Alternate Timeline Building Experiment, v1.0

[Luckymoose]

As a former farm boy, I can tell you that pigs are barely domesticated - but still domesticated. Their sense of friendliness is very thin even when on the farm: they will attack you if you touch their piglets. Violently. However the fact that they can be controlled, herded, and farmed, I think, makes them domesticated.

I own a farm with various animals on it and do know how mean pigs can be. When they bite it sucks bad.

 

[bestshot9]

Symphany, by not being able to domesticate elephants I take it you mean African Elephants, because Asian elephants have been domesticated by humans for a long time.

 

[Luckymoose]

Eagerly waiting for this update.

 

[Crezth]

Amestris

Priorities: Consolidate, Culture

 

[Symphony D.]

Symphany, by not being able to domesticate elephants I take it you mean African Elephants, because Asian elephants have been domesticated by humans for a long time.

Intrude: Ahem.

There is a difference between something being tamed, and something being domesticated. I cannot be held at fault that multiple people are too ignorant to actually know the English language, and know the difference between these two words. However, I can hold the people who don't know the difference accountable.

Prepare yourself, because I'm about to educate you!

Domsticable animals are all alike; every undomesticable animal is undomesticable in its own way.

If you think you've already read something like that before, you're right. Just make a few changes, and you have the famous first sentence of Tolstoy's great novel Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." By that sentence, Tolstoy meant that, in order to be happy, a marriage must succeed in many different respects: sexual attraction, agreement about money, child discipline, religion, in-laws, and other vital issues. Failure in any one of those essential respects can doom a marriage even if it has all the other ingredients needed for happiness.

[...]

The Anna Karenina principle explains a feature of animal domestication that had heavy consequences for human history--namely, that so many seemingly suitable big wild mammal species, such as zebras and peccaries, have never been domesticated and that the successful domesticates were almost exclusively Eurasian.

[...]

Many of these small animals thus yielded food, clothing, or warmth. But none of them pulled plows or wagons, none bore riders, none except dogs pulled sleds or became war machines, and none of them have been as important for food as have big domestic mammals. Hence the rest of this chapter will confine itself to the big mammals.

The importance of domesticated mammals rests on surprisingly few species of big terrestrial herbivores. (Only terrestrial mammals have been domesticated, for the obvious reason that aquatic mammals were difficult to maintain and breed until the development of modern Sea World facilities.) If one defines "big" as "weighing over 100 pounds," then only 14 such species such species were domesticated before the twentieth century (see Table 9.1 for a list). Of those Ancient Fourteen, 9 (the "Minor Nine" of Table 9.1) became important livestock for people in only limited areas of the globe: the Arabian camel, Bactrian camel, llama / alpaca (distinct breeds of the same ancestral species), donkey, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, banteng, and gaur. Only 5 species became widespread and important around the world. Those Major Five of mammal domestication are the cow, sheep, goat, pig, and horse.

This list may at first seem to have glaring omissions. What about the African elephants with which Hannibal's armies crossed the Alps? What about the Asian elephants still used as work animals in Southeast Asia today? No, I didn't forget them, and that raises an important distinction. Elephants have been tamed, but never domesticated. Hannibal's elephants were, and Asian work elephants are, just wild elephants that were captured and tamed; they were not bred in captivity. In contrast, a domesticated animal is defined as an animal selectively bred in captivity and thereby modified from its wild ancestors, for use by humans who control the animal's breeding and food supply.

Formatting modified for lack of indentation. Believe me when I say I very easily could continue posting sections of this book--a book written by a Ph.D who has spent years of research on such subjects and has been the winner of several national-level awards. You can call that an appeal to authority, but I call it knowing your sources, as opposed to citing somebody on Wikipedia.

So, to reiterate, you're wrong. If you'd like to know precisely why beyond the above, I advise you to buy the book or do some research and find out, instead of continuing to spout nonsense and hearsay you think is right. Oh, and by the way: learn to spell my name right.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Sorry no update tonight... too tired, especially after finishing NESlife update, and playing some Starcraft (trying to kill 20,001 hydras ). But I've read all the user input and already been thinking about what should happen next. Update will appear tomorrow, assuming there are no unexpected distractions (like usually happens ).

And, thanks for the informative discussion on domestication, but its overwhelming the thread! I know there isn't much else to post here, and I did ask for opinions and feedback etc, but any more input/orders are harder to spot, and I'm looking back and forth across more pages and posts in order to re-read them...

Please may I ask interested parties to continue the domestication discussion in the While We Wait thread, please and thankyou

 

[qoou]

Sorry no update tonight... too tired, especially after finishing NESlife update, and playing some Starcraft (trying to kill 20,001 hydras ).

Storms ftw! Wow... I haven't played Starcraft in so long.

 

[Luckymoose]

I'm thinking of running one of these myself, just to see how different the final products are.

 

[Ninja Dude]

I'm thinking of running one of these myself, just to see how different the final products are.

Please do this. Just don't let it die.

I think that if I find myself with enough free-time, I might make one of these, except on a non-earth world. i'd just need to put alot of effort into the map.

 

[Nick014]

*poke*

Any word?

 

[Daftpanzer]

*poke*

Any word?

Obviously I decided to quit this and not tell anyone

Well, I finally finished the map, and was going to post an update tonight, but I haven't had time to explain the main events, even limiting to one paragraph per continent.

At this point, the map is complicated and is taking ages to do, a fair few *hours* overall. Since the map is the main point of this thread, simplifying it seems counterproductive, and it would not be as rewarding for me to work on, and I don't want to break continuity with the old maps, although its no longer possible to update this quickly, so I dunno...



Anyway, here is map preview: (now at roughly 1250 AD - gunpowder invented)


(thought: the map might get easier as timescales get smaller, fewer miscellaneous border changes occur each time, and there are fewer but larger states)

Actual update tomorrow, and the next age after that is probably going to be one of discovery and exploration.

 

[Luckymoose]

Awesome map. The update will be just as awesome.

 

[Nick014]

I don't mind if it takes a bit longer to get the same quality of updates, just let us know and don't fall off the face of the earth for a few days. It scares me

Looking forward to the explanations of all the changed names though

 

[alex994]

Did China invent gunpowder?

@Lightfang, I bless you! UNIFY CHINA. Or better, let me take your place as Tiendishi

 

[Lord_Iggy]

The map looks awesome! I can't wait to see how things got to be the way they are!

 

[human-slaughter]

i miss orders once and the most ancient of empires in the Mediterranean is wiped out. awesome.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I don't think this NES works like that, with nations being utterly dependent on orders. Besides, judging by colour, the Saratian Empire looks like a strong successor state.

 

[LightFang]

Yeah, it definitely isn't. I don't recall sending orders for this turn, and look how big my empire got!

I guess since I sent such barely above-par orders in the beginning, I am allowed some slack.

Also, alex: the whole point was to unify China. What, you think I was going to be happy being some little Southeast Asian state like Siam? Heck no!

 

[qoou]

Obviously I decided to quit this and not tell anyone

Well, I finally finished the map, and was going to post an update tonight, but I haven't had time to explain the main events, even limiting to one paragraph per continent.

At this point, the map is complicated and is taking ages to do, a fair few *hours* overall. Since the map is the main point of this thread, simplifying it seems counterproductive, and it would not be as rewarding for me to work on, and I don't want to break continuity with the old maps, although its no longer possible to update this quickly, so I dunno...



Anyway, here is map preview: (now at roughly 1250 AD - gunpowder invented)


(thought: the map might get easier as timescales get smaller, fewer miscellaneous border changes occur each time, and there are fewer but larger states)

Actual update tomorrow, and the next age after that is probably going to be one of discovery and exploration.

*gasp* Not the age old Sweden-Denmark rivalry again!.. oh well, at least it looks like the Otlav kingdom manged to unite most of the other Olan before it imploded. Must have update...
I agree with minor border changes not being as frequent after gunpowder, and it'll also mean that those annoying steppelanders on your borders will be easier to deal with.

 

[mythmonster2]

Ooooooh, nice. The Zul are gone, wonder what happened to them? Awaiting update.