Is there a way to....

Have a world where the tribal model is predominant over the civilized model? Not necessarily no civilizations, but instead of cities, cities everywhere and ne'er a place to think, what about a world where the tribal peoples of the world get wanked instead? In this world, what would an absence of the growth of civilization do to languages? How would hunter-gatherers fare? In this world, is it possible to have groups with cool names such as the Silures and the Oscans continue to exist languages and all....and is the growth of centralized power on the scale of the US, Canada, and the old USSR inevitable?
 
It helps to think of urbanisation, administration, written law etc. as forms of technology. A tribal society facing one with urban settlemnents is at a technological disadvantage unless it can realise some alternative edge. So what you would need to do is give the tribal societies a leg up.

OTL, tribal societies survived longest in areas that were hostile to agriculture. A severely reduced crop package or significantly worse climate could do the trick. Centralisation doesn't offer you any great advantage if you can't concentrate enough population.

Another thing tribals have going for them is a much greater emphasis on martial prowess. Especially nomadic societies tend to develop a nasty warrior attitude. When there are no soldiers, everyone's a fighter. OTL this gets equalised fairly early through discipline, technology, and numbers. But if you slow down technological advances, let the tribes keerp up more easily, you could have a more widespread Central Asian paradigm with nomads broadly keeping pace with surrounding military technology and often dominating settled societies.

I still don't see it as a stable setup - the advantages of complex societies are too great - but given an ice age at the right time, you could get there.
 
It helps to think of urbanisation, administration, written law etc. as forms of technology. A tribal society facing one with urban settlemnents is at a technological disadvantage unless it can realise some alternative edge. So what you would need to do is give the tribal societies a leg up.

OTL, tribal societies survived longest in areas that were hostile to agriculture. A severely reduced crop package or significantly worse climate could do the trick. Centralisation doesn't offer you any great advantage if you can't concentrate enough population.

Another thing tribals have going for them is a much greater emphasis on martial prowess. Especially nomadic societies tend to develop a nasty warrior attitude. When there are no soldiers, everyone's a fighter. OTL this gets equalised fairly early through discipline, technology, and numbers. But if you slow down technological advances, let the tribes keerp up more easily, you could have a more widespread Central Asian paradigm with nomads broadly keeping pace with surrounding military technology and often dominating settled societies.

I still don't see it as a stable setup - the advantages of complex societies are too great - but given an ice age at the right time, you could get there.

So....a disruption of agriculture by the advent of another glacial period around the time of the Great Collapse might work, then?

Hmm....the Arab world is arguably an example of a settled tribal society, but that's not quite what I'm aiming for.....
 
This one's easy—no domesticated cats or dogs.

If you can't store grain, you can't build cities. Cats gave the Western world protection against rats, dogs gave China the same. Eliminate their—and related species—ability to be domesticated and you can't build cities.
 
This one's easy—no domesticated cats or dogs.

If you can't store grain, you can't build cities. Cats gave the Western world protection against rats, dogs gave China the same. Eliminate their—and related species—ability to be domesticated and you can't build cities.

A good idea, but I think that is stretching it a bit to the point of breaking.
 
Or you could have a reemergence of tribalism.
Anthropologists, look at groups like the Bloods and Crisps, with their multi generation memberships, as new tribes.
Something that accelerates the formation of such groups, along with a collapse of overarching Authority.
 
Top