Assume a large population (5,000,000 to 10,000,000) of people with one hundred percent literacy, all speaking the same language and sharing a similar culture, were somehow transported back into the distant past to a lush, remote island twice the size of Greenland that has vast natural resources, including not yet domesticated dogs, sheep, cows, horses et al.
This island is thousands of miles from the nearest population center and except for various archipelagos comprised of tiny islands no larger than five square km, there is no land worth settling within almost as large a distance as well. These people are stranded on this island with absolutely no external contact with anyone outside its culture.
If, along with the people, an entire metropolitan area’s (say NYC’s) worth of books, medical supplies, and food were transported along with them, how long would it take for the population to build their technological level back up to something resembling a First World country of the 20th and 21st centuries?
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Dr. Diamond makes note that aboriginal peoples moving to an island just off of Australia lost the ability to make fishing hooks etc that they had on the mainland, because the conditions were different.
Without domesticated animals, I don’t know how far they’d make it. Your question seems to be, “can a ‘modern’ society survive without domesticated(domesticatable) animals”
I think they would get off to a great start, then start going downhill with lack of a decent diet etc. They would also likely splinter into sub-groups.
Your comparison to the Australian aboriginals does not hold as they were not literate; lived in very inhospitable area of the world; did not have many resources, if any at all; and were not aware of any technology beyond the Stone Age society’s that they came from whereas my hypothetical society is literate; would be living on a huge, verdant island having vast natural wealth and resources; and has tangible knowledge of present technology.
And to make certain my question is a bit more clear, it is: How long would it take a homogenous and literate society to reach a technological level similar to the modern world’s if it were transported to a paradise with all available resources and knowledge but absolutely no infrastructure?
Do your settlers have seeds (wheat, maize, rice, etc…) ? If not I can’t see how they could survive.
Even if they do, I can see this being the main issue. Even with highly productive seeds (by comparison with their wild counterparts), a good knowledge of the local conditions (soils, climate, etc…) and tools (somethign your settlers are lacking) , the agricultural productivity in the middle ages for instance was incredibly low (it could fall as low as two grains harvested for one sowed, and would be quite often no more than a 5/1 ratio).
Lacking a huge number of people with farming experience, some knowledge of the local conditions, basic tools like ploughs (and a knowledge about how to use these old tools), I can see your settlers starving to death in short order.
It depends on the local conditions, of course. If your island is extremely rich in edible flora and fauna, I assume they could survive on a “hunter” (as long as hunting is only picking up one of the gazillion of dodos living there and roasting it) - gatherer lifestyle.
In less artificial and abnormally favourable conditions, few modern individuals would survive. It’s not like people could learn how to make even stone tools and how to hunt with them in a matter of weeks.
S. M. Stirling’s Nantucket Trilogy (Island in the Sea of Time, Against the Tide of Years, On the Oceans of Eternity) posits something similar to the OP, although the initial conditions are posed a bit differently. Stirling has just the island of Nantucket suddenly, inexplicably zapped back to 1250 B.C. Europe and the Middle East are in the Bronze Age. North America is thinly populated except for a few Indians.
The Nantucketers are fortunate to have a nearby sailing ship (a Coast Guard training ship) zapped into the past along with them, so that they can sail to Britain and trade trinkets for grain and avoid starvation the first year after the Event. Also, they are fortunate to have books in the library explaining blacksmithing, early modern machining technology, and antique weapons manufacture. One of them, luckily, just happens to have an old-fashioned machine shop as a hobby, and this is expanded into various industrial enterprises.
Within a few years they are able to reconstruct first iron smelting and then Bessemer process steel; their weapons start out medieval and then advance to Civil War and even WWI levels within about 10 years; they even build a hot-air dirigible. One thing that helps them along is scavenged parts from 20th-century technology. The practical effect of the technological and materials limitations imposed on the Nantucketers is that this in effect turns out to be a “steampunk” story.
They’d die quickly if the conditions of the OP were literally true. The amount of food in NYC would be approximately enough to feed 10,000,000 for a couple of weeks. They’d never be able to find enough existing food in the area for that size population. So they’d mostly starve before they had a chance to get a farming system going.
I would expect a drastic reduction in population numbers in the beginning but would think with them living in a paradise, the remaining people would have enough food to keep their numbers at a respectable level after the initial famine or am I missing something?
The vast majority of people would die within the first few weeks, mostly of starvation and disease. Modern humans lack the fundamental skillsets and mental abilities to survive in the absolute state of nature, just as an uncontacted Brazilian tribesman lacks the skillsets and mental abilities to survive in midtown Manhattan.
It takes a good long while to become a good enough hunter with a rifle to not need the supermarket, and it takes much, much longer to become good enough with a sharp stick to live on the kill alone. Farming is damned hard and unpredictable with modern tools and techniques, and if your tools are the aforementioned sharp stick and your technique is to bury a seed and pray, you won’t survive long enough to know how many seeds you wasted in unprepared ground.
Tropical paradises, furthermore, are rife with diseases and parasites and predators (oh, shit). Manhattanites simply do not see the mosquito as a threat, when in fact it’s probably the deadliest single animal. The parasites and diseases living inside those dirty needles with wings would make short work of the hungry and scared population. Big cats, wolves, and other predators would grow fat and happy off of the two-legged spam that just fell in their laps.
There would, I think, be a core of survivors on the island who live long enough to have children and pass on a workable set of skills and prejudices. The children will be islanders, not second-generation Americans or the children of `civilized people’. They will be unsuited to the world their parents came from, as their parents were unsuited to their world. I doubt they would be literate.
i’ve spent a bit of time out in “the wilderness” surviving with no food, electricity, etc. my guess is that most people are poorly equipped mentally and physically and lack the proper knowledge to survive in the elements for extended periods of time (even on a tropical island). you also play a dangerous game with temperatures and climate. too cold, people freeze, society dies. too warm and lush (this implies tropical and moist) and you increase all the dangers you find in the rainforest (disease, malaria, leeches, snakes, etc.). come to think of it, this might explain why civilization flourished in the fertile crescent, warm and dry, and lush around the rivers.
the main difficulty they would face would be disease, followed by dehydration. books would be of little use. for one, you can’t eat books. can you imagine scouring through thousands of books (and apparently they wouldn’t be catagorized) looking for how to make fish-hooks when you and your family are dying of hunger? i suspect that crime and violence would run rampant. eventually a few select criminals would rise above the flock and become the faction leaders. these leader would battle each other for land, books, food, etc.
the main reason i think for their death would be your failure to provide them with tools. our species has very little in the form of natural defenses and offensive capabilities (claws, sharp teeth, etc.) and have relied on tools to survive for thousands of years. give them all a supply of knives, and you have a chance. otherwise they would have to result to making stone weapons ond tools. unless the land they were placed in a land withe shallow and exposed ore deposits, metal tools would impossible to fabricate, even then they be limited to copper or other soft metals until they found a way to forge/melt iron. also, i imagine all books would be destroyed by rain, dew, and mold. it is very unlikely that books would survive more that a few generations. and with no means of producing paper, books would not be created for a while. the people would need to spread out vastly. 10,000,000 people cannot survive in close proximity in the wilderness, just as any other species has it’s own territorial requirements to live. this sprawl, would kill some people on the journey from fatigue, hunger, thirst, etc. this spreading out would also make communication amongst people nearly impossible. without communication, people cannot collaborate to fix problems. this leads to slowed scientific progress, isolationism, and war (not surprising).
also, why would they want to advance to today’s technological level? granted the initial survivors would lament the loss of indoor plumbing and luxuries, but their children, having never known such frivolities, would lack the drive and desire to advance toward them.
then my friend you need boats. yes you can do something from shore and in the shallows, but to support 10,000,000 people you need to harvest some offshore fish or marine mammal. this brings me to another point, how will they harvest lumber? limbs and branches can be gathered or broken, but to bring down a tree you need a saw or an ax (fire doesn’t hurt either, but it only speeds the process). stone axes may take a while to learn to make, time they don’t have. without lumber, boats will not be an option. yes eskimos (or is it inuit?) were very succesful with seal skin kayaks, but seals means you give up that warm climate neccessary to our experimental population. assuming they need a warmer climate, and that they are somehow able to get a steady supply of good lumber, 10,000,00 people can over-fish a coast pretty quickly, bringing up the migration problems i mentioned earlier. the best option for a coastal population would be tidal traps, and gill nets. also, they would have to settle near a river flowing into the ocean for fresh water. space by this river would fill up quickly, then migration death. lines and poles are not an option, as long lines needed for ocean fishing are not feasible to make without jute or hemp to make rope/twine. think cast nets or diving instead.
I apologize for continuously clarifying but I obviously didn’t make my OP as clear as I hoped I had.
When I described the island as verdant, I did not mean in a tropical sense but rather more like the forests, plains, and grasslands of the eastern and central United States but only with better soil and climate and plenty of lakes, rivers, and mineral rich mountains too. Since I took everything away from them in the beginning, I am trying to give them everything possible in the way of being able to reestablish an agrarian society which is fundamental to a technological society.
Speaking of which:
Over time, the island’s population would start acquiring technology again and I am curious how long it would take modern people with the knowledge of what is possible to gain back what they once had. I’m not expecting anything immediate or even somewhat soon… my guess would be at least four or five hundred years at the earliest.
once again the books and knowledge would be destroyed with time, and then civilization would have to start all over again, probably taking about the same time as it originally did. if they even survived. remember, man originally had time to adapt to his environment. what you are demanding of the species is for them to survive in a new environment for which they have no adaptations to survive. how many animals can survive a climate shift like that? if you want to give them a real jump start, give them man’s entire knowledge carved two feet deep into stone. wonder what the sociological and religious effects would be?
It may be difficult for people with no steelworking infrastructure to fashion steel ships.
Transplanting 5 to 10 million people to a primitive setting would be fatal to many of them. You would have some people who could build homes, but not quickly. You would have people who would know how to hunt or trap, but not enough to feed everyone. You would have people who would know how to farm, but would have no seeds, no equipment, and no prepared land to farm in any style or method they would be used to. The best they would be able to do at first, at least, would be little better than gardening.
For people to survive, it would be constant work just to get to a self sustaining level. Literacy in children would plummet due to the workload. Once homes are built, crops developed, and people learn to make needed tools things may become easier.
Another problem these people would face is who will be their leaders. You would have power struggles and violence. If it is too bad, I wouldn’t be suprised to see a 90% population decline with almost all the survivors scattered into small bands.
Why do you assume that there are no small founderies? A major city has many suprises, my friend.
And if not steel, aluminium. You can build an aluminum smelter/casting facility at home, & run it with no experience. It’s actually quite simple.
You say that there are no seeds, no equipment.But why?
Even if there is no farm equipment manufacturer in the City, there will be a railyard. Everything caught in mid-shipment will be there. Tractors & seed corn included.
Are there no grain elevators?
No food processing factories?
In a “typical” City?
Heck yes, there will be!
And most cities have a Mayor, a City Council, and cops.
Many people in the City will have moved there from the countryside, years before.
Some will have farming knowledge, & can act as trainers.