"Does-? Does winter really happen because Demeter misses her?"
"No, of course not. Don't be ridiculous. Winter happens because that hemisphere of the planet is tilting away from the sun."
"No, I-. I know that. I just don't know how much of the stories are true."
"Demeter caused crop failures, but it wasn't over the whole of the world. If she'd tried that the gods of those regions would have stepped in and stopped her, which might have resulted in the Hellenes deciding to worship one of them instead of her."
Y'see, now I'm wondering about the bronze age collapse.
According to what little I can find, there was an increase in temperatures beforehand, but a sharp decrease in temperatures and lack of precipitation in greece at the time of the abandonment of most palace centers in greece.
Getting bad enough that there's evidence of greek plants evolving to survive desert-like conditions.
The collapse hit Greece hard enough that there isn't any writing in the region for centuries afterwards. And the mixture of migration, crop failures, and disruption of trade networks(which were necessary to move the tin needed for bronze, which was critical for everything) brought down or caused major disruption in every civilization around the eastern Mediterranean.
It might have been possible to avoid being replaced with one of the other offended agriculture gods, despite also affecting their regions and pissing them off, if the greek pantheon and greek people had already clearly identified those gods as enemies, from previous conflicts(which would have inevitably been provoked by the Hellenistic gods). And it may have been a strategy to try to place external pressure on Zeus, from people who might actually be able to threaten him and his supporters, to get him to overturn his previous decision.
Is it possible that the real-world Demeter story is a distorted memory of religious explanations for the collapse?(it includes the god of death, and the anger of the gods causing crop failure)
In a mythology kitchen sink setting like DC would there be a relation?
Did you persuade Euanthe to spare subsistence farms?"
"No, but I gave the fruit-bearing plants around them a boost and created some new super fruits." She shakes her head. "Hugo sent some missionaries, but the people still there aren't interested in learning."
"Learning..? To live in the forest?"
"We're not ordering everyone to live in caves. The Accala have homes. But high-density settlements don't have a place in the civilization we're building. They're not good for the land or for humans."
"Um…"
"We're trying to show people a better way to live. You've seen alien civilizations; you can't tell me that every species destroys their natural habitat to industrialise."
"You'd like Alstair and O.
Hrmm, I suspect that, if they could import alien plant-based domestic goods manufacturing, and keep up with the food needs of the populace without destructive industrialized farming, it might be possible to overcome the market disadvantages of spreading out by using digital marketplaces.
In which case actually living spread out in small groups would be psychologically healthy and strategically advantageous(it makes them hard to nuke or orbitally bombard).
Bar is currently on the floor
