The Development of Cities

[JDR Dragoon]

c5000BC the last interglacial period ended, the grass lands of the Steppe started to diminish, the Steppe tribes were Pastoral nomads who depended on grass to feed their herds, as population levels rose greater demands were placed on steadily diminishing resources.
The lifestyle of pastoral Nomads is often supplemented by raiding settled agricultural lands, as the fear of Nomadic incursions increase this can be turned from simple raiding for booty into a more sophisticated settlement whereby tribute is paid to avoid Nomad incursions.

I have a hard time seeing how this is applicable to European pre-history in general.

The problem for the Steppe dwellers is that as their numbers increase and the local Economic sustainability of their lands decreases they need more & more external wealth to maintain their lifestyle. When overtime the established settled Agriculture based communities were weakened by raiding & tribute the Steppe tribes could (and did) move in and colonise (a similar pattern can be seen with the Germanic invasions of Celtic Britain), in effect, temporally relieving the overpopulation in the Steppe homelands, but, given humanities predisposition to breed then in time the Steppe population would again reach critical mass and if a strong enough leader came to the fore the whole process would begin again.
As far as the Roman empire is concerned once the Danube river line was breached (308AD ?) then a sort of domino effect could be said to have taken place, with succeeding waves of Gothic/Germanic/Hun/Avans etc etc moving in, some admittedly as Federatii, others as conquerors.

I see very little direct empirical evidence supporting such an interpretation. At best a shaky conjecture. There is no evidence supporting your thesis that overpopulation of the steppes drove anybody anywhere. various tribes came into contact with the Roman empire, yes. But they had their own specific reasons for doing so (which is often lost to us today) and their encounters with the Roman empire played out in wildly different ways.

I know the above is a somewhat glib rendition of several thousand years worth of History, and the process would have been either slowed of hastened by local shorter term climatic changes in the Steppe lands however we do have empirical evidence for it in that it is what happened, not just to the Roman empire, but to China & India all of which experienced Hun incursions, to name just one. In some cases we have written records other egs include linguistics clues or battlefield sites or in the case of China a recently discovered Hun city.

Post Hoc ergo propter Hoc error. Just because we know that people sometimes moved for shorter or longer distances does not mean we can automatically glean the reasons behind them doing so.

Dunno if you can lay your hands on ‘The Times, Atlas of World History’ or somesuch but it’s a fascinating read, the movements of the tribes pictorially laid out with dates etc.

I have. And I don´t agree.

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Mmmm, I’m a bit stuck here The dating of a given named locations age can only objectively be achieved by looking at when the location received its legal charter and juridic recognition as a "city/town". Rune if you are suggesting that unless we have a written record of title, or a written account of events then yes your original argument is entirely valid, I can’t argue against that. :curse:

I may have picked this up wrong but it appears we may have fundamentally different way of looking at history, you more from Ranke's empiric historiography, me more inclined to the Annales type historiography, in which case this would not be so much a discussion, more of a sectarian war! one regrettably I just ain’t got the time to do justice to, so I will Chicken out and ‘Surrender my Sword’ so to speak. :bow:

But just to tidy up some minor points;
I have a hard time seeing how this is applicable to European pre-history in general.

It wasn’t meant to specifically refer to European pre-history, it was for the There is no evidence that anything "drove" any tribes anywhere. Least of all into the Roman empire bit, something that popped into my head afterwards did not one of the Gothic tribes ? Osteogoths ? specifically appeal to Rome for asylum from the tribes to the East of them ie off the Steppes ?

... they ususally don´t move very far, and they don´t do so in large numbers. Would not the movement of say the Turks form North East China to modern day Turkey belie that, or the movement of the Finns from the Urals to modern day Finland; the Celts march across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean is another example nearer the Pre-history period. As I see it Humans have always had a certain Migratory habit for one reason or another, but usually I would suggest, based on basic survival, ie feeding growing populations, or, move out of the way of bigger hitters!

Anyhow will call it a day there.

All the Best
Peter

[JDR Dragoon]

Rune if you are suggesting that unless we have a written record of title, or a written account of events then yes your original argument is entirely valid, I can’t argue against that. :curse:

I am suggesting it is the only way to objectively (although imperfectly)date a city/town. Otherwise you have to resort to settlement continuity and in that case New York is thousands of years old ;)

I may have picked this up wrong but it appears we may have fundamentally different way of looking at history, you more from Ranke's empiric historiography, me more inclined to the Annales type historiography, in which case this would not be so much a discussion, more of a sectarian war! one regrettably I just ain’t got the time to do justice to, so I will Chicken out and ‘Surrender my Sword’ so to speak. :bow:

Perhaps. I see myself more as a Hermenuetic anyway.

bit, something that popped into my head afterwards did not one of the Gothic tribes ? Osteogoths ? specifically appeal to Rome for asylum from the tribes to the East of them ie off the Steppes ?

That is the one positive case (the Greutungi, while Valens was emperor) where this can possibly be proven to have been the case, but it is only described as such by one source (Ammianus Marcellinus. The rest of our sources seems to think they did it for the plunder). Besides, it was mostly meant as a rebuttal of your statement that the climatic changes drove specifically named ethnically defined people on long treks across geographical boundaries towards their eventual destinations.

Would not the movement of say the Turks form North East China to modern day Turkey belie that,

That presupposes an ethnic continuity which we cannot prove. Besides, you are dealing with an entire language family here that is (and was) spread out over most of Central Asia. There is (again) no reason to presuppose that the turks who eventually did move 9nto the east Roman empire) did so without a purpose and moved a long distance. In fact we positively know that this was not the case.

or the movement of the Finns from the Urals to modern day Finland;

We are again dealing with languages (and their spread) here. Not necessarily with any physical movement of peoples. And again we have no way of knowing why they moved or how far they did so. As a sidenote: It is not even certain that the Finns come from the Urals.

the Celts march across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean is another example nearer the Pre-history period.

I extend the same observations as above.

As I see it Humans have always had a certain Migratory habit for one reason or another, but usually I would suggest, based on basic survival, ie feeding growing populations, or, move out of the way of bigger hitters!

I see no support for that position. Indeed, it is only with the arrival of modern food conservation methods and mass transport systems that large scale migrations have become physically feasible. Throughout (pre)history most people tended to stay where they were (or close by), even in the case of nomads.

[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.

[JDR Dragoon]

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

Earlier it was also very much grounded in the notions of migrations as taken from the bible (ie. Exodus, Moses and his people fleeing Egypt etc.)

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

It certainly plays quite a big part. We humans just seem to have a knack for coercing each other through violence :)

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Mmmm, The weather gets warm, the weather gets cold, and empires and generals don't give a damn Errr ... might this not be something of an oversimplification?

Of course I may be wrong in this, but I was under the impression that Eisenhower was, in the final days before the launch of the D-Day landings, mightily concerned (i.e. he gave a Damn) about the state of the weather, so much so that until reasonable guarantees were given by the Met boys he was considering postponing the invasion till later when more clement weather could be guaranteed.

Or say, the planning involved with the Dambusters raid, which was dependent of clear skys, a Hunters Moon and the water levels in the Dams, again surely a Military situation where the planners could have been said to give a Damn.

Or again from the history of your own country, I seem to remember (again I could be wrong though) that General Washington gave voice (or wrote about it anyhow) over his concerns (again giving a damn) that the army at Valley Forge was evaporating as it was bogged down in the mud, short of supplies etc, etc. The fact that the weather changed from either North Easterly or North Westerly to its opposite froze the roads and enabled the Army to move. The actions he was subsequently able to take at Trenton & Princetown (?spl?) changed the whole nature of operations in North America from a Policing action to a full blown international war, with the French, Spanish & most importantly the Dutch siding with the Colonists.

Just a thought.

All the Best
Peter

[JasonC]

Sure right and Germany didn't conquer Russia not because Vasilevsky was a chess master and the Russians mobilized for total war while the Germans didn't, but because it got cold, and everyone knows only the ubermenschen are bothered by cold.

It is an excuse factory. D-Day they invaded and they won. Napoleon lost in Russia because he had no logistics sense or system and a typhus epidemic, not because it got cold. Etc.

Weather effects the timing of operations and the mixes of tactics, it does not decide the rise and fall of empires and nations. Men do. Men with arms in their hands. And, again, there are scads of men in the modern world who will believe anything and I mean anything, rather than admit that men with arms in their hands, drive history.

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Sure right and Germany didn't conquer Russia not because Vasilevsky was a chess master and the Russians mobilized for total war while the Germans didn't, but because it got cold, and everyone knows only the ubermenschen are bothered by cold.

Well I ain’t too sure about the above, personal opinion I know but I feel somehow Stoessinger may have been nearer the target for the failure of Operation Barbarossa, i.e. the deployment of troops to aid Italy in Greece followed by German intervention in Yugoslavia which necessitated the postponement of the launch of Barbarossa from May 15th till some 4-5 weeks later.

The subsequent failure to achieve Barbarossas objectives before the onset of winter as I understand it led to frightful, ‘Cock ups’ as far as supply was concerned, in part caused by Soviet scorched earth policies, plus the inability of German supply to do its job in the prevailing weather conditions.

However being in a generous mood I feel it may be fair to absolve the ubermenschen (?? German troops ??) being bothered by cold, after all suffering with frostbite etc and not having proper winter clothing could lead to a certain amount of disquiet.

As to and the Russians mobilized for total war while the Germans didn't could that possibly be because the winter conditions actually helped buy the soviets the time to do so?

But then of course I could be totally wrong, ... Ho hum such is life.

All the Best
Peter

[JasonC]

Yep, you are totally wrong.

Russia had the correct grand strategy, total war, and emphasized the continual production of new fighting power from the start of the conflict. Germany had the incorrect grand strategy, betting on unbounded multipliers from manuever warfare to make an extended war avoidable. Which was an unsound gamble that predictably failed.

This then operated through the difference in the replacement rates both armies achieved. The Germans failed to replace losses that were 1/10 those the Russians suffered, while the Russians replaced their losses and actually grew in total strength in the field by mid November. When you can't make up ground in attrition terms despite inflicting 10 to 1 losses, your replacement stream is in the "off" position. Germany had the same industrial base as Russia and vastly better conditions to work with, in terms of enemy interference in the functioning of its war economy. It had half the manpower base, or more like 2/3rd or better with minor allies included, and nearly parity after occupying areas containing a large portion of the Soviet population. It also had more than 6 months advanced notice that the war would occur when it did. But was still out-mobilized by a huge margin.

This was not due to lack of productive capacity or total manpower, as its later achievements showed. 1944 war output matched Russia's, for instance, and it was able to field a huge army clear to the start of 1945 despite losses of millions of men in the meantime. That capacity and those men went unused in 1941 and 1942 because the Germans foolishly gambled that they would not need them and would win rapidly without them. This was a false premise for a grand strategy from the outset. All the later attempts to justify this gamble and to speculate about ways it might have succeeded despite its recklessness completely miss the point. Attacking a state as powerful as Soviet Russia without preparing for a long campaign and total war of attrition was stupid beyond belief.

That, and not delay or weather, is why Germany lost the war in Russia and failed in the 1941 and 1942 campaigns. There was no earthly reason why a side inflicting 10 to 1 losses throughout the 1941 campaign, should *decline* in relative combat power in the field. It did, merely because the German replacement stream was non-existent. If Germany had matched even half of the Russian mobilizing effort its combat power would have increased continually throughout the campaign. Its losses were low enough to easily do so.

It is a habitual complaint from the front line commanders from then on, that this or that operational goal was impossible because trench strength in front line units was on a shoestring due to losses, while the total figures involved barely hit 6 digits. A power that mobilized 18 million men over the course of the war loses its key battles for want of something like 1-2% more of that figure actually in the front line as combat infantry at key moments and along key frontages. This is a sign of war-economy and attrition-planning incompetence of world-historical proportions. Stemming at bottom from suicidal levels of overconfidence and contempt for the enemy.

[eugene]

I may be wrong, but I am reading this as a will and circumstance type of question. If so, I don't think this type of thinking is really "modern." The ancients had there own "excuse factory," in divine intervention. "We lost it because God willed it," and that type of thing. Even the winners liked the idea. Alexander the Great claimed to be more than merely human. God has punished the nation of Israel. The city of Rome may fall, but God's love endureth forever.

China by tradition took the "sociological" view of things and deliberately downgraded the military class.

I guess what I am reading here is the military historian's lament. Professional history has down graded both military and politics in favor of some of the things derided here. I would explain that by the rise of an Industrial Society. In an industrial society population, disease the weather etc. all are important considerations. We even need to pay attention to (OMG!) the things that women contribute to society. Modern states, and modern historians pay attention to these things for good reason.

I think history is about change. The world changed more in the period 1750 to 1950 than it changed in the 2 millenia that proceeded. It changed less because of men with guns and more because of men with ledger sheets and wrenches. Andrew Ure rightly called the leaders of the industrial revolution the "Napoleon's of Industry."