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#Post#: 4033--------------------------------------------------
How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to Inve
nt Civilization (?)
By: guest5 Date: February 7, 2021, 4:54 pm
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How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to
Invent Civilization
[img width=1280
height=853]
HTML https://pocket-syndicated-images.s3.amazonaws.com/5ee8de1c77660.jpg[/img]
[quote]Overhunting of megafauna such as mammoths might have
caused us to take up farming, which ultimately brought about
modern-looking communities.[/quote]
[quote]Why did we take so long to invent civilization? Modern
Homo sapiens first evolved roughly 250,000 to 350,000 years ago.
But initial steps towards civilization – harvesting, then
domestication of crop plants – began only around 10,000 years
ago, with the first civilizations appearing 6,400 years ago. [
See also:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/mythical-world/the-birth-of-civilisation-cult-of-the-skull-(8800-bc-to-6500-bc)/<br
/>]
For 95 percent of our species’ history, we didn’t farm, create
large settlements or complex political hierarchies. We lived in
small, nomadic bands, hunting and gathering. Then, something
changed.
We transitioned from hunter-gatherer life to plant harvesting,
then cultivation and, finally, cities. Strikingly, this
transition happened only after the ice age megafauna – mammoths,
giant ground sloths, giant deer and horses – disappeared. The
reasons humans began farming still remain unclear, [ See also:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/human-evolution/misinformation-about-racial-origins/<br
/>] but the disappearance of the animals we depended on for food
may have forced our culture to evolve.[/quote]
[quote]Early humans were smart enough to farm. All groups of
modern humans have similar levels of intelligence, suggesting
our cognitive capabilities evolved before these populations
separated around 300,000 years ago, then changed little
afterwards. If our ancestors didn’t grow plants, it’s not that
they weren’t clever enough. Something in the environment
prevented them – or they simply didn’t need to. [/quote]
[quote]This will to sacrifice, to devote personal labor and, if
necessary, life itself to others, is most highly developed in
the Aryan. The Aryan’s greatest power is not in his mental
qualities necessarily, but in the extent of his readiness to
devote all his abilities to the service of the community. In
him, the instinct of self-preservation can reach its noblest
form because he willingly subordinates his own ego for the
prosperity of the community and is even willing to sacrifice his
own life for it, if necessary.
The reason for the Aryan’s constructive ability and especially
his ability to create civilizations does not lie in his
intellectual gifts. If he only had intellectual abilities, they
might easily be destructive and he would never be able to
organize and build. The essential character of the individual
depends on his ability to forfeit his personal opinions and
interests and to offer them instead for the service of the
community. Only by serving his community and assuring its
prosperity does he receive his own rewards. He no longer works
only for himself, but takes his place within the structure of
the community, not only for his own benefit, but for the benefit
of all. The most wonderful demonstration of this spirit is
through Work. He understands that his labor is not just for his
livelihood, but his labor serves the interests of the community
without conflicting with community’s interests. Otherwise, the
goal of his work is only self-preservation without consideration
for the welfare of the community. — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf,
pg. 196[/quote]
[quote]This is usually how their development occurs: Often,
amazingly small groups of Aryan tribes overpowered other peoples
and caused the dormant intellectual and organizing powers of the
conquered people to surface. These abilities were unexercised
until the Aryans awoke these abilities in the lesser race. The
benefits of the particular living conditions in the new
territory, such as the fertility of the soil, climate, etc.,
made it possible for them to accomplish this cultural
reawakening by using the large number of available workers from
the inferior race. Often in a few thousand or maybe just a few
hundred years, they built up civilizations which originally
displayed every inner mark of their founder’s character but were
adapted to fit within the special qualities of the local area
and the characteristics of the subjugated people. — Adolf
Hitler, Mein Kampf, pg. 192[/quote]
Continuing with the article:
[quote]Global warming at the end of the last glacial period,
11,700 years ago, probably made farming easier. Warmer
temperatures, longer growing seasons, higher rainfall and
long-term climate stability made more areas suitable for
cultivation. But it’s unlikely farming had been impossible
everywhere. And Earth saw many such warming events – 11,700,
125,000, 200,000 and 325,000 years ago – but earlier warming
events didn’t spur experiments in farming. Climate change can’t
have been the only driver.[/quote]
[quote]Human migration probably contributed as well. When our
species expanded from southern Africa throughout the African
continent, into Asia, Europe and then the Americas, we found new
environments and new food plants. But people occupied these
parts of the world long before farming began. Plant
domestication lagged human migration by tens of
millennia.[/quote]
[quote]If opportunities to invent farming already existed, then
the delayed invention of agriculture suggests our ancestors
didn’t need, or want, to farm. [ See also: Aryan Diffusion and
compare with Turanian Diffusion ][/quote]
[quote]Agriculture has significant disadvantages compared to
foraging. Farming takes more effort and offers less leisure time
and an inferior diet. If hunters are hungry in the morning, they
can have food on the fire at night. Farming requires hard work
today to produce food months later – or not at all. It requires
storage and management of temporary food surpluses to feed
people year round.
A hunter having a bad day can hunt again tomorrow or seek richer
hunting grounds elsewhere, but farmers, tied to the land, are at
the mercy of nature’s unpredictability. Rains arriving too soon
or too late, droughts, frosts, blights or locusts can cause crop
failure – and famine. [/quote]
[quote]These abilities are the clearest in the race which has
been, and is, the bearer of human cultural development: The
Aryans. The moment Fate imposes special conditions on them,
their inborn abilities surface at a quicker pace and their
genius is shown through the physical result. The cultures they
create are almost always determined by the soil, the climate,
and the conquered people. The last of these elements is the most
important. The more primitive and the greater the technical
limitations of any acquired culture, the more effort will be
required for the civilizing activity and therefore the more
man-power will be needed. When the man-power is organized,
concentrated, and applied, it can substitute for the power of
mechanical machines. Without the availability of lower ranked
men, the Aryan could never have taken the first step toward his
later civilizing of those people. It is the same as if he had
never tamed and used various domesticated animals to help build
the foundation of civilization. Then he would have never arrived
at a level of technical development which now is gradually
permitting him to do without these very animals. The saying,
“The Moor has finished his job, so let him now depart” (possibly
a paraphrase from Shakespeare’s Othello, also attributed to the
German poet Schiller) has an unfortunate meaning which is deeply
true today. — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pg. 194[/quote]
Back to the article:
[quote]Agriculture has military disadvantages as well.
Hunter-gatherers are mobile and can travel long distances to
attack or retreat. Constant practice with spears and bows made
them deadly fighters. Farmers are rooted to their fields, their
schedules dictated by the seasons. They are predictable,
stationary targets, whose food stockpiles tempt hungry
outsiders.
And having evolved to the lifestyle, humans may simply have
loved being nomadic hunters. The Comanche Indians fought to the
death to preserve their hunting lifestyle. The Kalahari Bushmen
of southern Africa continue to resist being turned into farmers
and herders. Strikingly, when Polynesian farmers encountered New
Zealand’s abundant flightless birds, they largely abandoned
agriculture, creating the Maori moa-hunter culture. [ See again:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/mythical-world/turanian-diffusion/<br
/>] [/quote]
Read the rest of the article here:
HTML https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-the-extinction-of-ice-age-mammals-may-have-forced-us-to-invent-civilisation?utm_source=pocket-newtab
#Post#: 9708--------------------------------------------------
Re: Simple living movements
By: Zea_mays Date: November 8, 2021, 3:29 pm
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HTML https://i.redd.it/gg8plv079ov71.png
I think observing people's reactions to the sentiment in this
image is a good way to gauge if they have gatherer blood memory
or farming blood memory.
My first thought was that the poster was nostalgic for a
pre-industrial simple agrarian life, but many people in the
comment section seem to be interpreting it as hunter-gatherer
nostalgia (and multiple people even repeat the assertion of
Jared Diamond (chosenite) that agriculture was "the worst
mistake in history"...)
HTML https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race
[quote][quote]Agriculture is where it all went wrong. We were
better off as hunter/gatherers.[/quote]
I feel like it wasn’t so much agriculture as it was the
industrial revolution that lead us astray[/quote]
HTML https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qfs0u9/right/hi1r0lz/
For some strange reason, many communist-influenced people (like
those on the Reddit forum linked above) idealize hunter-gatherer
society because they believe it was "economically egalitarian"
compared to the subsequent stage of civilization in farming
societies.
Biologically, it's literally insane to think hunter-gatherers
were somehow "egalitarian". The skeletons of Paleolithic
hunter-gatherers are easily contrasted to later Neolithic
individuals, because the hunter-gatherers had quite extreme
sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism is inequality literally
written into our DNA and our bones. That's way more absolute,
oppressive, and difficult to change than man-made economic
systems which varied from culture to culture and time period to
time period. (And, going on a tangent, I suspect that sexual
dimorphism is why so many teenagers these days express gender
dysphoria and call themselves "non-binary", since they developed
a sense of personal "identity" prior to puberty and are
psychologically unable to process the changes of their "new"
dimorphic self and unable to transition into the social class of
adulthood). Good luck abolishing the oppression of sexual
dimorphism with a communist revolution. There was only one
ideology which was actually capable of doing that!
Also, this isn't even pointing out the fact that hunter-gatherer
societies observed historically typically had very very strong
gender roles assigned to labor and social status/customs!!!
...So the communist assertion that hunter-gatherers are
"economically egalitarian" isn't even accurate. The only thing
stopping hunter-gatherer societies from reaching the same level
of "class" stratification and material wealth accumulation as
farming civilizations (and, later, industrialized civilizations)
is that hunter-gatherer groups were much smaller. Even then,
modern and historically-observed hunter-gatherer groups usually
have an "elder" class, priest class, hereditary leadership in
one or both of those, special status for 'elite' hunters or
warriors, etc.
#Post#: 9715--------------------------------------------------
Re: How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to
Invent Civilization (?)
By: 90sRetroFan Date: November 9, 2021, 12:20 am
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"many people in the comment section seem to be interpreting it
as hunter-gatherer nostalgia"
Yes, as if we didn't have enough problems with losing a large
chunk of leftists to progressivism, among the remainder of
regressives we lose another large chunk to these guys.
While pro-hunting types are barbarians who should simply be
executed, I would be willing to have a respectful conversation
with those (vegans) who support a pure gathering lifestyle over
a farming one. Some of them have genuinely good intentions, and
dislike farming on serious ethical grounds (e.g. ploughing might
kill worms etc.). In theory, we should be able to collaborate
with these types by convincing them that they have more in
common with us than with the pro-hunting types. But in practice
they often have anarchist tendencies that both causes them to
reject our strong statist position. Without state intervention,
however, there will be no organized phasing out of modern
complexity, so by not being anti-statists they will never see
their ideals realized beyond the scale of intentional
communities that will not affect the rest of the world's
continuation towards ever-increasing complexity.
"Biologically, it's literally insane to think hunter-gatherers
were somehow "egalitarian". The skeletons of Paleolithic
hunter-gatherers are easily contrasted to later Neolithic
individuals, because the hunter-gatherers had quite extreme
sexual dimorphism."
Even more obviously, do non-cannibalistic hunters treat prey
species as "equals" to their own?
It is farming habitats that permits evolution away from
tribalism. Contrast the attitude of the universalist
farm-evolved chicken with that of the tribalist wild-evolved
eagle:
HTML https://ng.opera.new
s/ng/en/pets/da8548d583e3d5764107aea63139b2e9
[quote]He took an eagles egg and placed it in the chickens next,
he also too the hens egg and dropped it in the eagles nest
...
soon after the egg harshed the eagle immediately noticed the
strange creature amongst them and could not forgive the farmer,
she sidelined the hens chicks and will only give food to her
biological chicks.
The hen on the other hand took in the eagles chick and treat it
as if it were her own, chickens have great maternal abilities
and very good at raising babies.[/quote]
HTML https://w0.peakpx.com/wallpaper/662/883/HD-wallpaper-impartial-love-hay-chick-sleeping-cute-hen-warmth-love-puppy-impartial.jpg
HTML https://w0.peakpx.com/wallpaper/662/883/HD-wallpaper-impartial-love-hay-chick-sleeping-cute-hen-warmth-love-puppy-impartial.jpg
(By the way, how Western civilization treats chickens is covered
here:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/western-civilization-sustainable-evil/msg72/#msg72<br
/>)
But ultimately, there is no way round the need for us to debunk
egalitarianism itself in order to turn leftist attention towards
the far more meaningful ideal of universalism (which does not
require belief in egalitarianism). As I have mentioned in the
past, someone who must first believe two people are equal in
order to treat them fairly is in effect admitting that if in
fact they were not equal then they indeed have no reason to be
treated fairly. Someone like that is not a universalist. But at
present most people cannot tell the two apart.
#Post#: 9718--------------------------------------------------
Re: How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to
Invent Civilization (?)
By: guest55 Date: November 9, 2021, 5:37 pm
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[quote]I think observing people's reactions to the sentiment in
this image is a good way to gauge if they have gatherer blood
memory or farming blood memory.[/quote]
Not to detract from all the great points both of you made in the
posts above but when I see the term "credit score" it always
forces me to ask: "Who was it that handed the money power of
king's and queen's over to handful of bankers?" "Who of us
consented to bankers keeping score of our lives?"
If I do not agree with the regime of a nation I can usually pack
up and move to a nation that has a regime in power that I do
agree with. But, I can never escape a bankers credit score can
I, no matter where I move to? How then is the credit score that
I did not consent to not tyranny?
I suspect much of the Sinophobic sentiment in the West
ultimately can be traced to financial and banking interests
because these interests understand that if the world follows
China's example many of them will be hanging at the gallows for
their tyranny sooner than later! And, they absolutely deserve
it!
#Post#: 13771--------------------------------------------------
Re: How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to
Invent Civilization (?)
By: Zea_mays Date: May 30, 2022, 12:09 am
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Scholarship over the past few decades has become more aware that
a large portion of modern/historic hunter-gatherers did more
gathering than hunting.
Apparently this was not always the case.
[quote]So far, attempts to reconstruct the diet of stone-age
humans were mostly based on comparisons to 20th century
hunter-gatherer societies," explains Dr. Ben-Dor. "This
comparison is futile, however, because two million years ago
hunter-gatherer societies could hunt and consume elephants and
other large animals -- while today's hunter gatherers do not
have access to such bounty. The entire ecosystem has changed,
and conditions cannot be compared. We decided to use other
methods to reconstruct the diet of stone-age humans: to examine
the memory preserved in our own bodies, our metabolism, genetics
and physical build. Human behavior changes rapidly, but
evolution is slow. The body remembers."
In a process unprecedented in its extent, Dr. Ben-Dor and his
colleagues collected about 25 lines of evidence from about 400
scientific papers from different scientific disciplines, dealing
with the focal question: Were stone-age humans specialized
carnivores or were they generalist omnivores? Most evidence was
found in research on current biology, namely genetics,
metabolism, physiology and morphology.
[...]
Comparing humans to large social predators of today, all of whom
hunt large animals and obtain more than 70% of their energy from
animal sources, reinforced the conclusion that humans
specialized in hunting large animals and were in fact
hypercarnivores.
[...]
Evidence of genetic changes and the appearance of unique stone
tools for processing plants led the researchers to conclude
that, starting about 85,000 years ago in Africa, and about
40,000 years ago in Europe and Asia, a gradual rise occurred in
the consumption of plant foods as well as dietary diversity --
in accordance with varying ecological conditions. This rise was
accompanied by an increase in the local uniqueness of the stone
tool culture, which is similar to the diversity of material
cultures in 20th-century hunter-gatherer societies. In contrast,
during the two million years when, according to the researchers,
humans were apex predators, long periods of similarity and
continuity were observed in stone tools, regardless of local
ecological conditions.[/quote]
HTML https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210405113606.htm
Hunter-gatherer groups who had become adapted to gathering gave
evolution a head-start prior to the invention of agriculture.
So, it seems we can declare that individuals with
"hypercarnivore" blood memory (e.g. Paleodiet advocates, etc.)
are distinct from, and categorically inferior to,
gatherer-centric hunter-gatherers. Indeed, it was from these
gatherer-centric groups that agriculture first developed.
#Post#: 15825--------------------------------------------------
Re: How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to
Invent Civilization (?)
By: christianbethel Date: September 26, 2022, 7:21 pm
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[quote]As I have mentioned in the past, someone who must first
believe two people are equal in order to treat them fairly is in
effect admitting that if in fact they were not equal then they
indeed have no reason to be treated fairly. Someone like that is
not a universalist. But at present most people cannot tell the
two apart.[/quote]
Are you saying only superior people deserve to be treated
fairly?
#Post#: 15827--------------------------------------------------
Re: How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to
Invent Civilization (?)
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 26, 2022, 7:56 pm
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No. I am saying that egalitarianism is a poor approach to
arguing in support of fairness.
[quote]Someone like that is not a universalist.[/quote]
I myself am a universalist.
#Post#: 15860--------------------------------------------------
Re: How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to
Invent Civilization (?)
By: christianbethel Date: September 28, 2022, 12:52 pm
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How does a universalist argue in favor of fairness?
#Post#: 15862--------------------------------------------------
Re: How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to
Invent Civilization (?)
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 28, 2022, 4:23 pm
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As a necessary corollary of universalism. Ensuring fairness
requires effort. If, in the interest of spending less effort, we
are willing to overlook fairness for some, we are in effect
treating those overlooked as part of the outgroup.
#Post#: 15870--------------------------------------------------
Re: How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to
Invent Civilization (?)
By: christianbethel Date: September 28, 2022, 6:43 pm
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Would I be correct in saying fair treatment for a Westerner
would be to inflict suffering/loss and fair treatment for a
non-Westerner would be to render aid?
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