/tg/ - Traditional Games

>>210750

Any land that has great soil, sun, temperature, etc would foster an agrarian, peaceful, (theoretically) more advanced society with very high population rates and a tendency towards short-term planning. A land with poorer conditions would foster more warlike people, with shorter lifespans, younger marriage age, higher birthrates (but greater infant/general mortality) and low technological specialization; any surplus must be garnered through violence. Such a society would have sharp division of labor/societal roles according to gender, probably a high emphasis on religion, and a tribal mentality.

As for breaking up tribes by mountains, that would just isolate them into inbred subsistence hunting/farming communities. It's incredibly inefficient to spend the resources to trek through a mountain range with enough troops to take over a (theoretically equal-sized) village and occupy it until you've imported enough of your own citizens to muddy the waters, then assume that there will be any sort of real cohesion or cooperation between the two — and that assumes that someone else isn't going to pull the same thing right afterwards. Best environment for a warlike society is one that allows for relative ease of movement (or potential for such) but isn't too resource-rich or has a short growing season; places like the Mongol steppe or Scandinavia would work.

>>210755

>Any land that has great soil, sun, temperature, etc would foster an agrarian, peaceful, (theoretically) more advanced society with very high population rates and a tendency towards short-term planning.

Not in North America.

>>210756

Which is one of the flaws with this theory. That being said, there are large parts of N. America that aren't ideal for growing crops.

>New England

>pre-industrialized Midwest

>West Coast

>Southwest

>>210756

>>210759

There weren't any animals that could be domesticated into pack animals or livestock in North America. They did farm some river valleys with great success (see The Mississipian Culture) but many of these societies were obliterated very quickly by European diseases

>>210761

>There weren't any animals that could be domesticated into pack animals or livestock in North America.

This is something I think a lot of people ignore when talking about how poorly certain ancient civilizations fared. For most of their histories, the native peoples of America had to rely almost exclusively on dogs for their riding, carrying, and shearing purposes.

Makes sense, every island nation is obsessed with the Sun and claim the Sun originates from them/their ruler.

>>210781

buffaloes? horses?

>>210810

Damn you hollywood

>>210805

While bisons might be big enough to be pack animals or livestock, it is still a very dangerous animal to be around even with modern domestication efforts. A bison is likely to get defensive around people and attack them if it gets scared. The bison just might not be as ideal of an animal as the pre-domestic cow. Perhaps early cows were more relaxed and curious than bison, which made them easier to domesticate.

On the other hand, lets assume that early cows were just as difficult as bison. Eurasia is such a larger and more populated area than the Americas. With more people interacting with early cows, there are more chances for the animal to be domesticated. You really only need to domesticate an animal once in one spot. From there the decedents of your domesticated animals can spread over the world over the course of centuries.

There's also the factor that once you know it can be done with one animal, you're more likely to try with others. In Eurasia, you have 3 somewhat similar animals: ox, yaks, and cows. The domestication of one may have inspired the domestication of others.

>>210787

Buffaloes are ill tempered and poorly suited to domestication and the natives drove north american horses to extinction. Which isn't all that difficult considering eurasian horses would be extinct if not for domestication.

>>210750

Whether or not a civilization is belligerent would also depend on which other civilizations are nearby, as well as diversity of resources. Large agrarian societies would be easy to raid for resources and could eventually facilitate the growth of feudal societies.

Large populations would inexorably be linked to food and security, so stable areas with large agricultural output and domesticated animals.

Technology is mostly linked with necessity. Frequent warfare would definitely contribute to this, as well as specific cultural and environmental challenges. For example, Mediterranean cultures frequently employed siege engines in their extended wars, while Norse cultures with their raiding focused on fast ships.

Meanwhile, like OP mention, Aborigines had pretty much nothing due to never having to move out of the nomadic hunter gathering society.

Marriage styles would likely rely on the resource quantity and life safety. Areas where you have to work hard to gather food and survive would likely gravitate towards monogamy since the man has less time to focus on many spouses and the society would gravitate towards a hardworking people with strong bonds of trust and familiarity.

Meanwhile, areas with ample, easily gathered food would give people more time to laze around in general. The relative lack of existential threats could also lessen the evolutionary drive to secure your own offspring, meaning people would be less interested in spousal fidelity and bloodlines and leading to a more promiscuous society.

I imagine the marriage age would be linked to this as well. Harsher climates where you must be able to provide for your family might facilitate later marriage so both parties have gathered up the required resources to start a family.

Religion is more likely to be important for societies that constantly face existential threats. Believing that you can safeguard yourself by sacrificing to gods to lessen the chance of natural disasters would likely propel the development of priesthoods and temples.

I also seem to recall some implications that the lack of salt in the diet of people in arid areas could lead to more frequent hallucinations, which would handily explain the Abrahamic religions.

Clothing obviously relies first and foremost on the climate. Any specific cultural expressions through clothing or lack thereof would thus have to be limited to equatorial areas where neither little nor heavy clothing is required by the climate. Either way, fancy clothing would likely be a sign of status in any culture, whether it's the best furs or purely ornamental things.

Taboos on the other hand, are usually religion related, so I don't see how the area would dictate that.

Patriarchies are pretty much the default throughout most of human history. Men have usually been the ones most responsible for hunting, fighting, an otherwise securing the future of the family/tribe, as well as being genetically stronger and more action oriented, so it is only natural that they take charge.

Generally I'd assume the harsher the area is, the more guaranteed you'd be to have a patriarchal culture, whereas matriarchies would likely only arise in milder areas where survival is assured and a social focus is more important.

Monarchies, feudal systems and other autocratic forms of government are the natural choice when you have large agricultural societies that cannot effectively defend themselves. Democracy is more natural for smaller tribes or very well developed nations where you have large middle-upper classes with a lot of money and power.

Arts, literature and cultural evolution in general is always a byproduct of leisure. The safer the society is, the more free time people will have to pursue cultural exploits. Islands, stable city states with large middle and higher classes will naturally produce a lot of culture.

>>210750

Wow someone realized that living in the fucking desert, won't make you grow up a spoiled brat.

Give this man a nobel prize, and an oscar too.

>>210750

>Warlike/Peaceful

The more people are nearby, the more warlike you're probably going to be. If you live on an isolated island so small that every human being you ever know can fit inside your monkey sphere, you're not very likely to split into competitive tribes and kill each other. On the other hand, if the population is very dense, there's a very large number of people you don't know well or at all nearby, so humans will start splitting up into tribes and bickering. Resources have an impact, but only in that life-threatening famines can make otherwise peaceful societies more violent. Life-threatening famines aren't all that common (in most societies, famines are a historical event, not something that crops up every three or four years). High school kids split up into tribes and bicker with one another even when there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to be gained, and in fact because there's nothing whatsoever to be gained. There's enough people around to split into tribes and there's nothing to be gained from cooperation, so people default to competing with one another over nothing.

>Large/Small Population

This is tied directly to resources. When things are good, people will fuck like rabbits. When things are hard, people will have sex much less often. This instinct is imperfect, but any people past the resource threshold will starve. A consequence of this is that island societies will be smaller than continental ones, since it's much harder to find more land once you've tapped out what you've got.

>Technological Development

At the most basic level, you need to be in a river valley in order to really get started on the whole agricultural revolution thing. Once you've got agrarian societies figured out, the main thing is how many other agrarian societies you're networked to. This is why civilization flourishes along the silk road and whenever there's impenetrable barriers, like oceans, deserts, or arctic wastelands in between the silk road and another center of civilization, that center of civilization fails. Babylon gave way to Persia gave way to Greece gave way to Rome gave way to Britain gave way to America will give way to something else, but the chain keeps going because it's all one civilization. When the current empire at the heart of it falls, the neighboring states have absorbed most of the knowledge that empire built up, and one of them will end up becoming the successor. Africa and the Americas are pockmarked by isolated civilizations that rose up and then, when they fell, had no successors, constantly popping up to the second stage of the tech tree for a few centuries and then sinking back down again.

>Monogamy/Others

Monogamy makes strong civilizations. Various other arrangements make weak civilizations. Men with families will fight to defend them in war and work to support them in peace. Every extra wife the mayor has is one more man who declines to do any more work than what he needs to survive. As more and more labor is divorced from your ability to motivate actual human beings and instead tied up in machinery, this becomes less important, but that's not something that even begins to be a factor until the industrial revolution, and even in the modern day we're only beginning to see the possibility that it might soon become obsolete entirely. For now and for the immediate future, that's still how things are.

What makes a society choose to be monogamous in the first place is hard to figure out, because non-monogamous societies rarely live long enough to develop writing and give us a historical record to work off of.

>>211210

>cont

>Religious/Non-Religious

I have yet to see or hear of any primitive culture that was not religious. People are religious until societies start to become more important and influential over your day-to-day life than nature, then people become less religious.

>Nudity/Taboo

A hot, wet climate needs to have little to no nudity taboo just to function. Other than that it seems like a crapshoot. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks were fine with nudity, the Ottomans and Byzantines rather less so.

>Child/Late Marriage

Child marriage is typically practiced only by political elites for whom family and government are identical and dying without an heir can mean civil war or loss of office. Feudal societies are most famous for them, but fundamentally similar behaviors and attitudes crop up in nearly every advanced society.

Primitive societies tend to have younger thresholds for adulthood and people tend to start having kids from around 13+, but they also tend to have no institution of marriage.

>Patriarchal/Matriarchal/Egalitarian

Like the monogamous question, it's hard to say what makes societies choose patriarchal structures in the first place, but it's clear that anyone who doesn't ends up getting crushed before they become advanced enough to leave a detailed historical record.

>Monarchy/Democracy

Imperialist democracies are rare and borderline non-existent. This means that democratic nations are ubiquitously the result of a people getting sick of a tyrant's shit and throwing him out. All nations and civilizations start with a tyrannical or oligarchic structure in which power-mongers forge empires (tiny, tiny empires if you're early on the timeline). Other government types are the result of regime changes, usually occurring centuries down the line. The specific factors leading to a democratic revolution have little to do with environment and more to do with having a middle class large and powerful enough that it doesn't have to take the elites' shit anymore, and elites who don't realize this until it's too late.

>For instance, the Australian continent completely lacked any domesticatable animals or plants. So despite the vast size of the continent, the Aborigines never developed farming, and instead remained a hunter-gatherer society. That resulted in a low population that was nomadic. That meant no settlements and no government. And no settlements meant there was no metallurgy. And so on.

But that's wrong.

The Aboriginals burned down Australia and turned it into a desert twelve thousand years ago by reckless landscape burning.

>>210871

>similiar animal

>ox

An Ox is literally just a male cow that has been castrated.

>>210880

Pretty sure early cows, such as aurochs, were basically the same in mannerisms to buffalo

>>211214

This. And looking at how dumb as rocks they are today, let's not try to make some sort of excuses for them - or peoples like them - so we can pretend they're all the same inside.

>>211210

>The more people are nearby, the more warlike you're probably going to be. If you live on an isolated island so small that every human being you ever know can fit inside your monkey sphere, you're not very likely to split into competitive tribes and kill each other.

Then explain the Maori.

>>210750

Makes sense to me. Britain civilised hard, invented the industrial revolution, huge empire.

Denmark and sweden had vikings, followed by good steel.

Germany's always been industrious and productive.

In comparison, Spain went from a big empire based on slavery and theft to basically begging. Same for Portugal. Italy went from the Roman empire to a mafia-run shithole.

The main difference? Climate. Higher latitudes means more productivity. Compare even the shittiest of southern europe with equatorial africa, and there's a huge gulf.

Environmental determinism was debunked a long time ago.

The ignorance in this thread is astounding.

>>210750

>For instance, the Australian continent completely lacked any domesticatable animals or plants.

Wrong, the Australian continent had plenty of animals and plants which could be domesticated. They were either ignored for any domestication or hunted/used to extinction by the humans living there, this is not an "environmental effect" it's a human effect.

>Even if you don't fully buy into the theory, it's a really interesting way to approach worldbuilding.

It's looking at things from the wrong perspective, if that's what you mean. First you declare an answer, and then you look for a question which fits it.

It's really damn hard to write a story that way, the only reason you can say this shit about Australia is because you already know about modern Australia.

>>211749

It only makes sense to you because you haven't put even a modicum of thought into it, or else you would see the glaring logical fallacies.

>Britain civilised hard, invented the industrial revolution, huge empire.

But Britain is a small, closed off island with almost no resources.

According to OP they should basically be modern Australian aborigines, and they should be peaceful.

And yet they colonized two continents, conquered and subjugated half the planet.

>Higher latitudes means more productivity.

Jesus fucking Christ… higher latitudes have FEWER resources. And how do you explain the latitudes on the other end of the pole, closer to Antarctica? Why didn't South America, South Africa and Australia become superpowers before European involvement?

Is your thesis that North Europeans are more successful because they were closer to the negative pole of the earth magnetosphere? That magnets improved their brains?

You fucking retard you're putting zero thought into this!

>>210755

Except life isn't a D&D game, people aren't spawned in a spot. They can travel around and find better conditions.

Also conditions change over time. The middle east was at one point a fertile paradise, and this condition lasted for tens of thousands of years.

>>210759

Pre-colonial North America was largely fertile plains, they even had antelopes and lions.

>>210761

>>210781

>>210810

>>210871

>>210781

>>210871

Modern cows are descendant from water buffalo, which are 10x more aggressive than North American buffalo. Their modern equivalent, the African water buffalo, are the most dangerous animals on the continent. They are responsible for more deaths than predators such as lions.

Early (neolithic) European cattle were domesticated from the European buffalo, which are more difficult to tame than North American buffalo.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=10531142154

One early breed of cattle included Aurochs, which were about the same size as the North American buffalo, and as aggressive as water buffalo.

North America had plenty of deer, which North Europeans managed to domesticate, but North Americans did not.

The domestication of horses took about 16 thousand years, North America had plenty of species of horses from that period until colonization. Such as Equus francisci and many many others, none of which were domesticated by Native Americans.

Even the modern domestic horse is actually descended from a North American variety which crossed over the bering strait.

>the natives drove north american horses to extinction

Well whose fucking fault is that?

>>210787

>>210805

Buffalo's are extremely hard to domesticate without horses or other similar animals and horses were brought over by Europeans

>>211782

By whom, and how thoroughly? Even if it isn't a rigorous method for predicting behavior, it's still true that your environment to some extent affects your mannerisms.

>>211806

Look one post up.

>>211830

>By whom

By everyone, it is as thoroughly debunked as phrenology, and for the same reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_determinism#Decline

Enviornmental determinism was just brought back by people like Jared Diamond to "combat racism", but is itself extremely racist due to the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Oh and as an aside, Diamond is a shit peddler. He publishes mutually contradictory ideas all the time. Compare Guns, Germs & Steel, which claims Europeans only succeeded and Africans only failed because of their location, with his ideas in How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed where he argues the complete opposite.

You have three choices:

1. Every serious anthropologist ascribes human differences to politics, societies, cultures and the interactions thereof.

2. Diamond and the brain dead people he sells his books to think that human differences are due to geographic location, and that Africans should be expected to fail.

3. Actual national socialists during the 1920s ascribed human differences to geographic location, and claimed that certain europeans will always be superior so they should rule the world.

Two of these points of view are retarded.

>>211214

>>211323

They had the entire continent to themselves, so what if they burned bits of it down.

They also had small farms and even eel farms.

>>211863

>1. Every serious anthropologist ascribes human differences to politics, societies, cultures and the interactions thereof.

>2. Diamond and the brain dead people he sells his books to think that human differences are due to geographic location, and that Africans should be expected to fail.

>3. Actual national socialists during the 1920s ascribed human differences to geographic location, and claimed that certain europeans will always be superior so they should rule the world.

>Two of these points of view are retarded.

Fair enough, that's what I asked. Still, my point remains. Growing up in a taiga rather than temperate steppes is going to have some effect, however minor, on your development.

>>211795

Southern edges of of South America, Africa, and Australia are not as far south as much of Europe is North.

A quick comparison:

Greece is 39N

Buenos Aires, Argentina 34S

Melbourne, Australia 37S

Cape Town, South Africa 33S

>>211562

The sentence you're quoting is, in fact, an explanation of the Maori. You may wish to look up what the monkey sphere is, because you seem to think it is much bigger than it is.

>>211797

>>>210871

>

>Modern cows are descendant from water buffalo, […]Their modern equivalent, the African water buffalo, are the most dangerous animals on the continent.

I'm impressed you managed to write so much completly contradictory shit in one post. Bravo.

>>212023

That's because it's not contradictory to tame and domesticate a dangerous wild animal. No matter how antisocial.

We've domesticated foxes in 50 years, and their APA axes are proportionally much larger than anything that munches grass and lives in a herd.

>>210750

There's a reason why environmental determinism is made fun of. The word "can" is the most important word in the beginning of OPs post. Environments DO affect how societies progress. Greece had marble fucking everywhere, hence the massive buildings made out of marble. Scandinavia didn't, hence the thatch roofing and semi-underground housing. However, wood was and is very prominent in the area, hence the wooden halls.

Nothing is influenced simply by one factor. Not atoms, not stars, and especially not people. Inherent intelligence is a major factor, hence why the Abo's in Australia are savages and Japan, Korea, and China came out amazing in the Victorian era.

But you see, what people forget about Asia is that before the 1300s, China and Japan where on par if even beyond the technological capabilities of Europe. Now we go into conflict vs pacifism. China was unified was most of their history past their Warring States period, and Japan was… weird. They were pretty much like the yellow HRE, states fought each other, but there were 2 rulers. the Emperor was is literally considered a god, and the Shogun who was pretty much that generations Napoleon. The most famous Shogun's being the Tokugawa family.

Now, back to Ching-Chong mainland. The Chinese used something called a firelance for about 300 years. What this was, was a pseudo-flamethrower on a spear. Which used gunpowder and projectiles to fuck up your day. This was used by pretty much everyone in China, and could've been used to mop the floor with all of Europe.

As you can see, what defines a civilization is not the resources it's provided with, but what it does with them. Keep in mind that the Opium wars were won at sea, not by land. The Chinese, even with a vast disadvantage towards British technology, still could slaughter their troops.

>"Environmental determinism" is the belief

>belief

Correct.

It has no evidence to support it, and a mountain of evidence against it.

Anthro freshmen would laugh at you for bringing this up in a serious discussion, but I'll give you a pass since this is /tg/.

>>212423

I severely doubt that Chinese firelances could have been used to mop the floor with all of Europe.

>>212433

>Anthro freshmen

I just thought this was a person. Dammit.

>>211795

Speaking of Australian aborigines as "peaceful" people, didn't recent studies show how they wiped out the pygmies that lived in Australia before the aboriginals?

>>212436

Okay. You march an early pike formation into a wall of firelances and see who wins. The Chinese also had rockets and cannons around a century before the Europeans did.

You gotta understand, in the 12th century only 68 million people lived in Europe, it's estimated that 3 times that many lived in China. The most heavily populated parts of China, being the Yangtze river during the Song dynasty, held 2/3-3/4 of the population. Which was entirely under the control of the Song dynasty. That means that a population larger than Europe was almost entirely united under an Emperor for around 300 years.

My point wasn't that the firelance could destroy Europe, it's that the firelance, combined with the superior technology that China possessed at the time which included:

Cannons

Rockets

Much larger flamethrowers

Could be used in conjunction with an army about 1/3 the size of Europe's population. If it hadn't been for massive deserts and mountains, they probably would've took us over.

>>212547

A wall of single-use firelances would require a lot of gunpowder and other supplies. Cutting off the army's supply lines for that would hamstring them. They would be easiest to use in a defending city (where they did in fact see a bunch of use.)

Firelances were also hardly flamethrowers you fucking Chinaboo.

Also, marching a pike formation straight into a wall of firelances is retarded.

You'd set up a wall of stakes in the ground (or just have pikemen in ranks.) You'd fire a bunch of arrows into the Chinese and harass them with cavalry. You'd try to break up the wall of troops and then you'd move forward with the pike wall to finish up.

>>212560

I never said firelances were flamthrowers. The Chinese did have flamethrowers. And they also had land mines as recorded in the Huolongjing. Also, you're acting like the Chinese couldn't have just fired their cannons at the Europeans, which had better range than longbows. Cavalry could held at bay with the same fucking tactic you're describing. Chinese also had cavalry.

And if we're talking about a war inwhich one side can cut off the others supplies, please keep in mind that all tactics can work both ways. For example, sulfur was used to make gunpowder. Sulfur is found literally all over Europe, sans some Eastern Europe. Gunpowder isn't hard to make.

also

>pointing out that China was larger and as advanced if not more advanced than Europe until sometime in the 14th century

>get called a Chinaboo for bringing up historical facts

>>212540

Yep. The so called Aboriginals were not the original inhabitants at all, they wiped the actual original people out completely.

>>212587

It's too bad the Song Dynasty had their anuses reamed by the fucking Mongols, despite their technological edge. Who could have possibly thought that an invading army would be able to adapt and utilize technology they've seen their enemies use?

>>212587

Cannons are heavy anon. Cannons are most usable when sieging a place or when defending a place as otherwise they are hard to transport and aren't usable in all situations.

Also, cannons are not that much better than catapults.

>And if we're talking about a war inwhich one side can cut off the others supplies, please keep in mind that all tactics can work both ways. For example, sulfur was used to make gunpowder. Sulfur is found literally all over Europe, sans some Eastern Europe. Gunpowder isn't hard to make.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

Also,

>wank about superior Chinese technology

>yes, get called a Chinaboo

yall niggas talking shit about china not being able to conquer europe keep forgetting it were chinese siege engines the mongols used, and the majority of the mongol army were chinamen who didn't want to live the ass rammed life of a peasant. Basically the second horde, the golden horde, only stopped in Russia because of the black plague in europe, which was virulent in asia as well at the time and they knew what a hellhole it is.

what is today Russia wasn't affected by the black death until 1351, literally the last place to be affected by the black aids. So they stayed there, they didn't expand into aids infected europe.

China would anally violate europe if they came to open conflict, especially at that age. /pol/niggers keep forgetting our superiority came from exploring and forming colonies in the new world, before that we had no leverage on asia resource wise and everything we imported we had to pay four times more for because we had nothing equal to offer them. And the accidental discovery of the new world led us to progress in naval superiority so we could better manage our colonies and so we could protect them.

>For instance, the Australian continent completely lacked any domesticatable animals or plants. So despite the vast size of the continent, the Aborigines never developed farming, and instead remained a hunter-gatherer society.

that called being a nigger.they never bothered to try like nigger in africa

>>211797

>Modern cows are descendant from water buffalo

Wrong. Do know what Bos primigenius is?

>Their modern equivalent, the African water buffalo

Wrong. Or are you seriously saying that Syncerus caffer is the same as fucking species as Bubalus arnee?

>One early breed of cattle included Aurochs

Wrong. See above. The Aurochs is the ancestor of all modern cattle

Now seeing how utterly fucking wrong you, do you seriously think you should lecture people about anything other than the contents of your bellybutton?

>>212611

yall niggas talking shit about china not being able to conquer europe keep forgetting it were chinese siege engines the mongols used

The point of >>212602 is that Europeans would have done the same thing and adapted chink technology.

>>211863

>3. Actual national socialists during the 1920s ascribed human differences to geographic location, and claimed that certain europeans will always be superior so they should rule the world.

Human differences are hugely influenced by geographical location, true, but the idea that the NatSocs wanted to rule the world is silly. I'm sure some NatSocs did, just as there are some people from every country and some people from most ideologies who like the idea of ruling the world, but to suggest it's a tenet of National Socialism is absurd. I do apologize if you're not suggesting that, but that's how your post comes across to me.

>>210761

>many of these societies were obliterated very quickly by European diseases

This is an important point. By the time European descendants got any distance into the heart of the continent, European diseases had already plowed through. There were what, 11 serious diseases the Europeans brought over? That many plagues having wiped through the continent at once means most of the natives were in a post-apocalyptic state by the time settlers saw them.

>Warlike / Peaceful

How resource-rich is the land? Specifically, how rich are the resources that aren't necessary for survival? If the land can support a large number of people, but has few other resources, then those people would envy their neighbors' resources.

>Large / Small Population

This is pretty much down to nutritional resources, but hygiene and prevalence of disease is part of it too.

>Rapid technological development / Technological stagnation

You get advancement when resources are fairly abundant, but most importantly when critical functions like farming and defense can be covered by a smaller number of people, freeing up the inventors to work on new shit. Isolation will result in stagnation if the people are not in a very large group (compare Japan and China).

>Monogamy / Polygamy / Polygyny / Promiscuity

This is probably only indirectly affected by the environment. Promiscuity is more common in primitive cultures and in cultures where they are stable and advanced enough that very secure family units are not that important. Polygamy/polygyny typically only appears when there's a shortage of men (usually because a lot died in a war or something). Humans at least tend toward monogamy in the vast majority.

>Very religiously devout / not very religious

Religion is pretty ubiquitous until technology advances to the point that you need science, when you can start to test claims made by religions or show them to be conceptually ridiculous. For instance, a creation myth wherein people were created from drops of their god's blood will persist until biological knowledge reaches the public to the point that this no longer makes sense.

>Lack of clothing / Strong taboo against public nudity

Nudity taboos will appear in areas where exposure is a health concern, because being nude will more likely kill you and because people will be more sensitive to seeing other people's bodies. If people can physically stand being naked, everyone will get used to it and stop being upset or surprised or guilty when they feel aroused because they looked at some genitals. This is also highly dependent on the memes spreading through society. Nudity taboos can be easily spread between generations if there's some immorality attached to it.

>Child marriage / Late marriage (18+)

Obsolete concept, but r/K selection comes to mind. If you live in an area rich in resources where you have fewer children and invest more in them individually, you'll get later marriages. If resources are scarce and breeding quickly is important, people will get married younger.

>Patriarchal / Matriarchal / Egalitarian

This is hard to know, because patriarchal societies (in humans) tend to vastly out-compete the other types. The few matriarchal societies that we know of are still hunter-gatherers, or just gatherers. Egalitarian societies who risk the women (who are bottlenecks of reproduction) on dangerous work will be at a major disadvantage unless they are very advanced and technology has reduced those risks greatly.

>Monarchy / Democracy / Other government types

If this has anything to do with environment, it's probably to do with whether traditionally the people in a given location had to survive by being self-reliant or by cooperating well.

>Societies with a strong emphasis on arts and literature

…I guess it's mostly a product of abundant resources, enabling technology, and specialization leaving enough people to do work that's not strictly necessary for survival. Not really any particular environmental factor.

>>212685

Well, assuming if that bison can be domesticated (and, no, just because auroch was, it doesn't mean that it was possible), there was no singular Native American in civilization to begin with.

In North America there were many loosely connected ethnic groups of hunter-gatherers. Domesticated cattle would be a little use for them.

Agrarian civilizations were developing in South and Central America but didn't know much about them.

Also, none of these cultures was "in need" per se. They were fine (as in not-dying) on their own, and there was no plausible way for them to knew about other civilizations.

>>210750

Everything affects everything. Everything does not cause everything.

>>210750

I can't say for sure for a lot of them, though I believe that having geographic enclaves will result in a more fractured, and therefore more at war society. Europe is a mess of peninsulas, mountain ranges, islands and forests. It seems good to remind people that the most successful European empire ever only unified 2/3 of the continent we now think of as Europe. 1/2, if you count up to the Urals as Europe.

The patriarchal/ matriarchal/ egalitarian split in my opinion, is a function of contact with strangers. I believe women used to and still do have the lions share of power when it comes to relationships between the "in-group". Women were probably always masters of the home, and you see this repeated in all societies, that women govern hygiene, childcare, food gathering, food preparation, food and other supply stocks and interpersonal relations (gossip).

This sounds trivial, until you realise this consisted of 90% of what hunter-gatherer societies did. Men dealt with hunting and strangers. Hunting provided 30-40% of the calories, with female dominated gathering accounting for the rest.

However as societies moved towards larger and larger groups with the agricultural revolution, 2 things altered the state of play and humans had to adapt. Firstly, dealing with both in-group (politics) and out of group (warfare) strangers took on a far more important role. And secondly, men's muscle made their food production potential many times greater than women's on a farm. This meant in order for a society to be successful, male led political and military castes had to form, supplied by surplus labour generated by a male dominated workforce. This meant women had to produce more children than their hunter-gatherer counterparts. However, to say one society is matriarchal or patriarchal is obtuse. Men and women have always held the same base positions (dealing with strangers and the home, respectively). It's just some of these positions become more valuable given societal structure, and one's relative position. Only people at the very top of the food-chain are said to be "dominant" in society, even if the situation for the 90% was, is and always will be essentially egalitarian. It's just thee way market forces work.

Feck off hotwheels

>>212783

>Well, assuming if that bison can be domesticated

If you can breed them to select for more docile and obedient traits then guess what, you can domesticate them.

All this is dancing around the fact that some races are smarter than others and some are less smart, and these less smart races couldn't domesticate useful animals because they were too stupid to do it.

But that doesn't fit the "race is skin deep" joke so people struggle to come up with paper-thin excuses like BUFFALO CANT BE DOMESTICATED!!!\

Polite sage for /pol/ post although this is basically a /pol/ thread anyways.

>>212883

In theory, maybe. In practice, I doubt it. Domestication of animals is not something that happened often. For example, pretty much all the modern cows can be genetically traced to a single herd, which lived about 11 000 years ago. Humanity – depending on whom you ask – originated 40-200 000 years ago.

Also, good job for ignoring the rest of my argument.

>>212922

see >>212002

It was one of the main beasts of burden in north europe before horses got introduced.

>>212941

>Domestication of animals is not something that happened often.

That doesn't make it difficult.

>>213101

>To say nothing of the rich farmland of southern England, the rich fishing grounds of the coasts, the northern petroleum deposits, the tin of Cornwall, and the cattle/sheep grazing lands in Salisbury, the Cotswolds, and North and South Downs. England is some of the richest land in Europe, both in agriculture and minerals.

Do you want me to list the natural resources in Africa or something?

Also I suggest you look at England from satellite view, it's 90% been converted to farmland. If didn't start out that way, it started out as a forest, humans made it into an agricultural success. Do you think the forests cut themselves and land irrigated itself?

>>213589

>>Domestication of animals is not something that happened often.

>That doesn't make it difficult.

What? So it rarely happened historically, but it's somehow easy?

Even if the buffalo is just as difficult to domesticate, there is still plenty of non-/pol/ reasons why it may have not been.

For example:

1. The buffalo's natural habitat is was not a densely populated area. Fewer groups of people == less chance that one of them will domesticate them.

2. There wasn't a precedent for domestication in that region, other than dogs. The domestication of dogs is different from that of farm animals. Pre-domesticated dogs had a reason to approach humans: to get their scraps. Buffalos don't have that reason. Also dogs can serve as hunting companions, which gives them a purpose in hunter/gatherer times.

3. The most developed Native American civilizations were in Central and South America. That put the buffalo, at best, at the edge of a civilization who had the best chance of domesticating them. As "easy" as domestication my be, it still takes fairly significant time and resources.

Hell, even with our modern resources and knowledge we still haven't domesticated the buffalo.

>>213633

You really don't understand this difference: Bubalus bubalis vs Syncerus caffer? Domesticated. Species. Don't. Change. Their. Taxonomical. Genus. You. Fucking. Dipshit.

You want to talk like a authority on fucking domestication while clearly not understanding basic biology? GFTO.

>>213930

>what is today Russia wasn't affected by the black death until 1351

>map clearly shows its literally where the plague came from

Congrats you proved me right.

>>213633

>Yes, it's been proven easy

It might be easy to us, but we already know what we're doing.

>Soviet team proved complete and total domestication

The Soviets were a modern civilization who knew about animal behavior and evolution. They weren't a early agrarian or hunter/gatherer society.

/pol/ because of

>>212883

>That argument doesn't fly. Human settlements are invariably near water sources like rivers, where there's plenty of water all animals come to drink. Plus consider that every time a prey animal is killed, their offspring can be easily captured and tamed, which can lead to domestication. This is how domestication of cows happened.

Dogs were there for a byproduct of people, ie. scraps. Buffalo would just be there for the water. They'd have no reason to stick around people. One is a natural conversion and one is a forced conversion.

>But they never bothered.

Once again, domestication was rare historically and there was no precedent in that area.

>So North Americans didn't develop civilizations because they weren't civilized like Central and South Americans. This is a circular argument.

I just gave reasons to why buffalo might not have been domesticated, not why the northern tribes were less developed.

>>213942

>You do not understand taxonomy.

lol you're funny.

I gave examples which counter everything you've said, supported by sources.

I'd like to see some sources from you now please.

>African

Why did you highlight that? I'm sure it made sense in your head, but maybe you'd like to share with the rest of the class.

>>214013

Like I said, read the study, they didn't use complex methods. Basically let the foxes who were friendliest breed.

>Dogs were there for a byproduct of people, ie. scraps.

What was the horses need for humans, were they eating our scraps too?

>I just gave reasons to why buffalo might not have been domesticated

None of which made any sense in context. You claimed buffalo didn't hang around people, this is wrong. You claimed people had no way to capture buffalo, again wrong. You claimed buffalo was too violent to be domesticated, also wrong.

Seriously this is a laundry list of excuses that don't make sense.

>>210755

Rome vs Kalahari bushmen immediately puts a dent in your peace/war theory. I'd actually pin the war/peace aspect of cultures down to boom/bust periods of food and space. Places which are consistently poor places to live tend not to develop warlike cultures simply because the profit to be gained by raiding is far outstripped by the potential loss of a life. Similarly, consistently 'good' territory, in stable conditions, is quite likely to reach it's carrying capacity peaceably and then drop off.

The real kicker here is what happens when there is a period of 'good times' followed by harsh times, and the population of a territory exceed it's carrying capacity. These often form the basis of the 'first aggressors', although their actions can, in turn, shape the culture of those they raid.

>>210895

Polygamy: Then how does one explain polygamy among the Arabs, who, for much of their early existence, lived in a decidedly unfriendly climate? No, my friend, the existence of polygamy has a lot more to do with high mortality rates brought about by some reason or another, usually fighting, and the desire to subjugate a neighbouring culture more easily.

>>211211

Explain Venice. A Republic that wasn't founded on the overthrowing of a monarch.

>>213589

>That doesn't make it difficult.

It shows how unlikely it was.

>Basically let the foxes who were friendliest breed.

They initially had 130 fox selected from fox farms, which already practiced some form of selective breeding.

They also had laboratories, electricity, heating systems and substinenance supply.

They also had a reasons to do it, unlike your typical Native American tribe, which had no use for tamed buffalo.

>>211797

>North America had plenty of deer, which North Europeans managed to domesticate, but North Americans did not.

Reindeer are not really domesticated at all.

>For instance, the Australian continent completely lacked any domesticatable animals or plants

All plants can be cultivated, all animals domesticated.

>>214141

>They initially had 130 fox selected from fox farms, which already practiced some form of selective breeding.

[citation needed]

16% of wild caught otters display domesticated characteristics, 14% of wild caught rats. You can be certain buffalo are well above that margin, but let's take it as a bare minimum.

Prior to arrival of Europeans there were around 30 million buffalo in north america, ranging in great herds that numbered in the thousands. Assuming American Natives captured a tiny herd of a hundred buffalo, more than sixteen of those would have the behavioral characteristics of domesticated cattle already. And sixteen is more than manageable by a small tribe, plus being enough for a seed herd.

So no, it's not impossible.

>They also had laboratories, electricity, heating systems and substinenance supply.

Most of which was needed to record the experiment, not actually make it happen faster.

>They also had a reasons to do it, unlike your typical Native American tribe, which had no use for tamed buffalo.

What reason is there in domesticating foxes? They make shitty and unpopular pets.

I'd say the Native Americans had far more reason to domesticate the bison, which would provide a constant source of food for the natives, aiding their very survival.

I doubt the scientists had that much incentive.

>>214187

[citation needed]

They're used for transportation and labor, they are milked, they are slaughtered for meat and bred in captivity. Using this definition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication#Domestication

They are domesticated.

You may use an incorrect definition if you like, I can't stop that.

>>214039

Before I continue, I'm talking purely about the lack of domestication in North America.

>Like I said, read the study, they didn't use complex methods. Basically let the foxes who were friendliest breed.

Sure, the basics of domestication is not complex. It's breed the friendly ones, kill the aggressive ones. However, it takes a significant amount of time and effort. It's going to take many generations of selective breeding.

In the fox experiment, It took 6 generations to get a few of the foxes to a dog like level of domestication. For argument's sake, let's say it takes a minimum of 6 generations to get domesticated animals. A bison can produce a calf at 3 years, so that's 18 years minimum to produce a domesticated bison. That's a really long time, especially for a primitive tribe. That's the best case scenario, where the tribe is focused, knows what it is doing, there is sufficient bison populate to pick docile ones from, and there is no unfortunate circumstances. If any of those best case factors aren't there, then it can take significantly longer for domestication to happen if the process isn't stopped outright.

>What was the horses need for humans, were they eating our scraps too?

The North American tribes didn't domesticate the horse. They hunted them to extinction. They only managed to domesticate dogs, which I'm arguing is a much easier and more likely occurrence.

>None of which made any sense in context. You claimed buffalo didn't hang around people, this is wrong. You claimed people had no way to capture buffalo, again wrong. You claimed buffalo was too violent to be domesticated, also wrong.

How doesn't that makes sense?

How exactly did buffalo hang around people? Because we both need water? That's hardly a social relationship.

I never claimed they couldn't catch buffalo.

I also never claimed buffalo were too violent. I explicitly started talking about reasons that had nothing to do with the aggressiveness of the animal.

Right here:

>>213613

"Even if the buffalo is just as difficult to domesticate" aka let's ignore the aggressiveness argument.

>>214216

This is true, but misleading. Yes, you can meet the definition of cultivation or domestication with any animal; all that requires is inducing human-controlled genetic changes over time. The real question is whether any useful animals existed in the area. Even if you don't domesticate animals, you can do what certain South American tribes did with guinea pigs (kek), and just keep them for food without causing any actual changes to their physiology.

Anyway, environmental determinism is partially correct in that it shapes human biology and resource availability. Human biology or biodiversity is important in a number of ways, but it does not alone determine culture or the potential for society (unless you're retarded on average like Aborigines). The energy regime involved is more important for the general structures in society, but unlike biology and environment is not strictly deterministic.

You do not have organized religion, division of labor, or standing armies in non-agricultural societies. Almost all hunter-gatherers are communal, egalitarian (but ruthless about it - think Sparta, or for a more relevant example Inuit elder abandonment), and non-specialized. In the rare cases were hunter-gatherer societies do have organized religion - as opposed to informal role-taking - it is typically a single individual acting in the capacity of a shaman-type figure and may or may not be hereditary.

Despite those general structures linked to the energy regime, though, there are certainly some environments that seem deterministic. Fishing tribes and cities are often relatively non-violent and particularly hierarchical.

Sometimes unique considerations such as a lack of available land can cause distinct effects. This is why Tibetans practice polyandry, for instance (no land = can't split plots = brothers all marry one wife and have kids with her).

>>214381

>so that's 18 years minimum to produce a domesticated bison

You realize you're arguing against yourself here, right? That's short time compared to literally every other domesticated animal.

>The North American tribes didn't domesticate the horse. They hunted them to extinction.

And this wasn't an environmental factor, it was a human factor.

>How exactly did buffalo hang around people? Because we both need water? That's hardly a social relationship.

Humans didn't have a social relationship with cows or cats or horses either, yet we domesticated all of them. Having a social relationship is not a prerequisite for domestication.

>>215624

Are we looking at the same picture? Resilience is low in Britain, and the best land is in the part of Europe that always lagged behind the rest (east europe).

Meanwhile look at the Americas, ridiculously good quality on two continents.

So why didn't the Americas develop faster than Europe again?

This is going off your image, which I don't think is even correct. They have Egypt marked as the lowest, despite it being called the "breadbasket of the world" for 5000 years.

>>215806

>This is going off your image, which I don't think is even correct. They have Egypt marked as the lowest, despite it being called the "breadbasket of the world" for 5000 years.

>the world

But you're right, Sicily, Northern Africa and Mesopotamia used to be much more agriculturally important. Not only the climate changed, but as the disruption of irrigation system in Asia by the Mongols showed, in the end humans have an important part in deciding how rich the soil is. Take for instance the Amazonian indios, who managed to cultivate absolutely shitty jungle soil cutting, burning and fertilizing it until it became terra preta.

TL;DR: Diamond = BTFO.

i thought that it wasn't a single factor but a clusterfuck of environment, race, religion, closest civilizations, politics, average vagina moistenes and lots of other shit

i once tried to make random world generator like that but i resigned after i understood that i would have to make 5 dimensional graphs to even try to make it right

>>215430

>You realize you're arguing against yourself here, right? That's short time compared to literally every other domesticated animal.

That's 18 years bare minimum in the absolute best case. It's also assuming that the fox and bison domestication are equal. The bison one has one calf, where as the fox has a litter of 4 to 6. Since you get 16% to 25% of the newborns to choose from per generation, I'd argue that it would likely take 4 or 6 times longer. Remember: this is absolute best case. Events like famine or war could reset the process entirely.

>Humans didn't have a social relationship with cows or cats or horses either, yet we domesticated all of them. Having a social relationship is not a prerequisite for domestication.

I'm not saying it's a prerequisite. I'm saying it significantly improves the chances.

>>215882

The overriding element is culture.

>>210750

>>Warlike / Peaceful

Competition for resources? Some boom/shortage cycles (population increases, then there's not enough for all) + overcrowding vs. stable environment + low population density.

>>Large / Small Population

Supply of food and fuel vs. how much is needed to live there.

>>Rapid technological development / Technological stagnation

Need to adapt to new conditions + availability of resources to play with vs. no reason to bother.

>>(the rest)

irrelevant

While not all environment-defined, an interesting bit here. Such a little detail, and where it led.

forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8518&whichpage=40&SearchTerms=hunting%20by%20night

I would really like for someone to try to explain hawaii before unification from what I've read.

Small population, isolated, but very warlike.

>>215882

Sounds like the next Dwarf Fortress update.

>>223214

From what little I've read, it's rare to find an islander culture that doesn't have some tradition of badass warriors and either cannibalism or fighting off cannibals.

Likely that islands having very little resources and lots to fight over contributes to that.

>>215806

Egypt relies pretty much entirely on the Nile and is desert outside of that.

Apparently it might have been way more fertile thousands of years ago, but overgrazing turned the rest into desert.

>>215906

>That's 18 years bare minimum in the absolute best case

You are aware that domestication and adoption of domesticated animals happened over 1000s of years, right? If something confers a selective advantage, IE, being managed by humans, it will lead to the development of characteristics that maximise that selective advantage, IE, being tamed. 18 years is a fairly short time for this to occur on a biological timescale.

>I'm not saying it's a prerequisite. I'm saying it significantly improves the chances.

This is an asinine comment. We did not have a social relationship with ANY animal before we domesticated them. Undomesticated wolves are reviled as much as hyenas in communities that live nearby them.

Saying having a social relationship with animals significantly improves the chances of domestication is like saying being in a relationship with a girl before you ask them out significantly increases the chance of them going out with you.

>>223445

>Apparently it might have been way more fertile thousands of years ago, but overgrazing turned the rest into desert.

Are you seriously blaming the sahara desert on "overgrazing"?

I get it, you like Diamonds theory. But you can't keep lying to yourself. The fertility of Egypt has always come from the Nile. Geographic, archaelogical, and cultural evidence supports this. The reason Egypt is not a major world power has far less to do with "overgrazing" and far more to do with anthropology.

>>216218

Culture is a product of race.

>>224820

Las Vegas run by the Muslim equivalent of Fred Phelps with the Infinite Money cheat turned on.

Spec Ops The Line was probably right; as soon as the oil stops making them tons of money (which may already be happening with Iran's sanctions lifted) that city is going to become a dust bowl.

>>224877

But to be slightly more serious; the Arabian peninsula in modern times is an interesting case; for most of history it was a nearly unlivable desert that mostly thrived as a trade hub between Europe, Africa and Asia, then got kinda fucked over when sea trade rendered them redundant, and then suddenly they happened to be sitting on a resource that became the most important thing in the world.

I think that relates to something I've read about called the 'resource curse'; an area that has a single, highly valuable resource and not much else, so whoever controls it rules pretty much unopposed; meaning you'll either have a stagnant government with little incentive to evolve or develop beyond the bare minimum to further exploit it, or a war-torn hellhole where everyone is constantly fighting over said resource and everyone else in the world sends in troops or proxies so they can get their hands on it.

>>224842

No, it's not. Race is a product of environment, and the environment noticeably changes the culture, but there the linkage ends.

In cities with strong histories of immigration, populations of Caribbean blacks and "generic" (mix of African and Caribbean heritage) blacks have significantly different cultures, despite being racially similar. Your appearance can change how the culture you're dealing with will treat you, but the culture's genetic lineage has absolutely no bearing on that.

>>225025

>has absolutely no bearing on that.

"that" being "how the culture acts in general". Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

>>214381

>18 years to domesticate an animal

If I could domesticate an animal in 18 years I would be finding fucking lions and taming them.

>>225025

Race isn't just an appearance, race affects how you think, act, and fuck. If you plop a group of whites in the middle of Africa chances are in 10,000 years they would be butt-fucking Africans because food is so abundant there is no need to do anything. They'll probably be so bored that they'll just slaughter each other and anything near them.

>>225172

And that's presuming you know exactly how domestication works.

Humanity had to figure all this shit out with no help at all. I imagine in a lot of cases, like the domestic cat, it happened half by accident.

>>225178

Culling isn't hard to do. Getting the animal to not kill me is hard, but everything else is much easier. Now, training the animal is on a whole different level. That's not what I'm looking for, though.