1. From the Agricultural Revolution to the Hierarchical State
Rise of the State
From the Agricultural Revolution to the Hierarchical State

2. Outline
1) Hierarchical state society in art: the stele of Hammurabi’s code
2) Two theories of history: L or U?
3) What caused the agricultural revolution?
Stages
4) What caused the rise of the state?

4. Shamash and Hammurabi Which is which? (Spodek, 59)
Gods look like kings (and vice versa)
Anthropocentric or regicentric?
Separation of ruler from ruled
Separation of divine from human
God-given laws cement human divisions
Rich and poor
Men and women

5. Threefold approach to society
Relation to nature – technology
Relation between people – social structure
Belief system – form of consciousness
Harmony between these levels (normally)

6. Historical “fall” (summary)
On technological level
from dependence on independent nature
to control over nature
On social level
from family-based, egalitarian society
to class-based, male dominant society
rulers are all powerful
On consciousness level
Animist oneness > Gods/priests are all powerful

7. L Theory of History 110,000 years of kinship society
5,500 years of “civilization”
Growing technology
Increasing social inequality
Plus growing environmental destruction

8. U theory of history
110,000 years of kinship society with primitive technology
5,500 years of inequality and oppression
But also, creation of advanced technology
Future: global kinship with advanced technology

9. End of “civilization”? Social changes: Growth of democracy, equality
Continued inequalities or new equality?
Political rights for free men: 238 years old (American revolution)
Civil rights for slaves: 149 years old (Civil War)
Political rights for women: 94 years old (Women’s right to vote, 19th Amendment, 1920);
end of segregation in the US south: 49 years old (Voting Rights Act of 1965)?

10. New global kinship? Nature, technology and consciousness
Continued domination over nature or
New ecology movement > consciousness of our oneness with nature, with the earth (film “Avatar”)
Tech: Transportation and communications: one world family (global kinship)
Or are we now slaves to the Internet?

11. What caused the agricultural revolution?
1) Discovery of new technology?
2) Population increase?
3) Climate change?

12. Explanations: why agriculture?
(1) New technology, discovery?
What did women gatherers know?
How much work is needed? (Spodek, 43)
Hunter gatherers: hours
Agriculturalists: hours
Which work is harder?
Who is healthier?

13. (2) Population increase?
H-G: 1 sq km: 9 people
Bands of 25 people each, loosely related > 500 in exogamous tribe (Spodek, 25)
Agriculture: people per square km
Biology of reproduction
Lactating H-G mothers carrying infants up to four years
Sedentary agricultural mothers

14. (3) Climate change Ending of last ice age 15,000 years ago (S, 43)
plains > forests
= dwindling of ecology of great herds
Plus: hunting continues as before
> Ecological disaster

15. Difference between Eurasia-Africa and the Americas
In Americas:
Early extinction of domestic animals: cattle, sheep, horses, pigs
Why no wheel in “New World”?
What caused defeat of Aztecs, Incas, by Cortes, European invaders?
Technological lag? Vulnerability to European diseases?
In Eurasian/African land mass
Larger land mass
New technologies developed before extinctions

16. Paradox of Paleolithic ecological catastrophe
Respect for nature of early animistic peoples
Descent into caves, rituals for renewing animal, plant species (magic)
>Destruction of nature
New circumstances (climate change, global warming)
Hunter/gatherers didn’t know what they were doing
Gilgamesh & Enkidu kill the Humbaba
See film Princess Mononoki

17. Is technological “control” bad for nature?
What saved animal species in Old World?
More time for changes to take place in larger territory
Agricultural-herding (neolithic) revolutions: herders, agriculturalists produce their own means of survival
= interpenetration, humanization of nature
From magic to practical activity
New technology creates possibility of a new, more real sense of harmony with nature
But this did not happen. Why not?

18. Civilization: break with nature
Many things cause terror and wonder, yet nothing
is more terrifying and wonderful than man.
This thing goes across the gray
sea on the blasts of winter
storms, passing beneath
waters towering 'round him. The Earth,
eldest of the gods,
unwithering and untiring, this thing wears down
as his plows go back and forth year after year
furrowing her with the issue of horses. (Antigone, )

19. So why the passage in Antigone?
Sense of violation of Nature
Break from religion of nature
Sense of guilt and pride
But not the result of technology per se
Technology can save nature
So: need to consider the new social factor: hierarchical state, division of rich and poor, master and slave
Control of people over people > break from, control over nature
What people do to animals and the natural world, they first do to each other

20. Stages in agricultural revolution
1) Slash-and-burn (10,000 BCE)
2) Early hoe agriculture on flood plains
Tigris and Euphrates
Nile
3) Hierarchical irrigation state 3000 BCE
4) Iron plow agriculture on rain-watered lands (1000 BC )
5) Next stage: 500 CE in Europe ??

21. Slash and burn agriculture
Cooperative social relations
Hoe agriculture, women’s work
Use of ash -- limitations
Nomadic way of life continues
Life is difficult
Today: Brazil – Amazon rain forests

22. Flood plains of great rivers
Simple tools (hoe)
Natural, regular fertilization of soil by flooding rivers
Abundant harvest –> surplus of grain
Stored in granaries
Life is easy (easier)
Social level: Continuation of ancient cooperative kinship system

23. Hymn to the Nile
Praise to thee, O Nile, that issueth from the earth, and cometh to nourish Egypt
That maketh barley and createth wheat, so that he may cause the temples to keep festivals
If he be sluggish millions of men perish.
Offer is made to every other god as is done for the Nile . . .

24. Location of Garden of Eden
“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden And the fourth river is Euphrates.” Genesis 2:8
From slash-and-burn poverty to abundance of paradise?

25. What caused the “fall”? Rise of the hierarchical state
1) requirements of large populations?
2) military necessity?
3) requirements for organizing irrigation systems?
4) exploitation of the majority by a minority?

26. 1) Large Populations without States
Difficulties of uniting different kinship societies. But not impossible
Hunter-gatherer assemblies of local groups
Tiv people in Africa united 1 million
Iroquois Federation united separate tribes
Hence: large populations can be organized without a “state”

27. 2) Military necessity?
1) Traditional system of military: armed men of the kinship group
American Indian military power: not separate army
2) “State” = military power over the people (Gilgamesh)
Hence: defense is possible without a “state”

28. 3) Social problems of organizing irrigation
Separate villages multiply along river
Population growth > move away from river
> need for cooperation between kinship groups
It is possible to have cooperation without a “state”
Iroquois voluntary union of five nations
Maintains democratic constitution

29. Problems with Kinship Groups
First stage of history: kinship groups
Basic problems of this stage
Separation of groups
Sporadic wars
Second stage: uniting of separate kinship groups
Growing populations
More frequent interaction, conflicts
Two methods of unification
cooperation
force: hierarchical state
Hence: a choice between two methods

30. 4) Exploitation of surplus
1) Production of surplus
based on higher productivity of simple labor
Due to natural fertility of flooding river
2) Surplus as target
From the outside > military protection needed
From within the village > from the military protectors themselves
3) Chief chosen by people > rules over them

31. Rise of the hierarchical state
1) Traditional system of community control
Military leader is subordinate to community
Iroquois: women elders in charge
2) Conquest of the community
From within the community: the military leader seizes control, overthrows the old kinship order (Legal state of the West—positive law replaces kinship traditions)
From outside the community: another kinship community takes over, conquers the first (neo-kinship state of the East)

32. State as System of Inequality
State as class-divided, hierarchy
Power in hands of a few
Standing army under rule of elite
Women subordinate to men
Slavery