From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   On Saturday, June 28, 2014 4:52:04 PM UTC-4, J.Pascal wrote:   
   >    
   > > > What I was hoping for was a long term stable, I won't say "inbred"   
   because they wouldn't be, population with long term loyalties and conflicts,   
   possibly even raiding and warring between the various walled settlements.     
   >    
   > > If the population density is low, then what reasons would they have for   
   conflict?  Raiding for agricultural slaves?  Raiding for wives?   
   >    
   > Good point. Though even with small populations, if life is hard, it's always   
   easier (or would seem so) to steal what the other guy has. I can see some long   
   term grudges and feuds developing.   
   >    
   Before the Spanish came into the American Southwest looking for Cibola, the   
   city of gold, and began to dominate the Puebloans, their native buildings were   
   stacked to form a defensible wall around a central plaza, where the most   
   valued buildings and homes    
   (most secure) were at ground level.  That is what a pueblo is, a fortress   
   built to stand against attack by lightly-armed raiding parties, and not a   
   quirky native architecture.  The motive for this was for protection against   
   slaveraids by Navajo and    
   Apache to take field laborers (these were agricultural people before the   
   introduction of the horse).  Then, the various Pueblos each had populations of   
   a bit less than 2000, that being near the maximum that agriculture based on   
   the amount of water that    
   was concentrated by the slopes of mesas could support, that extra water being   
   the reason for the pueblos' existence in the desert climate.  (In their modern   
   situation, their populations have grown about 5X their historical subsistence   
   level, and often    
   the characteristic pueblo design of stacked adobe buildings has been left   
   behind.)  When attacked, the pueblo people working in the fields would rush   
   into their fortified towns, stand on the upper story and beat down Navajo as   
   they tried to scale the    
   walls.  That is the origin of certain residual ethnic enmities between various   
   tribes in the Four Corners.   
      
   That is what I was thinking of.  Probably they had dumb fights over women,   
   too, like in the Illiad.   
      
      
      
      
      
       
      
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