[ExI] Electoral College and 1177 BCE

[Keith Henson]

Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com> wrote

snip

> The current events are part of a LONG TERM PROBLEM THAT HAS BEEN EMERGING
> FOR A LONG TIME.

No kidding.  At least 300,000 years, and probably back to the earliest
days of chipping rock.

When humans figured out chipping rocks and fire we became the apex
predator.   Human populations grow and put pressure on people to move
if they can and kill neighbors if they can't.

The only thing that keeps "war mode" turned off is rising or at least
steady income per capita.  That's rare for any length of time in the
past.  Since the number of humans an environment can support is more
or less fixed (for a given technology level) before effective birth
control the population was kept down by wars (if something else didn't
get them first).

Since agriculture about doubled the fertility of women, that ushered
in close to constant fighting.  When a population sees a bleak future,
typically one of starvation, they would find irrational leaders
attractive.  Such leaders would take them into wars and that always
solved the ratio of humans to resources.  That certainly accounts for
most of the known wars in human history.

Relative to other places, China has excellent records of wars and
population unrest.  Sure enough, these episodes are highly correlated
with bad weather (determined from tree-ring data) that reduced the
food supply.

I suspect that the fall of the eastern Meditarian late bronze age
civilizations was primarily the result of a long-term drought.  That
could happen worldwide now if there is a big enough climate shift.

On the other hand, we might find a brand new way for our civilization
to fall apart.  Widespread computer and network failure might do it.
I wonder how close we would need to be to a GRB to wipe out the
technical infrastructure?

Keith