The Cultural Evolution
of Civilizations
This is a quick study exploring the nature of civilizations and increasing complexity that comes with the territory. This page will explore some theories on how societies have dealt with stress caused by increasing population and issues arising from growing numbers of societal segments and responsibilities.
We need only look at primates to see that all societies form some type of organization. The higher a monkey climbs in the hierarchy, the more you see of "its behind". Power creates freedom of action, but often also brings vanity, mercurial mood swings, and constant worry over how long the power will be enjoyed. Often there is little that can check the will of a powerful and power-hungry person. When a chief enters a room, all heads turn and discussions cease. There is the presence of something larger than life. If the chief tells a joke, everyone will laugh. He may may a request, yet no one will doubt the rationality of that question and assume there is a reason. Why do we attribute superhuman qualities to such people? Why can some people exploit the insecurity of others?
Before proceeding further, you can look at social relationships through the eyes of Franz DeWaal and chimpanzees.
Anthropologists tend to identify different types of societies differentiating them on the basis how they tend to be organized. Civilizations fall within what we would call states - a society defined by a centralized political structure and a central bureaucracy. The first literate states developed in the Near East by about 3000 BC, having evolved out of village communities within a millennium, a tiny segment of time by prehistoric standards. In the millennia that followed, state-organized societies emerged elsewhere in the Old World, in India, Greece, China, and southeast Asia. They also developed out of village societies in Mexico and the Andes after about 1500 BC.
Food production led to major changes in human life, vastly enhancing people's ability to exploit and manipulate the natural environment. But human societies everywhere were closely adapted to their environments, living in fundamental ecological balance with their surroundings. With the emergence of state-organized societies, the pre-industrial civilizations with their dense urban populations and new social orders, human societies became more interdependent and in more constant competition for land and resources. Slowly, the world order changed until, with the emergence of regional, then global, empires, the myriad societies of the globe were linked through ties significant and insignificant in an intricate web of economic, cultural, and political interdependence.
What is a state-organized society, a "civilization?" Definitions abound in the academic literature and surround three institutions-the notion of civilization itself, and what is called a state-organized society. This latter contrasts dramatically with pre-state societies. It's now time to look more closely at pre state and state-organized societies.
Pre-State societies are small scale societies based on the community, the band, or the village. They vary greatly in their degree of political integration. In many, the community is the largest political unit, with no centralized authority whatsoever. In others, several communities may join together for some cooperative political or social activity, but there is no permanent political authority over all of them. Still other pre-state societies are much more elaborately organized, with many communities under the overall authority of a centralized or supreme political authority, which can sometimes be a hereditary leader. However, these societies lack the highly stratified class structure and other characteristics of the state .
State-organized societies are on a large scale. All state-organized societies are autonomous political units, with many communities within their boundaries. They share a number of common features:
(1) There is a centralized political structure and a central bureaucracy that runs the state. Kin-based relationships are less important and specialization in economic and socio-political organization essentially replaces earlier forms of kin-organization. The emergence of non-kin-based relationships is a primary element of a state.
(2) There is a rigid social stratification that concentrates power in the hands of a privileged elite at the head of the social pyramid. Other classes include artisans, priests, and other specialists. Most people were commoners, farmers, fisherfolk, and other food producers. Slaves were the lowest of the low and below commoners.
(4) States are supported by intensified food production capable of supporting large numbers of non-food producers. Such intensification took many forms, but often involved state-organized water control and distribution systems. For example, irrigation canals were vital in Egypt and Mesopotamia, while the Aztecs of Mexico developed a huge system of swamp gardens to support more than 600,000 people.
(5) Elaborate public buildings, which served as temples, administrative centers, and dwellings for the elite are hallmarks of states (and civilizations.) Writing, or some equivalent form of record keeping, also was a essential element of dealing with the complexity of states.
States were not necessarily advantageous to everyone. Early states were societies where inequality was a reality, and where government was coercive. Government was usually controlled by a very small number of people. The elite maintained a monopoly on the use of force, and on the justice system. It was no coincidence that the rulers of many of these civilizations were perceived as having a special relationship to the gods. For example, Ancient Egyptian pharaohs were considered to be gods on earth. It was they who presided over the lavish public ceremonies that paid homage to the gods, recited the familiar chants that validated both the authority of the deities and their state. The Pharaoh was the owner of everything in Egypt in a literal sense.
Very often, social inequality was justified through elaborate fictions. For instance, the Shang rulers, who governed much of northern China 3,500 years ago, were considered intermediaries between the gods, the revered ancestors, the cosmos, and the living. They lived in isolated compounds, surrounded by a landscape of humble farming villages that has been called the "Green Circle." Shang lords and their successors maintained an elaborate fiction of their direct kin ties not only with the gods, but with the common people, who lived apart from them. In reality their authority was based on their monopoly of force to back their draconian decisions.
One of the most complex of all state-organized societies was ancient Rome, which for centuries presided over a vast empire centered on the Mediterranean Basin and extending at times far into Asia and as far as the Rhine and Danube Rivers. This was a highly centralized state, in the hands of a patrician elite that controlled not only political and social life, but most of the empire's wealth as well. The elite presided over a highly ranked society of merchants, artisans, and commoners. The lowest of the low were slaves, criminals and prisoners of war, who worked war galleys, labored in state mines, and on other public works. The empire was based on a highly efficient and very productive agricultural system, supported by a complex infrastructure of merchant ships and roads that allowed the authorities to move both food and armies from one end of the empire to the other with great dispatch. This infrastructure was essential, for Rome's grain was grown not in Italy, but in outlying provinces like North Africa, Spain, and Egypt.
WHAT WERE THE PRIME MOVERS TOWARD COMPLEXITY?
What follows is a deeper look at the theories regarding how states may have developed. There is by far no agreement on why states evolved but it may be a multicausal phenomena. For example, V. Gordon Childe believed that specialization was the force that shifted societies toward a state level. However, it is possible to find craft specialization as a common theme within tribes and chiefdoms. Craft specialization was by itself the cause of states, but it may have led a foundation by which states could develop. Karl Wittfogel pointed to the development of irrigation agriculture as the driving force yet there are irrigation systems that evolved in Mexico that were constructed and operated without a complex bureaucracy. The Hohokam in southern Arizona developed irrigation agriculture, but archaeologists don't find evidence that the Hohokam had a state organization. In other words, there may not have been one reason or one way states arose. The theories tend to be divided into the following areas:
Implications - The Rise and Fall Syndrome
References
Flannery, Kent V. (1972) The Cultural Evolution of Civilizations
Adams, R. Mc (1966) The Evolution of Urban Society
Created by
Richard Effland
for
ASB 222 - Buried Cities and Lost Tribe
1998