>"Many thousand years of hunting and gathering gets tedious, so as soon as humans figured out beasts of burden and basic agriculture, they put down roots, in both senses. It saved a lot of walking. It was also the start of the concept of “after work,” which history teaches us is a thing most humans strive to increase in any way possible. That is, leisure, time off, vacations and every other use of time that isn’t working, hunting, fighting, and of course sleeping."
I recently read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, where he thoroughly debunks this notion that a transition from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural life-style brought more leisure time. I found it compelling, but don't have the arguments at hand at the moment.
The common wisdom that I've heard was the opposite of that: hunter-gatherer societies had a wealth of free time. It's with agriculture, permanence, and the optimization that they allow that we start to lose it. Similarly though, no real citations here.
And the book it cites "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States".
Few quotes to whet your appetite:
> The first is that, for thousands of years, the agricultural revolution was, for most of the people living through it, a disaster. The fossil record shows that life for agriculturalists was harder than it had been for hunter-gatherers.
> there is a crucial, direct link between the cultivation of cereal crops and the birth of the first states. It’s not that cereal grains were humankind’s only staples; it’s just that they were the only ones that encouraged the formation of states... Only grains are, in Scott’s words, “visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable.’ ” Other crops have some of these advantages, but only cereal grains have them all, and so grain became “the main food starch, the unit of taxation in kind, and the basis for a hegemonic agrarian calendar.”
> War, slavery, rule by élites—all were made easier by another new technology of control: writing... writing was used exclusively for bookkeeping: “the massive effort through a system of notation to make a society, its manpower, and its production legible to its rulers and temple officials, and to extract grain and labor from it.”
Raymond Feist built Midkemia around a RPG campaign. So did a lot of other Fantasy authors of his generation, Elizabeth Moon (Paksenarrion), and Robert Asprin (Thieves World) are two. Might be obvious but I'd say those games are partly behind the explosion of fantasy starting in the late 1970s. It made world building a lot easier, but there was a landmine. Feist either accidentally or on purpose included elements of the game Empire of the Petal Throne without acknowledgement or renumeration. He apparently wasn't the GM and claims he didn't know where it came from.
> Feist either accidentally or on purpose included elements of the game Empire of the Petal Throne without acknowledgement or renumeration.
What sort of elements? RPGs and fantasy novels have always borrowed liberally from each other; unless it's particularly blatant/wholesale, I'm not sure it's a major issue.
I'm submitting this because it's an interesting article, but also because UnboundWorlds has a lot of great content that I think people on HN would find interesting.
This series was my first experience with, some books I read as a kid are better left alone. I have REALLY fond memories of the magician apprentice. And it was really good at the time. But I've changed so much that when I went back to re-read it I didn't enjoy it at all. I had to stop so that I didn't change my perception of the rest of the series.
All that said this was an interesting article that puts a lot of the series in perspective. Thanks for sharing. I might pick up his new world and see how that one plays out.
[+] [-] glaberficken|7 years ago|reply
I recently read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, where he thoroughly debunks this notion that a transition from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural life-style brought more leisure time. I found it compelling, but don't have the arguments at hand at the moment.
[+] [-] WaxProlix|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ulkram|7 years ago|reply
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-case-again...
And the book it cites "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States".
Few quotes to whet your appetite:
> The first is that, for thousands of years, the agricultural revolution was, for most of the people living through it, a disaster. The fossil record shows that life for agriculturalists was harder than it had been for hunter-gatherers.
> there is a crucial, direct link between the cultivation of cereal crops and the birth of the first states. It’s not that cereal grains were humankind’s only staples; it’s just that they were the only ones that encouraged the formation of states... Only grains are, in Scott’s words, “visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable.’ ” Other crops have some of these advantages, but only cereal grains have them all, and so grain became “the main food starch, the unit of taxation in kind, and the basis for a hegemonic agrarian calendar.”
> War, slavery, rule by élites—all were made easier by another new technology of control: writing... writing was used exclusively for bookkeeping: “the massive effort through a system of notation to make a society, its manpower, and its production legible to its rulers and temple officials, and to extract grain and labor from it.”
[+] [-] vajrabum|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PhasmaFelis|7 years ago|reply
What sort of elements? RPGs and fantasy novels have always borrowed liberally from each other; unless it's particularly blatant/wholesale, I'm not sure it's a major issue.
[+] [-] aetherson|7 years ago|reply
Steven Brust's Dragaera
George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards
Steven Erikson and Ian Esslemont's Malazan
Daniel Abraham and Ty Bank's Expanse
[+] [-] projectramo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bargl|7 years ago|reply
All that said this was an interesting article that puts a lot of the series in perspective. Thanks for sharing. I might pick up his new world and see how that one plays out.
[+] [-] projectramo|7 years ago|reply