The ruins of Gede are the
remains of a mysterious lost city on the
Swahili Coast of Kenya, located deep within the
Arabuko Sokoke forest. The mystery of Gede (Gedi) is that it
does not appear in any Swahili, Portuguese, or
Arab written records and
present day research has not yet been able to fully account for what actually happened to the city. The inhabitants were of the
Swahili, an ancient trading civilization that emerged
along the eastern coasts of Africa
ranging from Somalia to Mozambique.
Archaeological excavations
carried out between 1948 and 1958
have uncovered porcelain from China, an Indian lamp, Venetian beads, Spanish scissors, and other artefacts from
all over the world, demonstrating the occupants
were engaged in extensive and
sophisticated international trade. Questions still remain as to what caused the downfall of Gede, but by the 17th century, the city was
completely abandoned to the forest
and forgotten until the 1920s. Today, a
National Museum, Gede's
sister cities from the period are part of the ethnography based archeological work of
Dr Chapurukha M. Kusimba of Chicago's Field Museum,
whose lifework has thrown
light on the precolonial
heritage of the Swahili peoples.
posted by infini
on Nov 30, 2011 -
23 comments
National Characters is a long, multi-part essay about how computer games deal with the concept of nations and turns it into a game mechanic. The author, Troy Goodfellow of strategy gaming blog Flash of Steel, focuses on how the fourteen indistinguishable national factions of the original Sid Meier's Civilization have been treated by different games through the years.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 15, 2011 -
50 comments
Let's say just for a moment that you were ready to cash out. Quit your job. Sell your house. Take you and yours out of the rat race with a few hundred of your friends and family and relocate onto arable land. What tools would you need to sustain a livable—maybe even comfortable—lifestyle?
Open Source Ecology suggests you start with ~2.6 million dollars and
these |
fifty |
machines (← watch this first), collectively referred to as the Global Village Construction Set.
posted by carsonb
on Mar 28, 2011 -
48 comments
James Lovelock, 90, says
we're too stupid to prevent climate change. "I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change." One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added in
an extended interview. "I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while." He thinks only a catastrophic event would now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica.
posted by stbalbach
on Mar 30, 2010 -
78 comments
War and Peace is a simplified version of the Civilization games. How simple? One button switches your civilization's focus between war and peace. That's it. (PC only)
posted by CrunchyFrog
on Feb 2, 2010 -
36 comments
"
In the lawless mountain realms of Asia, a Yale professor finds a case against civilization"
Zomia is a rugged swath of Asia that for 2,000 years has remained culturally aloof from the traditional centers of power and the pull of empires. Its inhabitants, Asia’s “hill people,” have earned a reputation for egalitarianism, insurrection, and independence. Up until the second half of the 20th century, many of the societies there remained nonliterate and supported themselves through trade, smuggling, and Iron-Age practices like slash-and-burn agriculture... In Zomia’s small societies, with their simple technologies, anti-authoritarian tendencies, and oral cultures, Scott sees not a world forgotten by civilization, but one that has been deliberately constructed to keep the state at arm’s length.
posted by andoatnp
on Dec 13, 2009 -
82 comments
The ancient web is an online resource for students, teachers, and anyone interested in the cultures of the ancient world. With the Olympics fast approaching, here is an opportunity to learn more about the past 4500 years of
Chinese civilization. Or how the
Celtiberians would get drunk and eat raw meat before going to war. 24 ancient civilizations in all.
posted by netbros
on Jul 16, 2008 -
9 comments
With all the
crystal skulls,
nazca lines and such at the box office these days now might be the ideal time to reacquaint yourself with the theories of
Erich von Däniken. What better way to do it than by watching
William Shatners Mysteries of the Gods (
Pt. 1,
Pt. 2,
Pt. 3,
Pt. 4,
Pt. 5,
Pt. 6,
Pt. 7,
Pt. 8,
Pt. 9,
Pt. 10)
(MULTI LINK YOUTUBE SHATNERFEST)
posted by Artw
on Jun 10, 2008 -
28 comments
"The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered,
is a Daisy. There is more
money in it, more
territory, more
sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the
People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it –
they have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the
Blessings of Civilization."
posted by homunculus
on Jun 13, 2007 -
13 comments
Six Visions of the End: Fall Down Six Times, an essay by Ran Prieur, describes six possible scenarios for the near future: Worst Case ("Meanwhile computer technology keeps accelerating, leading by 2050 to an insane and nearly all-powerful artificial intelligence, which exterminates all life on Earth except a single human, who it keeps alive to torture for all eternity: you."), Ridiculous Best Case ("In 2016 Dean steps down and the new president is an anarchist who spends eight years peacefully dismantling the federal government and building local systems that make central control irrelevant and impossible."), Naive Sci-Fi Utopia ("Everyone can live forever,
and have kids,
and enjoy wide open spaces. No one is sure how this is possible, but it probably has something to do with the Mayan calendar or the word "quantum.""), and three others. Whether or not you agree with his vision, the exercise of imagining different futures is a useful one that might help us see a way through the multiple crises the Earth is going through. What does your apocalypse look like?
posted by spacewaitress
on Apr 11, 2006 -
70 comments
The
Value of Algebra: "
Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers."
posted by daksya
on Feb 16, 2006 -
190 comments
Collapse of civilization: Not necessarily a bad thing Many will no doubt find the foregoing discussion of collapse depressing or pessimistic. In “How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse”, John Michael Greer hints at why this is, writing, “Even within the social sciences, the process by which complex societies give way to smaller and simpler ones has often been presented in language drawn from literary tragedy, as though the loss of sociocultural complexity necessarily warranted a negative value judgment. This is understandable, since the collapse of civilizations often involves catastrophic human mortality and the loss of priceless cultural treasures, but like any value judgment it can obscure important features of the matter at hand.” Greer goes on to characterize collapse in terms of ecological succession.
…Collapse happens precisely because it improves our lives—and it happens when the alternative is no longer tolerable.
posted by halekon
on Dec 27, 2005 -
45 comments
MoAD is San Francisco's newest museum. The Museum of the African Diaspora is the latest addition to the SOMA neighborhood's expanding cultural riches, and promises to be fascinating (and, as far as I can tell, unique in the world).
[more inside]
posted by trip and a half
on Nov 30, 2005 -
14 comments
National Geographic has a special
issue on Africa out this month. There's also their Africa
resource site.
posted by Gyan
on Sep 21, 2005 -
17 comments
Was agriculture a mistake? Guns, Germs, and Steel author Jared Diamond asks this question. Originally published in 1987, it's still completely relevant today. I personally feel that
memes are the real culprit, and they are inevitable in any sizable social group with a common system of communication. Could agriculture be an ancient meme which has profoundly impacted the history of mankind?
posted by mullingitover
on Jun 27, 2005 -
116 comments
All right, but apart from the
sanitation, the
medicine,
education,
wine,
public order,
irrigation,
roads, a
fresh
water system, and
public
health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Brought
peace?
Oh. Peace?
Shut up!
posted by gimonca
on Mar 28, 2005 -
15 comments
