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[Il Palazzo]

They thought the Horse and the Horseman were a single creature.

Society For the Preservation of Historical Truth reminds: Indigeneous peoples of Amaricas were not dumb!

[Neonivek]

They thought the Horse and the Horseman were a single creature.

Society For the Preservation of Historical Truth reminds: Indigeneous peoples of Amaricas were not dumb!

If Canada is anything like the United States

Both the Pioneers and the Indigeneous thought eachother were really stupid!

[Jreengus]

They thought the Horse and the Horseman were a single creature.

Society For the Preservation of Historical Truth reminds: Indigeneous peoples of Amaricas were not dumb!

Well they would only be as dumb as we were, how do you think the myth of the centaur got started? Although I am hazy on the exact facts on group of people saw another group that fought on horseback and thought they were one creature. It's a reasonable assumption for anyone to make on seing people fighting on horseback for the first time.

[Asehujiko]

Somebody should make an alternate history game where the Mayas invent gunpowder before china does, conquers all of america instead of being kicked arround by the Aztecs, defeats the spanish invasion force and invades europe with the looted ships. Or just a game featuring an native american faction OTHER then the Aztecs.

[mainiac]

... I love this forums ability to stay on topic.

[Jreengus]

... I love this forums ability to stay on topic.

It's one of our better points.

[Granite26]

Somebody should make an alternate history game where the Mayas invent gunpowder before china does, conquers all of america instead of being kicked arround by the Aztecs, defeats the spanish invasion force and invades europe with the looted ships. Or just a game featuring an native american faction OTHER then the Aztecs.

I'm in the middle of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is a book about exactly why that didn't happen (because wheat from the fertile crescent could grow in it's latitude, plus or minus a bit, and that's a LOT of ground being the short version)

[mainiac]

I passionately HATED guns, germs and steel.  The author got so caught up in his own genius that he forgot that the study of history is somewhat important to history as well.  Any author who thinks they can comprehensively cover 6000 years in a single book is destined to fail.

[Granite26]

I passionately HATED guns, germs and steel.  The author got so caught up in his own genius that he forgot that the study of history is somewhat important to history as well.  Any author who thinks they can comprehensively cover 6000 years in a single book is destined to fail.

I'm not sure I follow you?  Who said comprehensively?

[mainiac]

I consider any history comprehensive if I purports to claim that a single feature, in this case geography, is the ultimate predictive feature to historical events.

[Sowelu]

Somebody should make an alternate history game where the Mayas invent gunpowder before china does, conquers all of america instead of being kicked arround by the Aztecs, defeats the spanish invasion force and invades europe with the looted ships. Or just a game featuring an native american faction OTHER then the Aztecs.

I found that Pastwatch: the Redemption of Christopher Colombus was an awesome, awesome alternate-history-sci-fi book.  Sure, it used the Aztecs a lot, but it was one of Orson Scott Card's best works...  A more satisfying read than most games are to play.

[Granite26]

I consider any history comprehensive if I purports to claim that a single feature, in this case geography, is the ultimate predictive feature to historical events.

I dunno, I don't think it was predicting events, so much as trends.  The trend was for more development of tech, more exposure to germs, and more available staple crops.

10d100 isn't necessarily less than 500d100, but most of the time it will be.

Back to the strategy game analogy, if you are a civ on an island all yourself, you're going to have fewer neighbors to steal tech from.

Across a smaller timescale, it wouldn't have been as noticable, but there were 6000 (or so) years of differing development between the different areas of the world, more than long enough for a small trend to become an overwhelming advantage.

[Servant Corps]

I found that Pastwatch: the Redemption of Christopher Colombus was an awesome, awesome alternate-history-sci-fi book.

Well, I hated it, I guess. Mostly because of the shock twist:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

that it turns out that you can't really change the future, you just create an alternate timeline. What a pointless waste of time. Spend all those resources building a time machine instead of rebuilding society, just so that ANOTHER TIMELINE gets to live happily ever after.

[mainiac]

10d100 isn't necessarily less than 500d100, but most of the time it will be.

Yeah, but the difference between 10d100 and 500d100 doesn't matter so much if there's a million other dice out there you're ignoring.  By obstinately refusing to admit that *gasp* cultural differences have some effect on historical development, guns germs and steel pretends those million dice don't matter.  Don't get me wrong, I'd buy into the premise that the geography of europe makes it a very good location for an expansive society or an industrializing culture.  But it was hardly inevitable and they weren't the only ones.  After all the phonecians and chinese went through very expansionistic phases, even though they are supposed to be the counter examples!  And a single leader was able to turn mongolian culture from very inward looking to the most outward looking culture ever.  There's a whole lot of random stuff that determines the path of history.  And it's often random which way the geography will affect the balance, only afterwards seeming "inevitable."

[Servant Corps]

It might be interesting to have the exact SAME culture on different territories, and control for all variables. You might need to create a computer program to simulate terrian beniefts, sorta like a Civilization game, and then conduct 1000 simulations, and see if you can detect trends that result for civilizations establishing on certain places.