Ride Of The Second Horseman :: essays research papers fc

Robert O’Connell explains to us the decline of organized warfare between people. This is stated in three different regions of argument; the nomads having to change to cope with the new geographic changes find it easier to just try to take the agriculturalists food sources rather then find their own. Second the new divisions of government cause a more humanistic approach to settle disagreements rather then warfare, and thirdly the total demise of how warfare once was. The shift to domesticated farming, away from nomadic pastorals, led to a clash between these two subsistence patterns. The nomads, facing geographic change and poor food supplies, attempted to make their way down from the hills and take on the agriculturalist. This is the only way the nomads could keep a steady food source. ‘Cultures that knew nothing of war suddenly began suffering unprovoked attacks by terrifying strangers.’(13) This shows you the kind of bloodthirsty savages the nomads were, their way of life was changing and they weren’t ready for it to change. ‘So it is that these voracious ant armies number in the millions, just as major outbreaks of nomadic aggression were characteristically preceded by inertial congregations. If there is strength in numbers among the sedentary, there is only hunger among the nomadic.’(21) Again this shows how the nomadic are going hungry and have no way to turn except to fight for food. The agriculturalist have superior strength in numbers and after a few attacks from the nomads the will be ready to take them out for good and worry about them no more. This new age of society is just too profitable for them to leave it, crops that a few men farm yielding the food for twenty. The economics itself are just to great to turn back now. ‘The key to such realti0onships is mutualism, with booth plant and animal oolong in ways that intensify the partnership†¦In the period between 8500 BC and AD 1 the great majority of humans made the transition from wild food to planting and harvesting domesticated crops-a span of only eight and a half millennia in the more than four-million history of our line.’(55) Once more you see the demise of the nomads, the ability to culture nature to how humans want it; it’s just to easy. So why continue to keep picking up and moving your entire group when you could just center out of one area and have ever possible thing you could need to sup port yourself.