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Post by onlymark on May 2, 2010 9:46:42 GMT
I've not read the book so I don't know if it mentions about seasons. One reason that Egypt changed after moving into the agriculture phase may be the fact that food wouldn't just grow at any time of the year, it was affected by the Nile flood. So the inhabitants had to begin to plan more and possibly store food for the 'winter'. I know that central Africa does experience seasons but to a very lesser extent. It tends to be the big rains and the small rains, but things will grow virtually all year round. In other words I'm wondering if experiencing seasons affects the development at all when tied in with the availability/type of food aspect of that book.
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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2010 10:26:54 GMT
If you look at the entire equatorial belt all around the planet, you notice that the majority of the people there -- in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Amazon, mostly remained quite primitive villagers until their lifestyle was disrupted by colonizers. Maybe it was because life was easy to live in those places, because you could pick fruit off the trees or go fishing all year long. Or maybe it was just too hot and muggy to do anything.
It is all the more ironic to see that fabulous modern places like Singapore how now sprouted exactly where some of the villages were. But this was due to imperial trade routes and has nothing to do with the wishes of the locals 200 years ago.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 2, 2010 14:22:20 GMT
Even where you have wild fruit and fish and game, you still have to have enough to go around. I'd have to know a lot more in order to say this with any authority, but I believe in much of the equatorial belt people sustained their lives by remaining in relatively small groups with designated territory. Even where those areas don't have mountain ranges, the terrain is broken by huge rivers and dense forest or jungle. That's probably the root of much tribal warfare -- groups struggling to maintain the territory needed to feed themselves, or trying to expand that territory. Looking at the example of the Mayan empire and the various collapses of its giant cities, it's easy to see how big is not necessarily better. science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/15nov_maya/Also, since the wars were small and contained, there was no need to develop sophisticated weaponry. It could be argued that many technological advancements in other parts of the world were in service to increasing military might.
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