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Climate Refugees Pt. 2

Re: Climate Refugees Pt. 2

Unread postby diemos » Sun 21 Apr 2019, 09:37:29

One of the core default beliefs of human beings is: "The way things are now ... are the way things have always been ... and the way things always will be."

And because of that people won't see change coming or adapt to it even if it's obvious.
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Re: Climate Refugees Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Sun 21 Apr 2019, 10:13:34

diemos wrote:One of the core default beliefs of human beings is: "The way things are now ... are the way things have always been ... and the way things always will be."

And because of that people won't see change coming or adapt to it even if it's obvious.


In fairness to my fellow human beings until the year 1810 or so cultural/technological changes were very slow, a rate we would not even notice with our current perspective. The first successful steam pump for draining mines was produced in 1699. It was not until 1769 that the first 'steam powered wagon' was built successfully and the first steam powered boat did not appear until 1805. Today if we don't get a new iPhone annually we feel cheated somehow.

Going the other direction from the Bronze Age (1500 BC) until around 1350 military missile weapons were bows, crossbows and catapults. When Gunpowder was introduced into warfare it was initially used as propellant to boost spears in China for several centuries before building 'hand cannon' to propel 'bullets' at high speed was conceived. A century later the matchlock arquebus was common military technology for two centuries before a reliable common flintlock was developed to replace it. Steam power made mass producing the cap-lock and then the solid cartridge breech loader affordable in the 1830's and 1860's respectively, compared to the 500 years it took to go from loose powder hand canon to the use of interchangeable parts on flintlocks in the 1790's.

All those changes in technology around Gunpowder, based on various mixtures of Sulfur, Charcoal and Potassium Nitrate, took half a millennia, and all three of the ingredients were well known to ancient western civilizations, they just never figured out how to mix them explosively.

So be fair to your fellow humans, all of civilization and before change was rare and catastrophic, not common and beneficial. The kind of changes noticeable to your ancestors in the Bronze age was a persistent drought that caused mass migration and destroyed two of the three great Empires of the period. At the same time that same climate change impacted the mountain civilization of the Andes to the point that they developed highly technical potato agriculture as a way to feed themselves, then when the drought broke it brought devastating floods and rotted the potatoes causing a civilization collapse there as well.

By far the most common cause of civilization collapse and transition in archeological findings is climate change. That is why today you can tour Hopi cliff dwelling in New Mexico and Arizona that were abandoned, or the Maya pyramids that were abandoned when their civilization collapsed.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Climate Refugees Pt. 2

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sun 21 Apr 2019, 12:33:08

Its very fashionable now to blame collapse of ancient civilizations on climate change, but there is considerable evidence that many ancient civilizations were destroyed and collapsed due to civil war and/or conquest. AND in some cases where climate change weakened a culture or civilization, the end came through civil war and/or conquest.

The abandonment of Anastazi cliff dwellings in the SW USA appears to have occurred during a period of climate change resulting in a prolonged drought, but it also corresponds to the arrival of the Navaho in the SW. In fact, the Navaho word for enemy is "Anastazi." One theory is that the Navaho arrived and attacked the Anastazi, dealing a fatal blow to many of the cliff dwellings.

Another theory is that there was a conflict within the Anastazi culture. Recent archeological findings seem to show murder and cannibalistic consumption of the former inhabitants of multiple cliff dwellings, suggesting conflicts existed between the cannibals and their human dinners.

Cannibalism and the Anastazi

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Re: Climate Refugees Pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Sun 21 Apr 2019, 17:06:05

Causes of collapse are generally complex. In fact, complexity itself is generally a major cause, directly or indirectly, as Joe Tainter pointed out in The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988).
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Re: Climate Refugees Pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 21 Apr 2019, 17:39:12

And maybe those two things are related. Climate change prompted movement, stable cultures were encouraged to reach out for new and more resources, which brought them into other cultures also under stress and hence aggressive.

Maybe?
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