Domestication and Agriculture: The Neolithic Revolution

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Domestication and AgricultureThe 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

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• 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

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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

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In the beginning all the World was America
John Locke, 1690
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• 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)

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• 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).

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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

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• 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 productionCapital,
  Alienation, and Class (conflict)

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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

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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).

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• 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 1985482)
• Among largest,
• Dresden about
• 2500

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• Chase D. Chase (2009)
• http//www.caracol.org/reports/2009.php

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What is Writing?
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Khipu (quipu)
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Karl Wittfogels (1957) Hydraulic
Hypothesis (Oriental Despotism)
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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

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Robert Carneiros (1970) Circumscription Theory
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The Trade Imperative Secondary States
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Personification of History Ideology

• Portraits and cultural heroes
• Divine Kings, tombs, palaces, and prophets
• Anthropomorphic (Monotheistic) Religion

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Crusades AD 1095-1291
Gautama Buddha 563 BC (Nepal) to 483 BC (India)
Jesus Christ 72 BC (Bethlehem) to AD 2636
(Golgatha)
Mohammad AD 570 (Mecca) to 632 (Medina)
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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

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The Rise of Social Inequality and Complexity

• Rank Revolution
• What led to the emergence of social
  stratification (rise of social classes) and
  complexity (regional integration and
  institutional differentiation within communities)
• How were personal and social autonomy and
  egalitarian social structures transformed into
  societies in which people were subordinate to
  others based on birth and social position, at
  both community and regional levels

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Forms of Social Organization

• Pre-State small-scale and kin-based simple
  societies
• bands and tribes small-sized (10s to 100s
  autonomous social groupings, egalitarian,
  division of labor and status based on age, sex,
  and personal characteristics or achievements)
• Chiefdoms medium-sized social formations
• (1000s to 10,000s), ranked kin-groups based on
  hereditary status (incipient classes),
  regionally-organized, integrated (non-autonomous)
  communities
• State (territory and class-based societies)
• Large societies divided into stratified social
  classes, with centralized government, a ruling
  elite class, able to levy taxes (tribute), amass
  a standing army, and enforce law.

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Chiefdoms

• simple two-tiered hierarchy people are either
  elite or commoner, in part related to hereditary
  (incipient classes)
• generally based on semi-intensive economies
• various communities integrated into regional
  society, typically showing a bi-modal or
  rank-ordered settlement pattern one or a few
  large (first-order) settlements, with smaller
  (second-and third-order) satellite settlements
  linked to these
• formal, even full-time specialists religious
  specialists, warriors, chiefs, artisans

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Indus
Mesoamerica
Andes
Areas covered in this segment (for test 2)