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Why did Civilization in the New World arise relatively late in human history? The Olmec are the earliest known civilization, and they only appear in 1400 BCE, which is >3500 years after the earlier old world civilizations.
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Dec 14, 2017 20:33
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unwantedplatypus posted:Why did Civilization in the New World arise relatively late in human history? The Olmec are the earliest known civilization, and they only appear in 1400 BCE, which is >3500 years after the earlier old world civilizations. define "civilization" Assuming you mean cities, entire books have been written about that, inconclusively. It seems like the middle east was uniquely suited for the rise of agriculture so it's not too surprising they got a head start, and then it spread to their neighbors from there.
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Dec 14, 2017 20:40
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unwantedplatypus posted:The Olmec are the earliest known civilization, and they only appear in 1400 BCE, which is >3500 years after the earlier old world civilizations. They're not. There's something known as the Norte Chico civilization that existed in Peru as early as 3500 BCE, with several dozen settlements. That makes them contemporaries of Ancient Egypt. Why civilizations didn't develop as quickly in the New World is a different question, but I'd say it's primarily due to the lack of trade and exposure to other civilizations that you have in Africa/Eurasia.
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Dec 14, 2017 20:44
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unwantedplatypus posted:Why did Civilization in the New World arise relatively late in human history? The Olmec are the earliest known civilization, and they only appear in 1400 BCE, which is >3500 years after the earlier old world civilizations. There were definitely earlier civilizations than the Olmecs, it’s just that we know gently caress all about them because we don’t have their myths, erotic poetry, inventories, or letters of complaint about copper ingots to peruse. Andean sites dating from the 4th millennium BC exist and there may be Mesoamerican ones as well.
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Dec 14, 2017 20:45
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They found a pretty large shell midden near Matanchen in western Mexico that they dated back to around 2100 BCE, suggesting a pretty large population there.
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Dec 14, 2017 21:03
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SlothfulCobra posted:I've been having some real doubts about the cultural unity of the Roman empire lately. Sure, the outlying provinces got a lot of Roman influence, but it seems like there's a real lack of the people on one side of the empire caring about the other side. After the republic ended, it seems like it was no longer necessary to sustain some kind of public spirit of the empire, and problems in outlying provinces didn't need to be routed through the public of the city of Rome, it's the emperor's problem, and he can just leave the city to go deal with it. the crisis of the third century was the end of the civic spirit of the empire. everything became insular and proto-feudal, and aurelian putting the empire back together didn't fix the societal shift that took place during the crisis. late antiquity is, in some senses, just as much clinging to the ruins of the old empire as the early medieval period is clinging to the ruins of the empire as a whole
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Dec 14, 2017 21:19
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Kaal posted:, as would macroeconomics, institutionalism, and representative government as a stabilizing force. You sure about that, man?
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Dec 14, 2017 21:20
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Jazerus posted:the crisis of the third century was the end of the civic spirit of the empire. everything became insular and proto-feudal, and aurelian putting the empire back together didn't fix the societal shift that took place during the crisis. Yeah this is absolutely fair point. It’s worth remembering that a major feature of the crisis was sectionalism, regional warleaders holding autonomous government for years or decades. It also put the nail in the coffin of relevance of the Senate or Rome itself, and with it the pretense that imperial rule was anything other than military dictatorship. Domitian got murdered and damned by his subordinates for behaving the kind of way that every single post-crisis emperor was expected to behave. A good number of them also got murdered for it of course, not least Aurelian himself, but the political culture had changed.
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Dec 14, 2017 21:31
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Jazerus posted:the crisis of the third century was the end of the civic spirit of the empire. everything became insular and proto-feudal, and aurelian putting the empire back together didn't fix the societal shift that took place during the crisis. It seems to me that the Roman world started becoming insular and proto-feudal as soon as the military was professionalized and the wealthiest citizens established a plantation economy. What do you think of that idea?
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Dec 14, 2017 21:32
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Halloween Jack posted:It seems to me that the Roman world started becoming insular and proto-feudal as soon as the military was professionalized and the wealthiest citizens established a plantation economy. What do you think of that idea? not at all. latifundia, the aristocratic plantations of the republic and pre-crisis empire, were involved in a complicated interlocking trade network, the workers were by and large either slaves or free citizens, etc., more like a non-racialized version of the confederate & post-confederate southern economy that was somewhat less abjectly brutal when rule of law broke down during the crisis, trade broke down too. wealthy citizens retreated to the countryside and fortified their plantations. slave labor had been vanishing at a rapid pace and because the economy went nuts, free citizen laborers became almost uniformly indebted and were forced into contracts which restricted their movement, profession, etc. creating the serf class. latifundia became manors, practicing the internally-focused self-sufficient economy that is a hallmark of feudal labor organization. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Dec 14, 2017 |
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Dec 14, 2017 23:04
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cheetah7071 posted:I said this a bit upthread but medicine alone won't really reduce the death count that much (though it might reduce suffering). The malthusian trap will spring and all the people who would have died in plague will die in famine instead, unless you also do something to increase farm yields. Someone else said that apparently a ton of early modern farming science could be implemented with Roman technology though. Incidentally, it would also be remiss of me to not respond to this. There's a counterpoint to Malthus that regardless of the way on paper more population growth should theoretically lead to scarcity and an entire collapse from overpopulation, people aren't idiots and will either adapt to the changing circumstances or develop new ways to make previously unsustainable growth totally sustainable. It seems foolishly optimistic, but so far the massive collapse that Malthus predicted ~200 years ago never happened, and on a smaller scale, there was a bet between two scholars on a decade-long experiment, and the anti-malthusiast won (and there was a book about it). Of course, on pessimistic side of things, if you introduced a bunch of antibiotics and how to make them, etc. without any of the greater technology involved with studying medicine, by the time the technology does roll around, a bunch more antibiotic-resistent bacteria will have been bred.
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Dec 14, 2017 23:04
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SlothfulCobra posted:Incidentally, it would also be remiss of me to not respond to this. There's a counterpoint to Malthus that regardless of the way on paper more population growth should theoretically lead to scarcity and an entire collapse from overpopulation, people aren't idiots and will either adapt to the changing circumstances or develop new ways to make previously unsustainable growth totally sustainable. I more meant it as "famine will be the limiting factor on human population" than "famine will cause massive societal collapse". If this is an inappropriate way of using the term Malthusian Trap then I learned something today.
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Dec 14, 2017 23:10
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Jazerus posted:not at all. latifundia, the aristocratic plantations of the republic and pre-crisis empire, were involved in a complicated interlocking trade network, the workers were by and large either slaves or free citizens, etc., more like a non-racialized version of the confederate & post-confederate southern economy that was somewhat less abjectly brutal
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Dec 14, 2017 23:14
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I think rather than invoking feudalism, a concept created to describe social order specifically in sub-Roman Western Europe, it’s better to say that the late Roman Empire developed manorialism that laid the groundwork for feudal social order to emerge. The other big aspect of medieval political order considered feudal is vassalage/fiefdom which only sort of became present in the empire, and rather despite the government than because of it. Late Rome still supported its armies on its waning tax base and not via fief, the leaders of the armies held that power because they were office-holders of the ruler and not because they were landholders who maintained troops in their own right...at least in theory. You can look at figures like Alaric and Ataulf as transitional here: Alaric could maintain a substantive force that operated within Roman territory and sometimes behaved rather like a Roman army, but could not get the legal right to support his troops with taxes so was often reduced to cutting the taxman out of the loop and just looting Roman wealth on his own say-so. Ataulf and the Gothic kings that succeeded him gave up on getting that kind of support and simply alienated part of the imperial territory to support the troops directly.
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Dec 14, 2017 23:42
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From what I've read, feudalism only really set in after the vikings. Charlemagne tried to keep local lords from building up fortresses or anything, but when the vikings showed up, it became a necessity that couldn't be denied, and once the protection is being done locally, that's who the locals are really going to declare their loyalty to. I'm not actually a 100% on that, the whole Charlemagne-outlawing forts thing, since I read it in an old source and haven't really seen it corroborated other places, but it fits with what I know about the vikings finding a bunch of rich targets that were somehow very lightly fortified despite the territory having once been ruled for a long time by some prolific builders. If someone has more to say about it, I'd love to hear it, because the "dark ages" are a real dead zone in my knowledge, especially about the tribes from outside Roman territory. cheetah7071 posted:I more meant it as "famine will be the limiting factor on human population" than "famine will cause massive societal collapse". If this is an inappropriate way of using the term Malthusian Trap then I learned something today. I'm not saying that you were technically wrong in your terminology, I'm saying that the pattern of population growth -> famines is a fairly dubious concept that may not be supported by the way things have gone in actual history. For example, there may be more mouths to feed, but there are also more hands to work on farms to feed more people, or even as food prices increase, the population may voluntarily decrease its growth without some grand crisis.
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Dec 15, 2017 00:15
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cheetah7071 posted:I more meant it as "famine will be the limiting factor on human population" than "famine will cause massive societal collapse". If this is an inappropriate way of using the term Malthusian Trap then I learned something today. I understand the trend of the Malthusian argument, but historically we tend to see much larger problems stem from disease and population collapse rather than overgrowth. In the modern era we're starting to get to the edge of that, and I think the Malthusian arguments are more compelling, but historically larger populations have always found ways to expand and succeed. The Romans certainly had plenty of capability for growing their agricultural sector - they did so very successfully until they started having such devastating plagues that they had to choose between staffing their farms and filling their armies. Plenty of those big latifundias implemented proto-feudalistic policies precisely because of chronic labor shortages. If they didn't hold onto their workers, they'd get conscripted by the armies that were desperate for healthy men. Kaal fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Dec 15, 2017 |
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Dec 15, 2017 00:35
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I guess I am learning something after all if there's a plausible argument to be made that except in extreme scenarios, food production is basically not ever the limiting factor on human population
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Dec 15, 2017 00:38
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If food production wasn't a limiting factor then why was hunger and famine so drat common? Not trying to be snarky, trying to ask a serious question. If the land could have supported higher population, why did the existing people starve?
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Dec 15, 2017 00:43
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How much wheat is grown in NYC?
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Dec 15, 2017 00:44
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Stringent posted:How much wheat is grown in NYC? So you're saying that famine is fundamentally an urban phenomenon? That doesn't match my understanding but I'm not an expert.
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Dec 15, 2017 00:45
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cheetah7071 posted:If food production wasn't a limiting factor then why was hunger and famine so drat common? Not trying to be snarky, trying to ask a serious question. If the land could have supported higher population, why did the existing people starve?
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Dec 15, 2017 00:46
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cheetah7071 posted:So you're saying that famine is fundamentally an urban phenomenon? That doesn't match my understanding but I'm not an expert. I think its more that famines are a result of logistics problems.
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Dec 15, 2017 00:48
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cheetah7071 posted:If food production wasn't a limiting factor then why was hunger and famine so drat common? Not trying to be snarky, trying to ask a serious question. If the land could have supported higher population, why did the existing people starve? Food production isn't consistent year to year. It's not the good years you look at, it's the bad years that cull the population through a combination of famine and plague because the two go hand in hand exacerbating each other.
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Dec 15, 2017 00:53
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Doesn't that mean that population is being limited by food production after all--it's just limited by production in bad years, rather than median production?
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Dec 15, 2017 00:56
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cheetah7071 posted:Doesn't that mean that population is being limited by food production after all--it's just limited by production in bad years, rather than median production? Yeah, but the situation is complicated and if you're searching for a simple answer like Malthus' rule then you'll be disappointed. Maybe Malthus wasn't exactly right, but that doesn't mean food production doesn't matter, it just doesn't stick to some stupid graph. There are all sorts of reasons why an area that could sustain a higher population doesn't. edit: for example ancient East Germany couldn't carry nearly the population it did later. It took centuries of work and innovation to make this possible.Clearing forests, draining swamps, new crops, breeding old crops, animal breeding, fertilizers, etc. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Dec 15, 2017 |
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Dec 15, 2017 01:04
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cheetah7071 posted:Doesn't that mean that population is being limited by food production after all--it's just limited by production in bad years, rather than median production? Sort of. Food doesn't keep well, so it's a continuous matter of matching supply to demand. There was a lot more arable land than was being used, so they could have produced a lot more in principle - but there was no one to consume it so they didn't. Bad crops one year could be compensated for to some extent by growing more the next. Famine did happen, but it was only one of many factors limiting population growth. Disease, accidents, and natural disasters all racked up their share of fatalities, too. Life was generally precarious and could be ended prematurely lots of different ways.
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Dec 15, 2017 01:08
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Ithle01 posted:Yeah, but the situation is complicated and if you're searching for a simple answer like Malthus' rule then you'll be disappointed. Maybe Malthus wasn't exactly right, but that doesn't mean food production doesn't matter, it just doesn't stick to some stupid graph. There are all sorts of reasons why an area that could sustain a higher population doesn't. Another thing to consider is that a population decrease from some other reason could be the cause of a famine. A round of plague or war could lead to not enough hands to plant or bring in a harvest, which then leads to famine and more population decline. It's rarely as simple as a population just outgrowing the land's carrying capacity. And like you point out, the carrying capacity isn't fixed, either.
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Dec 15, 2017 01:11
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OneTruePecos posted:Another thing to consider is that a population decrease from some other reason could be the cause of a famine. A round of plague or war could lead to not enough hands to plant or bring in a harvest, which then leads to famine and more population decline. It's rarely as simple as a population just outgrowing the land's carrying capacity. And like you point out, the carrying capacity isn't fixed, either. Yeah that's something I was thinking of typing up, but lacked the words to articulate. A war could cause a famine, then the malnourished transients that we call soldiers get typhoid fever, they spread this around. People fleeing the war and the typhus leaves the land empty, creating even more famine and spreading the disease again. Bad things tend to combine together to promote each other. When you have big migrating tribes fleeing the Huns that's going to bring new diseases to an area while simultaneously putting pressure on its carrying capacity and creating friction with the locals that may turn violent and spread social disorder. edit: figured out how to describe it. There's a reason the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride together.
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Dec 15, 2017 01:17
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Ithle01 posted:the malnourished transients that we call soldiers
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Dec 15, 2017 01:21
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HEY GUNS posted:yyyyyyyyyyello How obvious is it that I was thinking of the 30YW when I wrote that?
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Dec 15, 2017 01:35
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bewbies posted:How much did the plagues contribute to Rome falling apart? The latest episode of The Tides of History podcast by Pat Wyman talks a bit of the Justinian Plague if you're interested in that.
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Dec 15, 2017 01:36
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Ithle01 posted:How obvious is it that I was thinking of the 30YW when I wrote that?
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Dec 15, 2017 02:21
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John Green has a great video about famines. Basically most famines in one way or another are man-made by being willfully stupid or uncaring about the population's needs and acting contrary to what the circumstances call for, like for example exporting food from the starving population, like the British or Stalin did, refusing to distribute available food, or there's some kinda bullshit sapping all the available resources from the civilians like a war, or even ignoring the need for farming and using all the resources that should be put to food production for something else. Crop yields do matter a lot, but it's normally not a mass-death situation if there's one year or even a couple years where weather or other extenuating factors gently caress over food availability. People are normally supposed to be more adaptable than that. There were a number of climate-related events that hosed with crop yields in Europe throughout the 19th century, but that didn't cause mass deaths like you'd expect if it were just environmental factors that cause famines, because the governments either actually acted to try to alleviate the damages from rising food prices. Hell, to take an example, the Irish Potato Famine was caused by a potato blight that affected most of Europe, but Ireland for some reason  had been forced by wealthy landowners into conditions where the hardy potato was the only feasible crop. The first year with a failed crop wasn't even a total catastrophe, but the next year, the circumstances still made it so they still couldn't farm anything but potatoes, and then the deaths started. It would've been fully within the power of the government that ruled them to provide the people with food, potentially from the more productive parts of the empire, but they did not, in fact, they continued to make sure Ireland was exporting food that the Irish people badly needed.People try to shy away from it these days, but a lot of Malthusian rhetoric is rooted in the racially charged image of all the dirty poors breeding like rats because they can't help it, and it potentially being a good idea to let them die so that the problem is less likely to happen again.
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Dec 15, 2017 02:25
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Famine can be somewhat offset by better farming practices and being able to move food around a big empire. I've been thinking and I can't come up with any instances of famine being a serious issue in the Roman world until late antiquity, which makes sense because the state and its institutions are collapsing. Just the fact that the Romans can afford to supply free food to literally a million+ people suggests how much of a surplus they're working with.HEY GUNS posted:All the Neoconfucianism I've read has been Confucianism plus Buddhist ideas There may be different schools, I'm mostly familiar with it through Korean history and it's nothing but justification for why you should submit to authority.
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Dec 15, 2017 02:25
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Thanks for the very informative post. A lot of early modern history books talk about regular famine as just an inevitable unavoidable fact of life in pre-modern society and even in the Irish case just say Britain made it go from terrible to horrific, rather than bad to horrific. Viewed in that framework the idea that humanity has always been skirting the line of its maximum sustainable number given the technology of the time seems not just plausible but almost obvious.
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Dec 15, 2017 02:31
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I guess the other thing you have to consider is that famine over a really wide area is not very common, but one particular remote settlement or group of settlements could suffer a quite nasty one even as people relatively close by were doing just fine. We don't tend to care when it's just a few dozen people off in the corner dying while the 100,000 people in the general region we're looking at tick up to 110,000 people over the same time period
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Dec 15, 2017 03:01
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Grand Fromage posted:Famine can be somewhat offset by better farming practices and being able to move food around a big empire. I've been thinking and I can't come up with any instances of famine being a serious issue in the Roman world until late antiquity, which makes sense because the state and its institutions are collapsing. Just the fact that the Romans can afford to supply free food to literally a million+ people suggests how much of a surplus they're working with. It's hard to ignore that the free food was coming from workers in Egypt and Sicily that might have had a different view of the subject and whose opinions are not well noted in history.
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Dec 15, 2017 04:31
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Grand Fromage posted:Famine can be somewhat offset by better farming practices and being able to move food around a big empire. I've been thinking and I can't come up with any instances of famine being a serious issue in the Roman world until late antiquity, which makes sense because the state and its institutions are collapsing. Just the fact that the Romans can afford to supply free food to literally a million+ people suggests how much of a surplus they're working with. He's not always reliable, but Josephus claims there was a famine in Judea at the time of Claudius. Talking about the conversion of Queen Helen of Adiabene and her sons to Judaism, he mentions (From Antiquities, Book XX, Chapter 2) quote:But as to Helena, the King’s mother, when she saw that the affairs of Izates’s Kingdom were in peace; and that her son was an happy man, and admired among all men, and even among foreigners, by the means of God’s providence over him; she had a mind to go to the city Jerusalem, in order to worship at that temple of God which was so very famous among all men; and to offer her thank offerings there. So she desired her son to give her leave to go thither. Upon which he gave his consent to what she desired very willingly; and made great preparation for her dismission; and gave her a great deal of money; and she went down to the city Jerusalem; her son conducting her on her journey a great way. Now her coming was of very great advantage to the people of Jerusalem. For whereas a famine did oppress them at that time, and many people died for want of what was necessary to procure food withal; Queen Helena sent some of her servants to Alexandria, with money to buy a great quantity of corn; and others of them to Cyprus, to bring a cargo of dried figs. And as soon as they were come back, and had brought those provisions; which was done very quickly; she distributed food to those that were in want of it: and left a most excellent memorial behind her of this benefaction, which she bestowed on our whole nation. And when her son Izates was informed of this famine, he sent great sums of money to the principal men in Jerusalem. However what favors this Queen and King conferred upon our city Jerusalem shall be farther related hereafter. The same famine is also mentioned in Acts of the Apostles (if you excuse the "whole world" part. quote:During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. There was also, according to Livy, a famine in 440 that was the cause of Cincinatus's second dictatorship. There was a famine that led to a Plebian Aedile organizing the first free grain distribution. Meanwhile, this equestrian named Spurius Maelius had bought up a bunch of grain and started selling it to the people at a low price. The Senate, figuring that anybody who would voluntarily help the poor had to be up to something, named Cincinatus dictator, and he "discovered" a plot by Maelius to overthrow the Republic and become king, and so his Master of the Horse executed Maelius without a trial. Conspiracy broken up, republic saved!
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Dec 15, 2017 04:41
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Is there a good introductory work out there for Pre-Islamic Arabia? Wikipedia's far from a scholarly source, but concerning the Greco-Roman world it hasn't been that bad for brief summaries. By contrast, I tried to find something on the kings of Himyar, and an article on one particular monarch saysquote:Shammar Yahri'sh full name (Shammar Yahr'ish b. Yasir Yun'im b. 'Amr Dhu'l-Adh'ar) (Arabic: شَمَّر يرعش, "Shammar trembles") was a Himyarite king. It is believed He conquered The Levant (Syria,Palestine). Its also believed He Subjugated The kingdom of israel and Persia and reached as far as The Tibet. It is also believed he invaded Northern India and gained lots of Loot. His Father King Nasher An'em conquered Egypt And reached as far as the Strait of Gibraltar. A lot of articles related to Arabia in the first half of the first millennium are like that. They're either stubs, or the content is incredibly suspect, or both. A brief search on Amazon doesn't seem to turn up any promising introductory books, either. Am I missing some term which if searched will reveal all the brilliant scholarly articles on ancient Arabia, or do studies on old Arabia actually suck rear end?
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Dec 15, 2017 04:44
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If pop history is okay Tom Holland's in the shadow of the sword has several chapters devoted to showing what pre- and early-Islamic Arabia looked like
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Dec 15, 2017 04:48
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