Routine trade doesn’t have many ‘important’ events likewards because running smoothly is just normal life. Only one instance of merchants trading poor quality copper is noteworthy, because it didn’t change the trajectory of a violent conflict.
This reminds me. You often hear it said “history is written by the victors,” and while there’s truth to that, I much prefer “history is written by those who wrote it down.”
Because writing was, for most of history, an expensive and time-consuming process that only a few had access to, there are some big implications from that. One of which being that nobody was very inclined to write down the mundane day-to-day because it just wasn’t worth it and few had any interest in preserving it.
Ouh, i recently learned that war is likely a product of humans abandoning their nomadic lifestyle for settlements and agriculture.
Yes, there was certainly violence between humans before, but since tribes were always on the move, resources at their current location weren’t as valuabe/ worthy of defence. No berries here? Guess we’ll move on.
Another tribe fishes here already? What is increasing your survival chances? Moving along the shore, looking for a different fishing spot or violently take the occupied one?
If you grew crops on fields it absoluetly made sense to defend your location. You can’t take these plants with you, but they’ll yield a lot of food you wouldn’t want, or could affort to lose.
That war is the connective tissue of human history, rather than the holes in the tissue.
There is a lot more peaceful trade and cooperation in history than war, but because war is so disruptive and notable it makes the history books.
That, and war makes for better narratives.
Routine trade doesn’t have many ‘important’ events likewards because running smoothly is just normal life. Only one instance of merchants trading poor quality copper is noteworthy, because it didn’t change the trajectory of a violent conflict.
This reminds me. You often hear it said “history is written by the victors,” and while there’s truth to that, I much prefer “history is written by those who wrote it down.”
Because writing was, for most of history, an expensive and time-consuming process that only a few had access to, there are some big implications from that. One of which being that nobody was very inclined to write down the mundane day-to-day because it just wasn’t worth it and few had any interest in preserving it.
Wow that is a really great way of putting it
Ouh, i recently learned that war is likely a product of humans abandoning their nomadic lifestyle for settlements and agriculture.
Yes, there was certainly violence between humans before, but since tribes were always on the move, resources at their current location weren’t as valuabe/ worthy of defence. No berries here? Guess we’ll move on. Another tribe fishes here already? What is increasing your survival chances? Moving along the shore, looking for a different fishing spot or violently take the occupied one?
If you grew crops on fields it absoluetly made sense to defend your location. You can’t take these plants with you, but they’ll yield a lot of food you wouldn’t want, or could affort to lose.