Orjan

Comment Threads

• Robert Prior commented on Some notes on world building
  the people who colonised the Americas 10K years ago were believed NOT to have pack animals Dogs + travois will drag a lot, including hide tents. That's how the Blackfoot managed several moves a year covering hundreds of kilometres. I don't recall how long it took their ancestors to move from Maine to the Prairies, but that demonstrably happened. I grew up on the Prairies. The horse enabled wider seasonal movement, but even before the horse the Prairies were settled by nomadic tribes....
• Elderly Cynic commented on Some notes on world building
  I am sick and tired of you misrepresenting me, and am not going to respond to your distorted statements. Since you are not a trollbot, you must be the other one....
• Mayhem commented on Some notes on world building
  Hmm. I look at "do we make it hard to leave" as being a factor of much of human history unless there was (comparatively) empty land to move to. Certainly the peasants couldn't go anywhere unless their lords (and debts) disappeared. Our most recent period of big migration started with the discovery of the new world, and really kicked off in the 17th and 18th centuries. Prior to that there was relatively little movement between countries except amongst the elites. Subsequent to the colonial landgrabs there there was a surprising amount of movement between the Great Powers. Russia for example...
• Martin commented on Some notes on world building
  Please explain how I could possibly be misrepresenting or distorting your post? Your exact words in post 203 were "That's not market-driven evidence - it's just repeating discredited cold war propaganda." If you'd perhaps bothered to say how it was discredited, or by whom, then I might not have described it as "lazily". So, addressing your post @209 Cuba was little different from the Chinese who left the (more democratic) communists for Chiang Kai-shek's autocracy If you're mentioning the KMT, then the crossing to Taiwan is across a rather militarised bit of sea. However, what of those who attempted to...
• Mayhem commented on Some notes on world building
  I could also raise the people who leave democratic Asian and African countries for the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia today The question is whether these are migrants (i.e. they take their families, and gain full citizenship in their destination) or foreign labourers (keep their nationality, send home remittances, return later to their original country) I'm not sure I agree with your definition of migrants as only being permanent settlers seeking citizenship. Certainly the vast amount of Eastern European migration into the west was initially foreign labour taking advantage of the better conditions. Many of the earliest Polish and...