Posted on 06/10/2006 6:43:49 PM PDT by RWR8189
Well put. Building civilizations is what we (Humans) do.
To hell with the doomsayers!
(Once again) WELL SAID!
Our civilization is vulnerable to destruction because people are to segmented and specialized.We are dependent on engineering and technology but few people are well educated in those areas
And that has always been the case.
Really?
The U.S. Census Bureau claims that as of 1 July 2005, Orleans county had a population of 437,186. According to Wikipedia, 1,836 people died as a result of Katrina.
Counting ONLY Orleans county, that comes to 0.004%. Are you sure a hurricane of Katrina's magnitude would have only killed less than one half of one percent of hunter-gatherers living in the same area, without the benefit of early warning or outside assistance?
Most of the people who died in New Orleans were living off the compassion of other people, in a hunter-gatherer society, they wouldn't even have been alive when Katrina hit.
"The December 26 tsunami in Southeast Asia heightened international awareness of the region's indigenous peoples."
"Non-governmental organizations, governments, and anthropologists working in the region say many indigenous groups survived the tsunami because their traditional lore passed down from generation to generation prepared them to deal with natural disasters. Their survival demonstrated to the world the relevance of indigenous traditional knowledge."
"In communities where Western encroachment had destroyed traditional life ways, indigenous groups had no defense against the tsunami's destruction."
The most apparent contradiction is that if Fagan were correct, most human societies today would still be hunter-gatherer. But they are not.Farming started when hunter-gatherers domesticated plants and animals, proving it all-round more profitible to bring the food to you than you to the food. That's the inherent quality of civilization.
Stone Age tribe kills fishermen who strayed on to island
Stone Age tribe kills fishermen who strayed on to island
Thanks. I've seen that article before.
And then there are archaeologists.
If civilization goes to pot, look me up for some good arrowheads and other tools. But better bring something good to trade; dollar bills may have deflated a bit.
His California archaeology book is a good example. That's a subject I know well. I got 20 pages and had to stop.
The book was remaindered out within a year.
Ummm, yes?
"Boom, boom, boom! Out go the lights!"
You have to just love the infrastructure targets: power plants, substations, transformers, sewage processing stations, water pumping and purification plants, dams. Woo-Hoo. Hit a few of those and a city becomes uninhabitable.
It didn't work out too well for the inhabitants of Galveston, Texas in September of 1900. The local station of the U.S. Weather Bureau assured the citizens that the approaching storm would miss them; consequently, few decided to evacuate.
Isaac's Storm : A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
The key part is "society as we know it," that is, modern, technologically-advanced society. It all depends on electricity to function. Modern manufacturing for example requires vast amounts of electricity.
One only need to look at the Convention Center in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to answer that question. Of course, a lot of those folks weren't civilized to begin with.
Of course, otherwise with no refrigeration they will have spoiled by the time you need them...
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