Re: The joy of actual numbers, was Democracy

On 31/10/2024 00:06, rbowman wrote:

On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 18:33:25 +0100, D wrote:
 

But as we've done in the past, we learn the lessons, start again. End of
civilization? Hardly. A bump in the road, definitely.

 I haven't read Tainter but I have visited most the the Chaco culture sites
in the US SW. Chaco Canyon is particularly impressive, in the size of the
primary site and the network of roads to the outliers. The roads are
enigmatic. There is no evidence the Ansazi used the wheel although there
are children's pull toys that show they understood the concept.
 

I wasn't aware of this culture. Amazing and thanks for pointing it out, irrespective of the context of this thread.

The culture is gone. The same can be said for the Mound Builders in the
eastern US. You might say civilization was alive and well in contemporary
Europe, but it was vanishing in the Americas about a millennium ago.
 

Yes. The usual explanation is climate change.
Horses are a sort of 4x4 I supposes.  So it was emissions from horses asses what done it, presumably.

He was a one trick pony but Miller's 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' os the
more likely account of the future.

I read it amongst several thousand others, but have forgotten the plot...googles frantically. Ah yes. akin to the dark ages preservation of Classical knowledge in monasteries.
I was thinking of that period. Rome's rule over NW Europe became unsustainable as the communications lines of both products and political decisions simply got too long.  The NW European states were simply uneconomic to maintain, same as the USA was to Britain. Although it didn't descend *quite* as far into barbarism...
It took 500 years to begin to re-emerge and 1000 to escape the legacy of the Graeco Roman culture and start its own - the Renaissance.
And that lasted about 500 years and now the new Dark Ages are upon us, ruled by superstition,  fear and local war lords.
--
  “A leader is best When people barely know he exists. Of a good leader, who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say, “We did this ourselves.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching