Domestication and Agriculture:The Neolithic Revolution

• Cultural materialism: Marvin Harris = “the primacy of the infrastructure,” i.e., changes in socio-politics (structure) and worldview (superstructure) result from changes in techno-economies (infrastructure)

• But, evidence of significant change in ritual, social inequality, and ideology also are quite early and must be understood as more than the outcome of population growth resulting from food production, such as feasting

• Nonetheless, food production did provide the basis for most political economies with substantial populations, or civilization

“At all times for euer hereafter to discouer, search, find out and view such remote heathen and barbarous lands, countries and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people, as to him, his heires and assignes” (Elizabeth I, 1584, to Walter Ralegh).

Peoples in Americas, Africa, and many other regions viewed as barbarians, or even sub-human (Papal bull of 1536 declares Native Americans human)

Manifest Destiny & the ideology of colonialism

The State of Nature

“where everyman is Enemy to everyman. … there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain … no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worse of all, continual feare, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short”

“the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small families … have no government at all, and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before”– Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651

“In the beginning all the World was America”

John Locke, 1690

• “Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)

“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said ‘This is mine,’ and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”

Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754)

• Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) posited that all structures in the universe (including human society) develop from a simple, undifferentiated, homogeneity to a complex, differentiated, heterogeneity, accompanied by a process of greater integration of the differentiated parts.

• Societal change was progressive (like neo-Malthusians)

• Emile Durkheim (1858-1917): mechanical (kinship) and organic solidarity (social heterogeneity and integration) (Division of Labor in Society, 1892).

Social Complexity, the State, and Urbanism

Civilization: primitive and civilized

Lewis Henry Morgan: Savagery, Barbarism (Agriculture) & Civilization (Writing)

- Morgan saw property as the root of civilization

• Karl Marx (1818-1883): primitive communism (no surplus), Asiatic mode of production, ancient mode of production (Graeco-Roman), feudal mode of production, early capitalism, late capitalism, communism (hypothetical demise of nation-state and class system)

• Friedrich Engels (1820-1895): Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)

• Modes and relations of production:Capital, Alienation, and Class (conflict)

The “Urban Revolution”• V. Gordon Childe was among the first to discuss the

development of ancient civilizations (Near/Middle East)

• defined states – “urban revolution” - based on the presence of certain key elements, most notably: cities, writing, surplus, metallurgy, craft specialization

• technological innovations (e.g., metallurgy, writing), craft specialization, and agricultural surplus were key in the emergence of ancient states

• Surplus, in particular, allowed certain individuals to be freed from agricultural labor, creating social inequality (capital, alienation, and class)

• as with “Neolithic Revolution,” states were seen as an advancement over earlier cultural forms and given the right conditions a natural development for humankind

The Urban Revolution

• Childe introduced the Urban Revolution in 1936 (“Man Makes Himself”); article in “Town Planning Review” (1950) described 10 traits that defined it:

– Large population and large settlements (cities) – Full-time specialization and advanced division of labor – Production of an agricultural surplus to fund government and a

differentiated society – Monumental public architecture – A ruling class – Writing – Exact and predictive sciences (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy,

calendars) – Sophisticated art styles – Long-distance trade – The state (bureaucracy).

What is a City? Definitions Vary, and some quite small.

• “In Germany as a whole in the late middle ages [1300-1500], 3,000 places were reckoned to have been granted the status of cities; their average population was no more than 400 individuals” (Braudel 1985:482)

• Among largest, Dresden about 2500

A. Chase & D. Chase (2009)http://www.caracol.org/reports/2009.php

What is Writing?

Khipu (quipu)

Karl Wittfogel’s (1957) Hydraulic Hypothesis(Oriental Despotism)

Warfare

• “Violence has been a feature of human society since the Paleolithic, but as communities grew in size the scale of conflict increased”

• Internecine and external aggression

Robert Carneiro’s (1970) Circumscription Theory

The Trade Imperative & Secondary States

Personification of History & Ideology

• Portraits and cultural heroes

• Divine Kings, tombs, palaces, and prophets

• Anthropomorphic (Monotheistic) Religion

Gautama Buddha: 563 BC (Nepal) to 483 BC (India)

Jesus Christ: 7–2 BC (Bethlehem) to AD 26–36 (Golgatha)

Mohammad: AD 570 (Mecca) to 632 (Medina)

Crusades: AD 1095-1291

Multi-causality and Variation

• No prime movers (no silver bullets)

• Multi-linear cultural development

• Cycling (Integration and Disintegration)

• Population growth, agricultural intensification, environment, change in socio-political organization (inequality), ideology, trade and warfare, material culture, urbanism

Andes

Mesoamerica

Indus

Areas covered in this segment (for test 2)