Civilization?

More and more Halloween displays in my neighborhood. Coming soon: another post dedicated to them.

Halloween critters for Eileen.

A Beautifully Illustrated Cookbook

José Andrés: Zaytinya.
I haven’t tried many recipes yet, but I hope I will do more.
I have enjoyed dining at the author’s restaurants in Washington, DC.

Fattoush salad from Zaytinya. Tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese, croutons, radishes, bell peppers,
red onions, and herbs from our garden. Olive oil, pomegranate, and lemon dressing. (I omitted sumac because I didn’t have any.)

In 2023: our family at one of the Andres restaurants in 
Washington DC.

Two Historical Novels

I originally reviewed this book by John Shen. Yen Nee and SJ Rozan last year:
https://maefood.blogspot.com/2024/07/two-exotic-mystery-tales.html
Reading next: a newly-published sequel about the same characters.

Next book: the sequel, also featuring Judge Dee.
The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and S.J.Rozan.

A Challenging Theory of Prehistory and Civilization

Luke Kemp: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.
There are so many theories of prehistory! I haven’t finished this book yet.

The early chapters of this book summarize the emergence of violence and war in human societies, which in hunter-gatherer times had tended to be very egalitarian and peaceful. I found this fascinating. Here are a couple of passages that capture the author’s ideas about the disadvantages of civilization:

“In Europe, there are no signs of war during the Palaeolithic. Around 9500 BCE, after the entry into the Holocene, evidence of lethal violence begins to become more common. After around 5500 BCE, as agriculture agriculture spreads across Europe, people settle down, and inequality intensifies; clearer indications of warfare, including fortifications, towns surrounded by ditches, and evidence of massacres, all creep upwards. The Near East follows a similar trajectory. The Natufians killed each other at low rates and didn’t conduct war. For thousands of years we find just a few skeletons with fractured skulls and embedded projectiles. Then in the seventh century BCE, perhaps the first fortification in the world – Tell Maghzaliyah in northern Mesopotamia – was constructed near a node of long-distance obsidian trade.” (p. 68)

The author points out that the increasingly dense cities that emerged not only were more violent, but also began to suffer from contagious diseases. He writes:

“Many of the plagues of the world today, such as influenza, measles, mumps, cholera, smallpox, chicken pox, and, of course, Covid-19, are all recent developments from the past ten thousand years. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors never had to endure the throaty cough of influenza or the painful and disfiguring scabs of chicken pox or smallpox, which emerged only with the advent of urbanism and agriculture. These ‘density-dependent’ diseases require intense interaction between humans and animals, something many of the earliest cities provided in abundance. Such diseases also need a sufficiently large population so they don’t burn themselves out by killing all their hosts.” (p. 89)

This is a challengingly-written and rather long book, and I’m planning to continue reading it around 100 pages at a time.

Related book reviewed in 2017

James C. Scott , Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States.
Reviewed here: https://maefood.blogspot.com/2017/10/against-grain-contrary-book.html

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Shared with Deb’s Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz