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Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

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Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

#31

Post by phkahler »

jwtadvice wrote: post #11

Yes: geostrategy is a huge defining factor in the organization of the planet, the movement of people and the evolution of society. It is a primary factor, including resource extraction technologies, agricultural capability, and more. I think rounding that up to "drove the rise of civilizations" is a crude way to put that. For example, the simulation pits "agriculture plus military" against "agriculture". Then they fo…

>> geostrategy is an important factor in the development of human and international relations and that broadly laymen are completely ignorant of it

Age of Empires taught me that the key to world domination is control of the natural resources plus growing as fast as possible. To win a long game you must control the remote resources as well as those in your immediate area. Try to consume the non-local resources first.

Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

#32

Post by nostrademons »

stcredzero wrote: post #12

The older I get, the more it strikes me that civilization is inherently unstable. It may be metastable, in the way that a predator-prey relationship is stable. A technological civilization like ours is not stable. It's a conflagration . It's subject to a number of exponential processes. Our economy is based on exponentiation. If progress is based on war, then that's just another nail in the coffin. This makes for a p…

It's quite possible for civilization to be stable while any given civilization is unstable. Think about life itself. Life is subject to a number of exponential processes - cell division & decay, telomere shortening, growth of parasites, etc. - and as a result, we all die eventually. But life itself continues, because we're (usually) replaced by descendants.

So it goes with civilizations. Any given civilization will eventually break up and disintegrate, but the idea of civilization itself continues to progress.

Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

#33

Post by mc32 »

rmchugh wrote: post #28
mc32 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the "military" only group be able to terrorize the agriculture only as well as the ag plus military ones? Something akin to the Danes at one point? They could just build it up so that they could go pillaging indefinitely, so long as they don't outright destroy their target civs.

I'm not sure the Danes were ever military only, Denmark was also an agricultural society during the viking period. As I understand it, the viking raids were in fact organised around the agricultural calendar, with the two raiding seasons taking place after the harvest and after the sowing. And of course the Vikings were interested in acquiring farming land and often settled and farmed in their places of conquest. A m…

I didn't mean for the imperfect example of the Danes to take it off tangent, it was only to illustrate a people I could think of for whom raiding was integral but your examples or any other is just as well. I think someone (civ) could have taken it further and been sociopathic and only relied on military force for survival. Obviously there are benefits in diversifying, but I think while not ideal, it's possible and could work, in some circumstances.

Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

#34

Post by wavefunction »

rmchugh wrote: post #28
mc32 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the "military" only group be able to terrorize the agriculture only as well as the ag plus military ones? Something akin to the Danes at one point? They could just build it up so that they could go pillaging indefinitely, so long as they don't outright destroy their target civs.

I'm not sure the Danes were ever military only, Denmark was also an agricultural society during the viking period. As I understand it, the viking raids were in fact organised around the agricultural calendar, with the two raiding seasons taking place after the harvest and after the sowing. And of course the Vikings were interested in acquiring farming land and often settled and farmed in their places of conquest. A m…

They also took slaves who would handle the agricultural and manual labor tasks in those Nordic societies while the freemen raided.

Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

#35

Post by joshuaheard »

LordHumungous wrote: post #21

Interestingly, from a cursory glance at those images, it looks like the biggest gap between the model and the data is in Iran and central Asia. The model predicts a low incidence of civilization there, which makes sense due to the region's low agricultural potential, but in reality large civilizations have thrived in those areas. I wonder what factor explains this divergence? Trade along the Silk Road?

Long term climate change? Those areas were probably fertile when the ancient civilizations thrived there.

Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

#36

Post by grandalf »

War is the application of violence to achieve a political outcome.

It's important to differentiate between this type of war and simple conquest and commandeering of resources (human, natural, etc.)

In both cases, as the scale increases, the sophistication required to support the effort increases... One needs better social structures, better technology, supply chain management, etc.

So these "civilized" aspects are in fact prerequisites for victory in war, though war may offer an incentive to focus on improving those systems and their coordination at the expense of other aspects of society.

So just as eating food strengthens a person enough that he/she may grow, survive, and thus desire to eat larger meals in the future, eating is not the cause of hunger.

What we must also realize (for history and for the present day) is that war utterly wipes out culture and the history of humans, and replaces it with some politicized narrative imagined by the victors. We know little about indigenous Americans, and the future will know little about the Afghanistan and Iraq of the early 21st century and earlier. There will be volumes of information, but it will be written by scholars beholden to the occupying hegemon.

Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

#38

Post by jandrese »

mc32 wrote: post #33
rmchugh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the Danes were ever military only, Denmark was also an agricultural society during the viking period. As I understand it, the viking raids were in fact organised around the agricultural calendar, with the two raiding seasons taking place after the harvest and after the sowing. And of course the Vikings were interested in acquiring farming land and often settled and farmed in their places of conquest. A m…

I didn't mean for the imperfect example of the Danes to take it off tangent, it was only to illustrate a people I could think of for whom raiding was integral but your examples or any other is just as well. I think someone (civ) could have taken it further and been sociopathic and only relied on military force for survival. Obviously there are benefits in diversifying, but I think while not ideal, it's possible and c…

You mean like the Mongols? They didn't stop and farm. Their entire society was built around conquest and pillage.

Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

#39

Post by Spooky23 »

mc32 wrote: post #25
jwtadvice wrote: post #11

Yes: geostrategy is a huge defining factor in the organization of the planet, the movement of people and the evolution of society. It is a primary factor, including resource extraction technologies, agricultural capability, and more. I think rounding that up to "drove the rise of civilizations" is a crude way to put that. For example, the simulation pits "agriculture plus military" against "agriculture". Then they fo…

Wouldn't the "military" only group be able to terrorize the agriculture only as well as the ag plus military ones? Something akin to the Danes at one point? They could just build it up so that they could go pillaging indefinitely, so long as they don't outright destroy their target civs.

Agriculture also comes with structure. Once you get past subsistence farming, you need markets, credit and social order. Once you have those you get specialization. A purely aggressive group eventually loses and vanishes.

Remember the story of the Danes was told by the recipients of their raids, who had an interest from a religious standpoint to portray them as awful pagans.

Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)

#40

Post by stcredzero »

nostrademons wrote: post #32
stcredzero wrote: post #12

The older I get, the more it strikes me that civilization is inherently unstable. It may be metastable, in the way that a predator-prey relationship is stable. A technological civilization like ours is not stable. It's a conflagration . It's subject to a number of exponential processes. Our economy is based on exponentiation. If progress is based on war, then that's just another nail in the coffin. This makes for a p…

It's quite possible for civilization to be stable while any given civilization is unstable. Think about life itself. Life is subject to a number of exponential processes - cell division & decay, telomere shortening, growth of parasites, etc. - and as a result, we all die eventually. But life itself continues, because we're (usually) replaced by descendants. So it goes with civilizations. Any given civilization will e…

So it goes with civilizations. Any given civilization will eventually break up and disintegrate, but the idea of civilization itself continues to progress.

Which doesn't preclude a circumstance where almost no civilization anywhere keeps its sh!t together long enough to send itself to the next star.

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