Me>> But meeting places do not a civilization make as
>> the Rathori and the Uncolings have similar meeting places and nobody
>> describes them as civilized.
>Right, and this is from the publishing era when the RQ2 map showed Sartar
>dottied with cities that are really more properly towns, so "City of
>Wolves" could simply be a colloquial term.
>But it could well be some pre-Dawn kingdom.
Kingdom =/= Civilized Society. Is a Pentan King civilized?
Me>> I really think this notion of people degenerating into "cavemen"
>> after they had been defeated is patently ridiculous. The welsh,
>> for example, are not cavemen despite having been seemingly expelled
>> from much of England by the anglo-saxons. There would be stronger
>> similarities between the cultures above and beyond the fact that
>> they worship wolves, then you would suggest.
>I wasn't terribly clear. Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (highly
>recommended) has several examples of people who lost what seems like very
>basic technology, when it was no longer practical in a new environment.
He has three examples IIRC. The first are the Tasmanian Aborigines who do not fish. The second is the Tokugawa Shogunate which gave up guns ('basic technology', my eye) and the third are the polynesians who do not practice pottery (whereas their Lapita culture ancestors did) because the prevalence of coconut shells and flax which make pottery a redundant technology.
This is a very different thing that what you were suggesting: namely in moving, the Basmoli have lost agriculture, plows/swiden and other accoutrements whoelsale. You simply do not see that type of technological regression anywhere!
>Isn't it more true that the Welsh have contracted their range, rather than
>being expelled to a new and entirely different place?
Quibble. What about the Mormons who fled from the US to Deseret then? Nor did many of the Bantu tribes who fled Shaka Zulu give up their cattle and sorghum crops.
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