Riots Model 2.0

[LDiCesare]

Wow... What a can of worms.

I just wanted to have 'something' which would tell the Greeks they are Greek rather than barbaroi, without their being necessarily either Spartan or Theban or...

I believe that in terms of Greek vs. barbaroi scenario, race doesn't help. Culture or language would. so an ethnic group's nationality is a bit limited for the purpose of differentiating Greeks from other cultures. I'm just asking for soomething which lets me relate two ethnic groups as being part of a family (of language/culture/way of life) so I can have something which lets me model Greeks without needing a Greek nationality.

About races: My concerns are mostly genetic. I have some biology background after all, and consider that there's no reason why a deep difference in terms of genotype would necessarily lead to a visible difference in phenotype. That is why I chose the Basque example: If you restrict yourself to Middle Ages Europe, and decide to implement races in the game, Basques would be genetically different form the rest and thus from a genotype point of view a different race. But from the visible phenotype (their face, colour...) that's not relevant. So we could pick a more or less arbitrary number of races, but if the game evolves in such a way that two of them mingle which we didn't have in real life (e.g. pygmies and caucasian), you'd have to do a lot of extrapolation to guess what they'd look like, and whether this particular mix would look different enough from another one to allow discrimination between the groups to occur.
The point about Reunion and Brazil is not a negation that races exist, but a negation of the fact they are useful in the game: When people have similar culture, way of life, religion (not necessarily, depending on the importance of this one), they interbreed whatever their race may be. Thus it's more interesting to have an ethnic group or culture object than a race object in-game, because race will remain unchanged only if the cultures reamin unchanged. Thus race can be seen as a byproduct of culture in game terms (it's actually retaining the race the people started with X generations ago which is a byproduct, since race predates that, but I'm not being academic, I'm talking about the game).
Again, races don't help me in Greek/barbaroi scenario (particularly if you consider that Philip's Macedonians were not always considered true Greeks by Athenians, Spartans, etc.).

So to sum it all again: I want something (I'd call it culture for lack of better word) which lets me have families of cultures. Language is certainly part of culture, and race too, but neither is the whole of it. And I need a function which lets me tell whether two of these cultures are near or far one from another.
That may just be that, by comparing all elements (traditionalism, importance of religion, individualism, etc.) of the ethnic group, I can infer that two EGs are mostly the same. This would mean that I need to compare all these values when checking ethnic riotting/discrimination, though, which is a bit bad as they may slightly vary inside the same nationality.

[yellowdaddy]

LGJ

And i am similarly unconvinced that language is.

1. I don't understand what you mean.

2. You haven't managed to refute what I'm saying or support what you're saying.
e.g.: The example of Lebanon and Yemen... what makes them both Arabs?
And I don't get your opint about "language being a by-product of ethnic groups". Language is a defining factor of an ethnic group whether it's a street slang or a totally unrelated language, you certainly can't put it lower than race, and you can't really generalise that it's less a defining factor than "WOL", Religion, and Customs - sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, they're all variables - isn't it obvious?!

3. Your post about China doesn't appear to disagree with me or Gary.

4. Is any of this really helpful?
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Laurant
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incidentally, the Basques share an awful lot of mDNA with the Welsh and Cornish of SWern Britain. I think it's a bit of a stretch to call them a different race though.
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I think we may solve the problem by making a set of factors which add up to "Culture".
Way of life is down to environment I would say.
Language is fairly easy to use as a tool do link and differentiate ethnic groups; it's also not dependant so much on the other factors, the way languages diverge is almost random in terms of the initial sound divergence, but gathers a kind of momentum to consolidate the changes, rather like how water find's it's way down towards the sea, sometimes forming a large "delta" of daughter languages, other times feeding into a lake (?!) .

What could we have? Here's some ideas:

LANGUAGE:
Homologue (L0)
Accent (L1)
Dialect (L2)
Language (L3)

These are like three different levels of language, so you could call them "L1 L2 and L3", you can then map an EG with the "L factor" (Linguistic Divergence), so that those around the capital have a low L factor, and the more disparate populations have a tendency to gradually increase their L factor, to the point were they can evolve to L3 and have a different language, making their propensity to become a new EG greater.

RELIGION:
Shamanistic
Polytheistic
Monotheistic
Atheistic

like language this is kind of both a cultural and ethnic feature innit? I think it's more cultural than ethnic though. (to me ethnicity is to do with aspects of humanity which can't change - race, mothertongue, birthplace)

WRITING:
alphabet (syllabic like Hiragana and non-syllabic like Cyrillic)
pictograph (Maya, Chinese, Egyptian)
phonograph (like Korean)

countries which share writing systems often share cultural affinity.

WayOfLife:
Settled Agriculturalists
Nomadic Pastoralists/Hill Tribes
Coastal and Riverdwellers

I imagine this affects the economy, the kind of trade that can take place, among other things. It seems to depend almost entirely on environment.


SOCIAL TRADITIONS/VALUES:
Kinship Society
Class Society
Matriarchal
Patriarchal
Individualist
Group-oriented
Militaristic?

This must be similar to politics, i'm not sure how much of this is in the social model. It's definitely culture.

AESTHETICS (a way of summing up clothes & buidings!?)
Oriental
Hindu
Classical
Gothic
Monolithic
...

a bit of an intangible, especially if you're dealing with random non-historical scenarios - i.e. the WorldDawn scenario.
Maybe including what kind of Artefacts, Monuments, you build, and frilly things like "artistic trade"... i suppose this is the kind of thing "Wonders" were supposed to cover in Civ.


The idea being that maybe you could have a set of factors to define the term:
"Ethnicity"
And a set of factors to define the term "Culture".
implicit is the idea that two or more ethnicities can share the same culture, and one ethnicity can have two or more cultures.
Can that work? Or are they the same thing really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture

I suppose Culture is:
Aesthetics, Values, Religion (bit of overlap), Writing System, Economics, Politics
and Ethnicity is:
Way of Life (bit of overlap) Language, Race, Nationality/Tribalism,

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I just wanted to have 'something' which would tell the Greeks they are Greek rather than barbaroi, without their being necessarily either Spartan or Theban or...

I think the idea of adding a "Culture Family", as you suggested, is the most straightforward way to do this. The problem with comparing traits is that a Korean-offshoot culture and an Etruscan-based culture could have similar values for many cultural attributes and yet they wouldn't be kin. (However, communication between them should be easier since they have a lot of fundamental agreement on how the world works and what is important. . .)

If we want to get more complicated later we can certainly do that.

yellowdaddy:

The more culture-based ideas you are proposing should go in a social model thread so that they can be considered in context. Some of the things you promote are Already in the social model, FE "Individualist". See the Social Model page.

[Gary Thomas]

Xia Dynasty 2183-1769 BCE (There is archeological evidence to support this since 1959)....This sites are too numerous to list, but suffice it to say, they've found several tombs dating to this period.

Hsia Dynasty: circa 2100 - 1800 BCE

This dynasty (Xia and Hsia are the same word) is essentially mythological, acceptance of it as a real dynasty is still limited. However, even if existed it was confined to a small area in northern Henan, and could not really be termed an empire (though its greatest ruler is often called the first Emporer of China - this is misleading).

By contrast the cites of Uruk (later called Erech, and now called Warka) and Ur date from around 5500 BC, 3000 years before the Xia dynasty.

Yams and Root plants: circa 8000 BCE (This is contreversial) http://www.bartleby.com/67/39.html

Were they domesticated though? In any case, it is later than the development of agriculture in the Near East.

[quote]Rice: 15 000 - 12 000 BCE http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3207552.stm[quote]
This is based on a news report - I can find no reliable references. It is also based on only 59 grains of rice and no other evidence whatsoever. And finally, the (single) find was in the central area of South Korea, very far from China.

circa 9500 BCE Permenant fishing cities established in Japan (Jomon culture) (i mention this because japanese culture has been traditionally more fishing based than agriculture based)

So what? We were talking about China. Anyway the Mediterranean has much earlier fishing villages.

I have some offline resources but that'll take some time to site.

No doubt.

In effect, the "references" you cite, tend to support my contention that the Near East civilizations arose around a thousand years before those in China.

To save you the trouble, I am aware that the earliest pottery predates the Mesopotamian civilization and has been found in Japan (not China). This proves nothing - I did not claim that every human advance began in the Near East.

[yellowdaddy]

Basically, no-one knows for sure, because i'm not sure if there's any written evidence - from non-chinese sources (they do like to embellish their own history).
Some people like to fill in the blanks to make what seem obvious connections, they're often more or less right, but sometimes there's a surprise.

However, I don't think you can apply the term "mythological" to them. I think the Xia did exist as a dynasty in northern China, but not as a representative of the whole Chinese ethnicity... there were loads of tribal "kingdoms" until Shi Huang Di (lit. the first emporer - not his real name like "Phil" or "Dave") of the later Han dynasty.

but this is all just intellectual willy-waving as far as I can see...

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well one of the major problems is that there has been much WESTERN digging into the middle east and the surrounding area, but not nearly so much in china for the similar time period and most of those people tend to disreguard most, if not all the records done by chinese historians, partly because they didn't use similar methods, but mostly because it doesn't fit with their "idea" of how the world worked. They will only if there is enough evidence to not only support it, but its so glaring in your face obvious that they haveto accept it.

FE the fact of the neadertals not being part of humans today...there are still people who believe this based solely on bone data. Bones can tell a lot, but not everything and can be misleading. But hey, because they were the first find, everything else had to have a much higher threshold of proof than that original find because it didn't fit into "the view." There are other reasons and each situation has its own unique circumstance, but basically "the view" montra prevails everywhere.

Unfortunalty, online, most cites use referances from people with "the view" or are so totally relgious/philosophically biased toward china being the "original" and cite stuff that even i, someone who as i said doesn't always accept "the view" think is totally bogus.

Which is why i will post stuff later from offline sources if you still want me to (i'm in school right now srudying for middterms and doing some intense reasearch papers which takes away time, but i will post my referances if you still want me to.

As to the Xia, there is as i say archeoligical proof of their extistance, including undisturbed tombs found as late as last year. Yea, they're definatly hyped up, but you know at one time people laughted at a man who thought Troi existed (note: the manner he actually went about excavating the site is another matter). Before 9000 BCE things do get sketchy i'll admit in china, but most of that is because of industrialization of china, lack of iterest as opposed to mesopatamia and egypt and closed nature of the previous chinese communist nation (this has changed because they like promoting stuff they can now find they were first in as opposed to ignoring it...FE the recent promoting of the 500 year anniverary of Zheng He's first voyages).

2. You haven't managed to refute what I'm saying or support what you're saying.
e.g.: The example of Lebanon and Yemen... what makes them both Arabs?
And I don't get your opint about "language being a by-product of ethnic groups". Language is a defining factor of an ethnic group whether it's a street slang or a totally unrelated language, you certainly can't put it lower than race, and you can't really generalise that it's less a defining factor than "WOL", Religion, and Customs - sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, they're all variables - isn't it obvious?!

Arabic is a western term used to simplify the arabs into 1 group. Ask a Yemenis and Lebanese if they think they're the same group and most of the time you'll here the answer "no" mention they both speak arabaic, and depending on the person you may get something like "americans speak english so does that mean they're the same as all enlgish people?" or some other way of saying "so what?"

Laguage is a by-product because it always (except in forced situations) follows cultural splits or absorbtions. Forcing cultural absrobtion by langauge adaptation can work, but so can by propogranda, commerce, non-language based inistutional education. Thus language is always a lagging indicator when done naturally of cultural divergance and convergance, espically the latter.

Language doesn't help shape a society or culture, although it can help to reinforce values. More important than langauge is geography (not race as georgraphy, but geography as to where a person lives at a time). This, along with other things, shape the language around them, but only after a long time, long after the changes have happened. Oh a few words, terms and phrases may change or crop up, but not enough to make me unable to speak with most other people who speak english as a first language. I mean using the 3 things you list: Race, language and religion, england would have the same culture as US...ask any american or enlgishman if they share the same culture and after maybe laughing/chuckling, they'll tell you they don't, even though they share 1. Same dominat religionous background 2. Same dominat race background and 3. Same language background, Better yet, Mexico and Spain. Both have a very heavy Roman Catholic background and still is heavily incluced even today in both countries. Both have the same language (the variations are within the allowed variance paramaters to at most be called sub-language) and finally they are bothas far as who makes up the real culture of the same stock or Spanish origin, non-moorish chiristan people.

Or what makes Rural japan different from someplace like Kyoto or Tokyo? Can't say its race...Japan is 98% "pure" in that for long enough their generations are all japanese born. Its not language or religion...the Meiji Restoration saw fit to that as did the American occupation to the latter. But there is a differance based on where you live.

[yellowdaddy]

Well one of the major problems is that there has been much WESTERN digging into the middle east and the surrounding area, but not nearly so much in china for the similar time period and most of those people tend to disreguard most, if not all the records done by chinese historians, partly because they didn't use similar methods, but mostly because it doesn't fit with their "idea" of how the world worked. They will only if there is enough evidence to not only support it, but its so glaring in your face obvious that they haveto accept it.

that's an emotional generalisation if ever i heard one.
I've studied at Chinese university, their standards (for the most part) aren't as rigourous as British universities in my view (a lot of bribery and nepotism), there's a lot of political milage in history, which taints a lot of research in China. Whittering on about western methods being somehow less effective or even dramatically different to non-western methods is twaddle. "western" methods involve things like peer review and openness of results and data, things which aren't always present in corrupt states like China, where practically everyone seems to be back-scratching.
Most serious asian academics use "western" methods.

Unfortunalty, online, most cites use referances from people with "the view" or are so totally relgious/philosophically biased toward china being the "original" and cite stuff that even i, someone who as i said doesn't always accept "the view" think is totally bogus.

this is also an emotional generalisation. i've found most academics of western colleges that i've read or asked are surprisingly dispassionate and unwilling to assume links between anything that might seem obvious to us amateurs. There is a lot of pseudo-history on the internet, thee's also a good amount of serious research which often too dry for most amateurs like us to digest.

As to the Xia, there is as i say archeoligical proof of their extistance, including undisturbed tombs found as late as last year.

i think there are tombs at Banpo, of the Yaoshan culture, but as Chinese writing didn't exist until the mid Shang dynasty, and there's no records from other civs, then i'm afraid you can't pin the name "Xia" on them just yet. Most reputable books will probably say something like "there is now some evidence that the Xia dynasty MAY have existed", meaning they've found Longshan and Yaoshan artefacts in the right place at the right time, but it's not the same as saying they definitely are the Xia. They're "semi-mythological" as far as I can tell.

Arabic is a western term used to simplify the arabs into 1 group. Ask a Yemenis and Lebanese if they think they're the same group and most of the time you'll here the answer "no" mention they both speak arabaic

not in my experience. in my experience Lebanese and Yemenis regard themselves as Arabs. they often cite the fact that Arabic is their mother tongue as a main reason. they could be wrong, of course.

I mean using the 3 things you list: Race, language and religion, england would have the same culture as US...ask any american or enlgishman if they share the same culture and after maybe laughing/chuckling, they'll tell you they don't

I;m getting the distinct impression that nobody reads anything i post
I'm talking about Ethnicity not Culture - it's on a different thread now.

By the way it was YOU who listed Religion as a definition of ethnicity, not me.

Laguage is a by-product because it always (except in forced situations) follows cultural splits or absorbtions.

I'm not sure Language always follows.., sometimes it leads: the dialect arises within a community for cultural reasons and a divergence of people can arise. It's not always a by-product of relocating some people.
I'm differentiating between Cutlure and Ethnicity, see the other thread.
I think when you talk about language as a "by-product"
you're on about colonial type scenarios, where one branch of people is divided geographically, and subsequently evolves their own
accent->dialect->language.
Dialects can evolve without necessarily having people being separated by significant geographical barriers or distances. Contact with alien languages FE. In England the english dialect of the Scottish lowlands is a direct descendent of the English of a different tribe which existed alongside the Angles and Saxons who evolved into the English, there is never been a geographical gulf between them, or lack of interaction, yet they are still after over 1000 years two distinct dialects of the same language. But returning to my point, language is a major defining factor of an ethnicity: a people splitting into 2 tribes can start off having only the "nationaism" distinction, and perhaps a accent or L1 linguistic difference to make them split into two named tribes, they can then evolve as separate EGs defined by their sense of separate tribal identity (natioalism), and perhaps land connection to a locality where they have lived for a while, and some degree of linguistic difference. I agree that differing racial traits are not essential, nor religion. The Nat. LC, and L factors do seem to me to be the most important to make a distinction between ethnicities, though I concede some of the other "Cultural" things CAN also form part of that, but I don't seethat they're any more essential than racial difference.

Both have the same language (the variations are within the allowed variance paramaters to at most be called sub-language) and finally they are bothas far as who makes up the real culture of the same stock or Spanish origin, non-moorish chiristan people.

Mexicans are mostly of mixed race are they not? and plenty of native amerindian peoples still exist.
Their language has become an "L1/L2" using the proposed language scale - am accent approaching becoming a dialect.
Race and Language, Land Connection and Nationality are the biggest factors there - see the other thread.

Or what makes Rural japan different from someplace like Kyoto or Tokyo? Can't say its race...Japan is 98% "pure" in that for long enough their generations are all japanese born. Its not language or religion...the Meiji Restoration saw fit to that as did the American occupation to the latter. But there is a differance based on where you live

Japanese is a mixed race ethnicity (Ainu, Korean, Malayo-Polynesian speakers...), the northern half of the country (excluding Ryukyu Is, Sapporo and surrounds) have different origins to the south - evidenced by skull analysis. The difference is less apparent now as a lot of mixing has gone on. But often you'll find southern Japs in Kyushu, Shikoku and the south-west of Honshu tend to be fairer skinned (akin to Koreans) than those from Tohoku.

I don't understand the point though.

the "other thread" I mentioned:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=2835302#post2835302

[Lord God Jinnai]

But returning to my point, language is a major defining factor of an ethnicity: a people splitting into 2 tribes can start off having only the "nationaism" distinction, and perhaps a accent or L1 linguistic difference to make them split into two named tribes, they can then evolve as separate EGs defined by their sense of separate tribal identity (natioalism), and perhaps land connection to a locality where they have lived for a while, and some degree of linguistic difference. I agree that differing racial traits are not essential, nor religion. The Nat. LC, and L factors do seem to me to be the most important to make a distinction between ethnicities, though I concede some of the other "Cultural" things CAN also form part of that, but I don't seethat they're any more essential than racial difference.

But does it nessarily? It can happen, but it can also and is more likely that the seperatiion of the language will be minor impediment if geographic locations allow them to keep in contact, thus geogrpahy plays more of a role than language.

Japanese is a mixed race ethnicity (Ainu, Korean, Malayo-Polynesian speakers...), the northern half of the country (excluding Ryukyu Is, Sapporo and surrounds) have different origins to the south - evidenced by skull analysis. The difference is less apparent now as a lot of mixing has gone on. But often you'll find southern Japs in Kyushu, Shikoku and the south-west of Honshu tend to be fairer skinned (akin to Koreans) than those from Tohoku.

Yes, everyone is a mixed heritage, however, after some time people of different backgrounds can tend to collase into 1 group though either common ideals or by force. I will admit that in the northern provinves where the Ainu people live they'd still qualify as a distinct cultural minority, but the rest of the area has been erased in so far as background/heritage idenfity to be unimportant. What i meant by that statment is that reguardless of the pevious backgrounds in past generations there would by the standard of absorbtion, both natural and forced, be 1 japanese culture under that system, except for the Ainu and post-war influx. What i am saying here is that geographical location is also a key factor, moreso than race on par with with what you consider language should be.

AS to my first parts, i do have to admit some of my stuff was somewhat emotional, but it has been a pattern you cannot deny that theories developed in the early days, reguardless of how well the science was, require more evidence to disprove than those theories originally required to prove. Not all mind you, but important key ones have.

And my point about the online resources was to point out that most of the sites that would "support" my idea i do not find credible either for the same reasons. I just don't find for eastern part of the world the dates listed very credible because most scientist refuse to budge from their ideas without substanial proof, more than is needed. And yes, there are in some cases egoes on both sides.

[yellowdaddy]

yes, geography does matter, to varying degrees.
i imagine population size affects how much it matters - when the early splitting of indo-europeans took place, there won't have been very many of them at all, so each incipient group may simply have been a village just out of contact range with the others.

but what has any of this got to do with Riots?