Jul 22, 2023·edited Jul 22, 2023Liked by Aaron Lee
There is talk that there were some catastrophic weather shifts and famines associated with the Bronze Age Collapse. It's hard to be sure. There are some special old world things in existence which don't fit the standard timelines of events.
It was really hard to forge iron in the old days, hard to get the heat, and manage it, and hard to work it.
Somewhere along the way there was critical masss of how to get heat, then enough iron to pound out more iron.
English coal, capitalism, and the eviction of peasants from the land, coupled with mass production, then steam were a wicked onslaught to established systems.
China and India have always been very different, with China concentrating power in hierarchy, and India distributing order in a fractal way, where everybody carried some blurry version of the same order, the caste system. China could be extremely powerful sometimes, then collapse for a few centuries. India was always teeming with life, and sickness, and all kinds of conflicts. Messy, but stable in many ways, supporting a lot of life.
Your discussion of distributed nodes vs centralized got me to thinking of another sort of mode, building a castle to control a river or similar critical trade route, like the Salzturm (Salt-tower) on the river Elbe in Germny. They extracted salt-tax from the salt traders. Constantinople had this kind of criticl position, where it could extract multiple tax flows and make fortifications.
The complexities of management developed in Byzantium remain a thing oof wonder, still evidenced in Greece, Turkey, and Russia.
Bronze tools: tin and copper. These are not often in the same nation. Even when they are, they need thralls to mine and transport to the palace to be finished. One craftsperson makes the bronze, another forges it. Brittle metal requires special care and handling when using. So specialists. Food for all those people. Scribes for accounting and supply chain management.
Iron tools: Iron ore, which can be worked in a pit on site, as archeological records reflect.
High energy systems are vulnerable to weather catastrophes. Yeah, weather seems to have been a major factor in bronze age collapse. Makes one wonder: am I a dependent, or independent variable? Those bronze age cities were dependent variables. The weather, independent.
India had concentrations of power, but its history more closely resembles Europe & the Middle East than China. Didn't have nationalism. Decentralization as islands, instead of nodes.
Those German forts were also the reason trade routes went elsewhere. There's an old saying nobody believes anymore, that the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. This is how trade reacts to taxation.
There is talk that there were some catastrophic weather shifts and famines associated with the Bronze Age Collapse. It's hard to be sure. There are some special old world things in existence which don't fit the standard timelines of events.
It was really hard to forge iron in the old days, hard to get the heat, and manage it, and hard to work it.
Somewhere along the way there was critical masss of how to get heat, then enough iron to pound out more iron.
English coal, capitalism, and the eviction of peasants from the land, coupled with mass production, then steam were a wicked onslaught to established systems.
China and India have always been very different, with China concentrating power in hierarchy, and India distributing order in a fractal way, where everybody carried some blurry version of the same order, the caste system. China could be extremely powerful sometimes, then collapse for a few centuries. India was always teeming with life, and sickness, and all kinds of conflicts. Messy, but stable in many ways, supporting a lot of life.
Your discussion of distributed nodes vs centralized got me to thinking of another sort of mode, building a castle to control a river or similar critical trade route, like the Salzturm (Salt-tower) on the river Elbe in Germny. They extracted salt-tax from the salt traders. Constantinople had this kind of criticl position, where it could extract multiple tax flows and make fortifications.
The complexities of management developed in Byzantium remain a thing oof wonder, still evidenced in Greece, Turkey, and Russia.
The supply chain to produce:
Bronze tools: tin and copper. These are not often in the same nation. Even when they are, they need thralls to mine and transport to the palace to be finished. One craftsperson makes the bronze, another forges it. Brittle metal requires special care and handling when using. So specialists. Food for all those people. Scribes for accounting and supply chain management.
Iron tools: Iron ore, which can be worked in a pit on site, as archeological records reflect.
High energy systems are vulnerable to weather catastrophes. Yeah, weather seems to have been a major factor in bronze age collapse. Makes one wonder: am I a dependent, or independent variable? Those bronze age cities were dependent variables. The weather, independent.
India had concentrations of power, but its history more closely resembles Europe & the Middle East than China. Didn't have nationalism. Decentralization as islands, instead of nodes.
Those German forts were also the reason trade routes went elsewhere. There's an old saying nobody believes anymore, that the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. This is how trade reacts to taxation.
"That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect..."
-Sailing to Byzantium, WB Yeats