On Hermes, Grand Duchess Sandra hunts and kills cyanops. She uses a rifle and is accompanied by men and dogs from her ancestral estate.
Ythrians are carnivores who must hunt or herd.
Merseians wish each other "Good hunting."
Time Patrol
See here.
Well, that was easy. I have probably missed something. But I am trying to clear what is left of this evening for other reading - and maybe also for watching some more horrific TV news, while sympathizing with the citizens of the Solar Commonwealth and Hermes as they hear about the latest developments in the Mirkheim crisis.
14 comments:
Humans, like our ancestors since H. Erectus, were apex predators for nearly the whole of their history until the invention of agriculture about 12,000 years ago.
At which point humans stopped being, on average, 6ft tall for males and five-seven to nine for women, and became weedy little runts.
Diseased, weedy little runts -- one of the primary ways they displaced hunter-gatherers was by infecting them with the diseases endemic in their crowded, filthy villages.
It wasn't until well into the 20th century that agricultural populations ate as well as their hunter-gatherer (mostly hunter) ancestors and started increasing their stature accordingly.
Kaor, Paul!
Then some might argue we should all become hunter/gatherers again. Except, about 99 percent of the human race would have to die miserably for that to happen!
What made the agricultural revolution so successful, despite its drawbacks, was that it allowed for larger, more concentrated populations. It created a surplus of wealth enabling people do far more things than was possible for nomadic hunter/gatherers. Arts, crafts, religions, philosophies, etc. It also led to the rise of the State, whose monopoly of the means of violence allowed large numbers of people to live together more or less peacefully.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes. Vast changes have occurred.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
For once we agree about something. Anderson shows us hunter/gatherers in "The Forest." But maybe they were a bit too idealized?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
He did his best.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, but real hunter/gatherers of that ancient time were probably rougher and tougher.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yup.
They fought each other -a lot-. Violence was the principal cause of death for adults.
They were big, healthy, and ate well (except in the occasional weather catastrophe or so forth).
And they fought a lot.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly what I had in mind. I would plead, in extenuation for Anderson, that the brutalities of hunter/gatherers were not as well understood at the time he wrote "The Forest," as it was later.
Ad astra! Sean
Yeah, the statistical analysis of human remains in collections hadn't developed then.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
PA was not truly naive about hunter/gatherers. That part of THE SHIELD OF TIME called "Beringia," shows us paleo-Indians crossing the land bridge linking Asia with North America during the last Ice Age. These paleo-Indians were fleeing enemies who had every intention of killing them all. And they in turn were plenty rough on the primitive archaic Caucasians living in Beringia.
Ad astra! Sean
From SM Stirling:
Sean: yes, but the archaic Caucasians are implausibly primitive.
They're using Neanderthal technology; but Neanderthals were apex predators, not opportunistic scavengers as shown.
Neanderthals hunted aurochs and mammoths and wooly rhinos, and they killed cave lions now and then.
Humans were always apex predators, and our pre-human ancestors only slightly less so.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That was a weakness in "Beringia," showing these archaic Caucasians as being so primitive. Again, that was probably due to defects in the data available to Anderson.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: probably. There was a fashion for a while to paint humans and their ancestors as peaceful scavengers.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Iow, some wanted to think of early humans as tho they were still prelapsarian!
A little thinking, based on how people actually behaved, should tell all of us that life in paleolithic times was far more Hobbesian than Arcadian!
Ad astra! Sean
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