social classes at TL1

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

The Aztecs were TL2 (Weapons TL1) so Mesoamerican society wasn't "pure" TL1.

What is your source for calling them TL2? I don't recall even mentioning the Aztecs in GURPS Low-Tech. The Maya, yes, for their advanced mathematics and astronomy. Oh, wait, we had the macauitl in the weapons lists, but that would have been TL0, like all microlithic devices.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by whswhs

What is your source for calling them TL2?

Overall, I'd call the Aztecs and similar tribes TL1, but potentially advanced to TL2 in Administration, Agriculture, Astronomy, and maybe a few other areas, but retarded in areas like metalwork, power generation, and transport.

All of the South/Central American native empires are a bit weird in terms of GURPS TL due to lack of draft animals and very limited use of metal tools.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Nixies as a people tend to live either in swamps and marshes, or along rivers and streams. These tend to be ecologically productive, with good levels of plant nutrients.

Riffing off of the above, consider that an aquatic race might "farm" (or even herd!) critters like amphibians, fish, and waterfowl. Think traditional Chinese culture along the Yangze or Yellow Rivers, with fish raised in ponds or pens along the river banks, trained cormorants or similar "fish hunting" creatures, and, anachronistically, farmed shellfish (technically low tech but only discovered at TL6 on Earth).

If they have access to really impressive salmon runs, like those once found in the Pacific Northwest, they could have a very high protein diet due to ready access to preserved fish. The natives of the Pac NW were comparatively wealthy and well-fed compared to many other groups of North American Amerinds for this reason, and more sedentary than most other groups because villages grew up near known salmon runs and the need for infrastructure to catch, process, and store fish.

Originally Posted by whswhs

There probably is some grain production, but likely it goes as much for beer (nixies invented beer!) as for bread.

Remember that barley grows in poorer soil not suitable for wheat or maize. The same properties that make it "not so good" for bread (lower protein and lack of gluten) make it more suitable for malting, and hence, making beer. It is likely to be grown in upland areas.

Alternately, if you want to invent some mechanism which allows grains to be turned into beer without the need for malting. In that case, you can have all sorts of "grain wines" produced using bacterial or fungal degradation of complex starches (e.g., aspergillus fungus used to make sake and similar Oriental "rice wines) or "indigenous beers" made by chewing on grains (or otherwise exposing them to amylase enzymes), and allowing the masticated grains + water to spontaneously ferment.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Anyway, I'm leaning toward saying that the truck gardeners close to Portus Argenti tend to a somewhat urbanized class structure, with a gardener being regarded as a skilled worker akin to a weaver or potter.

This might depend on specialization and scale. Certainly, an orchardman or vinyardman would be a skilled tradesman, but in pre-modern times just about everyone - even city dwellers - had a garden patch which grew simple vegetable crops and pot herbs. Tending such small-scale gardens was just an ordinary part of the work that womens and children (less often men) did. Depending on the culture, it was also likely to be linked to small-scale fish, poultry, and/or diary husbandry, since the animals manured the garden and might help keep weeds and pests down.

Commercial farmers who specialize in slightly trickier crops (e.g., cauliflower, endive, melons, or any sort of hothouse/greenhouse style growing) might also be considered to be skilled trades, but more likely they're just farmers.

Originally Posted by whswhs

There are probably poor folk out there who wander around doing odd jobs most of the year, and then earn the bulk of their pay during the harvest season, when everyone is working at 100%+.

This sort of seasonal worker was likely to be employed as brewery assistants or possibly charcoal burners in the winter months. They might also be seasonally employed as fishermen or foragers of commonly-available wild crops like berries. And, of course, if there are any big construction projects going, they'll also be unskilled/semi-skilled labor for those projects in the off-season.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by maximara

Per GURPS Imperial Rome Rome was more TL2-3 then straight TL3. While Classical Athens was indeed TL2 the Heroic Period was TL1.

We know a lot more about Rome since that book was written. If you list all of the technology categories and assign a TL to each one, then Rome has a lot more that are TL3 or above than TL2. By the time of Christ, Rome was a solid TL3 civilisation.

[Polydamas]

Actually, have you played around with Gregory King's estimates for England from 1691? He was one of the first people to try to estimate this kind of information in detail, and specialists seem to poke at his figures and tweak them here and there rather than throw them out.

Gregory King https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/king.htm

[maximara]

Originally Posted by whswhs

What is your source for calling them TL2? I don't recall even mentioning the Aztecs in GURPS Low-Tech. The Maya, yes, for their advanced mathematics and astronomy. Oh, wait, we had the macauitl in the weapons lists, but that would have been TL0, like all microlithic devices.

"The Aztec's sophisticated architecture and mathematics were Tech Level 2. Their weaponry, without metal, was only TLI." GURPS Aztecs pg 18

"Primitive see p. 826; This is worth -5 points. Though the Aztecs believed all nonAztecs to be barbarians, true primitive cultures existed all over Mesoamerica. The Chichimecs, at TL1, represent one such culture." GURPS Aztecs pg 36

Originally Posted by DanHoward

We know a lot more about Rome since that book was written. If you list all of the technology categories and assign a TL to each one, then Rome has a lot more that are TL3 or above than TL2. By the time of Christ, Rome was a solid TL3 civilisation.

Near the Empire Period to the end of the Western Empire they were TL3 (Transportation TL2) rather then "solid" TL3

[AlexanderHowl]

I would call late Imperial Rome TL2 with some TL3 inventions (such as better steel techniques), but lacking the vast majority of the inventions from TL3. I would actually argue that academics do not know much more about Rome than they did 100 years ago (just that the horrific sexual practices and the utter corruption of the society has become more known to the general public than it was 100 years ago). During the early 20th century, Rome was publically admired as a model civilization. During the early 21st, Rome is publicly known as one of the most corrupt and vile societies to ever stain the Earth

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

"The Aztec's sophisticated architecture and mathematics were Tech Level 2. Their weaponry, without metal, was only TLI." GURPS Aztecs pg 18

"Primitive see p. 826; This is worth -5 points. Though the Aztecs believed all nonAztecs to be barbarians, true primitive cultures existed all over Mesoamerica. The Chichimecs, at TL1, represent one such culture." GURPS Aztecs pg 36

I don't think those assignments can be relied on. They come from a book published for GURPS 3/e; TLs changed in 4/e. And in fact, Aztecs was published even before the first edition of GURPS Low-Tech; I consulted it when I was working on that book. So it wasn't even influenced by whatever early clarification of the low-tech rules took place then.

I'd also note that nonmetal weaponry would fairly clearly be stone age, and thus TL0, by current rules. Likewise the "primitive cultures" of Mesoameria. I understand that at one phase GURPS took TL1 as the lowest human TL, and reserved TL0 for animals, taking it literally as "no-tech." That's definitely not true in 4/e.

So whatever GURPS Aztecs said cannot be taken as authoritative.

Near the Empire Period to the end of the Western Empire they were TL3 (Transportation TL2) rather then "solid" TL3

When they didn't even have bronze, let alone iron or steel? For that matter, TL2 in transportation without the wheel seems optimistic.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I would call late Imperial Rome TL2 with some TL3 inventions (such as better steel techniques), but lacking the vast majority of the inventions from TL3. I would actually argue that academics do not know much more about Rome than they did 100 years ago (just that the horrific sexual practices and the utter corruption of the society has become more known to the general public than it was 100 years ago). During the early 20th century, Rome was publically admired as a model civilization. During the early 21st, Rome is publicly known as one of the most corrupt and vile societies to ever stain the Earth

The moral evaluation of past civilizations as "noble" or "base" doesn't seem relevant to what I was asking about. I'd rather not get into such things.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Actually, have you played around with Gregory King's estimates for England from 1691? He was one of the first people to try to estimate this kind of information in detail, and specialists seem to poke at his figures and tweak them here and there rather than throw them out.

I hadn't heard of them, and they seem like a useful source. Puzzling out the table, I think I see a roughly equal split of the population into Status -2, -1, 0, and +1, with less than 10% at Status 2 and up, almost all at Status 2 and 3. That looks more egalitarian than I was envisioning for Portus Argenti, actually. Was England a comparatively freer or less exploitative society, or a more egalitarian one?

(That's taking Average wealth as 45 pounds/year, so that farmers, artisans, and small tradesmen are Average, but "freeholders" and soldiers and sailors are Comfortable and at the lower edge of "gentlemen." I'm not sure what to make of cottagers; are these people who have a small house and a garden, but don't have fields of their own to plow? They don't seem to have been outright starving, at any rate, given that there were so many of them.)