for their personal tragedies.

As the conquistadors brought foreign diseases, like smallpox, huge numbers of Maya died. In some cases, this left just handfuls or even sole individuals, out of once populous settlements. The remnants of these clashes and communities congregated at the ruined Maya towns and cities. They were rescued by other survivors and taken into the jungle.

The original people were all Maya, all speaking a similar language, but with various cultural and linguistic differences. Imagine taking a couple of Americans, a few Canadians, a lone Australian, two Afrikaners, a family of New Zealanders, two British children and an Irish elder. Throw in a German and a dozen Dutch people for good measure. Now isolate them and return a generation later to see what that did to the English language and cultural norms.

Would water enter a sink through a faucet or a tap? Would we wrap a baby's bottom in diapers or a nappy? Would the traditional turkey meal happen at the end of November or the end of December or both? These were the sort of issues that confronted the traumatized survivors of various Maya cultures; and it resulted in a new, patchwork Mayan language.

By the 18th century, the fusion of all these different Maya influences had resulted in distinct Lacandón traditions and language. It was firmly rooted in Maya, but had become something different. They still practiced the Maya religions, including pilgrimages to the Maya holy places, dotted around Mexico. These sites were only given up when there was evidence that the conquistadors had discovered them. The Lacandón wrote those pyramids, cenotes and other spots off as desecrated. In short, they avoided all Mexicans, in order to remain undiscovered. Their own history told them that contact with the outside world was too dangerous to contemplate.

Numerical Anxiety posted:

Who knows how effectively it was enforced, but Hadrian did at least forbid Jews from residing in the city of Jerusalem/Aelia Capitolina, no? The rest of Syria Palestina, yeah, they were almost certainly still around.

quote:

And even if there was never an official policy of exiling entire peoples, one does have to acknowledge that the Jews disappear from the historical record in Egypt after the revolts in the second century - whether they were killed, exiled, sold into slavery or something else is an open question, but they do effectively vanish from the territory until new Jewish communities settle there in subsequent years.

quote:

There's a bunch of references to Jews in late republican/early imperial literature. Enough, that is, to make it clear that there was a large Jewish population in Rome itself. Ovid's Ars Amatoria is the only thing I can think of off the top of my head. He advises young men to take girls on dates on the Sabbath because the markets will be quieter and there won't be as many pushy merchants around.

MeinPanzer posted:

that the Palestinians aren't the descendants of the huge Judaean population that continued to live in the region and practice Judaism until the Arab conquerors coerced most of them into converting to Islam.

Bloodnose posted:

This may be a politically incorrect question, but I've always wondered, why don't Palestinians convert to Judaism? If they did, couldn't they just walk out of their ghettoes and join Israeli society? Or does this happen already on a small scale?

I mean, the conquered converting to the religion of their conqueror is a pretty common historical thing.

Bloodnose posted:

This may be a politically incorrect question, but I've always wondered, why don't Palestinians convert to Judaism? If they did, couldn't they just walk out of their ghettoes and join Israeli society? Or does this happen already on a small scale?

I mean, the conquered converting to the religion of their conqueror is a pretty common historical thing.

MeinPanzer posted:

I've not heard this before, and it sounds highly unlikely. The Jewish community in Egypt was huge, and remained so still after the Bar Kochba revolt. I think it's probably an issue of sources.

There are lots of references. Horace is one of the earliest authors to mention them, and he makes several references to proselytizing Jews trying to convert Romans in Rome itself, for instance.

MeinPanzer posted:

It's just too bad that "the Romans exiled the Jews after they revolted, and the Jews have lived ever since as a wandering people" is touted so often even by those generally well informed about Jewish history and the modern issues in the region - it makes it easy to argue that the Judaeans were forced out of Palestine, and that the Palestinians aren't the descendants of the huge Judaean population that continued to live in the region and practice Judaism until the Arab conquerors coerced most of them into converting to Islam.

Numerical Anxiety posted:

Oh, the revolt at stake isn't Bar Kochba, it's this one. The article isn't all that great on the situation in Egypt, but from what documents we have, it seemed like the army was off dealing with the persians and the local government resorted to whipping up angry mobs of native Egyptians to help put it down (given relations between the two communities, it likely didn't require much effort). So not government policy per se, but there is a lapsus in documentation after the revolt. Whereas before one has the Greek-speaking Hellenized Jewish communities that we recognize from Philo, Aristeas and the like, after one has Aramaic speaking Jewish communities in Egypt. Whatever happened to the Greek-speaking community, they were decimated enough that they're not producing written documents anymore (at least none that have survived), while those that replace them probably settled from elsewhere.

quote:

I agree with this more or less entirely, but that doesn't mean that the demographic upheavals, while not catastrophic in the way that the narrative you gesture to would have them, weren't important in their own right.

Pakled posted:

Heh, everyone laugh at Maine, Delaware, North Dakota, and Alaska, they don't even have any billionaires.

This is a pretty lovely color scale, though.

oldswitcheroo posted:

Aaaaand I went to high school with Mississippi's richest jerk's kids. Rich jerks, the whole lot of them.

Pakled posted:

This is a pretty lovely color scale, though.

MeinPanzer posted:

It's just too bad that "the Romans exiled the Jews after they revolted, and the Jews have lived ever since as a wandering people" is touted so often even by those generally well informed about Jewish history and the modern issues in the region - it makes it easy to argue that the Judaeans were forced out of Palestine, and that the Palestinians aren't the descendants of the huge Judaean population that continued to live in the region and practice Judaism until the Arab conquerors coerced most of them into converting to Islam.