Guns, Germs, and Steel

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Jaybe

"A surplus of food ment that some of the labor force could now specialize, which lead to new discoverys."

Sure, but not until a library is built.

I find it staggering that even in the days of Caesar the city of Rome didn't have a public library. All of their libraries must have been private!

Hey, he was still in the BC's and was probably doing a pret-rush. Give him some slack!

[eris]

Originally posted by Brutus66
Old news I am afraid.
I remember when I originally read this thread , I was turned on to Peter Watson's "Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention" , which to this day is one of my civilization-related favorites.

I may be only ranked "warlord", but I pay attention

I actually remember the thread as well. Soon after reading it, the movie was a three part series on the local PBS station. I loved it, although some of the analysis, as presented in the movie, seemed a little shallow. It did a good job of clearing out the living room, too.

"What ARE you watching?"
"It's an explanation of historical trends that mirrors a lot of the game play elements of Civ4!"

"Hey! I get my computer back when this is over!"

[zeace]

[SIZE=1]
I find it staggering that even in the days of Caesar the city of Rome didn't have a public library. All of their libraries must have been private!

The "public" couldn't read... Unless your public library was going to be pretty picture books it wouldn't be very popular.

They did have public baths though...

[Jaybe]

Well, perhaps much of the "head count" of the subura couldn't read, but that was probably because there was no public library so there would be things TO read! Most likely non-readers however, would have been rural farmers.

Referencing Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series, which I have been reading lately.

[mkorin]

The lack of public libraries had less to do with the literacy of the population than it did cost and how fragile the 'books' were. Rome was surprising literate for a population of its time. However books were increadibly expensive and fragile. If you could afford a rare expensive treat, would you allow the unwashed public to destory it? We have to remember when studing history to look at it from the mores of that time period, not our own. Public libraries make a lot of sense when books are cheap, mass produced and sturdy. It was not until early Americana that public libraries took off, much of that is credited to Benjimen Franklin(along other things.)

Mike

[Jaybe]

Besides, back then most "books" were actually scrolls. Of course, the "Great Library" of the time was in Alexandria.

[VonSharma]

It's funny you mention Guns, Germs and Steel. Jared Diamond was just on the Colbert Report a few days ago (was a mediocre interview though).

I started playing civ3 in 2002 and being a biology/physics nerd my whole life, it really got me into history. The first book I picked up which I highly, highly recommend is The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. I came around to Guns Germs and Steel later, and like was said, I definitely saw the parallels with the topics in the book and the game. Civ has done a very awesome job historically grounding the game, especially with the tech tree, although the Incans did manage to figure out some astronomical wisdom without even figuring out writing.

There are many things in the game that mirror Diamond's writing pretty well. If you had a continent where corn was your only staple grain/health resource, with no animals, especially no horses, all the civs on that continent would probably wouldn't be able to support very large populations and thus never be able to have people specialize to any significant extent. This is what Diamond descxribes as having happened to the native americans, who only domesticated corn, and really crappy corn at that time at that and had no domesticated animals. Had the native americans had a few more staple crops and maybe at least one solid domesticatable animal, they may have been able to at least enter the middle ages by the time Eurotrash came over. And even if the aztecs and incans had maybe another 1k-1.5k years to putz around, maybe they would have figured out writing and iron working and then who knows what could have been.... That's what makes civ so awesome. To see montectezuma dressed in a suit.

And also to an earlier comment, it really wasn't the Europeans that pushed civilization forward. Many will argue that Japan, given enough time would have industrialized even without contact with the west. Also, if China didn't become completely isolationist in the 16th century, we may all be speaking Mandarin right now. They came up with many of the important inventions of human society but were too busy impressing their neighbors with them instead of learning how to kill people with them. Their ships in the 1500's were reportedly 5 times the size of any european vessels. So once again, who knows...

[Brutus66]

Originally posted by eris
It did a good job of clearing out the living room, too.
"What ARE you watching?"
"It's an explanation of historical trends that mirrors a lot of the game play elements of Civ4!"

I am familiar with this phenomenon.

[Tattila the Hun]

This document raises an interesting question.

Should horses/cow (oxen) with appropriate tech raise the output of farms?