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Old 12-26-2015, 01:11 AM   #31
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

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Originally Posted by (E) View Post
After the discussion going without fire is a bit too extreme.

Your right about Magic being powerful in this context.

On a side note it wasn't this group of elves that was TL 2+1 but another faction sorry I'd that wasn't clear.

The main thing I was hoping to get a handle on from this discussion was some ideas how a divergent tech tree from TL 0 could look.
The first thing any divergent tech tree has is stuff that probably or certainly won't work. You have to let them cheat and ignore anyone who tells you it isn't realistic.
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Old 12-26-2015, 01:50 AM   #32
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

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Originally Posted by mr beer View Post
Also, the main reason that we cook food is because it tastes better, not to make it safer, although of course that is a distinct ancillary benefit.
It's not ancillary, it's the mechanism for selection. People who find unhealthy food to be more tasty are going to reduce their population through parasitism and malnourishment, maybe even cancer for those who like really well cooked and denatured steak.
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Old 12-26-2015, 03:23 AM   #33
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

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Originally Posted by RogerWilco View Post
Remember the Polynesians were TL0 and they conquered the Pacific. Their navigation technology is quite amazing.

...
Related to the earlier discussion: humans have quite some local adaptation to food types, developed over the last ten thousand years or so. Examples:
- In the areas with domesticable bovines, we developed lactose tolerance.
- In areas with maize, we developed to digest it more effectively.

What I'm saying is that your Elves need to be able to eat raw potatoes, or something like that. Same thing for meat. Vegetarians not withstanding, meat is a really good brain fuel, and probably quite essential in human development as well. (Compare Gorilla to Chimpansee, the latter one is known to eat meat as part of their diet).
Canon is that Phoenecians/Polynesians/etc. were TL 0/1 in navigation.

Goat/camel/horse/etc. milk all have lactose. And speak for yourself. I was born intolerant. Thank goodness for advanced soy based formula.

Native Americans can not digest maize better than Europeans. Europeans merely ignored proper nixtamalization that drastically improves nutritional content. Pelagra and kwashiorkor resulted.

Chimps and gorillas are apes but not us, so comparisons only go so far. Vegan humans can be just as healthy as more omnivorous humans, but it is far more difficult and takes advanced nutritional knowledge rather than just eat whatever you find and/or is in season, in moderation.
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Old 12-26-2015, 03:48 AM   #34
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

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Originally Posted by jeff_wilson View Post
It's not ancillary, it's the mechanism for selection. People who find unhealthy food to be more tasty are going to reduce their population through parasitism and malnourishment, maybe even cancer for those who like really well cooked and denatured steak.
The reason is taste, like I said. The mechanism for selection is not the reason.

EDIT

Really this is just arguing about phrasing, I think.
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Old 12-26-2015, 08:11 AM   #35
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

You can also preserve some food using fire by smoking it.
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Old 12-26-2015, 10:09 AM   #36
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
I don't believe it. Provided you don't overcook it. Unless you are comparing it to carefully mallet tenderized meat.
Well "harder" isn't the same as "hard". Meats are so much more easily digested than plants (which tend to keep their nutrients inside cellulose armored cell walls) in the first place that it's probably a negligible difference for anybody with a functional gut. Almost anything that can live on plants can digest raw animal tissue more easily, and humans can live on plants, so....
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Old 12-26-2015, 11:32 AM   #37
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

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Meats are so much more easily digested than plants...in the first place that it's probably a negligible difference for anybody with a functional gut.
Richard Wrangham is an anthropologist who's written on how influential the development of cooking was for the evolution of hominids (Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human). He argued that raw meat is substantially harder to digest than cooked meat. As evidence, noted that when chimpanzees get access to (raw) meat, they spend a long time chewing it very thoroughly, and even so they pass undigested bits of the meat in their feces.

His book is surprisingly interesting and readable. The summary is that homo sapiens has evolutionarily adapted to eating cooked food starting hundreds of thousands of years ago.

in GURPS terms, a species that evolved without cooking or a similar method of partially pre-digesting food would realistically have significant differences from homo sapiens. A more carnivorous species might have fewer differences, due to the more nutrient-dense food reducing the time and metabolic capacity required for eating. Personally, I'd handwave this away for any kind of fantasy game.
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Old 12-26-2015, 01:07 PM   #38
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

I like the image of elves with gorilla bellies.
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Old 12-26-2015, 02:17 PM   #39
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

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The first thing any divergent tech tree has is stuff that probably or certainly won't work. You have to let them cheat and ignore anyone who tells you it isn't realistic.
Not always. A divergent tech tree where selective breeding was discovered and understood (among with a basic understanding of genetics and inheritance) at tl 1 is perfectly plausible, and a fictional society that discovered such could see a divergent tl leaning more towards bio-tech (if you had thousands of years to work at it there is little reason 'roundup ready (or similar)' crops could not be developed as early as tl 2. The resulting boom in farming could spur an industrial revolution population surge while bronze tools are still being utilized, but the population boost could free up thinkers to develop advanced physics and math (compared to regular tl advancement)

The resulting tl 2+4 society would ultimately be very familiar if irregular (mixing tl 2 through 6 knowledge and technology).

There are a lot of 'this could be developed in a vacuum' technologies that are excellent candidates for alternate tls.
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Old 12-26-2015, 07:31 PM   #40
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Technological development without fire.

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Not always. A divergent tech tree where selective breeding was discovered and understood (among with a basic understanding of genetics and inheritance) at tl 1 is perfectly plausible, and a fictional society that discovered such could see a divergent tl leaning more towards bio-tech (if you had thousands of years to work at it there is little reason 'roundup ready (or similar)' crops could not be developed as early as tl 2.
And wouldn't be a divergent tech tree. It would just be TL 2 (TL x in biology). Nobody from our tech would look at their stuff and say "What the heck is that?"
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