ruveyn wrote:
Philologos wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
TechnicalPacifist wrote:
The pre-historic hunter-gatherers. Not that they were a culture/civilization, but you get my point.
So beautiful. Typical life span -- 35 years.
And when the game was scarce they starved.
ruveyn
Do NOT get me started. I am resisting.
Why don't you wax lyrical on the beauty of slums and nursing homes?
They are not lyrical material.
ruveyn
A long lifespan is something relatively recent in human history. Speaking specifically about Ice Age Europe, the hunter gatherers (Cro Magnons) very often stood over six feet tall, and had a heavy layer of muscle covering their huge skeletons; a result of their high protein diet. The human population world wide probably never rose above a million people - if that. So it's doubtful there would have been a scarcity of animals to eat, as the human population was so small. Paleolithic Europeans were for the most part migratory, they would naturally follow herds of animals if food became scarce in one place. And because resources appear to have been plentiful, it's unlikely differing tribes or bands of humans regularly fought one another, whether they were fellow Cro Magnons, or Neanderthals. On top of that, Paleolithic art - whether it was the cave art of Lassauex (I know, spelling), or realistic woodworking, such as a life sized lion man discovered in Germany, or an apparently carved from life portrait of a man used as a staff head - was without peer for long centuries after.
So anyhoo, if I have to choose the most beautiful human civilization, it would be the Cro Magnon civilization of Paleolithic Europe.
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer