Are there any statistical correlations regarding a grouping of people who reside in an area prone to frequent natural disaster and the number of wars they have participated in throughout their history?
For example,
Two tribes share an island and battle volcanos every few months.
Would there still be a natural tendency for them to make enemies amongst themselves? Do these tribes participate in war less frequently?
I know of no such data. However, I can think of two outcomes:
The disasters are such a nuisance that the tribes have to spend nearly all of their time securing their food supply (i.e., hail/hurricane destroys crops/kills game/etc.), and have no spare time/surplus food with which to conduct war.
(In more primitive societies, war is often seasonal, since once the crops have to come in, people have to stop fighting or risk starvation; similarly, it’s usually better logistics–feeding your troops, at the most basic level–not better technology, that results in victory when more advanced armies attack more primitive ones.)
2) The disasters are even worse than the above, and so food is SO scarce that the tribes end up fighting fiercely for the tiny amount that remains. But that seems like an extremely unstable and short-lived situation, so I imagine one tribe would soon wipe out/absorb the other, so that only one tribe remains in the resource-scarce area.
The problem with this scenario is that it assumes thats somehow population remains stable despite a perpetually insecure food supply. In the rela world that doesn’t happen. Instead population will stabilise at a level appropriate for the long-term food supply situation. This is why srid-region people are just as warlike as people in the wet tropical and sub-tropical regions.
The ‘nuisance’ value of disasters doesn’t lead to people putting all their effort into food supply because effeort simply can not overcome disasters. It doesn’t matter whether the disatser is drought or locusts or volcanoes, hard work won’t stop it. Instead the population adapts to an unredictable food suuply situation by shrinking in size so that they always have enough food despite the disasters. Then they go out and kill each other.
That’s an awfully broad brush you’re painting with. Histroy abounds with examples of wars that start because the harvest has failed and the people want to go and steal their neghbour’s food. Under those circumstances war is just as likely or more likely during the normal harvest season.
Perhaps more importantly the harvesting in most ‘primitive’ societies is done primarily by women. As such men are free to go war whenever they choose.
Once again, history says that excatly the opposite occurs. This was most umabiguous amongst the Maori of New Zealand where the cold climate made the traditional Polynesian crops terribly unproductive. Food was perpetually scarce and the tribes were in a state of constant warfare for centuries prompted almost entirely by food raids.
One tribe could never wipe out another precisely because food was so scarce and populations were so low. With each town having less than 500 warriors, and each clan needing to defend itself constantly it was impossible to effectively hold any captured land, and as a result it was impossible to elminate your enemies.
Where agriculture is productive it is possible to feed ocupying soldiers and then use food stolen form occupied territories to increase the home population leaidng ultimately to colonisation. But when ocupied lands can barely sustain the population of farmers there is no way to do this.
Let’s just wait and see what happens when global warming really kicks in. I’ll lay odds that much of the world will be fighting over water this century.
Japan has earthquakes, volcanos, typhoons, tsunamis (sp?), floods, blizzards, landslides, occassional city-consuming fires, and waged a ruthless war of aggression during WW2. It also had a period in it’s history called the Age of Battles.
Brazil is devoid of most natural disasters and the indians fought each other just like anywhere else. The only way disasters make war less prone is by wiping out pesky humans in the area.
Watched a documentary on the collapse of one of the big South American civs in 530-620 period due to a 30 year El Nino freakout.
Later that week I read a book demonstrating that there was a world-wide climatic distaster in that period stemming from a catastrophic volcanic event that screwed the world climate for several years in 536.
Interesting…but once Brazil became a nation, it did engage in a few small wars, which seem to have been fairly short. take the war with Argentina (that resulted in the formation of uruguay)-what was that about? There doesn’t seem to be much to get riled up about, in South America-the “Malvinas/Falklands” war being a glaring exception. Oh, and that war between Bolivia and Paraguay-why was that one fought?
I kind of doubt it. War and other assorted nasty characteristics of humans are part of why our species is still around and why we aren’t somewhere in the lower regions of the food chain.
Except that it’s occasionally been true. Sure, not on a global scale, but try telling a European in the mid-thirteenth century, or pretty much anyone in any industrialized country in the late 1930s that everything was going to be okay and see how well they’d believe you.
The whole world doesn’t have to come to an end for your particular civilization to fall all to pieces. The high probability that most of your travails will be forgotten in a generation or two is pretty cold comfort if the shit’s going down for you now.
You haven’t heard of this? One of the drivers for the Gulf Stream is cold water running off from beneath the artic ice shelf. No ice shelf no driver. The Gulf Stream is already much weaker according to Southampton University research and could fail completely in the next few decades leaving the UK with the climate of Sweden or Moscow.
It’s undeniable (IMHO) that the climate is entering a massively unstable phase and this will play havoc with agriculture. Year after year of crop failures in the US and Canadian corn and grain belts would be a world catastrophe.
As mentioned previously in South America around 536 there was 30 years of drought in one area while there was 30 years of storms on the coast and this ended the urban civilisations in the region.
I recall an SF short story from the 1930s: A huge chain of volcanic eruptions causes Panama and Costa Rica and some other Central American countries to sink beneath the waves. It takes a while for people to realize this means the Gulf Stream is now flowing straight through into the Pacific, and Europe is going to get colder. (One scientist asks an audience: “Which is further north: New York or London?” One person guesses NY, which is slightly colder; and the scientist points out that, in fact, NY is on roughly the same latitude as Rome, and London would be – will be – glacier-bound without the warming effect of the Gulf Stream.) This leads West European countries to the brink of war with the U.S. as they demand the U.S. drop all its immigration barriers. The crisis is averted when one bureaucrat figures out they can restore the Gulf Stream by building a huge wall along the submerged mountainous spine of Central America.
But, in the currently impending scenario, that solution would not be available – the GS being disrupted at its other end.
Read it! So long ago that I’ve forgotten the author. And the final development was that this huge wall was a Good Thing because if the Euros didn’t jolly well behave themselves and do what the Americans said, the wall would be history in a matter of hours. :dubious:
Of course, sometimes you get traded the Barbarian Hordes. Metalworking and Engineering slow them down a little and you can reclaim the territories next turn. Just hope you don’t get Epidemic or Flood in the meantime.