Cataclysms make and unmake civilizations.

Before the Crusades (beginning in 1095): Demographic and Energy Pressure: Europe is emerging from the medieval “Little Ice Age,” and its population is exploding. The knightly energy, born from the Viking and Magyar invasions, no longer has an internal enemy. It must project outward. Psychic Preparation through Millenarianism: With the year 1000 passed, eschatological expectation transforms into an active desire to re-conquer the holy places. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem multiply, creating a collective imagination of the Holy Land as the ultimate goal.

Reminder:

We live within the cosmos; we are not an isolated mental particle floating in the Universe. You must remember your place in the universe and abandon this modern atheism of which liberalism, Christianity, and humanism are branches.

You cannot define yourselves; you are defined by natural constraints: by the Cosmos to which you belong, by the Family from which you come, by your culture, etc. You must break with this atheism within you, with this selfishness, which, without you realizing it, will kill you and strip you of all vital force. For your current paradigm is that this vital force is material. It is not; it is organic. You are living flesh that loves, breathes, reproduces, has children.

You are part of a whole, a chain: humanity... the cosmos.

Therefore, climate and geography shape what a people, and then a civilization, becomes.

ADVENT OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION (from the 6th to 3rd century BC)

  1. Environmental and Geographical Conditions: Crossroads Position: Latium is a natural crossroads between the Etruscan world (North), the Italic peoples (mountains), and Greek colonies (South). It is a permanent battlefield and synthesis. Climate of the Roman Climatic Optimum (around 250 BC – 400 AD): A period warmer and more stable than average, with long summers and mild winters. This allowed for: Reliable cereal harvests (wheat, barley) in Latium and Sicily (the future “breadbasket”). Prosperous viticulture and olive cultivation, ensuring surpluses and trade. Less glacial Alps, facilitating exchanges with the North. Local Resources: Timber (shipbuilding), stone (tuff, travertine), iron ore (Elba), and pastures for sheep (wool industry).

  2. Demographic and Energy Pressure: Latin demographic growth: The early Latin communities faced land pressure in a limited plain. Two solutions: agricultural intensification (drainage, Appian Way) or military expansion to seize neighboring lands. Military Energy: The model of the citizen-soldier city-state (the legionnaire landowner) is an extremely effective human energy system. Conquest provides slaves (motive energy), loot (financial energy), and land (agricultural energy). It is a growth machine powered by predation that must constantly expand to maintain its internal balance. Energy Crisis Avoided by Expansion: Social tensions between patricians and plebeians (the agrarian question) are constantly deferred by the conquest of new lands to distribute.

In summary: Rome emerges from a geographical crossroads under a favorable climate, transforming local demographic pressure into a military expansion machine that solves its internal crises through the constant input of external energy (loot, slaves, land).