Re: Civilization? FEH.

Alexander N. Bossy (alxander@pipeline.com)
Sun, 03 Nov 1996 03:23:04 GMT

thedavid@clark.net (David O' Bedlam) wrote:

>Joshua Fruhlinger <jfruh@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>[...]

>>On the other hand, your point about grain storehouses is interesting.
>>Perhaps civilization arises where there is need for large scale
>>organization? (i.e. Egypt's tricky flood system, Sumer's large-scale
>>irrigation works.)

> Had
>there been no "Mighty Lords" there would've been no call for big farms
>or complicated waterworks

Get real. With or without "mighty lords", the common people of Sumer
and Egypt would have wanted to eat. If that involved constructing
"complicated waterworks", they'd have done so.

>or organized religion or any of that shit we
>recognize as "civilized" -- as those few people who'd happened to live
>in those inhospitable valleys would have simply wandered on to locales
>where the living was easier

And, what would the people living in those "locales where the living
was easier" have done about that? My bet is just about what the
Egyptians did to the Lybians and the People of the Sea when they
"simply wandered on to [Egyptian] locals where the living was easier."

>Those "Mighty Lords" (like ours) were implacable brats -- whose "major
>achievements" were basely inhumane and merit only revulsion. There are
>no building projects worth a thousand human lives, nor can there be.

Including a hospital where a cure for a disease that would otherwise
have killed a hundred million humans?

Alexander