C2C - Transhuman Era

[pepper2000]

If the Industrial Era really runs from about 1700 to 1920, some techs, such as Representative Democracy, Emancipation, Replaceable Parts, Rocketry, and Fission (among others) are in the wrong era. Based on the tree, I had thought of the Industrial Era as roughly 1800 to 1945.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Rep Democracy is the governmental form the united states operates under. So pretty much is one of the beginning techs for the era and may even be argued that it was the rise of this tech that led to the French Revolution, long before any nation was able to actually implement the civic.

The idea of emancipation was taking place in some places long before the US Civil War.

Replaceable Parts might be the most defining and yes it took place a little later than 1700.

Rocketry and Fission would be early Modern I would think... or should be. Are those still considered Industrial techs? If so then we have considered industrial era to cross into WWII.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Emancipation in the civ context is emancipation of women ie Suffragettes.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Huh... I'd always thought it was intended to be the emancipation proclamation speech given by Lincoln. In Civ context anyhow. Emancipation of slavery rather than any other civil liberty matter.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Ah, who knows. I thought it was about 50% of the world population not something about what happened in one country. Different perspective as US history was not a big deal in the UK/Australia when I was growing up.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yeah, we're a bit of a narcissistic nation aren't we? It gets down to the fabric of what we're taught growing up as well though. You proposed an event to represent emancipation that I would never have imagined might have but I also wasn't taught much at all about said event. Something to look deeper into I guess. The slavery emancipation in the US wasn't the first place slavery was abolished though if I'm not mistaken. I think it had been happening elsewhere for a while. Not that my school ever put the civil war and the politics of the day in a global context, aka what was happening in the rest of the world during this time was left a mystery.

 

[Noriad2]

Good arguments Noriad. This, however, begs the question, are we talking about the formation of cities or of just sedentary lifestyle. I can see how there's actually a difference and we are trying to see sed lif as being the cutoff when perhaps the sed lif they are pointing to in those references are more to do with our tribalism tech. I like to think of it as Ancient is coming from the founding dates of the oldest discovered cities.

That notion is incompatible with the current C2C tech tree. In the tech tree, farming comes right after sedentary lifestyle.

Large cities require a steady food supply. Which require established farming communities.

So the order is settle down (give up nomadic lifestyle) -> farming -> farming villages -> larger cities. As farming comes after sedentary lifestyle in the tech tree, sedentary lifestyle must equal sedentism, or the switch from a nomadic lifestyle to a stay-in-one-place lifestyle. As farming was invented over 10K BC, sedentary lifestyle must be before that and larger cities must be much later than that.

The youtube documentary called "stories from the stone age, first farmers" I mentioned before, also mentions that farming communities can have much larger families. Newborns can not walk for the first few years of their life so they have to be carried all the time. As hunter-gatherer groups are always on the move, this severely limits family size. Farming requires less travel and thus enables more rapid population growth which is necessary before starting a city.

I think the current tech tree fits history correctly and sedentary lifestyle = sedentism and happened 12,000 BC in the Middle East.

You list some earliest found sedentary communities and it seems like they are all extremely high land communities. Interesting.

That may be because the ocean has submerged all archeological evidence of coastal settlements. After the last ice age the ocean has risen by 120 meters, moving the coastlines significantly. The youtube documentary Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age mentions the discovery of 2 large underwater stone cities off the coast of India, each "the size of Manhattan". Artefacts recovered from there were carbon dated to 9500 years old (7500 BC).

The end-of-the-ice-age sea level rise came in pulses and the horrible world wide tsunami of 6100 BC probably killed untold numbers of people around the world, setting the development of humanity back by hundreds or even thousands of years, and is probably the basis of the countless flood myths from ancient times.

 

[Noriad2]

Which is why the Fertile Crescent (and the rise of the first great cities) is in Mesopotamia. Even Göbekli Tepe, the ancient early Neolithic ruins in eastern Turkey, date back to the the 9000s at the earliest. .

Göbekli Tepe was probably an open-air burial site where corpses were offered to the holy vultures. A religious site, not a settlement. The youtube documentary "Stories from the Stone Age - first farmers" matches the various symbols found in Göbekli Tepe to religious drawings found in the same area that show vultures carrying the skulls of the deceased into the sky while leaving the rest of the body behind. The rest of the corpses (without the skull) were buried under the floors of the houses. It confirms the C2C tech tree of megalithic structures predating sedentary lifestyle and agriculture.

By the way, Paradox's new space 4X strategy game Stellaris is out. If you're still looking for stuff to throw into the late game, I'm sure that there are plenty of ideas there.

Having played Paradox games since EU 1, I fully expect the game to be incomplete, buggy and unbalanced (like all their other games), but will be much improved in a year or so of continual updates and DLC's. So I'm planning to buy it next year.

 

[Arakhor]

It confirms the C2C tech tree of megalithic structures predating sedentary lifestyle and agriculture.

Well, the earliest work on Stonehenge dates to around 3000 BC, which was just when Neolithic culture was taking root in Britain, but northwest Europe was behind the times on that.

Farming and sedentary lifestyle are essentially one and the same innovation. You can't sustain large populations with hunting and gathering, but likewise, you're not going to settle down until you have a way to support your people. If you want to set Göbekli Tepe as the first example of megalithic structures at 9,000 BC, then by necessity Sedentary Lifestyle and the Ancient era has to be later still.

I think the current tech tree fits history correctly and sedentary lifestyle = sedentism and happened 12,000 BC in the Middle East.

What evidence do you have for that date? That seems far too early.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

There is much evidence for settled lifestyle of hunters and gatherers before agriculture in places where food is plentiful all year round. The suggestion is that these settlements invented agriculture which in turn allowed them to grow into cities.

 

[Arakhor]

Yes, I'm assuming that sedentary lifestyle indicates people living in large numbers in the same place all year round. For instance, the area around the ancient city of Jericho apparently has supported habitation since roughly 9000 BC, but the first indications of its famous walls "only" date back to 6800 BC or so.

 

[Noriad2]

What evidence do you have for that date? That seems far too early.

I already answered that in detail in post number 1212 in this thread. Quoting myself:

"n the Middle East the Natufian culture was the first to become sedentary at around 12000 BC"

The youtube documentary "stories from the stone age first farmers" follows the
Natufian culture and explains in details how farming comes after sedentary lifestyle.
At first they harvested naturally growing grain and learned how to turn it into edible cookies. They probably discovered that dropping grain on the ground creates new grain plants. Then the naturally growing grain died out due to climate change and they were forced to live close to scarce water sources (oases). And were forced to plant grain themselves instead of just harvesting what was available. Farming started 10K BC. If you need more details, go watch the first part of the documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTgIPVi1yPs

Interestingly, the documentary also claims that Europe had no naturally occuring edible grains. All the grains the later European farmers used originated in the Middle East.

If you want to set Göbekli Tepe as the first example of megalithic structures at 9,000 BC, then by necessity Sedentary Lifestyle and the Ancient era has to be later still.

Hmm I thought construction of Göbekli Tepe was started at 10K BC, which means construction started at roughly the same time as the invention of farming (ignoring the unreliability inherent in dating). Farming comes after sedentism and megalithic structures should be close to those but the exact best location of megalithic structures in the tech tree is debatable.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Interesting information on Gobegli tepi.

I'm thinking that the concept of a city being founded is debateable as to what we must say existed at a site to be considered that. The ones we've really tracked, such as Eridu and Jericho are very early and hovering around 5-7k bc in founding dates, as has been discussed above. But you also make a good point that it could have been happening much earlier and most of those early efforts were eradicated by the flood. Nice dating on that btw... I would agree based on what I've researched myself.

So this is to suggest that although our tree is probably fairly correct and the date for sed life should perhaps be around 12k bc, those first permanent settlements were mostly wiped out. Which would get into the pertinence of a earth changes mod and an early event that takes out all cities to replace them with settlers or something along those lines, possibly along with some coastline adjustments. Oh to be in a place where we could get some work done towards that effort!

I suppose 6k is my previous base given the dating of the earliest foundations of the oldest cities.

 

[pepper2000]

My understanding is that Britain passed antislavery laws in the 1820s, and that's when Emancipation should be dated. It requires Economics (Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 1776?) or Representative Democracy (see above). And I've seen it argued that the factory system, and the corresponding demand for free labor, was an essential element in the end of slavery.

But yes, there is a lot of subjectivity to all this. Few technologies or political movements appear overnight, and for most things you can find antecedents going way back. I don't think we'll put Steam Engine in the Classical Era, even though Hero of Alexandria built one in the first century AD. I think of the tech being invented when the concept becomes well known to the public, or when it starts to play a major role in society or the economy, which might be a long time after it starts working in a lab.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Nice discussion all.

But here's where I'm shooting for. All dates in terms of years are approximate. The GS itself will determine whether Preh ends at 6000 BC or 10,000 BC. No start or End date is set in stone Except Preh Era' Start of 50,000BC. All are approximate year ranges with "target" dates for start and end.

Carry on now.

JosEPh

 

[Noriad2]

Regarding dates, it was found that carbon dating was somewhat unreliable. It is based e.g. on the assumption that the background radiation in the atmosphere is constant. Comparison with other dating methods (like tree rings or sediment deposition) shows that carbon dates were off, and calibration curves are constructed, like this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intcal_13_calibration_curve.png

Which shows that 10K BC carbon radiodate is really 12K BC Calendar date. So dates may vary based on when the dating was done and how much the date was compensated for.

Yes, I'm assuming that sedentary lifestyle indicates people living in large numbers in the same place all year round. For instance, the area around the ancient city of Jericho apparently has supported habitation since roughly 9000 BC, but the first indications of its famous walls "only" date back to 6800 BC or so.

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_Qaramel

"However the remains of the structures uncovered at Tell Qaramel appear to be older than this, giving the first evidence of permanent stone-built settlement without signs of animal domestication or organised farming.[3][4] Particularly striking are the remains of a succession of five round, stone-built towers, each over 6 metres in diameter, with stone walls over 1.5m thick. These have been carbon-dated to between the eleventh millennium and 9650 BC. This dating makes the towers roughly two thousand years older than the stone tower found at Jericho, which was previously believed to be the oldest known tower structure in the world"

However, searching the web, I found no reference to city walls (as in a wall that goes all around a city, for defensive purposes) until many thousands of years later which throws the existence of the C2C building called "earth walls" into doubt. I only found references to walls to enclose areas or pen animals, or towers that could possibly be used in defense.

 

[Arakhor]

My understanding is that Britain passed antislavery laws in the 1820s, and that's when Emancipation should be dated. It requires Economics (Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 1776?) or Representative Democracy (see above). And I've seen it argued that the factory system, and the corresponding demand for free labor, was an essential element in the end of slavery.

For what it's worth, we passed two such laws in 1807, banning the taking of new slaves, and 1833, finally banning all slavery within the Empire.

Which shows that 10K BC carbon radiodate is really 12K BC Calendar date. So dates may vary based on when the dating was done and how much the date was compensated for.

Really? Are you sure you're not confusing Before Present with before Before Christ? One is dated from today, the other is 2000 years earlier. Moreover, if the dating is wrong, all such dates are likely to be wrong and there's going to be considerably more upheaval than a single chart.

Besides which, the very first part of the Wikipedia article on the Natufian culture says, "It was unusual in that it was sedentary, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture." Throwing in outliers as proof of anything is simply proof of the existence of outliers.

 

[Noriad2]

Really? Are you sure you're not confusing Before Present with before Before Christ?

No I did not. Look at the chart I linked. The wikipedia article it comes from is this one (calibration of radiocarbon dates) :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibration_of_radiocarbon_dates

 

[Noriad2]

Regarding slavery abolishment dates, that is an American-centric view.

Slavery in Western Europe has been abolished between 1000 AD and 1200 AD with the exception of muslim-occupied Spain. Only in overseas territories did slavery persist until the 1800s, and was primarily driven by private enterprise. In fact many Western European cities had laws that if a slave entered Western Europe, he would become a free person immediately.

Slavery persisted much longer in East Africa and the muslim world. Slavery in Saudi Arabia was legal until 1962 and Mauritania is still a classic Arab master - Black slave society today although slavery was made illegal temporarily for a very short time around 1980.

 

[majaczek]

From the discussion I get that we should divide time before modern era into more eras. Epecially the three first could be at least four total.