Historical events in Civ IV terms

kochman said:

Most indians didn't have cities... nomads.
Anyhow, that's funny for what it is worth...

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Peregrine said:

One of the oversights of Civ games in general is the absence of epidemics, that have always been a major component of human development over time, especially since the advent of civilization and the concomitant high population densities inherent in urban constructs.

Estimates of demographic collapse post-Columbian Exchange range as high as 90%. Native American societies everywhere were far more populous than is generally understood--probably to minimize "guilt" associated with the spreading of epidemics to the Americas over the course of the 16th century. As per Orellana's reports, it's been revealed that an Amazonian civilization, replete with numerous cities, once existed along that river basin--destroyed completely by introduced epidemics. Similarly dense populations once also existed in various other regions of the Americas (central South America, north American southeast, midwestern north America), that also collapsed post-exchange--and effectively vanished. These were documented by the earliest explorers of the Americas, and had disappeared by the turn of the 17th century. "Cities," in every sense, existed throughout the Americas . . . at one time.

I can only suppose that the simulation of these demographic collapses in Civ games was witheld because civ players wouldn't enjoy seeing their carefully wrought civilizations go into sharp decline due to a practically random event. Nevertheless, it's a gaping hole in the idea of historical simulation. I've seen several attempts in various scenarios, for various versions of the game, to simulate the Black Death, for example. It's difficult simply because there isn't a game mechanism available to do the job. (Some have used "nuclear events" to attempt this, with mixed results.) I suppose it's not much fun to see your civ brought low by an epidemic, but it's also undeniable that such events played a MAJOR role in historical change.

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Civ Vicious said:

Since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, to reduce war weariness by 25%. The British and American governments have moved from a fake style of representation to an unofficial police state.

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Peregrine said:

Pandemics is right on the money.

Journal article years ago; "Virgin Soil Epidemic." It's what struck the Americas. The idea is that it's not just smallpox, it was yellow fever, influenza, dystentery, the common cold, etc--all the old world diseases, and all at once. Such an epidemic could drastically reduce populations. Sometimes entire tribes, entire nations, were reduced below the point of recovery. The Shawnee, for example, were a tribe that was an amalgamation of reduced populations, combining into a completely new "tribe."

The Black Death, a combination of Bubonic, Hemonic, and Pneumonic agents, was vectored by fleas/rats, but the latest data indicates that an environmental fluctuation was responsible because it allowed the primary vector, a species of central Asian rodent, to expand outside its normal range. However, and this is the big "however," the Mongol unification of central Asia, and the free trade routes that this created, allowed the transmission of the bugs far beyond where the thing might have stopped within environmental limits. So rather than a technology as the trigger, I'd say that trade routes could be the transmission lines, if not necessarily the origin, which would be typified by, in Civ4 terms, a random event. (see Kinder and Hilgemann's Atlas of World History, vol. I, p. 154-155, and The Black Death, by Phillip Ziegler. Notably, Ziegler stated that a previous Bubonic epidemic, in the 590s AD, had probably been a significant factor in bringing the decline of the Empire of Justinian's time, striking first in Egypt.)

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Peregrine said:

Not "poppycock" at all. The evidence of these cities exist all over the United States. I have communicated with researchers engaged in the fieldwork and have visited a few of these sites myself. They are well-known, well-researched, and well-understood. I'm not even going to state that this knowledge is the domain of experts and specialists in the field--any textbook on American history should have some info available. Plenty of websites around if one wants to look. Pre-Columbian Americanists have known about the demographic collapse for some decades, and satellite photography is revealing more about it with each passing year. I'm almost embarrassed a little attempting to correct your misimpressions, the information is so well-disseminated and so well-known. It's not esoteric stuff at all. Some of it is cutting edge, especially the satellite-revealed things, but there are documentaries on the ed networks relating to this stuff. You are, of course, welcome to your opinions, I just can't take them seriously when they're so poorly informed.

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Peregrine said:

Kochman; admirable response, and I'll endeavor to do so.

The first general source that springs to mind is the Cambridge Atlas of World History, p. 25. The Adena and Hopewell cultures were the earliest farming societies and by "2500-2000 BC" had developed "long-distance trade networks" and maize cultivation, an agriculture that allowed substantial demographic expansion. The mounds that appear throughout the Mississippi river watershed area are ubiquitous, still visible, and most have been excavated, demonstrated a population dense enough to be mobilized for large-scale building projects. In the same publication, p. 109, the relevant map show no less than 5 widespread cultures in the watershed area, each w/at least 10 cities, the largest, central region containing in excess of 50 cities. "Mounds in the heart of these centres were crowned by temples and sometimes the houses of the elite." These are "ceremonial centres for their surrounding communities." The initial explorations of the southeastern regions were conducted by Spanish explorers, and De Soto is the primary examplar. De Soto visited, according to his reports, very many cities throughout what is now the US "deep south." By the time that La Salle explored these areas, the cities were gone.

Jared Diamond, author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel," in his subsequent publication, "Collapse; How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," in chapter 4, p. 136-156, "The Ancient Ones," detailed the rise and fall of the Chaco Canyon culture, a location I have visited. Pueblo Bonito is the Spanish name given the ruins, as the people who settled there had long since brought about their own collective demise via deforestation and resource depletion. The chapter details the demograpics throughout the period of settlement and the scientifically-discovered reasons for the collapse. Chaco was not only a city, but the cultural, political, and trade nexus for a number of smaller sites identified as "towns." Chaco is by no means unique to the region. The Mesa Verde national park is not that far away in southwestern Colorado, I've visited there too, and these habitations are clearly cities.

Orellana, a spanish explorer of the Amazon River basin in the 16th century, reported that there were large cities along the river, right up to the mouth. Subsequent Spanish and Portugeuse explorers failed to find these cities and Orellana was discredited. The truth of these cities has only recently been established by means of soil analysis. The inhabitants of these cities had a knack for enriching the jungle soils on a apparently permanent basis, a skill which, to this day, cannot be replicated, and the sites were first located by noting that farms and farmers working the Amazon basin today still travel to the ancient city sites (not knowing what or why), in order to collect a soil type that is substantially more productive than surrounding soils. Satellite analysis subsequently revealed that these soil sites exist throughout the river basin and each is the site of a city--excavations proceed.

If you'd like more examples, I can provide them. Hopefully, these exemplify the city-based cultures that existed prior to the Columbian Exchange. About the plains Indians; before the 16th century, these groups were hunter gatherers, and had been marginalized by groups farther east--the French name, "Sioux," was derived from a term that translates as "dog eaters." It was only with the arrival of the Spanish, and the reintroduction of the horse, that these groups flourished and expanded their influence, probably the only example of a Native American group that gained positive benefits from the Exchange. Even these groups were struck by Virgin Soil Epidemics, however, with the example of the Mandan, almost wiped out, by smallpox in the mid-19th century.

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