As we have seen from the previous two chapters, human beings organized themselves into larger and larger groups as a result of the "agricultural revolution". These larger groups, having benefited from creating and storing a surplus of food, developed into more complex societies and evolved into "urban centers", much like our cities of today. This was the beginning of what scholars term, "civilizations".
These "first civilizations" more or less emerged concurrently in 6 different areas around the globe, encompassing all the major continents. They were the Olmec and Andean civilizations in the Americas; The Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations in the middle east and north africa; and the civilizations of China and The Indus River Valley. They all roughly grew from about 3500 B.C.E. to 500 B.C.E.
There is some debate that civilizations grew, not just from the "agricultural revolution", but , as Strayer points out in the Book, from what Anthropologist, Robert Carneiro says; "it was a combination of war, trade, population density, limited agricultural land, and access to water", that also contributed to the formation of civilizations.
One of the by-products of these larger groups living together was the formation of cities as urban centers. There were meeting places for ceremony's and traditional practices. There was a central market place to exchange goods and services; there were organized living quarters, and aqueducts to bring water and transport waste.
Some of these cities were very large like the Mesoamerican City of Teotihuacan in central Mexico, that housed approximately 200,000 people. It had large streets, many Temples , lots of stone carvings, small apartments, as well as palatial homes for the elite.
Another example, given by Strayer, would be the Mohenjo Daro, from the Indus River Valley civilization. It had 2 and 3 story homes that had indoor plumbing, luxurious bathrooms and private wells. The city was laid out into a organized pattern with an underground sewage system. Sounds like Mill Valley in 2011 not Mohenjo Daro 4,000 years ago.
Strayer goes on to describe how these first city-states spawned the beginning, of the "erosion of equality" and a "hierarchy of class", as a result of the inner workings of these new civilizations. Other characteristics include the beginnings of "Patriarchy" and a "hierarchy of gender". Conversely, in the nomadic Paleolithic community, all the men hunted game for meat and the women gathered veges and fruit. There were no rulers. Women had a higher social standing; all the men participated in the decision making.
These new cities, with fewer people actually growing the food for everyone else, had a surplus of workers now. They were available to build the homes, or work as potters to make storage containers, and still others were used to clean the public spaces. As these cities grew they sometimes came into conflict with neighbors. Inevitably, there were conflicts and wars. Winners took material possessions and sometimes losers were enslaved to do the menial work of maintaining the society. For example:like the Hittites, who after using the latest technological war tool, the Chariot, conquered the once powerful Babylonians in 1595 B.C.E.
One of the things I like about the way the author, Robert Strayer presents his book, is his way of showing "balance", point-counterpoint, benefits-drawbacks, positive-negative
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Interpreting History in a flattering way, and teaching that same history to a "society" depends on which side of the fence your sitting on.
For example:
If you are an American child, being patriotically taught American History, and how "manifest destiny" pushed the boundaries of the great plains to the Pacific Ocean, thus allowing the "frontiersmen" to tame the hostile environment paving the way for the new nation that was growing, there may be a sense of pride in our sturdy and determined pioneers. Our popular culture romanticizes the notion with its "cowboy" genre and nostalgic movies like "Gone With the Wind".
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The displaced indigenous Indians may have a different opinion.
Africans, kidnapped from their homelands and forced to work as slaves, separated from their family and being brutalized, may not have those same "warm and fuzzy" feelings either. So, I think History must be viewed in a larger context and understood that for every action there is a reaction. There are consequences to "man's" choices.
Yes, it's true that these new societies that morphed into "civilizations" produced complex urban centers with advanced technology, and writing, and aqueducts, and art, and great engineering, and mathematics, and astronomy, etc, etc....
.It is, just as true that these "civilizations" produced massive inequalities, state oppression, slavery, patriarchy, rebellion, diseases and war.
The new urban centers were far from the egalitarian societies of Paleolithic nomadic peoples, that only ate as much as they could carry, where women enjoyed a more equal existence, and where decision making and wealth was spread around horizontally and not vertically within the social structure of the group. Or, as Strayer puts it,
"as ingenuity and technology created more productive economies , the greater wealth now available to societies was everywhere piled up rather than spread out".
Strayer continually reminds us that History is an analysis and observation of the good, and the bad, of humankind's relentless march forward in the evolution of our species. He does his job well as an Historian and presents us with multiple angles to view history.
He leaves however, the interpretation of his writings , to us, his readers.
