SETI-related discussion, split from another thread.

[Shpaget]

Maximum number. That's why they don't bother with puny slow light speed coms and go with the good old FTL that any high school slime mold can make in less time than it takes to emerge from their fourth cacoon.

My point is, presuming FTL coms is somehow possible (yeah I know all about the paradoxes, bear with me), they may consider it so basic that they don't even consider using radio since that's as obsolete as carrier pidgeons.

[Pthigrivi]

Then of course there's this:

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent-heard-from-aliens-yet/

[tater]

26 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Maximum number. That's why they don't bother with puny slow light speed coms and go with the good old FTL that any high school slime mold can make in less time than it takes to emerge from their fourth cacoon.

My point is, presuming FTL coms is somehow possible (yeah I know all about the paradoxes, bear with me), they may consider it so basic that they don't even consider using radio since that's as obsolete as carrier pidgeons.

Maximum number requires picking a least common denominator tech—or simply doing both. Ping the universe in FTL, and you quickly know if there's anyone within the range of the return time. You can now use radio on those areas. At longer distances, the FTL return time might be similar to the light return time within a much shorter range. Regardless, you want to do both.

10 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Then of course there's this:

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent-heard-from-aliens-yet/

No not answer Do not answer

[magnemoe]

On 8/25/2022 at 12:59 PM, kerbiloid said:

Without metals, your abilities to cut, pierce, and shape materials are close to none.

Thus everyone has to withstand external conditions personally, and the sapient civilisation will consist of tribes of highly spiritual philosophers eating each other.

Wait... Isn't any philosophers' community this?.. At least in the part of eating.

Well we become the dominate species during the stone age.  You can not cut hard materials but hardest they ran into in daily life was wood and bones.
Now you would be limited to the first high cultures like ancient Egypt but they build the pyramids, now that one would be very hard without bronze but bronze was really expensive in the bronze age and of limited use among average people. 

[magnemoe]

On 8/25/2022 at 1:40 AM, tater said:

@NFUN basically beat me to it.

I don't see physiology as playing any role whatsoever. If it is possible to become highly intelligent without developing technology... then those species are lost to the universe unless someone stumbles on them in person.

SETI obviously requires a technological species. Radio because it is an obvious choice for communications over extremely long distances.

Who is its main problem, unless its an beam target at you by purpose or accident you will not receive it and if by accident you got the WOW signal, it could be an targeting radar painting something in space figure out that it is and get better trajectory data for all we know. 

Now how I would go about it would be to first find earth like planets. Then search this subset for planets with life and I look for oxygen and other gasses who indicate life, yes its some way to get oxygen in the atmosphere as in an water world boiling off but that would look very different. 
Nice now we know how common life is, problem is that this is very very hard, as I get web can do this to some limited degree. 

If you have an good candidate then yes listen for radio or other signals. But again you need to be lucky as the other side don't spend more power to transmit than they need and radio bandwidth is an limited resource. Now getting better telescopes the ones who has to be build in space even with starship and add sunshades makes sense. Even traveling 550 AU in the opposite direction to use the sun as an gravity lens, it will let you take images who resolves continents and should also work for radio so you might pick up lots of radio. 
Who raise the question, should you transmit back? Brings up the dark forest theory, as in its been so many insane rulers on earth the last 100 years I say no unless the signal is so weak they would pick up our radio noise anyway and that is something someone who is rich could build anyway. 

My idea of first contact is this many hundreds years in the future. 

Yes trying to eat or billion  dollar rover who cost lots of billions and hundred years to reach its target. 

[Pthigrivi]

Trouble is with a n of 1 we really have no idea what other life might look or behave like, or what exotic environments might be capable of producing. There could be semi-sentient anemone living under the ice on Europa right now and we’d have no idea. There could be silicon based life living in oceans of liquid hydrocarbons out there. If we’re on the verge of AI now other species might have spawned information-based consciousnesses that flit between stars and span galaxies by now. I just don’t think our microscopic experience as a conscious species allows us the imagination to consider what’s possible or even likely. 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Well we become the dominate species during the stone age.

Bronze one.

Right after the Ice Age.

When the humans started managing biosphere by agriculture and herding.

It was a specific situation in Americas, where the human was among three or so physically biggest predators (jaguar, crocodile), and there was no big cattle.
And anyway until the first musket.

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Now you would be limited to the first high cultures like ancient Egypt but they build the pyramids

Pyramids and other alien artifacts are useless in sense of domination. They aren't even fortresses to hide.

***

Metals aren't magic. Stones are oxidized metals. So, the stone age is a spoiled metal one.

And the civilisation either can reduce the metals oxides, or no.

Edited August 27, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pthigrivi]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

It was a specific situation in Americas, where the human was among three or so physically biggest predators (jaguar, crocodile), and there was no big cattle.

Early peoples of the Americas probably finished off the mastodons and mammoths, but there’s no evidence of predation among most of the other megafauna. They probably died out before we arrived. Except of course the buffalo that still roam. 
 

As we’ve talked about in the red button/green button dilemma thread humans are interesting but we’re not much without the rest of the biosphere. Even domestocation kind of cuts both ways. I mean did we do this voluntarily or did rice fool us into terraforming the earth to benefit its own genetic prevalence, the way flowering plants bribed insects into becoming pollination vectors? Symbiosis is always a bit hand in glove. “Dominance” is a very anthropomorphized, subjective term in this sense. 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[wumpus]

10 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Early peoples of the Americas probably finished off the mastodons and mammoths, but there’s no evidence of predation among most of the other megafauna. They probably died out before we arrived. Except of course the buffalo that still roam. 

It is always suspicious that sudden extinction events always seem to happen when humans show up.  And those humans presumably killed the mastodons and mammoths with nothing more than Clovis* tools, rarely if ever dying  even if hunting such obviously dangerous game (the groups simply couldn't survive losing many hunters at all).

Don't forget Cahokia had a population of ~40,000 (presumably at peak).  Probably had to both fish the Mississippi and grow corn.  What I'd like to know is how they kept the buffalo (bison) out of the crops?  Those herds were immense, and a little fence wasn't going to stop them.  Andes (and Mexican/central American) culture might have resembled bronze/iron age civilizations, but if such  cultures existed in North America, they didn't survive smallpox (or died out earlier, like Cahokia and the Anasazi).

* not sure about the state of pre-Clovis artifacts/evidence.  Wouldn't be surprised if an earlier wave had wiped out the other megafauna and it wasn't until the arrival (or development of) Clovis people/tech that the locals could hunt/wipe out the mastodons and mammoths (and thus have the food for the population to leave evidence of their passing).

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Early peoples of the Americas probably finished off the mastodons and mammoths, but there’s no evidence of predation among most of the other megafauna. They probably died out before we arrived. 

Between other nuisances insulting the extinct elephants (like changed climate, changed diet , and documented mass degeneration caused by inbreeding) were also packs of two-legged beings with sticks and stones making ugly faces and weird screams. These beings were the most nasty, making the elephants just die from disgust.

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Except of course the buffalo that still roam. 

On the North America plains, almost human-free, compared to the populated Southern lands where only lamas and tapirs were being caught.

And the millions of buffalos grazing unpunishedly in the North American steppes are were a living proof of how few people were living there till XIX, and how limitedly they were affecting the local biosphere.

Here, in Eurasia, all big cattle was forced to surrender or die immediately after the Ice Age ended, and humans started turning stones into metals.

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

It is always suspicious that sudden extinction events always seem to happen when humans show up.

Scavengers always appear where something big died. Why should humans differ from others?

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

the groups simply couldn't survive losing many hunters at all

If kill only already dying mammoths and weak mammothlings lost by the mammoth pack, it will be fine with the hunter health.
And wouldn't affect the elephant population.

Of course, there is another nice way, to set the steppe on fire (probably how the pithecantropuses learned the usage of fire) and make all mammoths either fry or run away and fall from rocks.
But the problems is what to eat next decade until the new mammoths have grown.

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

Don't forget Cahokia had a population of ~40,000 (presumably at peak). 

How many wolves were populating the territory of Cahokia in addition to 40k humans?

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

What I'd like to know is how they kept the buffalo (bison) out of the crops?

Easily.
Either buffalo hadn't eaten the crops, or it had and was killed and eaten by the village. Win-win.
Maybe even the crops were a clickbait for buffalos.

Interesting, were they digging wolf pits in the rice?

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

mean did we do this voluntarily or did rice fool us into terraforming the earth to benefit its own genetic prevalence, the way flowering plants bribed insects into becoming pollination vectors?

Gods of rice and corn were fighting for dominance over humans.

***

When you don't have metals, you are very limited in choice of habitation place and total population.
Because not every stone is appropriate for tool making. You need flint or obsidian, which are rare in mountains and almost exotic on plowland plains.
So, you need to import it from hundreds kilometers, bring it by hands, and spend several days to make one badly shaped tool.

With metals the tool making starts running much faster.

***

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

did we do this voluntarily or did <...> fool us into

All is simple.

The lithosphere is lying between two monstrous balls of fire, the Sun from above, and the core from below.
Like the fusion secondary ina thermonuke is being heated and compressed between the fission primary fire from outside and the fission sparkplug fire from inside.

In between it's boiling and seething, so a part of lithosphere gets separated as water and organics, and part of geology studying this organic foam is called biology.

Humans are just a part of lithosphere representing its self-organization and thermodynamic self-regulation.

[Pixophir]

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Early peoples of the Americas probably finished off the mastodons and mammoths, but there’s no evidence of predation among most of the other megafauna. They probably died out before we arrived. Except of course the buffalo that still roam. 

Part of the explanation could lie in the declining bio-diversity of their diet during and after the last glacial maximum.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12921

Change of circulation patterns and distribution of moisture in the northern hemisphere could have played a role in that. The megafauna didn't really go extinct with a turn of a switch. It was a long process, that started much earlier. Some rather retreated and  became island populations and survived into the Holocene, with reduced sizes and genetic variability.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27439-6

It is an ongoing discussion with several facets.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

All is simple.

A simple mind is always certain. Finding answers to complex questions is what makes some people's lives interesting. This can be quite demanding, and is stuffed with uncertainties, many of which can be modelled and put in numbers. But in the end leads to a better understanding of what happens around us.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Pixophir

[kerbiloid]

16 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

A simple mind is always certain. Finding answers to complex questions is what makes some people's lives interesting.

Making complex questions simple is what makes the people's lives possible.

16 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

This can be quite demanding, and is stuffed with uncertainties, many of which can be modelled and put in numbers.

Too complicated models rarely correlate with reality better than a simple common sense.

Usualy they lack a thousand more factors and suffer from volatile and estimated coefficients.

Do not forget: the history is made by simple, plain, and lazy guys with no theory in heads and doing everything as easily as possible.
Wise men are hired to rule the peasants.

200 thousand years of human evolution have been dedicated to throw bigger stones farther, and watch down from a higher tree.
All those fizzix-schmizzix, rocketry-pocketry, and other nerdish stuff were invented just for this.

Btw, try to explain to a pithecanthropus the physical principles of the space tech, he will understand nothing.
But he will need no explanation of its purpose, just show by hands, it's his native and familiar ideas.

Edited August 28, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pthigrivi]

@kerbiloid (also everyone) you should check out a book called Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. It covers a lot of this ground and is incredibly well researched and written. 

[kerbiloid]

38 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

Heard about it, and wish to refer to the opinion of ru/wiki (in google translate)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ружья,_микробы_и_сталь#Критика

Quote

Criticism

As the Russian paleontologist Kirill Yeskov notes, in his book, Diamond takes a sound idea - that the transition to the manufacturing farm critically depends on the set of domesticated animals and plants - and gives a huge number of examples to confirm, completely ignoring the opposite examples and allowing “Bloopers that are obvious even to the non -specialist ". For example, in the north of Africa the same ancestors of domesticated animals and plants lived as in Eurasia, and through the [Sahara] there were trading routes to the rest of Africa, because there were all the possibilities for breeding the same crops and pets as in Eurasia. There was indeed a grain shortage in America, but the variety of tuber plants and root crops was much wider in America: it was from there that potatoes, [batatas], manioc, completely incomparable with European analogues (turnips) in yield. Diamond also writes erroneously that in the New World, the processing of non -self -born metals owned only the Incas, or gives a higher level of epidemics that gives greater immunity, as the advantage of the peoples of Eurasia to the peoples of the America, indicating the mass extinction of the latter after contacting civilizations - while for analysis The growing technological lag, according to Yeskov, is correctly considered only the period before the opening of America, in which the low level of epidemics was, on the contrary, the advantage of the population of America. The popularity of the book in the West Eskov explains the culture of political correctness - an explanation of the successes of Western civilization from the standpoint of geographical determinism, as opposed to genetic reasons, avoids charges of racism [2].

Edited August 28, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Heard about it, and wish to refer to the opinion of ru/wiki (in google translate)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ружья,_микробы_и_сталь#Критика

He does actually address all those things (they’re kinda the whole point of the book) so you should check if out anyway and see what you think. 
 

However, we’re pretty far afield now from the topic of SETI and what signals an alien species is likely to utilize. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Heard about it, and wish to refer to the opinion of ru/wiki (in google translate)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ружья,_микробы_и_сталь#Критика

I'd have to dig more into Yeskov, but he seems wrong on the surface in some ways. 

Thanks to intercontinental trading between Asia and Europe, Mediterranean and European populations had suffered through, died and the survivors (critically) had the opportunity to recover population numbers from the series of plagues that swept the continents... Just as Europeans (re)discovered the existence of the Americas.   While they were gearing up to move enmass toward the Americas - disease was ravaging the domestic population.  Had plagues not ravaged local populations or those populations had time to recover - in other words, had there been enough people alive at the critical juncture in time to resist - the Americas would look more like Africa w/r/t European migration than they do today. 

Admittedly I'm criticizing only from the above quote, but Yeskov also seems to ignore the issue of water in the development of the agrarian base.  It seems he recognized that North African (Mediterranean) populations had a parity of technology and agriculture... But Sub-Saharan Africa lacks the navigable rivers and regular non-tropical rain patterns for fixed agriculture to be the dominant food production method vs wandering pastoralists.  Certainly they had the large domestic animals required for intensive farming - but the weather would not cooperate. Despite this, they were high iron age levels of domestic technology at a similar point in time to their North African, Mediterranean and European neighbors. 

On the other side of the pond, the lack of anything domesticable larger than the Llama had profound effects that should not be minimized or trivialized 

Edited August 28, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Pixophir]

Around the world, and during the Holocene, several centres of what is called neolithisation formed (careful with terms like "neolithic revolution", they have historical sources, partly with political intentions, and are wrong in modern archaeology). In the fertile crescent (and from there into Europe and Africa) that was based on wild versions of wheat/barley and goat/sheep, in southern/central America on the alpaca/vicuna and maize, in east Asia on rice and the pig.

Also the propagation of those "neolithic packages" is not uniform, but that's a story that does fill books, and many many papers :-)

Btw., climate in northern sub-Saharan Africa was humid during the early/mid Holocene. Drainage systems (for instance Tamanrasset drainage system) are still visible on satellite images.

 

Edit: a question nobody can answer atm is why did that happen ? Why did it take humans 3 million years, and why did modern humans (and apparently not Neanderthals) make the step from hunter and gatherer to agriculture and animal husbandry. It is not exactly desirable for the first to do so, because game comes for almost free and population control is something automatic, but animals must be raised and fed, it takes a long time until any benefit shows. So this process takes thousands of years to complete, gradually, not revolutionary, but after that there is no way back because of population growth and expansion.

Climate played a role, the relaxation after the glacial maximum, mountain sides where crop gets ready for harvest from low to high, enabling smaller groups to actually bring it in. But then again, climate transitions into warm phases have happened before, for instance in what is called OIS-5 125 thousand years ago, but Neanderthals, despite having composite tools, did (for all we know) not develop any sedentary ambitions.

For anyone pondering Seti or some such, they may want to take that into account, that even if intelligent(tm) life emerges, there is no guarantee they actually do that civilization thing, division of work, and all that what might be necessary for developing next tier technology, handling copper which is abundant in metallic form, mixing it with tin, discovering a process to obtain iron from ore (it rarely appears in metallic form because oxidization , meteorites mostly) and so on.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Pixophir

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Pixophir said:

Why did it take humans 3 million years

Humans are just 200k yo.

3 mln ago they were proto-humans, and their brain was much smaller. 

And they were living in small groups of 100 members, where the division of labour was not possible. A tribe of Swiss army knives (or multitools).

2 hours ago, Pixophir said:

why did modern humans (and apparently not Neanderthals) make the step from hunter and gatherer to agriculture and animal husbandry

They didn't. They were just catching and holding the prey together to avoid hunting every time, and they were seeding and gathering same wild crops which they were gathering in wild nature.

They would be very surprised to know that something changed.

A hunter gatherer tribe is not a pack of beggars aimlessly and ramdomly wandering from land to land, like the movies and XIX century saloon visioneers were describing.
You can't survive in a forest by looking for food. You must know its places and patrol them in known route.

They have a tribal territory (~1000 km² / 100 human tribe) and live there. (0.1 human/km², that's all what h/g stone-age society can support).

The male half and actually the whole tribe are ruled by 5..6 adult (20+) men.
They have survived several generations of youngsters, so their authority is absolute for everyone who wants a chance to do that.
They don't need a formal chief daily, so just decide who (of them five) is a boss when they need to cooperate for hunting or war. Others are shuttimg up and listening.

The male "hunters" (actually, scouts) are patrolling the territory following the routes known to them, from hazel place, ro the raspberry place, then to the hare place, then to the mushroom place, to the deer place, to and back.
Small recon/patrol/hunting groups with an elderman at the top, several groups per tribe.
They are doing that, moving silently, and looking out for prey. When they see something or somebody edible, they kill it and bring to the encampment, where the female part is fishing, skinning, cooking, etc.

When raspberries are ripe, they tell this to the female matrons, and next day the matrons kick the maiden backs and the female part goes and gathers the berries.
The male scouts are hanging around kinda to protect them (actually to not carry the heavy payload),

When the spring with berries is over, they move the camp to their another usual place, a couple of kilometers far, where the fish is coming for spawning, and the fruit trees are close, 
The scheme repeats, just the routes change. No need to patrol the berry glade in autumn.

When it gets cold, they move to the winter camp, preferrably in some cave. Also they can keep there their strategic food supplies and other things.

Next year everything repeats.

They have a large deer forest at the boundary of their territory, and hunt there. It's a neutral territory of them and neighboring tribes (relatives and aliens), which hunt there, too.
There is a men's house (not a wooden restroom, but a hunting operating base and a bootcamp for the boyscouts of 5..7+, till the initiation).
Obviously, it is the main interibal hunting gods sanctuary.

Another group of tribes can have their own or just be guests, so from time to time everybody trespasses to another one's land for robbing or poaching.
Then a war happens. They lose several people, but capture an enemy prisoner.
Unlike the XIX visioneers stories (that they don't because a slave would eat every berry he could find), they normally have slaves from the prisoners of war and kidnapped women.
When it's enough food to throw it out, the p-o-w slaves do dirty and hard daily job like skinning, cleaning etc.
When it's hunger, they eat them first. So, a slave actually doesn't spend any resource and is very profitable.

Thus, they are living on a very limited territory, their "wandering" is just moving a tent camp three times per year for several kilometers, to their known and prepared camp places, and they even don't have an idea that they are nomads. They just live in their village consisting of several camp places and a cave dungeon.

Thus, they didn't make any step from hunting/gathering to agriculture/husbandry.
They just grew enough big to focus on the resource collection and stopped moving from camp to camp, because all of them were in use at once. Because they were living in comfortable places of the Crescent surrounded by sea, steppe, and mountains
They collected available animals in pens to kill them more comfortably, sitting on a bench, and were seeding the grains on their usual territory. Previously they didn't need it.

They would be surprised that their official status changed, because they were living like always did, just with some technical improvements.

Climate played a role, because megafauna got extinct, and the fast food like gazelles became the main prey, so they changed spears to arrows.

When their settlements reached 10k limit, it was impossible to provide everyone with food from his own field, and at the same time there were enough peasant around to make goods and sell them for living.
The division of labour appeared, and after that a primitive state was brooming the tribal neighbors around.

Edited August 28, 2022 by kerbiloid

[wumpus]

15 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Easily.
Either buffalo hadn't eaten the crops, or it had and was killed and eaten by the village. Win-win.
Maybe even the crops were a clickbait for buffalos.

The only pre-Columbian method I've heard of to hunt buffalo was to spook them and get them to charge off a cliff.  It took horses and later muskets/rifles to even the odds.  Pretty sure there aren't any cliffs near St. Louis.

Don't underestimate the size of the herds either.  A fairly large herd could outnumber even ~40,000 native americans, although they might only gather this large in rutting season (not enough scientists out west before anti-indian policy demanded the [near] extinction of buffalo).

Best guess is that they *did* hunt the buffalo.  But I'm curious how they did it pre-horses.  Maybe they drowned them in the Mississippi (or there is a cliff nearby) and after a few centuries the buffalo learned (and Chokia faded).

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, Pixophir said:

Around the world, and during the Holocene, several centres of what is called neolithisation formed (careful with terms like "neolithic revolution", they have historical sources, partly with political intentions, and are wrong in modern archaeology). In the fertile crescent (and from there into Europe and Africa) that was based on wild versions of wheat/barley and goat/sheep, in southern/central America on the alpaca/vicuna and maize, in east Asia on rice and the pig.

Also the propagation of those "neolithic packages" is not uniform, but that's a story that does fill books, and many many papers :-)

Btw., climate in northern sub-Saharan Africa was humid during the early/mid Holocene. Drainage systems (for instance Tamanrasset drainage system) are still visible on satellite images.

 

Edit: a question nobody can answer atm is why did that happen ? Why did it take humans 3 million years, and why did modern humans (and apparently not Neanderthals) make the step from hunter and gatherer to agriculture and animal husbandry. It is not exactly desirable for the first to do so, because game comes for almost free and population control is something automatic, but animals must be raised and fed, it takes a long time until any benefit shows. So this process takes thousands of years to complete, gradually, not revolutionary, but after that there is no way back because of population growth and expansion.

Climate played a role, the relaxation after the glacial maximum, mountain sides where crop gets ready for harvest from low to high, enabling smaller groups to actually bring it in. But then again, climate transitions into warm phases have happened before, for instance in what is called OIS-5 125 thousand years ago, but Neanderthals, despite having composite tools, did (for all we know) not develop any sedentary ambitions.

For anyone pondering Seti or some such, they may want to take that into account, that even if intelligent(tm) life emerges, there is no guarantee they actually do that civilization thing, division of work, and all that what might be necessary for developing next tier technology, handling copper which is abundant in metallic form, mixing it with tin, discovering a process to obtain iron from ore (it rarely appears in metallic form because oxidization , meteorites mostly) and so on.

kerbiloid sums it up well but, it was also that we call improvised agriculture, you knew there it was berries or wild grain and you kept that area clear. Perhaps moved in some time before it was ripe and focused hunting birds eating berries or seeds. 

Now they learned that you could plant seeds and probably did. Population density grew and now you had to start doing more intensive farming who was very hard work but you survived. 
Once you had farmers starting moving outward their population density displaced the hunter gatherer as they might be up to 100 to 1 so the hunter gatherers had to become farmers, fight an war they would loose or move other places. At the end the only places with hunter gatherers was places there you could not farm or herd animals, mind you the farmers and herders also hunted. 
It was an singularity event. 

Now homo sapiens moving into Europe had much of the same effect they was much more efficient using more hunting methods with more an focus more on smaller animals who all could hunt like ducks and with better technology. So they might outnumbered the Neanderthals 20 to 1, and if you are an pure western European that is the upper limit on how much Neanderthal dna you have . Make love not war would worked out the same here yes it was fighting but it was more of an assimilation and residence is futile. 
Its some evidence Neanderthals tried to catch up and I guess the first sci-fi stories might be told at their campfires. Easy ways to make fire, ways to trow spears many times faster, much better gear and organisation. 
 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

The only pre-Columbian method I've heard of to hunt buffalo was to spook them and get them to charge off a cliff.  It took horses and later muskets/rifles to even the odds.  Pretty sure there aren't any cliffs near St. Louis.

Don't underestimate the size of the herds either.  A fairly large herd could outnumber even ~40,000 native americans, although they might only gather this large in rutting season (not enough scientists out west before anti-indian policy demanded the [near] extinction of buffalo).

Best guess is that they *did* hunt the buffalo.  But I'm curious how they did it pre-horses.  Maybe they drowned them in the Mississippi (or there is a cliff nearby) and after a few centuries the buffalo learned (and Chokia faded).

Natives in the US was mostly farmers, hunting was an part time. Now they had kingdoms so they might do large scale hunts. 
Chasing 2000 buffalo of an cliff make sense if you had 10.000 people to pull it  off and harvesting the result afterward. 

Then the Europeans came the brought lots of  diseases. population dropped by up to 90%. 
Being an neolithic farmer is idiotic hard, hunter gathering is much easier and more fun and now population density is low enough for it to work. 
Add horses and you have an winner. However the Mongols fielded real armies, even at the time of Napoleon it was an serious fear the Mongols might return. 
 

[Pixophir]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

kerbiloid sums it up well but, it was also that we call improvised agriculture, you knew there it was berries or wild grain and you kept that area clear. Perhaps moved in some time before it was ripe and focused hunting birds eating berries or seeds. 

Now they learned that you could plant seeds and probably did. Population density grew and now you had to start doing more intensive farming who was very hard work but you survived. 
Once you had farmers starting moving outward their population density displaced the hunter gatherer as they might be up to 100 to 1 so the hunter gatherers had to become farmers, fight an war they would loose or move other places. At the end the only places with hunter gatherers was places there you could not farm or herd animals, mind you the farmers and herders also hunted. 
It was an singularity event. 

Now homo sapiens moving into Europe had much of the same effect they was much more efficient using more hunting methods with more an focus more on smaller animals who all could hunt like ducks and with better technology. So they might outnumbered the Neanderthals 20 to 1, and if you are an pure western European that is the upper limit on how much Neanderthal dna you have . Make love not war would worked out the same here yes it was fighting but it was more of an assimilation and residence is futile. 
Its some evidence Neanderthals tried to catch up and I guess the first sci-fi stories might be told at their campfires. Easy ways to make fire, ways to trow spears many times faster, much better gear and organisation. 
 

That makes no sense, I am sorry. There are several things in the timeline heavily confused here.

Planting anything is not an initial achievement of the neolithic which is first observed around the fertile crescent (around 13000bp). It takes very long (~2000 years) from an initial pre-storage neolithic (search term "pre pottery neolithic") until the first domesticated grains appear. "Fruit" as in apples and the likes in their domesticated form aren't known until the early bronze age (~5500BP). Wild apples aren't edible. So there are 7-8000 years in between. Wild berries and nuts where of course plucked if found, there's quite some evidence, even in the palaeolithic (much earlier). When I say numbers, I refer to the Levant and Europe, Africa is very different.

Back to the early neolithic (~13.000BP), they did not start farming because it was better than hunting/gathering in any way, it isn't. It is a gradual, slow development over thousands of years. One should also take into account for several intermediate stages, but this gets complicated. Suffice to say, modern humans coming into Europe ~50.000 BP also needed around 10.000 years to adapt and develop the full spectrum of an upper palaeolithic. But now it get's special, and I tend to pratter :-)

Important is also, early modern humans in Eurpe (Cro Magnon) did not have better technology than late Neanderthals in Europe. In noerthern Africa and the Levant, they are indistinguishable in their tool making. And they did not outnumber each other, that came later, after Cro Magnon, and probably Neanderthals were already gone then, or married in :-) Both species met every now and then, and that for hundred thousands of years in the Levant and elsewhere, before early modern humans became endemic in Europe. The story still evolves, some read: https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/neandertal_interaction_with_cro-magnons.htm

As to humans on earth, genus Homo since more than 3 million years, starting with Homo erectus and subspecies. Anatomically modern humans, oldest findings for now from 300.000 BP (Djebel Irhoud). 

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Being an neolithic farmer is idiotic hard, hunter gathering is much easier and more fun and now population density is low enough for it to work. 

Exactly (without the horses). There is no logical reason to do so, to say "Hey, I invented farming. It is cool !". In northern Hungary and farther to the north mesolithic hunter/gatherers and early neolithic groups lived side by side for more than a thousand years. There's evidence of intense trade between them, but also for some friction.

 

Anyway, trying to find a way back to Seti. Early and middle stone age is not that interesting there, because there was only very slow progress for millions of years, but what could affectionately be called "dawn of civilization", which, based on different combinations of plants and animals, is not an abrupt emergence, but a long gradual process.

A lot of skills must be developed by an aspiring intelligent species to actually become interesting for programs as Seti. Even if everything works out alright, and there is another planet nearby with a civilization of a level like earth post 100 years ago, the window of catching them right now may be open only for a short time.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Pixophir

[wumpus]

7 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Natives in the US was mostly farmers, hunting was an part time. Now they had kingdoms so they might do large scale hunts. 
Chasing 2000 buffalo of an cliff make sense if you had 10.000 people to pull it  off and harvesting the result afterward. 

Then the Europeans came the brought lots of  diseases. population dropped by up to 90%. 
Being an neolithic farmer is idiotic hard, hunter gathering is much easier and more fun and now population density is low enough for it to work. 
Add horses and you have an winner. However the Mongols fielded real armies, even at the time of Napoleon it was an serious fear the Mongols might return. 
 

Not sure why North America was spared the horror of neolithic cities (outside a few short lived places).  Presumably huge swaths of land had abundant food, unlike the narrow fertile valleys civilization first grew in.  The catch was once farmers monopolized the region, the shear number/density of farmers could fight off hunter/gatherers trying to live off the farmer's land.  But presumably there were small patches of fertile land in Aztek/Mayan lands, and presumably farming terraces was the only way to produce food in the Andes.  So those areas it was possible to force nearby people to farm, but less so in North America.  But there was certainly plenty of farming: I'm pretty  sure the pilgrims would have died out had they not been able to squat on fields cleared by a native population wiped out by smallpox.  Corn was already widespread (native to and cultivated in what is now Mexico).  No idea what percentage of food came from farming, and one alleged real motive for farming [scrubbed by forum rules] wasn't known above the Rio Grande.

And it wasn't just idiotic hard to be a farmer in neolithic times.  Plenty of people simply left "western civilization" and "went native" with the nearby tribes (presumably starting with Roanoke).  Between taxes, interest, and other middlemen fees the hunter gatherer life was particularly attractive at least until the mid 19th century (which coincided with all current hunter gatherers confined to some of the least fertile parts of the USA).

And ironically enough, horses aren't the only way for "hunter gatherer societies" to mass enough warriors to defeat farming societies, the Vikings managed to locally mass warriors in huge numbers by longships.  I think the big catch is that Lief Erikson's  crew in the Vineland Saga was more a farming/trading/brewing mission than a full out "Viking raid", so the locals were able to deliver themselves from the "fury of the northmen", while all the monasteries of Europe (at least nearby seas and rivers, although they nearly took all of England) were praying "from the fury of the northmen, deliver us oh Lord".

[Pixophir]

38 minutes ago, wumpus said:

And ironically enough, horses aren't the only way for "hunter gatherer societies" to mass enough warriors to defeat farming societies, the Vikings managed to locally mass warriors in huge numbers by longships. 

But the Vikings were no hunters/gatherers, quite the contrary. And not all of them were pirates. When we say hunter/gatherers, we mean those pre-Neolitihic societies of the Pleistocene, that gradually disappeared with the spread of the new lifestyle from 13,000BP on. Sure, hunting did contribute some to the diet at any time, it is still a sport today.

Btw., domesticated horses were widely used in the iron age, that's >15,000 years after the hunter/gatherers of the ice age. Earlier domestication 5,000 BP possible. Still, it is before the Vikings, which where a medieval group of chaps.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Pixophir

[SunlitZelkova]

2 hours ago, Pixophir said:

logical reason

“The Sky People came and taught them farming and irrigation”- Dr. Henry Jones Jr., 1957

/s just to be clear 

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Plenty of people simply left "western civilization" and "went native" with the nearby tribes (presumably starting with Roanoke).  Between taxes, interest, and other middlemen fees the hunter gatherer life was particularly attractive at least until the mid 19th century (which coincided with all current hunter gatherers confined to some of the least fertile parts of the USA).

It is possible this has nothing to do with either a hunter gatherer or agricultural life style, but rather the tendency to rebel or wish for “freedom” in humans.

What you describe sounds ridiculously similar to how, for example, someone raised in X country sees nothing special about it and finds Y country comparatively attractive, while the person in Y country, despite having everything they need to live a decent life, feels Y country is lacking and wants to drop everything to leave for X country, despite the immense challenge of doing so compared to the simplicity of remaining in Y country.

An example that mainly comes to mind is many foreigners wanting to come to Japan despite the much more complex* and strict culture than America, and vice versa with Japanese going to America. But I’m sure there are examples for every type of “boo”, if you are aware of that Internet slang.

So it might not be that the hunter gatherer life style is actually less difficult, but that the Europeans simply wanted something different no matter what it was.

*I do not mean complex as to imply that America is “simple” and thus “backwards”, while Japan is “advanced”. Furthermore, it is a relative thing. There are certain things in Japan that make America look like a prison and there certain things vice versa. But to be a normal person respected in society there is a lot more one needs to pay attention to than compared to the US, IMO.

Edited August 29, 2022 by SunlitZelkova
More clarification