For millennia farmers grew enough for their own needs and lived in small self-contained societies of perhaps three hundred people, usually less. Then, around 3500 BC, the first civilizations began to appear in the Middle East. What was it that led to one of the most important developments in the human story?
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In the world of hunter-gatherers, tribes roved the land, but the coming of farming allowed the growth of settled populations to take place. Yet it did not make the coming of civilization inevitable. Something else had to happen before this could occur.
It has long been realized that river valleys have played a key part in the rise of many, if not most, “original” civilizations – i.e. those which did not derive their technological or cultural capabilities from older civilizations. River valleys offer areas of well-watered, fertile soil, which, because of their very high agricultural productivity result in very dense human populations.
But why didn’t this result simply in a proliferation of small farming villages closely scattered across the plains? What follows in this article is of course speculation, as no records have survived from these millennia - writing comes at a late stage in the emergence of civilization. However, civilization did emerge, and it does need explaining.
As will be shown below, civilization can only take place in the context of "states" - that is, societies in which decision-making takes place, not within small family or clan groups (although these may remain important), but within a centralized power-structures exercising authority over a much larger grouping involving several thousand, mostly unrelated, people.
Perhaps three reasons lie behind early state-formation. Firstly, the increasing density of villages will have magnified the opportunities for conflict between them. This would have been particularly so in a dry land where valuable water-resources had to be shared between different villages.
Secondly, and related to this, the growing need for co-operation on a scale wider than individual villages in order to optimize water resources (for example the need for irrigation channels several miles long, or the need to allocate valuable water resources fairly between villages) will have called for a co-ordinating authority to be exercised over much larger areas than hitherto. This will have led to the rise of centres of power – possibly cult centres or particularly prestigious clan leaders - to settle disputes between villages and co-ordinate irrigation activities. Once this has happened, the proto-state has arrived.
Thirdly, the populations of these river valleys lived in areas that were surrounded by arid land. Given the high density of population within the river valleys themselves, it would have become increasingly difficult for people to move elsewhere. Even if life became less congenial for them, for example as a result of oppressive government, they could not easily escape out of reach of officials and soldiers. The peasants were forced, by and large, to put up with the new conditions (though it should be stressed that the “new” conditions probably came about over a period of several lifetimes, so virtually imperceptibly. The point is that fleeing the land ceased to be a real option for most peasants). This meant that the “new” states were successfully able to extract the surplus tribute and labour from the population.
Seldom would one proto-state have arrived in isolation. In the plain of a large river system the same processes making for the appearance of proto-states would have been at work over a large area, and several centres of power would have arisen at about the same time. Soon, the inevitable tensions between these centres would have resulted in warfare between them, on a scale overwhelming the ability of individual villages to defend their interests effectively. People would have looked to the centres of power for protection, and this would have greatly strengthened the authority of these centres. These, supported now by military force, would over time be transformed into true centres of political power over a defined territory.
The full state has now emerged.
Somewhere in this process, tribute from farmer to ruler would gradually have become the norm. The ruler and his entourage would not only have become the fount of sacred, military, judicial and administrative power, they would also be the recipient for a large proportion of the wealth in the state. The agricultural surplus would flow to the centre, for distribution as deemed necessary by the ruler and his officials. A growing class of priests, overseers, officials and soldiers would then be maintained. These would live near the centre of power, in larger settlements than hitherto, surrounded by walls to protect them and adorned with public buildings such as temples and palaces: the first towns and cities.
Meanwhile, the excess labour of the population (during the slack months of the farming calendar) has become available to the ruler. He and his supporters can mobilize this to dig and maintain drainage channels, flood walls, dykes and irrigation canals (activities which will significantly increase the wealth of the state), as well as city walls, larger and larger temples, royal mausoleums and of course palaces. The ruling group maintains a class of professional craftsmen to adorn the temples and palaces, but also to produce the trade goods for exchange with neighbouring peoples, far and near. The standard of craftsmanship rises, and artistic norms are laid down at the dawn of history which remain deeply impressive to this day.
The first states that arose in Mesopotamia and Egypt soon became centres of long-distance trade, not only because of the unparalleled wealth that they could now deploy, but also because they were situated in regions rich in agricultural resources but poor in other resources such as timber and metals. Tin and copper flowed into their temple and palace workshops, where they were alloyed together to make bronze, a tough metal useful for weapons and decorations. The Bronze Age had arrived.
In order to maximise the resources available to them, the new states imposed a highly centralized economic system upon their populations, with the peasants’ surplus food and excess labour very much under state control. This required large buildings to store the farmers’ surplus, workshops for the craftsmen, and the means to record the hundreds of goods flowing in and out of the storehouses. This requirement gave rise to new techniques for recording transactions, which, by about 3500 BC in Mesopotamia, had attained the sophistication that can properly be called writing. Literacy had arrived.
This explanation for the rise of civilization is applied in detail to the beginnings of the first civilization in the first articles on Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.
