The Development of Cities

[JasonC]

Attempts to explain political events through non-political social-science-ee causes like population or climate do not reflect historical realities but only present ideological proclivities. Which ruthlessly downplay the role of political action and human choice in historical events, and seek instead for scientistic scholarly explanations that ignore that main driver as much as possible. But it is all utter hogwash.

Jericho was continuously settled as an important walled town for something like 10,000 years, and then it was razed to the ground after a single conquest. "Tels" dot the near east that were continually rebuilt on the same site for thousands of years, and then utterly abandoned - destroying the explanation of special spots.

As for population pressure and the fall of Rome, it was never anything more than a 19th century fairy tale told by Malthusians.

When Alaric sacked Rome, it was the third time he was able to take it - he settled for a pay-off the other times - and his official title was master of infantry for the Roman province of Illyria. He was, in other words, an important *Roman* general, at the time. Several score important Roman generals conquered Rome at one time or another. He didn't get there by population pressure, he got there by achieved military-political ambition. Just like Caesar or Vespasian.

If you want to go by pure born Italian blood from the region around Rome proper, you can count the emperors who were literal Romans on two hands, with fingers to spare. And they weren't the successful ones, after the first one or two. Everyone ruling the Roman empire was a successful military adventurer, or the failed successor of one. In terms of conduct, the biggest monsters included the original line.

The Roman empire in the east didn't fall until 1453 anyway. That the fall of the west was considered the greater event reflects a western Catholic parochialism to start with, and the origin stories of the modern European nations that produced the historians fixated on it.

The population was uniformly higher in the areas population was supposedly diffusing into, than in those it was diffusing out of. That isn't "pressure", at all. It was simply the force of attraction of a greater capital and higher standards of living, to ambitious men.

The dominant, driving events in all of it, always, are the specific policies and actions of successful generals and statesmen. But there are too many of them and it seems too complicated to those ignorant of the actual history, so they excuse themselves from learning it by flip references to supposedly grander causes, that are in fact petty not grand, and never influenced any of it.

The weather gets warm, the weather gets cold, and empires and generals don't give a damn. Economies rise and they fall, inventions are found or are lost, agriculture uses this or that technique, and empires and generals don't give a damn. You won't find a Hurrian anywhere for an entirely different reason.

It is military conquest. But the modern world will say anything and believe anything, rather than admit that military conquest drives history.