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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1649308" data-attributes="member: 6533">The English level of Population isn't necessary.I think this argument puts the cart before the horse and does little to recognize people who don't ride horses let alone carts.First off, remember that large portions of Eberron do not seem to be dominated by any system that resembles classical Feudal rural and urban patterns.Even one large dinosaur nomad nation is going to drop your overall density way the heck down.So yeah, it's one tradition that you have dense settlement.  It's not the only one.Second, population density is the result not the cause.Food goes from the ground to your belly.Goods need to be used not dispersed.  Granted.  Markets are a nice step in that system.  But looking at human behavior from the top down is the wrong step to take.When the population goes below 40 per square mile, and the right sorts of people are still around, mass starvation and poverty is not the result.Instead you get better diets, simpler but more robust social structures, and, often, more stuff.Post-black plague people eat better and are richer.  Mongols had way more stuff per person than Englishmen and were far fitter.    It's true.  People live in tight groups.  But living thick to the ground is not an imperative.  The traditional pattern.  The around 2 million year pattern is to disperse your population pretty widely.  You want to live in a group, but you don't want to  jostle with the next group over.   It's pretty hard to argue for the desirability of population density from primordial days.  Mind you, it's only tangential to the argument, but cavemen are badasses and I want them to get their widely dispersed props.Also true of Eskimos, who have an amazingly high level of technology.  I wear a lot of Eskimo garb over the course of my year.  They did more than allright for people with an exceedingly low population density.</blockquote>

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