Pre-American industrial "evolution"

[fusangite]

Doesn't that make the point? The ancient american civilizations that had written languages acheived great heights in development, learning and technology. Those that didn't....

So what technologies did the Mexica employ that other American civilizations did not?

My point was not that the main purpose of language is describing technology, nor was it to knock the romance languages. The point is that some languages are more ideally suited for certain purposes.

Actually, you appeared, from my reading, to be stating that Germanic languages were better for communicating technological information than Romance languages were because they were word-building languages. If I've been successful in disabusing you of that notion, I'm pleased. (The danger of that theory is it places Turkic language as the most technically useful.)

Charlamagne understood this, when he said "I speak french to women, spanish to god, and german to my horse".

Also, I think the Charlemagne quote you are using is either apocryphal or mistranslated because French and German were acknowledged for the first time as separate languages 29 years after his death. Also, according to his capitularies, it is very clear that God is supposed to be addressed only in Latin.

Here is a thought question... Could the chinese language have ever allowed the developement of modern computers? If not, why not?

I heard a very compelling argument that the Inca Quipu system was actually the language closest to making that incredible breakthrough. [For more on this, I'll want to be prompted so as to not make the hijack of the thread complete.] Regardless of whether your language is phonetic (like Latin), syllabic (like Arabic) or symbolic (like Chinese) you still have to map your language from sound or meaning codes into numeric codes. I don't think any of the systems is more or less conducive to such mapping. While one could argue that by having very few codes, we are closer to binary and are only removed from it by a power of 5, one could equally argue that the need to convert language into some simplified, numeric construct would be more obvious to an individual operating within the highly complex Chinese system of thousands of characters.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Doesn't that make the point? The ancient american civilizations that had written languages acheived great heights in development, learning and technology. Those that didn't....

My point was not that the main purpose of language is describing technology, nor was it to knock the romance languages. The point is that some languages are more ideally suited for certain purposes. Charlamagne understood this, when he said "I speak french to women, spanish to god, and german to my horse".

Touche. Too bad they didn't capitalize on it like Mr. Guttenberg.

Here is a thought question... Could the chinese language have ever allowed the developement of modern computers? If not, why not?

You've got the wrong Holy Roman Emperor there. That was Charles the V gave us that line.

And, in terms of the Guttenberg argument, that's more than little overstated. No denying the print revolution was important, but it took a lot longer than most people claim in the argument and affected a lot of cultures in similar ways. Most of the big arguments for the print revolution can't really be seen until the 19th century when these empires were firmly established. Accusing China of not being properly literate and text based is a bit off base.

You can make a strong argument for European and Middle Eastern educational systems but those were in place a long time before Gutenberg.

Most cultures developed writing out of accounting. Actually, everyone did. The west was no different in that respect.

In terms of China and the computer, probably, I'm certain there would be differences between what we have now and what we would have, but I don't so much think language was the issue. There used to be some arguments based on the shape of the alphabet and its adaptability to keyboards but then the stroke based keys appeared and pretty much blew that out of the water.

Were I to assign a conceptual variable to the issue of computers it would probably be A.) the complexification and specialization of computer, as in people, labor in the early and middle twentieth and B.) the Arabic number system which is itself Indian so I don't know how that makes anyone's point.

Quepu's appear to be zero based, might be that the Inca's would have gotten closer conceptually.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Final capstone point: What language was spoken by the man who invented the printing press? There you go.

Which of the somewhere between 5 and 7 languages that most persons of quality, probably even just persons, would have known during that time period did you have in mind?

Or was it just the French he would have spoken in the area where he started the project, or with the people who inspired him and collaborated with him on developing the idea?

 

[Heretic Apostate]

Certainly, the Spanish took out the Incas without the aid of disease.

Actually, the diseases preceded the Spanish. They killed off the old emperor, resulting in a civil war, which ended just as the Spanish came a-conquering.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'm not an anthropologist, or a historian, so I just want to ask a question regarding this. If disease was a major factor in a take over of the Americas (and I know it was), why then wasn't Europe conquered during any number of the epidemics they picked up from Asia?

On a similar note, why was Africa protected from European and Asian invasion in large part by indigeonous diseases, but not the Americas? I would think that the lack of many domesticated animals in most American cultures would lead to a less rapid evolution of disease, however there must have been some diseases that the Europeans didn't come into contact with and thus may have been especially virulent. Was the fact that the Europeans were the invaders, and thus had a long trip back to Europe, allowing those infected to die before spreading the disease a factor?

[EDIT] Are there any good books that deal specifically with the subject of diseases and culture? I'm a biochemist, so this is a bit more interesting to me than some of the more hardcore historical-political stuff.

Point One: Diseases universally had an affect on New World history but the affect was varied according to where you were. In the worst hit areas, the casualty rates that were mentioned elsewhere weren't so much a product of the disease itself as the society unravelling afterwards. The NE United States had a casualty rate estimated at between 70-90% but a lot of that was post-plague starvation as the disease took out your best bread winners and left the rest to starve. That pattern is one of the reasons, to the best of my knowledge, there's still a big debate over what the disease was. The theory I've heard that I like best is that it was some combination of small-pox, which we know moved through the area again about a generation afterwards, and the flu, which in the Spanish flu epidemic of the early 20th created a similar pattern of extinction in 'primitive' cultures by taking out the otherwise healthy young men.

The biggest European plagues, on the other hand, were actually pretty good for the culture. The Black Plague was awful for everyone on a moral and spiritual level, but actually represented a sort of economic windfal for a culture that a lot of scholars believe was at the limits of its sustainability. Now the plagues of the Dark Ages weren't good for anybody and did serve as predicates for later invasions and migrations.

Africa I don't know too much about, save the folllowing: diseases did cross the Indian Ocean and Sahara already. There were no large empires to easily take out and run. The nations that first came into contact with Africa had already had some contact with African economies, at least indirectly, through the Sahara caravan routes and were more interested in trade than conquest. Africans also already knew about the horse and stirrup and had guns.

Point 2.5: Syphillis. There is some debate about this, but there is considerable evidence that Syphillis was an American disease that crossed over into the old world. And caused no end of problems. Not so useful militarily, however, since it follows armies rather than preceeding them. Voltaire has a fantastically funny argument about how it was ok that Europe got syphillis out of the new world since it also got chocolate.

Point 3: Guns, Germs, and Steel is the popular classic in this regard, but it's a lot more historical than bio-historical, to coin a term, I've seen cool articles on individual plagues, there are some fantastic ones on the plague that hit Athens during the Peloppenessian war a group of doctors had something similar hit in the American Mid-west and concluded that it was the flu accompanied by toxic shock syndrome and that the weird crowded conditions in Athens were the reason it developed that way and never got seen again, but I don't know what the big best book would be.

There was a very cool book on the Spanish flu that pretty much serves as my gold standard for an awesome disease book on history.

 

[Heretic Apostate]

Question: The fact that (it being my understanding) Chinese is a word-based alphabet, rather than a letter-based alphabet (like English) or a syllable-based alphabet (like Korean), would you consider this to have been a stumbling-stone in the development of the Chinese printing press as a practical application?

Just think about it: assuming you go for the moveable type in English, that means you have to cast 26 different symbols (assuming no capitalization), as well as punctuation, all in different quantities (e.g., the letter "e" will appear a LOT more than the letter "q").

But what about Chinese? Don't they have something like a few thousand symbols? Wouldn't that seriously slow down the use of cast symbols? Sure, you can fit more per page (since each symbol means an entire word), but wouldn't you lose production time when you found out you're missing a "horse" symbol and a "plow" symbol, for that text on agriculture? Stop production and go cast a few more symbols, only to have production halt again on the next page?

(Personally, I am more inclined to like syllable-based alphabets, so there's no pronunciation confusion... See the whole "how do you pronounce 'drow'" thread. )

 

[fusangite]

Most cultures developed writing out of accounting. Actually, everyone did. The west was no different in that respect.

Unless astrology is a type of accounting, I'm not sure that argument holds.

Quepu's appear to be zero based, might be that the Inca's would have gotten closer conceptually.

A researcher into the Incan understanding of camelid genetics suggested a far more radical theory to me that the alphabetic to numeric conversion process that arguably started and then was abandoned in pre-Roman Greek was far more advanced in the Andes -- that essentially, the Quipu were a numerical expression of a phonetic language. She explained that while our reading of the data on our computers remains phonetic, the data stored is numeric. Whether the numeric to phonetic conversion were taking place internal to the reader rather than internal to the computer is essentially irrelevant. She argued that our culture was the second in history to store its phonetic data numerically and convert the stored data at will.

 

[fusangite]

Actually, the diseases preceded the Spanish. They killed off the old emperor, resulting in a civil war, which ended just as the Spanish came a-conquering.

This speaks to the actual relative efficacy of north-south trade in the period. Of course, in some regions of the Americas, the diseases weren't a few years ahead of the Europeans, they were a few generations ahead.

On the book front, I've remembered The Columbian Exchange and two other books by the same author are a very good place to read about the remaking of Pangaea from a biological perspective. For a good book from a popular historical standpoint, I might recommend Ronald Wright's Stolen Continents.

 

[Andre]

...why then wasn't Europe conquered during any number of the epidemics they picked up from Asia?

One could argue that it was conquered, in a sense. Though cultural historians (Edward Gibbon, Michael Grant) have tended to focus on Christianity as a major cause of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, military historians have tended to give greater weight to the epidemics that swept through the Empire.

In AD 165 a plague was brought to the Empire by soldiers who had been campaigning in Mesopotamia. Though uncertain, it's possible this was smallpox or a particularly virulent form of measles. The plague lasted for 15 years, then broke out occasionally thereafter. A hundred years later another series of plagues swept through the Empire. These outbreaks dramatically affected the Empire's ability to defend itself from barbarian tribes, many of which were being driven into the Empire by Asiatic tribes who were also pushing west.

...Are there any good books that deal specifically with the subject of diseases and culture? I'm a biochemist, so this is a bit more interesting to me than some of the more hardcore historical-political stuff.

Try Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill. The book specifically covers the impact of disease in the history of societies. It's been a few years since I last read it, but I highly recommend it if you're interested in the subject.

 

[mythusmage]

On Writing

You go back far enough in history and you'll learn that writing was developed as a way to keep track of things. For inventory and other records. Highfalutin stuff like literature came later. In the case of Middle East it all started with pictures, progressed to ideograms, then some cultures took it to syllabaries and finally to an alphabet.

The impression writing was used primarily for art is just that, an impression. One gained through our tendency to focus on the interesting stuff. Agricultural data aren't interesting, soap operas are. So we tend to translate the interesting stuff and ignore the boring stuff.

Literally millions of baked clay tablets were found in the ruins of the Assyrian cities of Asshur and Nineveh. The vast majority were records. Annual reports and the like. The fiction section was a small part of the whole.

In the case of Greek writing what we have is what survived up to today. Which is most often what people were interested in preserving. Namely, the soap operas and other intellectually vital stuff. Agricultural records etc. got the short end of the stick, because people tended to see no value in them. Which is a shame, because comprehensive annual records of production can tell a lot about how a society is faring. If grain production drops off by ²/₃ after a period of great plenty, you know something's going on.

Much of our view of the past is shaped by what people considered important enough to save. And that, we are in the process of learning, can give us a very skewed view of our history.