Re: A sense of scale

From: Jeff <richaje_at_1jDNq6TSMEbNl0rs32SvYmsuKCSebqrJxPHC3S_DCAWSKbpmYSSGxzd2XvOzctGgnOe3>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 06:06:07 -0000

> > I fear you underestimate our own diversity. Want diversity in the real world? Just check out
> > the Bronze or early Iron Age Near East. Radically different languages, religions, cultures,
> > agricultural practices - you name it. All in an area about the size of the Lunar Empire.
>
> I may be wrong here but my understanding is that different groups gained a technological
> advantage over their neighbours, rose to dominate their area and were in turn overtaken by
> others. Not that there were multiple diverse cultures existing at the same time.

FWIW, it is unlikely that the sheep-herding Akkadian pastoralists living in their black tents had a technological advantage over the city-building Sumerians! But yes, the Near East had multiple diverse cultures existing at the same time. Some of that diversity remained until nearly the modern age (although it is largely gone in the 21st century).

> Agriculture is a poor guide to culture - what works in one place may not work twenty miles
> away. It is absurd to suggest the sheep farmers of the Cheshire plains are a different culture
> to those of the Pennine hills.

But they have been of different cultures in the past. Unless you consider all iron age mixed agriculturalists to belong to the same culture.

Jeff