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You need pack animals for civilisations. Transport is the backbone of industry and is required for the high degree of specialisation in trades that produces tec

You need pack animals for civilisations. Transport is the backbone of industry and is required for the high degree of specialisation in trades that produces technological advancement.

lurk2 2y ago
You've drawn this argument from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. There are a few problems with the theory: 1) Diamond's argument rests on the idea that world historical developments are effectively determined by geography (and implicitly, by factors which precede the existence of a civilization). While I can't make a strong argument against historical determinism, the conclusions Diamond draws are strange. The chief problem is that Diamond is trying to make the case that the exceptional prosperity of Northern Europe and all of its colonies was effectively a fluke of geography. The problem for Diamond is that this pattern repeats over the course of about four hundred years all over the world, not just in the places where Europeans had the advantage of small pox on their side. 2) Native Americans had access to pack animals by way of the llama. 3) The Aztecs lacked access to pack animals. They still had specialized tradesmen and constituted a civilization. The germs argument is the only one of Diamond's that I think holds any water with regards to the European conquest of North America, and perhaps I was being too brash in my original assertion (these civilizations existed, but were decimated by small pox). The issue with this argument is that it doesn't address European colonialism in Asia (where the disease factor is absent) and Subsaharan Africa (where the disease factor actually worked against Europeans). The fact of the matter is that Europeans (and specifically Northern Europeans) happened upon a method of conquest that worked. This could have been an accident of geography, biology, or ideology, but it's absurd to pretend that the model didn't exist when it was the basis of a successful campaign to conquer the world. It had nothing to do with having access to pack animals.
- James_K 2y ago
  The Llama is not a very good pack animal, you would know this if you ever looked at one. Pack animals are not necessary for any specialisation, but the are for the degree that brings technological advancement. If you want advanced society, you need to move lumber from forests to cities and ore from mines to furnaces. It's difficult to do this by hand. > it was the basis of a successful campaign to conquer the world I am referring specifically to the conquest of America here. You can see that there were several advanced societies at the time (China, India, Europe, Middle East) and it is essentially luck which of them won out. There are also many places which could not have feasibly conquered the world, America was among them precisely due to the lack of pack animals barring further societal advancement. By the same token, aboriginal Australians and Polynesian islanders had little chance dominating the world.
  - lurk2 2y ago
    >The Llama is not a very good pack animal, you would know this if you ever looked at one. They are pack animals with carrying capacities comparable to donkeys and slightly less than horses. >America was among them precisely due to the lack of pack animals barring further societal advancement. You never addressed the issue of Tenochtitlan, which was constructed without the use of pack animals, so this isn't a compelling claim to begin with. Even so, North America had plenty of candidates for domestication that would have made serviceable pack animals (e.g. moose, caribou). Diamond makes some weak attempt to claim that the animals available were too temperamental to be domesticated, conveniently forgetting that the ancestor of man's flesh-eating best friend is the wolf. > By the same token, aboriginal Australians and Polynesian islanders had little chance dominating the world. You're making this argument because these places are islands. This was not a hindrance to the British. You'll then make the argument that you were really arguing that these places are isolated (which is maybe valid if we're talking about Polynesia, less so for Australia), to which I'd reply: "Isolated from what?" to which you'd reply: "The pack animals, the germs, and the steel," to which I'd inquire: "Why were these things found in Europe and not Australia?" and that is where we get to the root of the matter. Europe's conquests were not a matter of luck or an accident of geography. There was something in their method that simply worked better than the methods of those peoples that they conquered. I haven't reached a conclusion as to what it was in that approach that led Europe to becoming the dominant power of the last five hundred years, but there's no compelling case to be made that this method didn't exist.
    - James_K 2y ago
      > Jared Diamond I don't know who that is and have never read any of his work. > Tenochtitlan > Even so, North America had plenty of candidates for domestication that would have made serviceable pack animals Weirdly enough, Tenochtitlan is the rebuttal to this question. Why do you think they built a city on a lake? It's because they didn't have any pack animals so boats were the best way to move stuff around. This is a disadvantage that makes everything else much harder and therefore slows development. > conveniently forgetting that the ancestor of man's flesh-eating best friend is the wolf If literal millions of Native Americans could not domesticate the other animals, but they could domesticate dogs, I'm going to guess that the other animals are harder to domesticate than dogs. You might not feel that this is the case, but your feelings don't stack up to the practical results of a thousands-of-years-long experiment run on an entire continent where these animals could not be domesticated. > Why were these things found in Europe and not Australia? Because Europe has horses and Australia doesn't, and horses cannot swim therefore could not reach Australia. The moon also doesn't have horses for a similar reason. In fact, you'll find that horses only really inhabited areas reachable by horses, until someone put them on a boat and took them to other places (which didn't happen for Australia until quite late). You have this strange assumption that all areas are secretly equal in geography and must be equally hospitable to human flourishing, but this is not true. Europe is more hospitable than Australia, therefore humans flourished more in Europe than Australia. All you need do is assume differences in geography exist and you'll reach the conclusion that humans in more amenable areas are more likely to conquer those in less amenable areas. > Europe's conquests were not a matter of luck or an accident of geography You say this with precisely no proof. The closest you get is saying "other people didn't do it, and Europeans did so it couldn't have been luck". The idea that knowledge is what held other areas back, as opposed to luck or geography, is ridiculous and trivially disprovable. Knowledge exists in equal quantities for all people (unless you believe certain races are inferior to others). The difference between regions is geographical or in fortune, which could include the fortune of having a particularly skilled leader or successful sequence of conquests.

You need pack animals for civilisations. Transport is the backbone of industry and is required for the high degree of specialisation in trades that produces technological advancement.

lurk2 2y ago

You've drawn this argument from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. There are a few problems with the theory: 1) Diamond's argument rests on the idea that world historical developments are effectively determined by geography (and implicitly, by factors which precede the existence of a civilization). While I can't make a strong argument against historical determinism, the conclusions Diamond draws are strange. The chief problem is that Diamond is trying to make the case that the exceptional prosperity of Northern Europe and all of its colonies was effectively a fluke of geography. The problem for Diamond is that this pattern repeats over the course of about four hundred years all over the world, not just in the places where Europeans had the advantage of small pox on their side. 2) Native Americans had access to pack animals by way of the llama. 3) The Aztecs lacked access to pack animals. They still had specialized tradesmen and constituted a civilization. The germs argument is the only one of Diamond's that I think holds any water with regards to the European conquest of North America, and perhaps I was being too brash in my original assertion (these civilizations existed, but were decimated by small pox). The issue with this argument is that it doesn't address European colonialism in Asia (where the disease factor is absent) and Subsaharan Africa (where the disease factor actually worked against Europeans). The fact of the matter is that Europeans (and specifically Northern Europeans) happened upon a method of conquest that worked. This could have been an accident of geography, biology, or ideology, but it's absurd to pretend that the model didn't exist when it was the basis of a successful campaign to conquer the world. It had nothing to do with having access to pack animals.

James_K 2y ago
The Llama is not a very good pack animal, you would know this if you ever looked at one. Pack animals are not necessary for any specialisation, but the are for the degree that brings technological advancement. If you want advanced society, you need to move lumber from forests to cities and ore from mines to furnaces. It's difficult to do this by hand. > it was the basis of a successful campaign to conquer the world I am referring specifically to the conquest of America here. You can see that there were several advanced societies at the time (China, India, Europe, Middle East) and it is essentially luck which of them won out. There are also many places which could not have feasibly conquered the world, America was among them precisely due to the lack of pack animals barring further societal advancement. By the same token, aboriginal Australians and Polynesian islanders had little chance dominating the world.
- lurk2 2y ago
  >The Llama is not a very good pack animal, you would know this if you ever looked at one. They are pack animals with carrying capacities comparable to donkeys and slightly less than horses. >America was among them precisely due to the lack of pack animals barring further societal advancement. You never addressed the issue of Tenochtitlan, which was constructed without the use of pack animals, so this isn't a compelling claim to begin with. Even so, North America had plenty of candidates for domestication that would have made serviceable pack animals (e.g. moose, caribou). Diamond makes some weak attempt to claim that the animals available were too temperamental to be domesticated, conveniently forgetting that the ancestor of man's flesh-eating best friend is the wolf. > By the same token, aboriginal Australians and Polynesian islanders had little chance dominating the world. You're making this argument because these places are islands. This was not a hindrance to the British. You'll then make the argument that you were really arguing that these places are isolated (which is maybe valid if we're talking about Polynesia, less so for Australia), to which I'd reply: "Isolated from what?" to which you'd reply: "The pack animals, the germs, and the steel," to which I'd inquire: "Why were these things found in Europe and not Australia?" and that is where we get to the root of the matter. Europe's conquests were not a matter of luck or an accident of geography. There was something in their method that simply worked better than the methods of those peoples that they conquered. I haven't reached a conclusion as to what it was in that approach that led Europe to becoming the dominant power of the last five hundred years, but there's no compelling case to be made that this method didn't exist.
  - James_K 2y ago
    > Jared Diamond I don't know who that is and have never read any of his work. > Tenochtitlan > Even so, North America had plenty of candidates for domestication that would have made serviceable pack animals Weirdly enough, Tenochtitlan is the rebuttal to this question. Why do you think they built a city on a lake? It's because they didn't have any pack animals so boats were the best way to move stuff around. This is a disadvantage that makes everything else much harder and therefore slows development. > conveniently forgetting that the ancestor of man's flesh-eating best friend is the wolf If literal millions of Native Americans could not domesticate the other animals, but they could domesticate dogs, I'm going to guess that the other animals are harder to domesticate than dogs. You might not feel that this is the case, but your feelings don't stack up to the practical results of a thousands-of-years-long experiment run on an entire continent where these animals could not be domesticated. > Why were these things found in Europe and not Australia? Because Europe has horses and Australia doesn't, and horses cannot swim therefore could not reach Australia. The moon also doesn't have horses for a similar reason. In fact, you'll find that horses only really inhabited areas reachable by horses, until someone put them on a boat and took them to other places (which didn't happen for Australia until quite late). You have this strange assumption that all areas are secretly equal in geography and must be equally hospitable to human flourishing, but this is not true. Europe is more hospitable than Australia, therefore humans flourished more in Europe than Australia. All you need do is assume differences in geography exist and you'll reach the conclusion that humans in more amenable areas are more likely to conquer those in less amenable areas. > Europe's conquests were not a matter of luck or an accident of geography You say this with precisely no proof. The closest you get is saying "other people didn't do it, and Europeans did so it couldn't have been luck". The idea that knowledge is what held other areas back, as opposed to luck or geography, is ridiculous and trivially disprovable. Knowledge exists in equal quantities for all people (unless you believe certain races are inferior to others). The difference between regions is geographical or in fortune, which could include the fortune of having a particularly skilled leader or successful sequence of conquests.