Once Upon A Time in Latin America (23) Easter Island. The Inevitability and Accident of Civilization Viewed from the Austronesian
Leaving Easter Island, I will have a summary in the Austronesian. I will analyze the independent development civilizations of New Zealand's Maori and Easter Island and compare to the Afro-Eurasian civilizations that interacted with each other. If the specific detail of the two types of civilizations were similar, it could be inferred that this detail was the inevitability of the development of human civilization determined by the human gene. It would develop here anyhow.
If the specific detail was inconsistent between independent civilization and the mutually affected Afro-Eurasian civilizations, the development of civilizations was likely accidental. In the future, I will compare the three major civilizations of the Americas: the Inca civilization, the Mayan civilization, and the Raztec civilization. If a specific detail of the civilizations also presented different branches of development, this detail was accidentally generated rather than inevitable, and it was not the gene of civilization.
As for the choice of specific details of civilization, I set as follows: the age of civilization (stone, iron, etc.), environment (river civilization, ocean civilization, tropical rain forest civilization, plateau civilization, etc.), three elements of civilization (text, city, bronze), and human relations ( Monarchy, theocracy, human rights, marriage), industry (industry, agriculture, service industry, textile, construction, transportation, animal husbandry, commerce), science and art, etc.
Of course, some specific details of civilization are included or crossed, such as human rights and marriage, industry, and textiles, but they are listed separately because of their importance.
Let's talk about the contingency of civilization first.
From the comparison table of the civilizations of the Austronesian family below, we can see that the entry of the bronze and iron ages was very accidental, depending on many factors such as the existence of mineral veins, the production of smelting technology. The production of copper and iron seriously affected the development of various industries, such as agricultural cultivation, construction, and handicrafts. The presence or absence of large-scale livestock also determined whether the transportation industry could produce wheel transportation, otherwise, it was mostly human and hydraulic transportation. And large animals were not found in the South Island, which was also the accident of civilization.
The inevitability of civilization:
The knock-on certainty: kingship (human beings must produce classes), religion (fear of nature must occur), words (necessity of communication), cities (human settlement), mathematics (real-life applications) ), Astronomy (agriculture and theology inevitably produce astronomical knowledge), art (arts of primitive nations were generally particularly shocked, which was also a necessity for survival), the exchange of goods and materials might eventually produce money (selective evolution of exchange). These were the innate attributes of civilization, and no matter where they developed independently, they were bound to arise.
Therefore, the three elements of civilization (literature, city, bronze) were right for Asia, Africa and Europe, but how was for the Austronesian? for American civilization? It seems not so necessary. So whether the bronze in the three elements of civilization needs to be replaced, we will see the later analysis of other independent civilizations.
Due to space limitations, it will not be expanded here. The comparative analysis is quite rough, please criticize and correct it.
