IMG source - Pinterest.com (slightly edited)
I wax excessively prosaic on decentralization for very good reasons. As a child I was exposed to quite egalitarian conditions at sea and deep in the forests of my island home, yet also to highly stratified society subsumed to institutions. My experience of these extremes led to strongly abhorring status and institutional power, which demonstrated intolerable abuse.
The recent murder of George Floyd well illustrates my childhood experiences, as the murderer was George's co-worker at a private club, but empowered by the institution of the state as an armed thug, in which role he executed George Floyd. It is almost impossible the two were not acquainted through their mutual employment, and the reason for the murder likely to have derived therefrom, but the ability to murder was only due to the institution of the state and the abuse it necessitates to centralize power.
As an inmate at a public school, I was once attacked by dozens of jocks, whom I had offended by my lack of deference, AND the school administration staff, who also incited my father to beat me, because he did defer to their authority.
Privately, none of them (except my father) dared so abuse me. Some made some attempts, but after their chastisement in private, failed to pursue abuse directly even in institutional settings. Nonetheless, institutions availed them of indirect means of abuse, which did not relent, as I could not attack the institution with a baseball bat. Schools have no brains to bash out.
I am struck by the instability of such institutional political power, and note that the Bronze Age ended for that very reason. It is this dynamic that has informed my recent researches into the evolution of society and what I feel is confirmation of my anecdotal experience.
Eurasia has been continuously peopled for as long as there has been people, and the ebb and flow of particular societies revelatory of the influence of social stratification on social stability and individual benefit therefrom.
The Bronze Age was marked by highly stratified societies, war, and social instability, despite the massive advances in technology that seemed to result from that stratification. Copper and tin are necessary to make bronze, and as a rule those ores aren't both available in any one region, requiring specialized craftsmen and trade to produce.
This both allowed and capitalized on institutional power, in turn enabling and dependent on abuse. Prior to the empowerment of institutions, neolithic societies were far more egalitarian and stable.
"Throughout the 2,750 years of its existence, the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture was fairly stable and static; however, there were changes that took place. This article addresses some of these changes that have to do with the economic aspects. These include the basic economic conditions of the culture, the development of trade, interaction with other cultures and the apparent use of barter tokens, an early form of money."
"Members of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture shared common features with other Neolithic societies, including:
"An almost nonexistent social stratification
"Lack of a political elite
"Rudimentary economy, most likely a subsistence or gift economy
"Pastoralists and subsistence farmers
"Earlier societies of hunter-gatherer tribes had no social stratification, and later societies of the Bronze Age had noticeable social stratification, which saw the creation of occupational specialization, the state and social classes of individuals who were of the elite ruling or religious classes, full-time warriors and wealthy merchants, contrasted with those individuals on the other end of the economic spectrum who were poor, enslaved and hungry. In between these two economic models (the hunter-gatherer tribes and Bronze Age civilisations) we find the later Neolithic and Eneolithic societies such as the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, where the first indications of social stratification began to be found. However, it would be a mistake to overemphasise the impact of social stratification in the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, since it was still (even in its later phases) very much an egalitarian society. And of course, social stratification was just one of the many aspects of what is regarded as a fully established civilised society, which began to appear in the Bronze Age."
Europe: Cradle of Civilization
Another driver of power was the domestication of the horse, which enabled cavalry, and overwhelming force to be applied in war against infantry. However the most potent driver of institutional power IMHO was plague.
While the Trypillian society built the largest cities on Earth we know of at the time, up to ~50k population, those cities were abandoned and burned every 60 - 80 years, likely because of plague. Yersinia pestis has been a curse on humanity for far longer than most of us realize, reaching deep into prehistory.
Urbanization creates high concentrations of food for fleas, rats and otherwise. Eventually, Y. pestis gains a foothold, and plague begins to spread. Burning the cities to the ground cured the plague. Were these cities dependent on highly specialized crafts, such as metallurgy, politics, or war, the socities would have likely collapsed.
However, all the people had each the necessary skills to restore society, and sometimes rebuilding cities replaced the actual prior buildings in place and form. Some of these urban centers were rebuilt more than a dozen times.
South and East of Trypillian society, the steppes and Anatolia were undergoing waves of competition, and war advanced the technology of warfare and abuse with horse and bronze. The specialization necessary for such tech advance was insuperable in egalitarian society, and absent such advance they were doomed to be murdered.
In such fierce competition, they were left with a choice between submission to overlords or death by conquest. Thus were born the Yamnaya, the patriarchy, and modern institutions.
With control of plebs by overlords, the concentration of resources was undertaken, and eventually resulted in waves of conquest that overwhelmed neolithic societies like the Trypillian that had been stable for thousands of years.
One of the most valuable resources were the plebs, because from them were drawn all the other resources necessary to growth of the power of overlords. Like all other resources, the plebs were centralized - and became ripe for plague.
As conquest proceeded, so spread the plague.
Only after improved sanitation was built into urban sites was plague largely reduced, and even today it arises, still lurking on the outskirts of civilization where the poor aren't availed the same sanitary facilities, yet are subject to the same economic forces that drive their husbandry.
It was after the elimination of egalitarian, decentralized society that plague most affected society, as the cities could no longer be burned without restoring equality of status to the people. Plebs forced to live in hovels with nothing better to provide warmth than composting dung died by the tens of millions during the middle ages when plague struck.
Overlords, while not immune, were far better insulated (pun intended) from plague vectors, and despite the economic losses during pandemics, maintained their relative status during outbreaks.
It is difficult to imagine what could impel people to voluntarily remain members of a society that so abused them, but instructive to consider that they found it preferable to being burned at the stake or starving to death.
Interesting that today a similar pandemic is being invoked by the overlords of institutions when distributed means of production are developing and enabling society to restore the stability of egalitarianism.
We are blessed that the plague they tout is a hoax (the most recent CFR published by the CDC is .004, lower than that they claim for the flu by orders of magnitude). Only those incapable of surmounting the psychological abuse we have all been subjected to can be controlled by this means, and we who grasp the duplicity are being prepared for a global cull.[I note that since the end of the Ice Age, human brains have shrunk ~20%. I suspect the reason for this is that need of overlords for plebs. Bigger brained people were too smart for their own good. Neanderthals had larger brains than even our Cro Magnon ancestors. They died first.]
It is a feature of the universe that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The imposition of highly stratified institutional power thousands of years ago remains in effect, the reaction to it's imposition delayed by every means conceivable, yet inevitable.
The social structure of human civilization is most profitable when wealth and power are distributed, as it was for hundreds of millenia prior to the Bronze Age and the centralization necessary to produce the weapons of war. Today those weapons are long obsolete, eclipsed by more advanced tech that enables individuals to withstand the attacks of whole armies, yet centralized means of production have kept individuals disarmed because the means of production have been monopolized by overlords.
The cutting edge of tech advance across all industries today is decentralization, and the distribution of means of production to individuals, whom will then possess the ability to manufacture WMDs that make armies, and war, obsolete.
Even the ultimate weapon brandished today by overlords desperate to maintain their power, plague, must defer to individuals empowered to cure any ill with CRISPR and AI that are being presently developed and distributed.
The fact is that only bombing the world back into the Stone Age can keep overlords the power institutions drain from our veins. Physics mandates that decentralization is more efficient and profitable as tech advances, just as bronze mandated institutionalization and specialization. The terrible hell that has been served to people by their pitiless overlords awaits those of them that do not repent, and seek to advance just society.
If you are able to grasp means of production today, do not hesitate to do so. The nature of institutions, inhuman and inhumane, has driven them to be the possessions of the least human and humane of us, psychopaths as pleased by fear and pain as normal people are by happiness and good company. In the coming global pogrom those psychotics prepare in an attempt to retain their relative power, the lack of resources will be, as it always has been, one of the primary weapons used to destroy all who do not defer to overlords.
The restoration of human society to freedom and equality has come around full circle to where technology drove it from, because the universe is real, rational, and factual. Discard what is false, unreasonable, and fake, and become the master of your fate. The delayed reaction to enslaving the world is unstoppable, and woe to those that are in the way.
Nothing is ever precise in society, and feedback will produce corrections from over-reaction only eventually. I sure don't want to experience the over-reaction to being starved, raped, and murdered for thousands of years that is about to begin. I bet you don't either.
Best get on the right side of history, and set people free. Either become the master of your fate, or suffer the fate your masters impose.
In the Bronze Age, those who monopolized copper and tin were dominated. East Asia is currently competing to secure US artificial intelligence technology.
So, kings from Korea, China, and Japan are clinging to Bill Gates to get AI technology. The king chosen by Bill Gates will rule over all of East Asia.
Perhaps through the centralization of East Asia, Bill Gates will build his own global empire.
Senior, brain size does not determine intelligence. Elephants and whales are less intelligent than humans, even if they have a larger brain than humans. The Cro-Magnons were more intelligent than the Neanderthals and won the war.
Perhaps the brain size of Koreans is smaller than whites.
In primates brain size does determine intelligence, because of a difference in primate brains from other vertebrate brains. Other vertebrates have larger brain cells the larger their brains are. Whales have the largest brain cells of any vertebrate. More importantly than the size of brain cells, however, is the types of brain cells, their organization, and how they are used. It should be easy to grasp that what we call intelligence involves understanding how to manipulate stuff with hands, and that whales don't specialize in the same kind of intelligence.
But primates, and people are primates, have more brain cells the larger their brains are. Even though our brains are much smaller than whales, we have more neurons per kilo of body mass than whales. The larger a primate brain is, the smarter the primate is. Cro Magnons were far smarter than modern man, and Neanderthals made them look stupid.
War is not won by intelligence, but by brute force (exceptions exist, but aren't the rule). Neanderthals did not live in social groups, as H. sapiens do. A village of smaller, weaker, dumber Cro Magnons might defeat a family group of Neanderthals, who would have one or two adult males to defend them. We simply zerg rushed them, if conflict occurred. We probably mostly didn't, because they probably mostly won when it happened.
It is likely we did not bother (or dare) to kill them personally, because Cro Magnons and Neanderthals co-existed for tens of thousands of years. We probably just took over their territory, and made it impossible for them to survive on our leavings.
Neanderthals must have been incredible warriors. I am confident one Neanderthal would have been happy to tackle ten Cro Magnons without much fear of losing. Neanderthals took down mammoths, wooly rhino, and similar multiton prey alone, or as a family group. They weren't long distance runners, and their immense strength was all for short bursts, like sprinters compared to marathon runners. Their reaction times were probably much quicker than ours, like birds. In battle one would have danced circles around whole tribes of weak, slow, stupid sapiens.
They had no villages, no huts. They were completely integrated into the ecology, and didn't alter it at all. It's very difficult to grasp how such a natural mode of living is extremely demanding of intelligence, until you've tried to live off the land, but I have done so, and would probably die in a few months if I tried to do it today. You need to know every life stage of every plant and animal necessary to your living, and travel long routes, along which you also need to know every shelter, source of salt, stone, and etc. It's necessary to master all trades, not just to specialize in scratching lines in the dirt where you plant some seeds.
You need to know when and how to do all that, and do it in a landscape full of lions, tigers, bears - and the most deadly of predators, feral packs of men - with nothing but a pointy stick to protect your women and children. Neanderthals did that for ~50kyr after H. sapiens showed up. They were hella smart.
We, and our forefathers, hunted such game in packs, and we didn't jump on them and stab them to death. We dug pits they fell in, or drove them over cliffs by setting fire to the steppe. I don't think any H. sapiens could have tackled a mammoth bull alone, and I think Neanderthals lived by doing so routinely. As warriors, we were no competition at all. Only as we dominated the whole landscape with our eusocial tribes were we any challenge to Neanderthals.
Personally I don't think Neanderthals went extinct in the way we think of mammoths or wooly rhinos going down. I think they were absorbed into Cro Magnon tribes until their genes were simply mixed in, and they ceased to exist as distinct people. That's where the food was, and Neanderthals were far smarter than us, so that's where they went.
I think Neanderthals were the Nephilim of legend, giants among men in terms of strength and intelligence, although on average shorter than H. sapiens (this may more apply to H. denisova, who apparently averaged ~7 foot tall. They really were giants among men, and probably were absorbed the same way as were Neanderthals). I think the Norse trolls also refer to Neanderthals, and Beowulf may be a dim recounting of murdering the last hold out that refused to integrate into human society. I find it interesting the story of Beowulf and Grendel also alludes to Grendel breeding with human women - probably why they had to kill him.
What mere man could compete?
Your claims are interesting!
However, it was recorded in the Bible that humans fought and destroyed the Nephilim. The Jews initially lag behind the development of civilization over Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Islam, but eventually won the final victory through Christianity.
At first, the Neanderthals may have had superior intelligence and power over humanity. However, the evolution and development of mankind conquered the Neanderthals.
No. Where are our conqered slaves? We conquered nothing and no one with our development - except ourselves. We are being domesticated, enslaved today. Look at the pallets of bricks American cops are leaving for protesters to throw at them.
What does that even mean?
It means we are not smart, we are not developed, and we are their property. It means collectivism is slavery.
It means those of us, those remnants of Neanderthal genes that yet live today, are the only free men there are. I may not tackle a bull mammoth with a pointy stick alone for my dinner, but I will not enter the corral and enable my oppression by throwing bricks they supplied at them.
I always return to decentralization, the individual possession of means of production, as the solution to problems, and the means of creating benefits. Who better than Neanderthals to model independent means?
Neanderthals, my friend, will win this contest, not H. domesticus, not the domesticated cattle of banksters, but the lunatic fringe that isn't part of the compliant herd.
Thank God I am such a lunatic =)
Edit: >"...power over humanity..."
I do not see that Neanderthals ever exercised any power over humanity, not once in the ~50kyr we invaded their territory. What I see is that they have become the power of humanity, the very model of what we today must undertake to be free and human, when the enemy of humanity seeks to make mandatory injections of DNA altering 'vaccines' that will actually and literally turn us into GMOs, it is that refusal to enter into society, to enter the corral where the herd is, to remain reliant upon ourselves alone, that will retain our humanity.
It is the Neanderthals that will save humanity.
In Korea and Japan, Neanderthals are degraded as inferior human beings who have failed to adapt to environmental changes.
So, your claim is shoking! hahaha
Many people never suspend their beliefs and closely examine them. We absorb our culture, our foundation, and base our every thought on unexamined artifacts of our upbringing without ever choosing it.
Carefully examining the tens of thousands of years Neanderthals weren't extinguished reveals their sublime competence to survive. They were smarter than us by far. Today, particularly in places that are densely populated and have been for generations, being a faithful member of society is far more beneficial than being smart.
We needed to be social far more than we needed to be intelligent.
I understand!
Seek first wisdom. You are on the right path.
It is interesting that you quoted the prehistoric period of Europe.
After all, the new continent belongs to European civilization.
Are you a right-wing thinker who opposes left-wing thinking?
The Trypillian culture has primarily been found in Europe, but finds of bronze coins in the shape of knives that were used in what is now China at the time suggests that either they engaged in extensive trade with far Eastern cultures, or were present deep in East Asia. One of the discoveries was a coin with text on it pointing out it was minted in Ji Yo, a city in what has become China today.
Another label for the Cucuteni-Trypillians is Scythian, and that cultural context is primarily Asian, based on the steppes, with but a presence on the verge of Europe. We don't have much archeological evidence from Central Asia (during the Neolithic, before great cities like Samarkand and Tashkent arose, or more to the North of them at all). Not much is known about Scythian culture, and it is only vaguely understood what differences between Cucuteni, Trypillian, and Scythian existed.
It is important to realize that in the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and even into the Bronze Age, countries as 'the state' didn't span every inch of the globe. This was a culture, not a nation state. As a culture, it varied, and it becomes difficult to demarcate where it ends and another begins, and why. China, Korea, Ukraine, Romania, and Hungary didn't exist, and only recently have they emerged as states on the time scale of prehistory.
Also, generally Europe was always the weak fringe of culture, the last place people and technology arrived, and not the oligarchic culture it recently became. The Middle East and South Asia tended to have more people - and thus, power, from their greater populations that enabled larger armies - than Europe. The domestication of the horse ~7kya enabled the Yamnaya to basically replace the men of Europe (only a couple thousand years after farmers from the Middle East did the same thing), and Bronze took thousands of years to penetrate to the North and West of Europe. By that time Egypt or Assyria could have conquered the whole of it with a relatively small force ahorse and wielding bronze weapons and armor. They couldn't have ruled it, because it was so remote, so they didn't bother.
I do oppose left-wing thinking, but I also oppose right-wing thinking. I personally refer to the left and right as cheeks, not wings, because I think two-party divisions more represent an ass than a bird. States always form such bipartite divisions to enable a nobility to covertly rule, which inevitably destroys the cultural strength the state was adopted to further. Cultures have wings with which to soar, which states shit all over until the people are diminished, and can soar no more.
I do not support institutions, and consider them inherently slavery. I do strongly support peoples acting as sovereign members of their communities to work together for the good of their people, communities, and families.
Do you consider me the Right or Left? I do not consider me on that spectrum at all.
I don't know about The Trypillian culture. However, I think there was an pre - ancient civilization.
You are right. There were many.
this guy is working on it
@innerhive have you no principles? You defend your rewards pool with your flags, but have no salient comment?
Speak. State your beef.
Do you disagree? Or do you seek to be my master?
I would much prefer to be proved a fool by you than merely flagged. Are you nothing but a wallet? That's all I see from your actions here. Nothing more than a token effort.
How sad.