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Ron Peters's Reviews > Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
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This fascinating book, based on recent archaeological research, turns traditional thinking about the rise of early states on its ear. It's so full of ideas it's hard to summarize. It's one of the best books I've read in the last few years.
Hunter-gatherers lived a good life: largely self-directed, with a varied diet, an active healthy lifestyle, and moving in small roving communities that slowed the spread of disease. The lives of sedentary agriculturalists in early states were the reverse of all this. Agriculture may have been humanity’s biggest mistake. So why did we go there?
Cultivation-domestication may have begun in response to the long cold snap of the Younger Dryas (10,800-9,600 BCE), but humans still didn’t leap at the chance to become farmers. For 4,000 years (9,000-5,000 BCE) they chose to combine hunting-gathering with low levels of cultivation-domestication as a fallback and for dietary variety. Still, by 5,000 BCE there were hundreds of agricultural villages in the fertile crescent. But no states until 3,300 BCE.
The period from at least 3,500-2,500 BCE was "marked by a steep decline in the water volume in the Euphrates." This forced farmers to gather where they could plant, and this population concentration was a prerequisite for the emergence of the earliest states. Concentrated booty also suggested the need for a permanent warrior class which needed organization from on high.
Scott characterizes early states as "population machines" designed to maintain working populations adequate to supply luxuries to non-working elites. Walls may have been as much to keep serfs and slaves in as to keep invading cities and barbarians out. When a population top-up was needed cities collected new crops via warfare and slavery. This was also a good time for barbarians, who traded with or raided cities, or ran protection rackets against cities, but were in turn raided by cities for slaves.
States were inherently fragile due to epidemics, ecocide, social unrest, and endemic warfare. State collapse was fast or slow but seemingly inevitable. State collapse may have actually provided a golden chance for workers and slaves to claim freedom. What we now think of as various Dark Ages may have been opportunities for the development of democracy and culture.
Hunter-gatherers lived a good life: largely self-directed, with a varied diet, an active healthy lifestyle, and moving in small roving communities that slowed the spread of disease. The lives of sedentary agriculturalists in early states were the reverse of all this. Agriculture may have been humanity’s biggest mistake. So why did we go there?
Cultivation-domestication may have begun in response to the long cold snap of the Younger Dryas (10,800-9,600 BCE), but humans still didn’t leap at the chance to become farmers. For 4,000 years (9,000-5,000 BCE) they chose to combine hunting-gathering with low levels of cultivation-domestication as a fallback and for dietary variety. Still, by 5,000 BCE there were hundreds of agricultural villages in the fertile crescent. But no states until 3,300 BCE.
The period from at least 3,500-2,500 BCE was "marked by a steep decline in the water volume in the Euphrates." This forced farmers to gather where they could plant, and this population concentration was a prerequisite for the emergence of the earliest states. Concentrated booty also suggested the need for a permanent warrior class which needed organization from on high.
Scott characterizes early states as "population machines" designed to maintain working populations adequate to supply luxuries to non-working elites. Walls may have been as much to keep serfs and slaves in as to keep invading cities and barbarians out. When a population top-up was needed cities collected new crops via warfare and slavery. This was also a good time for barbarians, who traded with or raided cities, or ran protection rackets against cities, but were in turn raided by cities for slaves.
States were inherently fragile due to epidemics, ecocide, social unrest, and endemic warfare. State collapse was fast or slow but seemingly inevitable. State collapse may have actually provided a golden chance for workers and slaves to claim freedom. What we now think of as various Dark Ages may have been opportunities for the development of democracy and culture.
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