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It reminds me of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_place_theory
I'm certain someone did a map with this a while back but I can't find it. Maybe randigpanzrall ?
So I decided to do this to get how major cities arise to some degree....
black is water, brown is road, dots are settlements.
Let's assume you start with settlement A and you are expanding out from there.
You're going to travel along the water and you are going to stop every 30km.
This creates a natural layout of settlements that will grow because why clear out a new area every time you travel?
From here Settlements B and C are going to arise as major population centers either due to being at the end of the fresh water which makes it a last stop which means people are going to want to prep and buy there which means it is a perfect place to have shops OR they are a settlement based around some resource. This puts them as more important that the settlements before.
Next D and E are going to arise to import as cross roads between important settlements. F is going to arise very much the same way as A, B, and C, but it arises later due to Sea travel is going to be less important early on, but it will slowly gain more importance with it being the cross roads into that network and being just like A, B, and C being last stops.
E may build into more importance, but roads built out from C (built because it is a shorter journey and managable to walk without much water) lowers E's importance while F being centralized and being funneled into by A, B, C, and D rather than C being funneled into D and then into E which makes it rise to be even more importance.
As Sea and Ocean travel becomes more of a thing the importance of Settlement F increases and it starts controlling all in and outbound trade making it easily the more important city of the area and the connection with G across the water allows all that more trade funneled through F.
side note: This uses a river to establish roads and that works from the base of a civilization, but as a civ grows settlements go into the land areas. The important thing to remember is that roads go between resources and take the shortest/easiest route stopping about every 30km (or maybe it was 50km). All settlements need a water source. Cities grow via trade, not because their land is good. If a settlement is at the cross roads of 4 cities, but on the worst land ever, as long as it can get water that city will become the most important of the 5 cities, because the central cross road city can live off the trade coming through it.
It reminds me of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_place_theory
I'm certain someone did a map with this a while back but I can't find it. Maybe randigpanzrall ?
Close, but not the same. The problem with that is that it largely is based on a grid so any answer you get is a rough estimation of what might happen where there is no other factors.Originally Posted by Azelor
Also I forgot to mention...
Village > Town > City > Big City
The red dots are Towns.
The green are Cities.
The Purple are Big Cities.
Villages spread from towns radially at about 3km intervals. As the radius increases the City's borders increase and urbanizes villages and further out villages start having a different centralized trade center and thus forms a new Town. This is then yet another way Towns form and are placed. Though I am not sure how accurate this is because only modern cities get very big and older cities never even got close to even the first 3km radius mark in expansion. And Modern Cities don't follow this, other than Port Cities are the most powerful cities in the world still largely due to their ability to import/export large amounts of cargo over a water route even with all our ability to transport over air and land.
Pixie, what a neat contribution that map is, and the text!
It seems the journey from Arlia to the Empire and back is a bit tougher than I thought. It seems to me that it'd be even harder for Arlia to do trade with the Empire on the East coast. I guess the Empire would have to be Arlia's main trade buddy and Arlia wouldn't trade with Oncar at all; and that each journey to the Empire and back would have to be a well planned and costly expedition and not really casual at all. And I guess I can forget about Arlia and Picsi, without the richness from it, I'm not sure how Arlia can get the money to get the top notch navy of its time. I'll have to think of something.
Durakken, I can't wait to try out your model on the creation and evolution of settlements in relation to trade, and the concept of cradles of civilization that you mentioned in the other post. I've also picked up again "Germs, Guns and Steel" by Jared Diamond hoping to get more on this, but to be honest, I stopped reading it just a after a few chapters last time, cos he asks very intriguing questions, but then takes forever to get to a point.
Azelor, about randigpanzrall, I din't know what I was missing! He had a great world going on. However, I didn't find any mention to him working a map with that central place theory on his threads.
Read the synopsis on wiki. It sounds like a rather worthless read unless you're a racist in which case it is unlikely to change your mind.
It argues against success came from intelligence, which is probably arguing against the whole the average African has an IQ of 70 which is used to say that all those of modern African descent have lower intelligence when the reality is that IQ tests have been shifting and has shifted upwards recently because we in the more modern world have picked up a few tricks which allow for scoring higher. Also IQ tests tend to be in some minor way biased culturally. So the argument is unneeded and thus the book is arguing against a strawman which there doesn't seem to be much point to doing...
I thought it was going to be about Native Americans which the myth is that Europeans genocided them when the reality is that it was 80-90% just viruses being transmitted one way while not going the other way due to more often than not the trip to the americas was one way so anyone who got a new virus died either in the americas or on the way back.
I'd recommend something, but all that I learned of this subject was more or less piece meal by asking how do i make this realistic which led to asking why is that like that... Which is a very fustrating way to learn a lot of this stuff because after studying one subject to figure out some core thing it usually leads you into block somewhere that is only resolved by studying another topic sorta like this... Where do I place cities > At trade route..ok where are trade routes > at rivers... ok so where are rivers > formed in water basins ok but what are water basins > low points in the land divided by the high points. ie mountains...ok how are mountains formed? > Plate tectonics... Ok how does that work > We're not entirely certain... Ok you're not helpful!
Also I read more fiction books that have philosophical or mythological bents to them ^.^ so world and culture builiding is easy, because there is a lot to draw from. I should throw some more history in my things to read, but nothing has attracted me to read it so meh.
Last edited by Durakken; 09-24-2015 at 08:29 AM.
As Azelor alluded to, Central Place Theory is a first-order description of market networks. The major assumption of a flat space (technically, a uniform transportation cost) leads to nice overlapping circles, which tend to drop to the minimum configuration for close-packed circles, a set of nested heaxagonal grids. If you change the transport cost in certain directions (e.g. a river makes transport cheap along its length, or an imposed road network changes things, or an improvement in technology changes things), then the form and size starts to skew as you have noted.
There is a fun old book called Fractal Cities ( available at http://www.fractalcities.org/ ) that has similar discussion.
Also, about the winds, your sailors will need to take the doldrums in consideration near the equator: http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/07....08,-4.22,1106
I'd say that's a pretty limited reading of the book. True, it mentions the old racist idea that "Europeans are just smarter" but then pretty much immediately goes to, "obviously that's not true, so what was the difference with European cultures?" He then comes up with evidence that the Eurasian (not just European) advantage came from a bunch of factors which compounded over millennia, including a broader pool of domesticable plants and animals and the east-west orientation of Eurasia. I'd say the book's main contribution is that it very strongly shows that all sorts of environmental factors, from what animals are near you to who your neighbours are, can give you an early lead that can get parleyed into a massive European-American level of cultural advantage.
The book is about twenty years old now; I seem to recall that Diamond made a documentary with PBS about ten years ago which included updated thinking on these issues (including the massive cultural advantage writing gave the Europeans). That might be worth looking for if you're interested.
I agree with gilgamec about Diamond's book. I only bought it in the first place because I was reassured from reviews the thesis of the book was not based in any racist premise, and indeed, I can confirm it doesn't. His whole point in the book is to look for the causes of the Eurasian advantage in development, since he doesn't think at all it has to do with race.
Don't get me wrong, I still find the book longer than it needs to be, since he takes forever to get anywhere, but racist it is not, I wouldn't spend money and time on trash.
Yes Durakken, it happens to me a lot too, that by researching about an element I realize I have to do research on another that affects it, and on and on. It's paralizying for me sometimes because I just want to work on something, but to do it right I have to take a lot of time learning and figure out other stuff.
Wow Azelor, that link is mesmerizing. So beautiful.
Great link too waldronate! I'll check it out as soon as a have a little time.
Hi Durakken. I'm trying out your suggestion to get a model of the origins on the civilization that would be the origins on the Empire or at least of the people who then expanded to created the Empire.
So in the image with the poorly resized terrain from Wilbur: the whole area (N-E of the isthmus as Pixie suggested, and to which I agree) is 667x667km, and since the image is 30x30 cm, 1cm (each bold square on the grid) = 22,23km.
First of all, how exactly does the model you suggested match with the simplified progression of societies from bands to states?
It's clear enough for me we can't be talking about nomadic bands, so at least it has to be sedentary tribes doing the expansion along the rivers in the beginning (because of population growth that basic farming makes possible, forcing groups out of the original tribe to make their own).
So each red dot/town would be the settlement of a politically independent tribe, but then some of them would become chiefdoms (cities, in green) and gain influence over other tribes/towns, eventually getting more complex and one chiefdom defeating the others and becoming a proto state.
Questions:
- Settlements only develop in one side of the river?
- With so many ramification on my river, how do you settle a hierarchy? Which crossroad (G, H, I) is more important? Which end (A, B, C) is the most logical dominant? Is it F once trade with the coast becomes key?
