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The World Without Us - Alan Weisman
Numsgil:
--- Quote from: Peter ---They splitted but the city states had fierce resistance against the spanish.
maya wikipedia
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Right, but those were "post classic" Mayans. They don't represent a continuation of what we commonly call the Mayan "civilization". Same way that Italians aren't Romans (the civ, not the city) anymore. Not since the fall of Rome.
--- Quote ---Over a thousend years it is still high quality, that really sounds strange.
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I'm probably butchering the facts on this. However, there's no disputing that there were way more people during the Mayan heydey than are there now. Check out this site. The first few paragraphs talk about the population density. Clearly they were feeding all those people somehow. And doing it more successfully and sustainabley than we are today.
--- Quote ---I don't know in what area you live, but I have some feeling I know more about it then you.
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Heh, probably. Most of what I know is from reading books. I'm a pretty urban guy.
--- Quote ---I still looks strange that something like agriculture, where probably much people are involved, there are much people needed for the preperation of the ground, seeding, and harvesting. I gues there wasn't any machinery around in that time. So you have enermous much people who did the farming, and I can't believe that many of them has died.
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In the case of the Mayans, their population die back was huge. Like 80 or 90 %. And they had a large autocracy that wasn't involved in agriculture directly. In a top heavy society like that, it's the workers who know what they're doing that die first.
--- Quote ---Good example, I don't know how to sail , can you sail against wind, oh you mean going half left, half right in the wind but having a profit out of it, there was a name for it, or two. But I can't get the name for it in english.
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Right. It's called close-hauled. Check out the Wikipedia sailing page for all the jargon.
--- Quote ---In the so called knowledge-society I cannot really believe sailing isn't somewhere in a book or so, or
building a sailing boat in a book. Maybe I don't really believe sailing will be lost that fast, becouse my country(Holland) is a pretty seawairing nation. At some primary schools in holland there are kids learning sailing so maybe it wouln't go that far in holland.
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lol, yeah, Holland probably isn't going to lose sailing technology anytime soon.
And actually, I don't think there have been any civilizations that collapsed after adopting the printing press. Political boundaries and such changed quite a bit with varying wars, but generally I can't think of an instance where a successful civilizations region was drastically depopulated after adopting the printing press. It could be that literacy and the printing press together have prevented civilization collapses. With the printing press, you can make thousands of copies of a book, making knowledge more difficult to really lose. Can you think of any counter examples?
Of course, if something prevented a generation from learning to read, and a major disaster occurred...
--- Quote ---But something like a scarce at gasoline can really make things happen, much people without work, shortage of gasoline will take out atleast for a big part electricity, making you lose (I thought you said you where a computer-programmer as a job), your job, many others with it. Even more than you could imagine. Ofcource there are proportions being taken against a scarce at gasoline. Althrought this reminds me about some goverments having a miscalculationing at the wheat-reserves. Taking the price of wheat up, yes, the bread could rice in price coming jear. Having no clue what the exact oil reserves are, I am a little frightened.
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Generally I'm not worried about oil reserves running dry if they do it slowly. Humanity is pretty good at adapting to slow change. It's if all the gas and petrol were suddenly gone tomorrow that we'd have a problem.
EricL:
I've done a lot of sailing. Offshore, South Pacific, Carribean. I sailed the west cost of the Americas with my family for a full year. Sailing is easy. All you have to do is push the button that controls the battery powerred hydralic furling system that unrolls the darcon sails from the aluminim mast then press another button which turns the electirc stainless steel whinchs that control the spectra sheets (lines). Of course, I use my GPS-based navigation to plot my course on the electronic charts on my laptop first...
Numsgil:
--- Quote from: EricL ---I've done a lot of sailing. Offshore, South Pacific, Carribean. I sailed the west cost of the Americas with my family for a full year. Sailing is easy. All you have to do is push the button that controls the battery powerred hydralic furling system that unrolls the darcon sails from the aluminim mast then press another button which turns the electirc stainless steel whinchs that control the spectra sheets (lines). Of course, I use my GPS-based navigation to plot my course on the electronic charts on my laptop first...
--- End quote ---
Haha, you're all set for armaggedon then, aren't you
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