So i was sitting in botany today...

[dirtworm]

So I was sitting in botany today and my teacher starts talking about where agriculture was first started around 10,000 years ago. He goes on to say that the first cradles of agriculture was china, middle east, and mexico. right away i thought...but thats not a trait of china or arabia....
too bad my botany teacher hasn't played civilization, obviously he is mistaken

 

[Headbanger]

He's refering to Sumeria and the Aztecs/Inca.

 

[iambenben]

i cant read history books anymore now that i play civ, just in case it proves civ wrong

 

[T.A JONES]

Ya Sumaria kick arse. Why was I never tought about them in history class?

From what I read these guys came out nowhere with a pockets full of gadjets, One being the plow.

Some of the most versed scholars able to translate their ancient tablets theorize that argiculture wasn't the only thing they had down before all others like Greece, Babs, n' Egypt. There is something else a little more advanced in which they may have had prior knowledge

Ask him about astronomy and see what he says

Oh wait. a guess a plant teacher may not have known so much. SAy has he talked about the hangin gardens yet? Jeeze!

 

[Marsden]

Just about every ancient and mideveal Civ was Agricultural to an extent, with exceptions being the Mongols. If a civ wasn't agricultural they didn't eat, and most civs that didn't eat died shortly thereafter. China in Civ is based on the time period of Mao in which they were (are) a militarized and industrial society. If they based China on a different period, it could easily have been religous, scientific, expansionist, agricultural or commercial.


Arabia came much later, and they killed an occupied the Ancient civs that were agricultural in the area. So they wouldn't be agricultural, necessarily.

 

[NickyH]

The teacher might as well have said that an important factor behind the early agricultural civilizations in the middle east was the very fertile soil along the flood plains. Just like in Civilization.

 

[dirtworm]

Just about every ancient and mideveal Civ was Agricultural to an extent, with exceptions being the Mongols. If a civ wasn't agricultural they didn't eat, and most civs that didn't eat died shortly thereafter. China in Civ is based on the time period of Mao in which they were (are) a militarized and industrial society. If they based China on a different period, it could easily have been religous, scientific, expansionist, agricultural or commercial.


Arabia came much later, and they killed an occupied the Ancient civs that were agricultural in the area. So they wouldn't be agricultural, necessarily.

Well in reality, before agriculture started there was no civilization, it wasn't until areas began to develope agriculture that they were able to leave their hunter and gather ways behind them.

 

[12 Bar Blues]

Your teacher forgot New Guinea, Sahel and Peru, but anyway.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Mathematics was also something that the Sumerians were good at. That's where we get 360 degrees in our circles, as 360 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and multiples of all those numbers. Pretty smart guys. Later Sumeria became Babylonia, which is a scientific culture even in Civ3.

 

[civverguy]

I have always thought of China as Scientific and Agricultural.

 

[Headbanger]

China has been the very opposite of militaristic since the first emperor succumbed to mercury poisoning and old age.

 

[Ansar]

He's refering to Sumeria and the Aztecs/Inca.

Headbanger is right.

 

[Headbanger]

This book is the awesomness.

 

[Ansar]

Germs?

 

[Headbanger]

Germs?

400 blankets distributed to the natives later...

*cough*

*cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**GASP!**cough**cough* "Augh!""

 

[Ansar]

400 blankets distributed to the natives later...

*cough*

*cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**cough**GASP!**cough**cough* "Augh!""

Oh..!

 

[TheOverseer714]

Germs did more to conquer the native Americans than all other factors combined. They had zero resistance to smallpox, tuberculosis and other old world diseases. I've heard that the original colonists killed thousands just by being here, and later they used contaminated blankets to deliberately spread smallpox. Some original germ warfare.

X-post with Headbanger. His was funnier, in a very dark humoresque way.

 

[Nergal]

What the teacher is failing to take in to account is ....

It depends which Civ you are playing ...

 

[Snarkhunter]

Germs did more to conquer the native Americans than all other factors combined. They had zero resistance to smallpox, tuberculosis and other old world diseases. I've heard that the original colonists killed thousands just by being here, and later they used contaminated blankets to deliberately spread smallpox. Some original germ warfare.

True on the first, overstatement on the second. I've only ever seen one reference to a deliberate attempt to spread smallpox, and that was in the mid-1700s, over 150 years after the first colonies in North America.

But Native Americans had no chance against European germs, and the latter were spread accidentally every time Europeans ran up against Native Americans--the continent was decimated before Jamestown even got started (& there is good reason to believe it never would have survived if the original population had been at pre-discovery densities).

What Diamond's book explores (in part) is why native populations tended to succumb to European germs, rather than vice versa. It's a long argument, but makes considerable sense.

kk

 

[D0NIMATRIX]

Ya Sumaria kick arse. Why was I never tought about them in history class?

From what I read these guys came out nowhere with a pockets full of gadjets, One being the plow.

I was never taught about the Mongols. I learned about them while watching a history channel show over my dad's back.

But really, sometimes it seems that the country the history is being taught in will bypass some extremely important events that don't concern them, and instead teach the students pointless stuff that they couldn't care less for. In elementary/junior high at least...