Auggie
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Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Mar 9 th, 2017 at 8:32pm: Auggie wrote on Mar 9 th, 2017 at 7:18pm: Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Mar 9 th, 2017 at 5:37pm: Auggie wrote on Mar 9 th, 2017 at 4:46pm: Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Mar 9 th, 2017 at 4:41pm: Auggie wrote on Mar 9 th, 2017 at 4:36pm: Gordon wrote on Feb 21 st, 2017 at 1:14pm: So we're extolling the virtues of Aboriginals because they managed to pick up bits of broken glass and realised they were sharp and they could cut things with them. The glass shows that Aboriginal people were here and were utilising new materials, changing their technology, their technique of making artifacts Hang on what, new materials? Oh yeah, new materials to Aboriginals  I'd be impressed if they found pieces of glass, ground them to precision, put them inside a didgeridoo and used their brand new high power telescope to discover a new moon of Jupiter.  Finding a piece of glass on the ground and using it to cut things, I'd be impressed if a bonobo did that. Not a human. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-21/artefacts-show-coexistence-between-aborigi... If want a reasonableness explanation on why different societies be evolved differently, read Jared diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. This attributes environmental factors to urbanisation, writing and division of labour. that book is ok, but its obsession with ruling out biology and/or genetics does it no favours. Ooh. You're treading on controversial ground here. Biology and genetics have NOTHING to do with the development of societies. This is an established fact. Such theories are considered pseudo-science. biology always plays a part. removing biology from the equation equates to nothing of us existing at all. environments don't create bodies. what's really occurring is a constant interaction of the body with its environment, and vice-versa, whereby each affects the other. it's not either/or. it's and/with. The environment affects how we behave. For e.g. an instrumental factor in the development of early urbanization was a food surplus. The agricultural revolution, as a result of the domestication of certain animals which did not exist on the Australian continent, led to a greater productive capacity in agriculture. The food surplus then led to a division of labour, and urbanization, which then led to writing, etc. The Australia and American continents didn't have cattle. African had cattle but the tropical diseases affected the cattle so much that they were hardly effective. This prevented the Africans from having the capacity to create a food surplus and thereafter urbanized societies. so how did the aztecs, maya and incas develop farming, crops, bridges, roads, urbanization, pyramids etc? i don't deny the environment plays a part, often a very big part, but you don't even have humans without biology. forget the far-leftists and their screeching of 'biology = nazism'. think about it objectively. So, with the Mesoamerican societies, they were a kind of semi-complex civilization. They develop the early urbanization that was existent in Mesopotamia, etc. but they never progressed beyond that. There was never an empire in that part of the world; the Aztecs were really an empire but an alliance between 3 major city-states; the Incas were an empire but didn't even last 100 years when the Conquistadors came, and even then the Incas didn't have any writing. The really complex civilizations were the Romans, the Achaemenids, the Ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Indian subcontinent, etc. The Ancient Greeks are a bit of conundrum: they were highly civilized, but never coalesced to create an empire (except under Alexander the Great, which lasted for about 12 years), unless you include the Eastern Roman Empire, but that was a product of Rome, so the Greeks can't really claim it. There are different degrees of complexity. You're also completely disregarding social institutions and structures. Biology only really plays a role on an individual level, not a societal level.
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