[clock_tower]

Despite complaining about the Quakers below, I'd have to disagree here, too. It's possible to be too peaceful, but it's also possible -- and very easy and common -- to be too violent.

Being warlike enough to defend your society is one thing; being warlike enough to conquer neighbors who hate you, or to throw away lives and wealth in pursuit of glory, is something else. Sparta, Assyria, and the Aztec Empire didn't turn out so well, after all...

[vkou]

In the case of the Aztecs, they quite arguably happened to run into someone even more destructive, punitive, insular, judging, self-righteous, and violent then they were.

[clock_tower]

Cortez and his 300-odd men could never have taken down the Aztecs, were it not for how all their neighbors hated them so passionately that they'd rather be ruled by smelly, strange-looking, gold-hungry space aliens.

[nerfhammer]

Far more important were the western diseases they had no idea they were carrying

[clock_tower]

The diseases certainly had an effect (after the Night of Sorrow and before the conquest of Tenochtitlan, smallpox struck the whole Valley of Mexico); but Tlaxcala had an effect too, and if the Aztecs' subject peoples had rallied to their arms in the same way the Tlaxcalans rallied to the Spanish (after some initial fighting against them), there's no way Cortez could have won.

[nickbauman]

The Aztec civilization was already in a massive decline for over 150 years when Cortez arrived.

[clock_tower]

The Aztec Empire wasn't even 150 years old; if memory serves, Tlacallel flourished about 80 years before Cortes. Nor were they in decline -- Montezuma had stopped the empire's opportunistic conquests, and was focused on conquering the independent countries that still formed pockets of resistance geographically surrounded by the Aztecs. Tlaxcala was the most important of these, as it happens...

[nickbauman]

The empire is not the civilization. The civilization arguably goes back more than 1000 years, certainly since the Toltecs, which was a considered successor and collector of the Olmec, Teotihuacano and Maya people's cultures. The Aztecs themselves considered the vanquished Toltec their cultural superiors. By the time Montezuma II came to power, the Aztec world was already winding down, consumed by resource wars; and had entered a period of insular medieval-like culture that shunned their once great, open cities in favor of fortress-like enclaves.

[vlehto]

Didn't Sparta get taken down by Macedonia. Who in turn got taken down by Rome? Sparta existed for ~500 years.

By that standard, we have extremely few dynasties who could be called "successful" these days. But I do agree that transitioning from very warlike to just somewhat warlike tends to help survival.

[clock_tower]

Sparta _existed_ for 500 years; they flourished for zero. They existed at the cost of innumerable distorted or ruined lives, and contributed nothing to the human patrimony except possibly the idea of totalitarianism (which is not much of a contribution).

They fell well before the Macedonians, too: a commander of a minor city -- Corinth, I think -- noticed that the Spartans always used the exact same tactics, deployed his troops in a preposterous formation that ensured that the Spartans would lose if they changed nothing, and won decisively. The Helots immediately revolted and recovered their independence, and that was the end of Sparta.