The Stone Age Continues.

DuQuense

I know this is verging on ASB, But .................

If for some strange reason The bronze age never develops. The Stone Age Continues.
Old Stone age -New Stone age - 3rd Stone age

What kind of Political/Cultural - Europe and Mesopotamia - would whe be looking at.

Stone age can have Empires, [ie Incas, 1st dynasty Egypt, etc.]. Major Agriculture, Major trade, [Beaker? peoples]

?But would whe still have those Villages on Stilts, in the middle of lakes? or would some Mediterranean Empire have conquered Europe [aka Rome] and imported Cities.?

Howard in the Conan Books populates the world with Empires, Kingdoms, and Feudal Estates.

?Could whe have real Kingdoms or Feudalism?

?Any Ideas or Thoughts?
 

Stephen

Banned
The Meso and Andean americans managed to create aristocratic kingdoms and empires with nothing more than neolithic technology so I see no reason why it will not eventually hapen elsewhere. The polynesians manged to sail across half the World. I can imagine that it might even be posible build a viking style boat with just hard wood nails and wedged pegs as a longboat is made from split timbers which are created with wooden wedges instead of saws.
 

arctic warrior

DuQuense said:
I know this is verging on ASB, But .................

If for some strange reason The bronze age never develops. The Stone Age Continues.
Old Stone age -New Stone age - 3rd Stone age

What kind of Political/Cultural - Europe and Mesopotamia - would whe be looking at.

Stone age can have Empires, [ie Incas, 1st dynasty Egypt, etc.]. Major Agriculture, Major trade, [Beaker? peoples]

?But would whe still have those Villages on Stilts, in the middle of lakes? or would some Mediterranean Empire have conquered Europe [aka Rome] and imported Cities.?

Howard in the Conan Books populates the world with Empires, Kingdoms, and Feudal Estates.

?Could whe have real Kingdoms or Feudalism?

?Any Ideas or Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Not in the Alps as these were actually built on piles on the lakeshore and later flooded thus giving rise to the early theory that they were built on stilts in the lake.

Apart from this - as you write there was Stone age civilizations/Kingdoms in the Americas so that would be possible but metal working originated during Neolithic times.
So probably we would see some kind of Stone Age/Copper-Gold-Silver-Lead Age with metal objects for jewellery and other ornate uses.

Problem is of course that we don't have written texts of the Stone Age so perception of society will rest on interpretation of archeological findings.

As agriculture did rise in the Stone Age you could have Kingdoms/Pricipalities/Republics/Theocracys all over the place and to point to a specific location that would conquer all or large parts would be difficult.

Trade - definately and not only of items but also ideas and perceptions of empire! :D
 

Neala

Why is it verging on ASB? Non-development of metal working is a perfectly good POD, it doesn't butterfly away many inventions including writing and roads which would still have developed.

Remember, metal working only developed something like 6000 years ago, H. Sapiens has been around for at least 100,000 years, all of which, except for the last 6000 has been the stone age, so it's reasonable to continue the pre metal working tech.

Actually, you could consider the past 6000 years with it's incredibly rapid (compared to previously) advancing tech as a metal-wank
 

Riain

Banned
The American civilisations show what is possible without hard metals. However they don't have the array of domesticable animals that Eurasia has, so a stone age Eurasia would presumably be a bit more advanced than OTL American civilisations.
 

Neil Craig

Banned
I don't think you can build cogwheels able to last out of anything but metal which puts a limit on technological civilisation. No windmills, crossbows or reliable clocks. hat means we can get to about 1100 AD technology but not much further.
 

Stephen

Banned
I thought most old fashioned windmills did use wooden cogs, but the lack of iron woodworking tools would make any sophisticated wood shaping much harder.
 

Neala

Stephen said:
I thought most old fashioned windmills did use wooden cogs, but the lack of iron woodworking tools would make any sophisticated wood shaping much harder.
Click to expand...

yeah they did, the amount of good quality metal required to make gears of that size was far to expensive for most mills prior to the industrial revolution

you can really do an amazing amount with wood, bone and stone so a world without metal tools could probably progress quite far technologically
 

carlton_bach

The big problem IMO isn't tha things you can dp with stone and wood. You can build all manner of interesting things without metal. The problem to my mind is that once your technological level reaches a certain degree of sophistication, it is hard to see how metalworking would not emerge. Even the precolumbian civilisations, with many strikes against them, came up with the idea. Eurasia and Africa are not going to stay metal-less for long without extensiove ASB intervention if technological progress otherwise runs broadly as per OTL.
 

Boto von Ageduch

DuQense, your question seems to be next-door to "What was the political and economical landscape in actual late Stone Age?"

This is of course speculation, but definitely not ASB, and hardly "alternate" history at all.

__________


More to the point: For the development of scripture or other things,
the most important precondition is sufficient wealth.
It takes a lot of wealth to free a significant part of a society from everyday's work,
including warfare, and letting them experiment with calendars and the like.
And wealth in the Stone Age pretty much translates into "the right fertile spot,
and good luck with the weather".
 

Domoviye

The best way to get a stone age continuation is to remove most domesticated animals. Keep dogs, cats, chickens, and small animals but with most societies once they got the big animals they started down the road to using metal, and forming the Bronze age.

If you want some ideas about what it may look like look at the Inca's, Aztecs, Mound Builders, Puapa New Guinea, and Polynesia (especially Easter Island and Hawaii).
Each of them built diverse societies, even empires, in radically different places and ways.
Of course as carlton-bach said they will eventually discover metal. But it may take a while, and in some cases would likely never happen. In Puapa New Guinea and Polynesia, they simply didn't have the metal available.
In America they used copper in some places between 5000, and 3000 years ago, but were really only coming up with the idea of advanced metal work by the 15th century.
So this is an interesting idea. Hard to accomplish but interesting.
 

Domoviye

The best way to get a stone age continuation is to remove most domesticated animals. Keep dogs, cats, chickens, and small animals but with most societies once they got the big animals they started down the road to using metal, and forming the Bronze age.

If you want some ideas about what it may look like look at the Inca's, Aztecs, Mound Builders, Puapa New Guinea, and Polynesia (especially Easter Island and Hawaii).
Each of them built diverse societies, even empires, in radically different places and ways.
Of course as carlton-bach said they will eventually discover metal. But it may take a while, and in some cases would likely never happen. In Puapa New Guinea and Polynesia, they simply didn't have the metal available.
In America they used copper in some places between 5000, and 3000 years ago, but were really only coming up with the idea of advanced metal work by the 15th century.
So while the stone age continuing maybe hard to accomplish it isn't impossible, and could lead to fascinating developments.
 

Michael B

Domoviye said:
The best way to get a stone age continuation is to remove most domesticated animals. Keep dogs, cats, chickens, and small animals but with most societies once they got the big animals they started down the road to using metal, and forming the Bronze age.
Click to expand...
Animals have no linkage with metal working; the Khoi of southern Africa were both herders of cattle and a stone age people. Whilst construction of wagons may require metal tools, travois can easily be built and employed and used by the pre-Columbian Amerindians, again not exactly great metal users.

The only real way to prevent metal working is to have no fire and all the resulting butterflies that would create.
 

Domoviye

Michael B said:
Animals have no linkage with metal working; the Khoi of southern Africa were both herders of cattle and a stone age people. Whilst construction of wagons may require metal tools, travois can easily be built and employed and used by the pre-Columbian Amerindians, again not exactly great metal users.

The only real way to prevent metal working is to have no fire and all the resulting butterflies that would create.
Click to expand...

I said the best way, I didn't say it was the only way. Most of the big groups of stone age civilizations lacked large domesticated animals.
So it seems reasonable that if most of the domesticated animals could not be domesticated, the stone age would last a lot longer. Not forever but maybe 3 or 4 thousand years longer in Mesopotamia and Asia.
 

MNP

ED: Why did I think this thread was in the ASB forum? Disregard. So embarrassing.

Why not just move the metals to places much harder to get to? Places we can access easily with modern tech but that you couldn't with stone, like much farther under the ground. Then the ASBs wouldn't have to interfere with anything else, just change the types of rocks. That would limit workable metals to stuff that comes in from meteorites.
 
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Stephen

Banned
Copper smelting was likely first dicovered in poterry kilns. Animals dont have much to do with it except making more land productive an making trade easier.
 

robertp6165

carlton_bach said:
The big problem IMO isn't tha things you can dp with stone and wood. You can build all manner of interesting things without metal. The problem to my mind is that once your technological level reaches a certain degree of sophistication, it is hard to see how metalworking would not emerge. Even the precolumbian civilisations, with many strikes against them, came up with the idea. Eurasia and Africa are not going to stay metal-less for long without extensiove ASB intervention if technological progress otherwise runs broadly as per OTL.
Click to expand...

Well, basically, you'd have to posit an earth which either had no metals, or had no metals in an easily workable or smeltable form, thus preventing the discovery from being made. Not beyond the realm of possibility, but definitely not our earth.
 

Domoviye

Stephen said:
Copper smelting was likely first dicovered in poterry kilns. Animals dont have much to do with it except making more land productive an making trade easier.
Click to expand...

Animals increase the population size which makes discovering new things easier. Animals also help pass around information more easily, by letting people travel farther and faster.
Copper is easy to do, so easy its not considered special. Bronze and iron is much harder to accomplish. So getting copper doesn't really count in this situation, its mostly used to make pretty jewelry and maybe pots.
Now tell me, how many people without domesticated animals make bronze?
 
Hapsburg

Hapsburg

Banned
Correlation does not imply causation. Just because some tribes and peoples lacked domesticated animals and copper-working doesn't mean the two are intrinsically tied.
 

Domoviye

Hapsburg said:
Correlation does not imply causation. Just because some tribes and peoples lacked domesticated animals and copper-working doesn't mean the two are intrinsically tied.
Click to expand...
True. But it can help show there might be a strong link.
Also its an easier POD then saying the metal on the Earth becomes impossible to find.
 
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