Civilopedia Suggestions

[EgyptRaider]

Well just to start. I love the mod and I'm playing it very often lately. Because I love it so much I try to find somekind of way to contribute to the project since its very active and all and decided to write some suggestions for Civilopedia entries since I don't know anything about modding. I'm quite into history, even though I'm far, very far, from an expert, and I've always enjoyed reading the Civilopedia just to get a idea about the history behind the gameplay.

I've written three possible entries just to give a bit of a simple the way I would write the other entries, since I'm planning on writing alot more if there's support for it. I wrote it in a style that's similar to the rest of the Civilopedia by giving an overview-like story that's more meant to give a general idea about the suggestion than give a huge in-depth 100% accurate description. I'll also have to say that I'm not a native english speaker so there might be quite some spelling errors (I also make alot of them in my original language so that's not a huge excuse hehe)

Well here are the suggestions:

Ba'alism
Ba'alism, the worship of Ba'al, could refer to multiple religions. Ba'al is a Hebrew word meaning "lord" or "master" and is often used to refer to a certain deity by the people of the mediterranean. The name Ba'al is for instance used for the god Hadad, a god of rain, thunder, agriculture and fertility. The name is also used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to local spirit-deities that in the eyes of the Hebrew Bible are thus false gods.

In the Phoenician city of Carthage there was a god worshipped who carried the name of Ba'al Hammon. Ba'al Hammon was the supreme god of the Carthaginians and could be related with the Greek god Cronus and its Roman counterpart Saturn. Some sources indicate that the Carthaginians would burn their children as an offering to Ba'al Hammon.

The name of Ba'al was also used by the Jews but often in multiple ways. Some sources use the name of Ba'al simply as another word for Yahweh, while other sources use the name to refer to false gods. Christianity and the Islam also make references to the name of Ba'al, either refering to false gods or demons and mayby even a high-ranked devil or Satan himself.

Toltecayotl
The word Toltecayotl refers in general to the people of the Toltec culture that was based around the city of Tula. The Toltec became dominant in Central Mexico, around the 11th century, about two centuries after the fall of city-state Teotihuacan and were able to keep their dominance in the Mexican Valley for another two centuries.

The Aztecs, that grew to power in the beginning of the 15th century, viewed the Toltec people as the origin of their own culture and often uplifted them to mythical proportions, making them sound more important then they probably were during their own time period. Often the Aztecs used the word Toltecayotl for both the people of Teotihuacan and Tula, which may mean that the Aztecs used the names of the Toltec culture to refer to all of their predecessors that lived in the Valley of Mexico. The fact that the Aztecs liked to mix up mythology and history made it very hard to determine the real history behind the Toltec culture.

One of the most important deities of the Aztec pantheon was Quetzalcoatl, the feathered snake, and he in turn was often confused or conflated with Ce Acatl Topiltzin, a Toltec leader that lived during the 10th century.

Topiltzin
Ce Acatl Topiltzin, or Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl, (which means: Our Prince One-Reed Feathered Serpent) is a supposed leader of the Toltec Empire according to Aztec history. His existence is shrouded in much mysteries as is the existence of the rest of the Toltec Civilization. Aztec Legends say that Topiltzin has four possible fathers, one of them is the god Mixcoatl (Cloud Serpent) another an earlier Toltec king. His mother was probably named Chimalman.

He later became the new lord of the Toltec people and was revered by his followers for he abandoned the sacrifice of humans, for he loved his people so much that he couldn't bare sacrificing them.

It is because of this that many arising leaders of the Valley of Mexico would claim to decent from Topiltzin, a man who is often associated with the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, in order to legitimize their rule.


Let me know if you would like to see something different, if you have additions, suggestions or comments and if you would like to see me write more entries.

 

[Little Faith]

Those suggestions have some problems IMHO:

Ba'alism
Why are you describing Ba'alism through the jaundiced lens of the Bible? Of course a rival monotheistic religion is going to take a dim view on a preceding polytheistic tradition, but is it really all that important to describe what the Bible has to say on the subject. The whole child sacrifice rag might very well be a classical age smear job.
I'd rather see more description of the actual religion and it's peculiarities. Especially the the idea of each city(state) having a resident diety.

Toltecayotl
A lot of history here. Interesting how the Aztecs co-opted the religion of another people and made it theirs.
But i'd like to see more description of cosmology and ethics as these are really unique for that particular religious tradition.

 

[Simon_Jester]

It's only his third paragraph that has that problem.

 

[wanderm]

Not even: just the last sentence of the third paragraph.

Keep going Egypt Raider: I look forward to more entries. No history can be formulated without looking through some sort of historian's lens. Those that object to the Bible have their overt biases too.

Nothing preventing fellow users from seeking consensus.

 

[Xyth]

Gah, I thought I'd responded to this thread but it seems the internet ate my post.

These are good EgyptRaider, I really appreciate you taking the time to write these for the mod. They could use a few tweaks and extra details but they're a good foundation to add more to later. Unfortunately I won't be able to use the Toltecayotl entry as I've renamed (and slightly redefined) that religion for 1.18. It's now called Teotl and I've assembled a pedia entry for it. I reckon we could merge what you've written into your entry for Topilitzin though.

 

[EgyptRaider]

Well thanks for the feedback. I later realised that it wasn't the best move to start with these entries since well... of all the empty pedia pages these were probably the hardest subjects. I'm actually glad that the Mesoamerican religion will recieve an update to something new and that the suggestions I gave will help filling up the page Topiltzin. This morning I found some time to write another entry, and this time for a Great Leader I'm much more familiar with: Michiel de Ruyter for the Dutch. Coincidence has it I'm starting my final exams in a few week and the history of the Dutch Republic is one of the two subjects I've to learn for the History course (Vietnam is the other subject so expect Ho Chi Minh from me soon too).. Because of these exams I won't be able to write that much entries as I may have thought I could but I certainly try to write as much as possible and hope to inspire others to also contribute to the Civilopedia..

Also I'd like to make two small suggestions:
1. Being Dutch I would really recommand adding Prince Maurice of Naussau to the Dutch Leaders since he was quite famous for his role in the war against Spain. And I know that he was already made by others (I thought Legends of Revolutions already has him, don't know for sure.)

2. The older civilizations still have Strategy entries and I would recommand removing those, since most of them are wrong anyway because you changed most of the traits of the leaders.

And ofcourse, the entry for Michiel de Ruyter:

Michiel de Ruyter
Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter was born on the 24th of March in 1607 in the Dutch town of Vlissingen. He was the son of a beer porter named Adriaen Michielszoon and became a sailor when he was but eleven years old. One time, during his life on sea, he was captured by the Spanish (who the Dutch were fighting at that time for their independence) but was eventually able to escape with a couple of his comrades back to the Dutch Republic.

In 1622 Michiel went with his uncle who was a ruyter (horserider) in the army of Prince Maurice of Naussau and joined the siege of Bergen op Zoom. (It is said that Michiel later took the name "de Ruyter" because he cared much for his uncle.) After that he joined the Dutch navy and was sent to several locations on board of various ships. During this time Michiel quickly rose in rank and was able to collect a small fortune of gold. In 1631 he married his first wife who died not much later while giving birth to Michiel's first child, a daughter called Alida, who died only three weeks later. In 1636 he marries with Neeltje Engels and together they get five children, of which one dies soon after its birth. A year after the birth of their last child Michiel's wife passes away.

In 1637 he reaches the rank of captain and from that period on he becomes the leader of several ships that often travel to the New World and other far destinations. In 1652 he marries for the third time with a widow called Anna van Gelder who already two children from her previous marriage. That same year the First Anglo-Dutch War breaks out and Michiel, who just got married, joins the war with disdain but suddenly turns into a hero after the battle of Plymouth was won under his command. After that battle he is promoted to commander of the admiral of Zealand.

When the Second Anglo-Dutch War broke out in 1667, he was pushed by Johan de Witt, the raadspensionaris of Holland, a key-figure in the political structure of the Republic, to become the commander of the Dutch Fleet and he finnaly accepted the promotion. It is under his command that the Raid on the Medway takes place where the Dutch fleet succesfully destroys the English fleet and many of its shipyards on the Thames, the Medway rivers. Soon after Michiel the Ruyters becomes a legend in the Dutch Republic.

During the Rampjaar (Disaster year), 1672, of the Dutch Republic, where the republic is attacked by a joined force of France, England and two German counties Michiel the Ruyter was able to hold of several English landing attemps while the French were moving closer and closer to the province of Holland. The joined attack would have utterly destroyed the Dutch Republic were it not for the Dutch Waterline (a system of forts and flooded areas) on land and the defence of Michiel the Ruyter on sea. After the Rampjaar Michiel the Ruyter was promoted to luitentant-admiral-general of the Republic.

The war with France continues after 1672 and it is during the Battle of Agosta that Michiel de Ruyter is hit by a canonball that shatters his right leg. His leg is amputated afterwards but not much later he gets ill from the wound and dies a week later following the illness.

Michiel de Ruyter was buried in the New Church of Amsterdam, where his tomb is still located. Michiel de Ruyter is probably the most famous admiral in the history of the Netherlands and is to this day still portrayed as one of its biggest heroes.

 

[Xyth]

1. Being Dutch I would really recommand adding Prince Maurice of Naussau to the Dutch Leaders since he was quite famous for his role in the war against Spain. And I know that he was already made by others (I thought Legends of Revolutions already has him, don't know for sure.)

There is a good quality leaderhead made for him and I agree he would be a good addition to the Netherlands. There are only 13 trait combinations unused in HR though and at this point I haven't yet made any firm decisions on how to assign them. It will depend primarily on how many new civilizations I end up adding.

2. The older civilizations still have Strategy entries and I would recommand removing those, since most of them are wrong anyway because you changed most of the traits of the leaders.

Ah I've been meaning to do this for some time but it seems to have inadvertently slipped off my todo list. Thanks for the reminder.

And ofcourse, the entry for Michiel de Ruyter:

It's great. I've merged in a few small notes I had on him and put it in 1.18. Thanks.

 

[EgyptRaider]

While searching the web for some information I stubled on a site with pretty good leader biographies and it turns out that there are multiple leaders on it that are present in History Rewritten. I think they're pretty good so I hope they are of any use

Ashurbanipal:
http://world-leaders-biographies.blogspot.com/2009/01/ashurbanipalassurbanipal.html

Djoser:
http://world-leaders-biographies.blogspot.com/2009/01/djoser.html

Hattusilis III:
http://world-leaders-biographies.blogspot.com/2009/01/hattusilis-iii.html

Herod:
http://world-leaders-biographies.blogspot.com/2009/01/herod.html

Leonidas:
http://world-leaders-biographies.blogspot.com/2009/01/leonidas.html

Suppiluliumas I:
http://world-leaders-biographies.blogspot.com/2009/01/suppiluliumas-i.html

Tiglath-Pileser III:
http://world-leaders-biographies.blogspot.com/2009/01/tiglath-pileser-iii.html

 

[Xyth]

While searching the web for some information I stubled on a site with pretty good leader biographies and it turns out that there are multiple leaders on it that are present in History Rewritten. I think they're pretty good so I hope they are of any use

Useful site! Thank you.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Never enough tech entries!




FINANCE

"Finance" refers to the organized processes of handling money. While money is an ancient innovation, for most of history, currency was handled in simple ways. Coins were just another commodity- fixed volumes of precious metal that had some kind of official sanction. A rich person would simply have large numbers of coins, much as they might have a large herd of cattle or a warehouse full of pottery. Anyone who wanted to buy something would simply pile up coins into a large heap that could be exchanged for the good, usually by earning them a few at a time.

This had limits. Starting a business, making major purchases, or engaging in large scale public works were difficult because the buyer needed to have all their money at once, at the beginning of the process, in order to accomplish anything. Travel was more dangerous because there was no way to store money during travel except on your person- if you needed money at your destination to do business, you would have to carry it with you.

Around 1000 CE, solutions to this problem emerged. One obvious solution was the creation of 'banks:' dedicated storehouses that would hold onto money, and which could contact other banks in other cities. Instead of traveling with a hundred gold coins on your person, you could deposit the gold in a bank at home, travel to a destination, and 'withdraw' coins from the other city's bank: their records would tell them that you owned the money, but in another place. Banks could also make loans: a large sum of money up-front, to be paid back over a period of time with interest. This allowed the wealthy to invest with more safety, and gave the poor an option for buying expensive capital goods.

The rise of financial institutions has come with costs: professional money-manipulators have a great deal of power in society, and sometimes use it at others' expense. But it greatly increases the economic power and flexibility of a civilization.




GEOLOGY

Geology comes from the Greek for "knowledge of the earth."

Throughout history, humans have searched for mineral resources valuable to them: the best flint and obsidian for toolmaking, veins of gold, silver, and gems, the ores of useful metals. The systematic rise of science in the 18th century, and the relaxation of old taboos about the nature and origin of the world, allowed scholars to think more freely about the earth, as about other subjects. These 'geologists' examined rock strata, tectonic activity such as earthquakes and volcanoes, and the patterns formed in the landscape by erosion and other forces of nature.

In doing so, they replaced the old, naive picture of the world as an unchanging mass of rock. Geologists of the 19th and 20th centuries have learned that the ground we stand on is actually a series of plates of stone floating on the sea of lava that makes up most of the Earth's mass. Over the eons ("geologic time"), powerful forces slowly reshape the landscape, bringing new rock closer to the surface and rearranging the terrain to form mountains and seas.

Understanding geology helps us understand where to find mineral resources, and how to channel the elemental forces of earth and water to our advantage.





GLOBALIZATION

Globalization is the process by which different peoples spread across the world become united by ties of ideology, economics, and politics.

The first wave of globalization took place during the 19th century Age of Imperialism, when steam power and telegraphy allowed European empires to spread out zones of influence across most of the world, creating a web of transport, communication, and government. However, access to these networks was limited and patchy, and many people neither knew nor cared about events in far-off lands.

The World Wars sped up the process. The staggering, apocalyptic scale of combat caught up many colonial possessions in Africa and Asia, permanently undermining European rule at the same time that people in economic backwaters were exposed to a wide variety of modern products and weapons. After World War Two, ideologies such as nationalism or communism spread into regions that had previously been dominated by traditional cultures that were less inclined to resist foreign rule. A wave of "decolonization" swept the world.

But this was not the end. Direct imperial rule of poor nations by rich ones went out of fashion, the economic bonds between rich and poor were not so easily broken. The industrial giants of the developed world could easily produce enough goods to supply massive export markets, while needing to import raw materials on an ever-growing scale as their own supplies of timber, coal, ore, and oil became depleted. Along with these flows of goods came flows of popular products and the culture that came with them, particularly from the United States. Artifacts of American culture (Hollywood movies, blue jeans, Coca-Cola) became world-spanning; to a lesser extent this diffusion worked from other sources, and even worked the other way, with foreign customs being adopted in the former colonial metropoles.

Along with these economic ties came an entangled world political stage. Dictators of small, remote countries could no longer count on isolation and control of the media to keep their people from becoming restless, or to keep large foreign powers from intruding on their business. The only security for small nations was to align themselves with the economic interests of the great power blocs, supplying cheap resources and labor and giving themselves a place in the new world order.

Today, the world is extensively globalized, a product of the capitalist triumph of the post-Cold War era. Whether this is socially desirable, economically sustainable, or even ecologically survivable remains to be seen, and is likely to become one of the great questions of the 21st century.



HORTICULTURE

Horticulture is the art of cultivating plants for human use; an alternate word for agriculture.

By the late Middle Ages, the techniques of growing plants by hand and muscle power had been under refinement for millenia. Staple crops like wheat, rice, and potatoes were about as refined and optimized as possible. Immense bodies of farming lore arose, about the best practices for growing plants in a given land, under varying conditions of soil conditions, temperature, day length, rainfall, parasites, disease and predation.

The careful and professional science of crop-growing played a large role in the pre-industrial Age of Colonialism. Knowing how best to produce staple crops also made it easier to mass-cultivate luxury crops for export. Since most luxury crops grew best in certain climates and soils under the eyes of local populations who knew how to cultivate them (tobacco in the New World, tea in the Far East), this opened up new routes for trade and investment around the world.




HUMANISM

Humanism is the philosophical belief that human values and concerns matter more than divine, supernatural, or abstract ideas. This naturally gives rise to notions which would not be accepted without humanist philosophy.

For instance, the idea of religious toleration is at best morally ambiguous and counterproductive, if one assumes that humanity exists to please a particular set of gods. The idea of formal investigation into the nature and causes of physical phenomena is likely to be viewed as heretical sorcery, if one assumes that to investigate these things is to dabble in the secrets of divine creation and diabolical spirit-worlds.

Much of the scientific and philosophical progress of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries owes its origins to the simple notion that people matter, that human ideas of beauty and truth, human needs and aspirations, should be met instead of being denied in the name of some hierarchy's ideal of Order or Divinity.


HYDRAULICS

The word "hydraulics" comes from a root word for "water." Hydraulic technology manipulates water or another fluid, for a variety of purposes.

Civilization is intimately tied to water. People need water to live, to raise crops, to move cargo along rivers, canals, and the sea. As the understanding of water and water pressure became more complete and mathematical in late pre-industrial times, traditional projects of water-manipulation grew more ambitious.

Many civilizations built or improved great canals, for instance, making artificial waterways where nature did not provide an easy path. In areas where river valleys posed a flooding hazard, great levees and dikes were built to stem the flow of water. Existing innovations like waterwheels were used on a larger and larger scale, to provide greater reserves of power for manufacturing.

 

[Simon_Jester]

JOURNALISM

Journalism is the profession of investigating and reporting on news of interest to the journalist's readers, listeners, or viewers. Journalism plays an important role in economics and politics, by allowing the masses to access information that would otherwise be available only to a lucky, connected few.

Journalism as we now know it comes from the rise of news corporations (particularly newspapers, in the 19th and 20th centuries), improved transportation and communications that allowed correspondents to move about, learn things, and report back to headquarters quickly, and the rise of mass literacy among the general public in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In the middle and late 20th century the rise of radio and television created new media for journalists to distribute information. At the same time they changed the dynamics of how news flowed through the system, and what sorts of information could be presented, culminating in concepts like the "sound bite" and the "24-hour news cycle." Today, journalism is undergoing a sea change, as the old newspapers struggle to maintain public readership in the Internet Age, while critics argue that the television news have become bland tools for soothing and manipulating the masses instead of informing them. At the same time, vast numbers of enterprising individuals have taken it upon themselves to document and comment on the news online, creating a sphere of private, individualized online journalism.

The relationship between the "fourth estate" of journalists and government power is always uneasy. In dictatorships, state control of the media blurs the line between journalism and propaganda. Even in democratic nations, the organized media may be afraid of losing access to the corridors of power, of political concerns, or of undermining their own positions as wealthy information-handling organizations.

LAND TENURE

Land tenure is, simply, the idea of a fixed, legalized ownership of land- with a formal relationship between the landowner and their ruler. "Tenure" comes from a root verb meaning "to hold" the land in question.

Under a land tenure system, by default all land is the property of the sovereign- but this land is granted to trusted individuals in permanent, usually inherited titles. This forms the foundation of what we now know as feudalism. In exchange for a grant of land for themself and their heirs, a feudal noble might promise to supply their ruler with troops, money, food, or other goods obtained from the productivity of the land itself.

This saved the monarch from the burden of administering the territory directly and trying to collect taxes from it, and created a large class of aristocrats who owed their fortune and power to the throne. The pattern of tenancy could be scaled up and down easily, ranging from great territories held by powerful nobles down to individual farmers on their own plots granted to them by a local warlord.

A feudal tenure-based system has drawbacks, however. Tenants' loyalty to the sovereign is often conditional, based on complicated webs of mutual obligations and exceptions to the legal code which make it difficult to change or reform the economy. Powerful feudal nobles may defect to an enemy intact to preserve their status in the face of invasion- or even scheme to seize control of the land themselves.

 

[Simon_Jester]

LEATHER WORKING

Leather is a hard-wearing, flexible material created by curing and drying animal skins. Forms of leather can be made using Stone Age technology (curing hides with materials like lime or animal brains), or more complex chemical processes. Leather has been in use since at least the second millenium BC, as proven by finds of leather samples over 3000 years old in archaeological digs. Since leather does not last forever under normal conditions, its invention very probably came earlier.

Leather can be made from the skin of almost any large animal, with a variety of qualities. Depending on how it is tanned, it can be flexible or stiff, soft or rough. It is generally waterproof, fairly effective at keeping in heat, and resistant to rotting or decay. Properly oiled and maintained, it can survive desert sandstorms or frozen tundra conditions. It can even be boiled for hardness and used as a form of cheap, lightweight armor protection.

Unlike other fabrics such as linen, cotton, and silk, leather can be made even by nomadic cultures- if the nomads kill a domestic or wild animal, and have a suitable tanning process. On the other hand, leather remains useful in farming societies, especially those with large herd animals such as cattle.

Because it is sturdy and cannot be unraveled like normal cloth, leather can be decorated with a variety of hole-punches, stitches, and decorative studs. Decorative leather goods are a popular form of arts and crafts in many societies.

Today, advances in synthetic plastics have made leather less important, and it has now become more of a fashion statement and luxury good than a major fabric in practical use.



LOGISTICS

Logistics is the art of producing, moving, storing, controlling, and distributing supplies, in order to carry out a large project, especially in war. Logistics has governed the conduct of armies since ancient times.

Ancient historians often recount the use of vast armies of hundreds of thousands- even millions- in great campaigns. This is generally deemed unlikely, entirely because of logistics. To set great masses of people to work, one must have plenty of food and other goods, and ways to move them. For domestic labor this is relatively easy, since grain and supplies can be stockpiled near a fixed workplace and used as necessary. But in war, the supplies have to be transported and guarded from enemy raiders.

Human porters, pack animals, and animal-drawn wagons have serious limits for logistics. All these forms of transport have to eat and are vulnerable to exhaustion. Past a certain distance, the weight of food a man or animal carries to feed themself is so great that there's no room to transport anything else.

Smaller armies can survive by hunting, foraging, and (most often) stealing the food of local peasants in the area. But a large enough army will strip the land bare and potentially drink rivers dry; without a better means of supply the army will die of thirst or hunger even if it never sees an armed enemy.

In ancient times (and even today) the cheapest, most cost-effective way of moving bulk cargo was by sea. Even an ancient ship could carry many tons of cargo, much faster than man or beast could walk. Therefore, large ancient armies were tied to the seas and rivers; traveling any great distance from water was very risky.

This constraint remained throughout pre-industrial history, although areas with strong governments that built good roads could simplify the problem by allowing land transport to move faster and carry more; the Roman and Inca empires both thrived because they built excellent road networks throughout their land, and used them to move large armies.

In modern times, logistics has become more demanding, but more powerful. Railroads and modern ships carry totally unprecedented weights of cargo at incredible speed. But industrial armies demand tons upon tons of fuel, artillery ammunition, spare parts, and other goods not needed by an ancient army. Logistics is no less important than it ever was, whether the goods move by sea, railway, highway, or even through the air (see the Berlin Airlift).

A cunning enemy may always strike at an army's logistics. This has caused countless defeats throughout history, from the Horns of Hattin to the jungles of Dien Bien Phu. Therefore, much of what we call generalship revolves around making sure one's own logistics are secure, giving one the advantages of well fed troops with plenty of weapons- and denying those advantages to the enemy.



MACHINE TOOLS

One of the most important steps in the move toward industrialization was the ability to precisely shape or "machine" solid metal into a desired form. Through mechanical, chemical, and other means, machine tools mold and shape raw materials into precision parts for complex machinery. The first machine tool, a horizontal boring device, was produced in the late 1700's.

The development of measuring devices accurate to within thousandths of an inch allowed for the mass production of items with interchangeable parts. The technology of the 20th century has produced computer-controlled machine tools that can be adapted to a wide variety of applications. The speed and accuracy of these machines allows for the economical mass production of extremely complex products.




MILLING

Milling is the practice of using powered machinery to grind materials into powder, or (in a general sense) for other purposes.

Most civilizations since ancient times have relied heavily on grains for staple food. Some grains are edible directly (like many rice cultivars), but all grains can be processed into "flour," a ground-up powder made from the grain, which can then be made into nutritious, durable bread or tasty confections. Grinding grain into flour has therefore been one of the oldest tasks of agricultural civilization.

However, doing this by muscle power is incredibly laborious- typically, the grain is powdered by grinding it between heavy stones by a person turning a crank. It takes much time to produce enough flour to feed one person for one day. The work is hard and tends to damage muscles and joints if carried on indefinitely. Usually, grinding grain was the job of low-status people: slaves, women in patriarchal communities, or both.

Naturally, this burden of toil would drive almost anyone to find better ways of grinding the grain. One obvious method is to rely on the labor of draft animals- donkeys, oxen, or the like- to push the grinding stones. This allows larger 'mills' than a single person turning a crank, and saves trouble for human beings. But draft animals were expensive in pre-industrial society, and had an endless list of valuable applications (plowing fields, hauling vehicles, and so on).

The next logical step was to power the mill with the inanimate forces of nature. A river doesn't eat, never gets tired, and doesn't care how monotonous its job is. Making good use of inanimate power sources meant complex mechanisms of wood, metal, and stone, though- the pressure of wind and wave can only do mechanical work through the use of gears, bladed waterwheels, and windmills.

The drive to develop mills for grain and cloth was the first stimulus toward the rise of 'machine civilization.' It was a class of work machines were ideally suited to do, and it gave medieval societies a powerful boost in developing ways to harness natural forces.

 

[Xyth]

 

[Simon_Jester]

METEOROLOGY

Meteorology is the science of weather, how it behaves and how it can be predicted in advance.

Investigation into the structure and nature of the Earth's atmosphere and climate began in the Middle Ages, with investigations into phenomena like twilight and rainbows. Renaissance-vintage instruments and technology sped up the process in Europe. Scientific study of weather benefitted from the rise of instruments to measure temperature, pressure, wind speed, humidity, and the like.

18th century natural philosophers achieved the real breakthroughs in defining a global pattern of climate. With plenty of data from places around the world thanks to the Age of Colonization and its sea voyages, and with the tools to understand the way that the distant sun warms the Earth coming from astronomy, scientists like Hadley could identify the major wind and weather patterns on the world's oceans, which had great benefits for seafaring.

The 19th century saw refinement of meteorology and the first organized networks of weather observers that could communicate faster than a storm could travel, using the new electromagnetic telegraph. Radio accelerated this process further yet, but the real breakthroughs were the rise of computer and satellite technology in the 1950s and 1960s. An electronic computer can perform enough calculations to simulate weather in advance, predicting it long before it has any chance of arriving to affect us. Weather satellites can directly observe any kind of weather, no matter how intense, without fear; they orbit above the entire atmosphere and are immune to wind, rain, snow, and lightning. This lets us track hurricanes and project their course accurately, which has saved vast sums of life and property since the first decades of satellite technology.

NANOTECHNOLOGY

Nanotechnology is the craft of creating molecular 'machinery' to perform customized chemical and biological operations at a very small scale.

Up through the 20th century, the sciences of chemistry and medicine relied on naturally occuring substances, or large-scale manipulation and processing of those substances, to produce what was needed. Chemicals might be mixed in a vat and heated up, or exposed to some other substance or condition, but there was no direct interaction between the human operator and the molecules themselves: they are simply left to act in accordance to blind forces that affect every part of the material at once.

The idea of nanotechnology or 'nanotech,' pioneered by figures like Eric Drexler of MIT, is that we can create complex molecules which act like tiny machine tools. These molecular tools would have identifiable parts like tiny levers, wheels, and 'grippers' made up of varying structures of single atoms. They could then grab hold of a material surface or molecules floating in a solution, and break them up or reassemble them as needed.

This would have many applications. Nanotech could be used to 'build' materials with unusual or extreme properties atom by atom, to clean up dangerous chemicals, or to enter into the body and attack cancer cells or toxins. Advocates expect them to perform all manner of tasks which cannot be achieved by simpler, conventional means of industrial chemistry.

One example of successful, naturally-occuring 'nanotech' is the use of biological enzymes in industrial chemistry. An enzyme can take a chemical reaction that would normally happen slowly or not at all (like sugar turning into alcohol in a fermented beverage) and greatly speed it up. Nanotechnology researchers hope to take the potential of natural enzymes and generalize them to do whatever we can imagine, by controlling the molecular structure of matter.

Some say nanotechnology will totally revolutionize the production of goods and distribution of resources around the world. Others question this, pointing out that nanotech molecular machines will be inherently large, relatively fragile molecules that may not survive well outside a controlled environment. It is also uncertain whether nanotech would ever be more efficient than 'macro-scale' processes for making large objects: nanotech could be a good way to apply a coating to an engine part, but not such a good way to make the part in the first place.

Still, it seems likely that 21st century chemistry and biochemistry will be greatly strengthened by advances in this field, even if industry and society as a whole are not changed so much.

 

[Simon_Jester]

NOBILITY

Nobility can refer to "the nobility," a class of aristocrats who inherit the right to dominate society at large. Or it can refer to the ideals of "noble" behavior, as favored by this class.

Aristocratic elites have been with human civilization for millenia. Any person with enough resources, political influence, or military power would have a great advantage in controlling others, and could use that control to further preserve their power. Naturally, anyone blessed by such a fortunate combination of power and wealth would want to pass it on to their children, so legal systems emerged to make sure that the titles and positions of nobility would be inherited safely.

The most common employment for aristocrats in history has been warfare. The nobility can be sure of getting plenty of food and good living conditions, so that their children grow up big and strong. They can afford expensive, carefully crafted weapons like suits of armor, high-quality bows, and fine warhorses. And their political power meant they could easily recruit fighting men from among the people they controlled, making sure they'd have trustworthy retainers to watch their back and handle the supplies while the nobles themselves went off to fight.

The ideal of military courage and self-discipline therefore plays a great role in the idea of "nobility." A nobleman is normally expected to be brave in battle, to be prepared to fight either to defend his own interests or the interests of his ruler, and to act in the ways that his society expects of warriors.

Noblewomen generally were not expected to fight, of course; for females nobility had relatively fewer attractions, except of course for the freedom it granted from drudge labor like grinding grain or tending crops.

OPTICS

Optics are instruments that manipulate visible light.

The basis of optics as we know it comes from medieval times and the European Renaissance. Geometric studies of how light interacted with reflecting surfaces, and with materials like water and glass, were pioneered by the ancient Greeks and the Islamic natural philosophers. In the 1600s, European craftsmen combined this knowledge with improved methods of glassworking to create the first 'lenses.'

A lens is a carefully shaped, transparent object that bends light in predictable ways. Using the right mathematics we can tailor lenses to bend light so that far-away objects seem close by, so that tiny objects are enlarged, or so that blurry objects come into sharp focus. These three applications spawned three major classes of practical optics in the 16th and 17th centuries: the telescope, the microscope, and eyeglasses.

Eyeglasses were of course a practical boon to literacy and the aging eyesight of the average master craftsman or clerk. The telescope and microscope both caused great changes in science, by making visible that which could literally never have been seen before- the details of the planets and the structure of living tissue.

At the same time the telescope in particular had nautical and military applications. On the sea, lines of sight are long, especially from the top of a mast; having a tool to make an object ten miles away appear as though it is only one mile away lets sailors take full advantage of this. At war, being able to make a detailed observation of enemy positions while staying comfortably out of range of enemy guns was a great thing for scouts and commanders trying to understand how to fight an enemy more effectively.