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[Hobot]

Religion also played a major role, because that influenced the values of the society.  Christianity teaches that God gave human-folk dominion over the animals and sundry beasts, which could lead societies in which Christianity is the religion de rigeur (primarily Europe) to take matters into their own hands and cultivate the earth, leading to agricultural practises, as Judy mentioned.  This may not have been the case in cultures that had more naturalistic, communal, earth-friendly religious beliefs, for better or for worse.

However, I am no anthropologist, so this post could easily be full of lies.

[Ben-San]

Africa had some pretty kickin' empires and well-entrenched agriculture in its day. It's pretty hard to find African history sources that aren't basically a thin front for some modern American's political agenda, but this much does seem to be the case.

[theinevitable]

oh, hm.

now I want to write a long paragraph explaining why those empires were the best, and were wiped out by freak accidents of history. saying things like "obviously their empires were more advanced, because of the pressure put on them to advance by Lions and Tigers."

[FlipConstantine]

oh, hm.

now I want to write a long paragraph explaining why those empires were the best, and were wiped out by freak accidents of history. saying things like "obviously their empires were more advanced, because of the pressure put on them to advance by Lions and Tigers."

AND BEARS OH MY.


Sorry I couldn't help myself.

[Mite]

Read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. It addresses many of these questions, and is pretty entertaining, too. He talks about all kinds of factors - domesticatable animals (or lack thereof), east-west vs. north-south orientation of the continents, all kinds of stuff.

His arguments are talking largely about the fertile crescent and very early development of civilization (I think - it's been awhile). His thesis is that a lot of these advancements were already predestined, more or less, long before even things like monotheism rolled onto the scene. Religion might have some answers for the way the west colonized the rest of the world, but not really why we colonized them instead of the other way around.

Also, though he does tend to go overboard with the evolutionary biology, his Why is Sex Fun is a good read. He's got a new one out on the collapse of complex civilizations that I want to read eventually.

[theinevitable]

oh man, yeah! I have that book, but only read the very beginning.

I so need to read it now.

[littlefallsmets]

Generally, I tend to believe that there may well be a spiritual reality beyond our own... but any and every system that rises up wherein someone else says they have authority over your interaction with the spiritual reality is either trying to get your money, money indirectly through your labour as a volunteer, money indirectly though your labour as a soldier or trying to have sex with you.

This is not to say that all people into that stuff are looking for those things for you, on the contrary, the vast majority of the people involved have been tricked into thinking that this set-up is beneficial to them in this life or the (possible) next and believe that they are helping you by offering you their set-up... even though they also believe they're helping themselves by pleasing a deity or their priest/etc.

But the people at the top tend to either be cynically rolling around in piles of money or completely crazy. More likely both.

And religion was my minor in college. Woulda been my double-major, if the freshman requirements weren't so radically different in the Newhouse School (the communications wing of SU) and the College of Arts and Sciences (the liberal arts wing of SU)... pretty much, I had more credits in Religion than in TV/Radio/Film but I would've needed to have taken harder foreign language classes and another math class to have qualified.

But when you're taking religion classes and you're of the stripe to believe that there may well be a God or gods but anyone claiming to speak for them/speak to you for them is either a thief or insane... well... it makes for some fun classroom participation.

[wombat]

I don't know about the rest of this, but someone ought to warn theinevitable about the bears.

[swinehund]

ok, so, speaking of things that kill people:

reading Heart of Darkness, the following occured to me: is it possible that the reason that Europe and parts of Asia were so much more advanced is that they're easier to live in? Africa is terrifying. There are so many natural predators for humans, diseases, etc. On the other hand, Europe, and countries like China and Japan are relatively free of things that eat people. The biggest problem in Europe was most likely climate-- which required innovation to overcome it.

does this make sense? am I explaining this enough?

My husband was reading A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (I did not read it), and he said that it claimed that only recently (200 years or so) have European cities had non-negative population growth. They used to pull people in from surrounding rural areas, only to die in relatively large numbers. Part of this was supposedly due to WOLVES busting into town during lean winters. Apparently Paris had fairly bad wolf problems. I cannot back this up very strongly, not having read the book myself.

[side_show]

I am extremely annoyed at the tendancy of every even slightly religious conversation on this board to turn into a polarized and somewhat circular arguement.  When I came on tonight and read that not one but two threads had turned into said arguement, I have to admit that I've now come to the point of considering no longer spending time here.

"It is better to remain silent and appear a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."

[wombat]

Well folks, I think these threads have been civil compare to the rest of the internet, as has been pointed out previously, if rather time-wasting. But when it gets to the point that you're driving Smells away, you get locked. 

[V-Adore]

Screw that. I'll say it here -- if things get to the point that Smells is considering leaving the board, locking will only be the start.

[jough]

Sorry you feel that way, Smells.  Not sure what we can do about your finding religious discussions offputting except to advise against reading them (although the religious stuff seems to have slipped over into other non-religious threads - oh moderators...).

Anyway, I'd hate to ban discussion of religion and politics, which are of course the two biggest tinderboxes for flaming, but maybe we should start advising people to keep it in its own thread, with a leading tag, like "RELIGIOUS: Subject line" or "POLITICAL: Subject line..."  That way people could read if they were interested, but not stumble into discussions that seem to come out of nowhere.