tg wrote:

Constant Battles, by LeBlanc blows the myth of the "noble savage" away
with the forensic reports from hunter graveyards that show twenty times the rate of violent assault on the skeletons as found in the graves of yeoman farmers. Jared Diamond, "Collapse" reports that 25%% of the New Guinea highlander men died in battle until the white man showed up with new veggies that dramatically expanded food sources.

Custer died at Little Big Horn cause he never imagined that so many plains Indians would ever ally themselves together, but it'd been a remarkably good year and they were having a buffalo barbie.

Gen White, at Ft. Smith brokered a peace in 1828 that stopped a great alliance of other tribes and white mercenaries from entirely wiping out the Osage. Even today, if you speak with the local Ozark Cherokee, they will tell you the Osage were like Nazi scum. They dont have any use for the Lakota either, as the Chippewa will tell you because they were driven out of Southern MN by the Souix- who became the Osage.

Ordinarily true. But Europe in particular, because of its humid climate had lotsa plants that developed an effective defense against herbivores from eating them by causing sterility and abortions. Witches figured this out, which is why Bishops began burning them as soon as they could in the 5th century.

But the tels along the Danube show how the populations remained stable down thru 4000 years of occupation layers. See Gimbutas and Campbell.

Howard Brazee wrote:

Reasonable. But this is the same era when trade and travel expanded dramatically, and the sexual services these goddess temples offered were killing the women with internal infections. With a dude, he gets a sore on his dick, and since its superficial he survives.

There are, and always have been two ways to control men: violence or sex. Pick one. The women could no longer use sex.

but now today, that's reversed. There are safe sex techniques, but no safe WMD or safe nukes. There are however, myriads of the descendants of the warriors, who just dont get it. Islam, more than most other religions, pandered to the warrior mentality, and therefore are fanatically and frantically nearing the end of the line.

Christianity will soon follow because young women are figuring out how to use safe sex for economic and political power.

James A. Donald wrote:

The quarter truth is that so long as its a zero sum game. But now, the free range has been shrinking. Its why Iraqi zealots cannot agree with one another to kick out the Yankee. Too many Chiefs, not enuf Indians.

LeBlanc, "Constant Battles" discusses a cycle from a tribal leader who gets lucky, then organizes several clans under his authority. then how a warlords gets lucky to organize a nation under him, then build an empire like Ghengis Khan or Tamerlane.

The problem is, that while warriors are terrific for conquering an empire, you need clerks to run the damn thing, and the warriors butchered too many of the clerks to take their women.

Then, because they think the womb is only a room their seed grows in, they use stupid airheads to bear their sons, sending the difficult to handle smart women off to nunneries. So, the sons grow up with the same desire to dominate, but are too stupid to succeed at it. The classic example we see now are the Jihadim. Or those stupid rag heads dancing in the streets with small arms. Each of them wanting to be Ben Ladin.

Wherever you find the warrior class in power, you find they need draconian law to ensure "right conduct". However, that rigidity hinders the innovation needed to really dominate in the modern world.

DouhetSukd wrote:

I only have time for one question. Its not morals. Its resource management, to get the most out of least territory. Barford reports that when the Slav couples moved into a noman's land, it was just one person per sq km. But- with appropriate management, all they need is 1%% of that, not leaving any trace whatever of their presence on the 99%%.

A generation later, there's two or three cabins, and now they use maybe 3%% of the area. Another generation, and there's a village, maybe 10%%.

"Live in a Medieval Village" was taken from the surviving court records of an English Midlands village that was so out of the way none of the armies that swept across in all the wars they had ever found it to burn the books. Its not much like what you read in History.

When the Abbot, whose abbey owned the village tried to raise taxes, the villagers left, moving into the forest. the strike worked because the pandemics you mention had so reduced the population there was nobody to move in to replace them.

The villagers had everything they wanted, all they needed to do was get along with each other, and mostly they were left to do that. 60 people did just fine on a few hundred acres. A hunting tribe wouldda needed 500 times as much territory, and such a population dont havta rise very far before they run into turf wars.

Nobody talks about birth control herbs, but look at the birth record. The data across a couple hundred years shows its always 60-75 people. None of the women are cranking out 9 sons for a warrior wanting more allies.

When you read official history, you see how armies swept across the land taking all the grain and burning the fields. Egypt, Persia, China, India, Greece. Rome, it was SOP. but the European yeoman farmers figure it out and quit growing grain. Switched to turnips.

When they hear an army is coming, they take the food they can carry, and bury the turnips. You cant burn a turnip field. And you cant find the buried turnips. Which keep in the ground just fine, which grain wont.
Napoleon's army starving in Russia is only the most recent and well documented. The Slavs, Germans, Poles, or whatever you want to call them, for they were not a closed gene pool, had fled into the forest many times and starved out armies. Which the scribes in the pay of the kings you read about failed to mention for some reason.

So, you dont know about it. But more recently, archeology has quit looking at the carved Christian marble of the cities and dug into the pagan lives lived in the boonies. All the church or the abbot, ever cared about was the money, and the Slavs didnt have any, so they were left alone to be pagan.