Pre-Human Civilizations

OS--I think that you're trying to link genetics with cultural imperatives--and as an anthropologist it's good to be able to disengage the two.


Europeans indeed were an aggressive people.  Less to do with their genetics than it has to do with resources and the cultures that came into contact with them, and how they all got together.


In Europe, you got a lucky break for domesticatable species, fairly good deposits of materials and resources, and a good number of traders and exchanges, and the benifits of being knocked the fuck out by the Romans who gave them some culture when they were roaming around in woad and barely woven clothing.


The Romans had the lucky break to being savage little fuckers who stole the best from those around them, and had the good sense to build an empire based on sharing their good fortune with a selected few, who in turn took care of dissent and problems in their homelands, and made sure tribute flowed.  Without the Romans, the Europeans would never have advanced, because they were some backward motherfuckers.  Instead, they got to pick off the bones of the Roman Empire, and the fruits of their labor.  And in good competition with their neighbors, they advanced their war machines pretty well.  They were luckier, to be united in one religion, which gave them a common ground--and with a ruling gentry that traded members back and forth, it was a much more homogenized culture than a lot of folks like to admit.


You get conquored by the Romans, and treated to their version of "civilization" you come out one way.  You get conquored by the Chinese and treated to their version of "civilization" you get another.  You throw off the yoke of the Romans, but don't have the range of domesticatable species, or the ready resources that the Europeans had, you get Africa.  Especiallay when you add in Christianity without a strong rival faith, like Islam had with Christianity and Judaism, and still with the Hindus, and the other, much older cultures that they had strong ties with in the Middle East.


Instead, in Europe, you had a barbarian people who were thrust into the role of civilized folk, and given a culture whole cloth, and with great motivation to not really refer back to those "heathen" days, you get a monoculture.  Not quite the mix that you got elsewhere.  


European aggressiveness has much less to do with genetics, as it did with a whole continent of folks who had a case of cultural "short man" syndrome and an abusive father-culture who boot strapped them up the cultural ladder into literacy.
 
Hey, now, I gotta speak up for my ancestors. The celtic peoples may not have had cities or technology, but they had clothes- who do you think invented kilts?-, decent medicine, an alright oral education system, great hospitality traditions and, finally, far better sexual equality than the romans had, let me tell you.


Of course, we were bloodthirsty mo-fos who'd steal each other's cattle at the drop of a torc and who's favourite sport involved hacking at each other with big wooden sticks... So?


*upends mug of mead and gulps it down.*


Now if you'll excuse me, the next clan over kidnapped all our women and children while we were out taking their cows. Sure the craic is mighty.


Read some Asterix, man.   :D
 
In the words of MC Hawking:


Fuck The Creationists


Trash Talk


Ah yeah, here we go again!


Damn! This is some funky shit that I be laying down on your ass.


This one goes out to all my homies working in the field of


evolutionary science.


Check it!


Verse 1


Fuck the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches,


every time I think of them my trigger finger itches.


They want to have their bullshit, taught in public class,


Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass.


Noah and his ark, Adam and his Eve,


straight up fairy stories even children don't believe.


I'm not saying there's no god, that's not for me to say,


all I'm saying is the Earth was not made in a day.


Chorus


Fuck, fuck, fuck,


fuck the Creationists.


Trash Talk


Break it down.


Ah damn, this is a funky jam!


I'm about ready to kick this bitch back in.


Check it.


Verse 2


Fuck the damn creationists I say it with authority,


because kicking their punk asses be me paramount priority.


Them wack-ass bitches say, "evolution's just a theory",


they best step off, them brainless fools, I'll give them cause to fear me.


The cosmos is expanding every second, every day,


but their minds are shrinking as they close their eyes and pray.


They call their bullshit science like the word could give them cred,


if them bitches be scientists then cap me in the head.


Chorus


Trash Talk


Bass!


Bring that shit in!


Ah yeah, that's right, fuck them all motherfuckers.


Fucking punk ass creationists trying to set scientific thought back 400 years.


Fuck that!


If them superstitious motherfuckers want to have that kind of party,


I'm going to put my dick in the mashed potatoes.


Fucking creationists.


Fuck them.


-S
 
I'm actually slightly disappointed myself with this, but there was a study on human population genetics done maybe a year or two ago which found no neanderthal DNA in us at all. In fact, humans of both genders have genetic markers indicative of their lineage: The Y-Chromosome and the Mitochondrion, for men and women respectively. In both cases, the genetic variation throughout the population is startlingly low, and variations due to interbreeding between Neanderthals and Humans simply isn't there.


However, the events that caused that lack of variation may have happened after the interbreeding, I'm unsure of the dates. It's possible that Mitochondrial Eve, for example, was alive post-interbreeding, and simply had no neanderthal DNA by chance.


On the topic of Europeans: War isn't in the genes. War is a matter of culture, history and circumstance. I think there is a case to be made that northern civilisations settled and formed advanced technologies earlier because they didn't have the environment necessary to simply live of the land, as people could comfortably do furthur south. Of course, once you've settled and set up farms, you start thinking about soil fertility, and building materials, and they have more of that down south.


And I don't like the implication that the celts were savages. It's the kind of generalisation that leads people to think little of one another's heritages. Everyone learns most about their own civilisation's background, and that can sometimes give the impression that their history is richer or more complex than that of others.


There is an impressive book entitled "How the Irish saved civilisation". Essentially the idea goes that the Greeks invented much of what we think of as culture, and that culture was crippled after the fall of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages. Throughout all of this, according to the book, Ireland remained relatively isolated, and her monastaries maintained a comparatively abundant collection of books and knowledge. Toward the end of the Dark ages, it became fashionable to have an Irish monk as an advisor as a consequence.


Of course, you mention the celts in Pre-Roman times. The celts of then weren't nomadic, woad-coated barbarians. They lived in towns and cities and built forts. They tended flocks and practised agriculture. They had politics and families and rich legends. The Irish, at least, (And I speak so highly of them only because I know more about them than the other celts: see above) had a strong concept of personal honour, which is reflected in many of our legends; see Cuchulainn acting as Culainn's "hound" after slaying his prized guard-beast, etc.


It does one well to bear in mind other people's feelings on "Culture" before dismissing some civilisations as archaic or crude and exalting others (Remembering that the Romans also weren't very nice or cultured people themselves: They had good technology but they were no more "refined" than anyone else).
 
Samiel said:
It does one well to bear in mind other people's feelings on "Culture" before dismissing some civilisations as archaic or crude and exalting others
Click to expand...
Bearing this excellent point in mind I would recommend Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's Civilisations, which controversially concludes that cultures should be ranked according to how civilized they are, which leaves white westerners pretty low.  As we're talking about civilisation it should be remembered that anthropology has moved on from the racist Victorian presumptions of the past and now judges cultures according to very different standards, if at all.
 
I wasn't singling out the Celts as the only bloodthirsty bastards in Europe.  Pretty much, the mainland of Europe, and the upper tiers, had plenty of folks who made a lot of war and raided pretty hard on their neighbors--a lack of agricultural techniques made raiding a more favorable option than starving, and understandable.  


It carried over in the culture, and the British Isles were a great confluence of European factions.  Invaded over and over again, in successive waves, a gentry foisted upon them by the invaders again and again, it was a long while before the language of their own court was even English.


But let's face it the Gauls and the Danes had their own issues.
 
The mitochondrial and Y chromosome tests make the assumption that there were vast differneces between Homo Sap Sap and Neanderthals.  The problem is that there is no evidence of that in the fossil record.  Neanderthals, by the most recent numbers, diverged 200,000 years ago but so did the Australian Aborigines, yet we know that the Aborigines are Homo Sap Sap so why should we assume that Neanderthal is any different?  Just because the Neanderthal were more robust?  There is more difference between a native Swede and a native Sri Lankan than there is between a European and a Neanderthal.
 
There is still room to debate the genetics, but that still doesn't even address how you can put matters of aculturation, resource aquisition and domesticable species distribution as being simpler solutions than a supposed variant of the species that is aggressive because of a hybridization.


There is NO basis for it.  None.  What little we know about the habits of our European forebears in far pre-history, there is no evidence of especially aggressive behavior from any of the Europeans over other areas.  Evidence of their carnivorous habits, yes, but not so much on exactly how aggressive they were.  It's assumptions like that--that Europeans are genetically wired to be bastards--that leads to bad science, and is only a few steps away from the Bad Old Days when sociobiology was used to support all sorts of Ubermenschen theories.


I'm all for brining theories to light. And chewing them around a bit--but your conclusion is specious, at best, and based on poor if non-existant evidence and is naught but interesting supposition.
 
I tried learning Scottish Gaelic once. I think I was most thrown off by how little the spelling of a word resembles its pronunciation, at least from the perspective of anyone used to romance or germanic languages.


-S
 
Probably for the best. I'd have ended up revelling in nativespeak only to end up acting the mickey and slapping someone as gaelge. Never a good thing.


Dublin, eh? Many Exalted players up there? I only recently managed to convert a group of four to the cause, giving us about 12 players overall between my games, and I know of another game running somewhere.


Which, come to think of it, is quite a crowd for a city like Cork. Good old Cork, always exceeding expectations. You should visit, passport control is lax off-season.  8)


We even have a gaming shop (Smug grin)


Don't suppose you were at Warpcon?
 
No con for me, I'm afraid.


Though I'm sure there are Exalted players around here- Dublin city has two shops I know of that occasionally sell the books, and I overheard a pair of guys talking about Exalted once- I mainly picked it up for the setting while I was in America once a few years ago, and I've only recently engaged my regularly D&D friends in a game.
 
America? Look no furthur than Cork, my good man! We won't even scan your fingerprints on the way in!   :P


Next time you're in town 'gis a call, and I'll show you the gaming shop here. My family runs it, and under pressure from some of the staff we have some of the main books still in stock. Autocthonians, Abyssals and Siderials at the mo I think, along with some softbacks.


We have a webstore: www.otherrealms.ie, but I'll be the first to admit that it isn't maintained much. It still has a pre-christmas message on the index, I think.


Anyhoo, it's good to know there are more of us out there, in the wilds of Dublin. We should have a con someday.
 
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