Quote: (02-06-2013 02:38 PM)Ovid Wrote:
Quote: (02-06-2013 01:24 PM)Caligula Wrote:
Quote: (02-06-2013 11:10 AM)Ovid Wrote:
Primitive societies are generally always replaced by more advanced ones, or, if they overwhelm the advanced one with numbers, generally adopt the more advanced practices themselves. When Europeans started arriving in North America, it was only a matter of time before the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the natives was curtailed by the white man's organized land development, with cities, permanent buildings, and large-scale agriculture.
How about the barbarian invasions of the Rome? It's hard to argue that the Germanic tribes who overran Rome were more advanced than the empire they brought down.
Actually, that was just the scenario I had in mind. Government apparatus was dismantled as Rome was transformed from a pacified empire into a number of feudal kingdoms but Roman culture did not disappear. It was amalgamated into the Germanic culture and formed the basis of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The medievals didn't have the infrastructure and bureaucracy for massive building projects, by and large, but their actual engineering skill equalled and surpassed that of the Romans. The Germans eventually became civilized "Romans," rather than the Romans becoming Germanic barbarians. Orderly states prevail in Europe now, not tribes and war bands.
Good explanation. Hadn't thought of the continuation of Rome in those terms. I need to go back to Gibbon and early medieval history.
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