They have no:
state
tribal organization
military cadre
experienced soldiers
law
binding customs or duties
king
chief
council
To agree a border treaty, a neighboring state must negotiate with each household in turn.
Is this possible for human beings? I think that it is. We are plastic organisms, capable of building and inhabiting many mutually incompatible cultures, some even regarding each other as insane. But the point of the novel will turn out to be that the Rogaviki are no longer human.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It seems I will have to soon reread THE WINTER OF THE WORLD, after I finally get done with THE AVATAR! Thanks to you personally I've been rereading many of the books of PA over the past five or six years. (Smiles)
I do have some doubts over whether a people like the Rogaviki COULD do things like being able to print their own books, considering how few they were and averse to the kind of INDUSTRY needed to even make printing presses. But it was part of the genius of Poul Anderson that he was able to so often persuade us to suspend our disbelief.
No, I don't think a society of the kind the Rogaviki had is possible for Homo sapiens, not when the Rogaviki were GENETICALLY hard wired to be quasi nomads living off bison hunting. Not would I think it even desirable, considering how the Rogaviki were ruthless and callous territorial predators.
I'll give two examples of why I frankly dislike the Rogaviki. I remember with disgust their practice of infanticide for "undesirable" babies and the massacre of prisoners of war.
Sean
Sean,
I hope that I have persuaded some others to read or reread Anderson.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I a well! Plus the works of other authors, such as Pournelle and Stirling.
Sean
Poul's point was, I think, that the Rogaviki way of life is -not- possible for human beings; I agree, but I don't see an evolutionary pathway to the place the Rogaviki are in.
Did civilization and technology in that world quickly and totally break down and is just now recovering, or was there a long, slow collapse — or perhaps a collapse followed by a technological renaissance followed by another collapse (or a series of such)?
Perhaps someone had the idea that genetically engineering people into Rogaviki would enhance their ability to survive in the ice age, and thus they were meant to be the humanity of the future. Only the program was halted, either by accident or someone else deciding it was a bad idea.
David,
A very good premise for a WINTER OF THE WORLD future history.
Paul.
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