The Islamic Revolution

We Remember

Manhattan, September 11, 2001, approximately 9:00am







I. The Arabian Peninsula

A. Nomadic pastoralists--domesticated camels about 1000BCE, but lived by herding livestock from oasis to oasis across the peninsula.



1. Social Organization by clan--no real state at this time, obligations instead due to clan; social disruptions (murder, theft, etc.) seen as an insult to one’s clan, had to be avenged through retaliation and blood feuds.

2. Religious beliefs--prayed to a variety of local or clan deities, which they carried with them from place to place--like the Ark of the Covenant.

3. Sedentary groups--besides the nomads, the peninsula also contained more sedentary groups, who lived with there herds near the oasises. Some of these areas grew into towns and cities, reliant upon trade and some small manufacturing



B. Mecca--at the southern edge of the peninsula was the trading city of Mecca

1. Nomadic values of clan allegiance did not translate well with the emerging trading cities of the Arabian Peninsula. many of the people of these cities had already converted to some variety of Judaism or Christianity.

2. Towns like Mecca became centers for religious ferment as different theological philosophies vied for allegiances, which created a state of flux in these settlements.

3. This conflict was exacerbated by the deteriorating political situations in both Persia and Byzantium (the Eastern Roman Empire), which added to the sense of conflict.


C. Mohammed the Prophet--an orphan, formerly a member of one of the lesser trading families in Mecca

1. Visions from Allah--which he dictated to others to develop the Koran (Q’ran).

2. Mohammed’s visions were undoubtedly shaped by the religious ferment of his hometown, and by his exposure to the various religious practices there.

D. Shared religious tenets (practices and beliefs)--the message that Mohammed preached had many commonalities with Judaism and Christianity.

1. One single god (Allah)

2. Universal obligations to all fellow believers substituted for those owed to one’s tribe or clan

3. Appealed to the poor by providing protection against arbitrary oppression, but did not spurn rich as long as they practiced charity toward the poor.

4. Some appeal to women; although Mohammed still preached inferiority of women to men, it also demanded that men respect rather than mistreat women.

E. Political program--Islam had more of a political agenda than did either
Judaism or Christianity. Mohammed called for reforming society, replacing “barbarism” of competition, often armed, between tribes and ruling families, with an ordered umma community ruled under a single written code of laws.

1. Political program but Mohammed and his followers came into conflict with the ruling families in Mecca, and he and his followers were banned to Medina

2. Mohammed returned to Mecca in 630 and captured the city.

a) Mohammed’s success lay in not only his ability to attract a number of young men with religious fervor, but also in striking alliances with other groups who wanted to throw off their oppressors--or just get a cut of the loot.

3. Mohammed died in 632 CE, but his caliphs Abu Baku and Umar retained Mohammed’s allies, and re-directed their energies toward Damascus, the Persian capital of Ctesiphon, the Egypt city called Babylon (now a part of Cairo), and Alexandria, all of which Muslim invaders captured between 636 and 642 CE.

a) This demonstrates not only the tremendous mobility of Muslim forces, but also the immense unpopularity of the remaining “Roman” rulers in these cities.

b) The Muslims ruled with a relatively light hand at first, leaving peasants their land and only demanding a relatively light tax to be paid as tribute, while confiscating state lands and those belonging to nobles who continued to resist them.

c) Religious tolerance--like the Romans, Muslim rule was marked by tolerance of other religious practices--particularly for other “people of the book,” Jews and Christians.

F. Muslim dissent

1. Shi’atu Ali--the party of Ali, or just Shi’a. After Mohammed’s death, a power struggle ensued for control of his legacy. The caliph Umar was murdered in 644, and power shifted to Uthman, and early supporter of Mohammed, but also a member of a powerful Mecca merchant family; his rule was greatly resented by a number of believers, who believed Uthman represented many things that Mohammed had opposed--and resulted in his murder in 656. Power was then bestowed upon Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, who was murdered by some of his followers, known as Khariyites, who objected to Ali’s attempts to reconcile with the sect’s enemies. In his place a cousin of Uthman assumed power, and established the Umayyad dynasty.

a) The Umayyad’s were, of course, illegitimate in the eyes of many, and this further split the Islamic movement.

2. Rise of the Abbasids--Abu I Abbas was able to exploit this disenchantment with the Umayyad line to foster the ascent of his family to a position of power.

a) Reformed the movement to provide non-Arabs the same treatment as Arabs, and opened the way for more than a century of economic advancement.


b) Baghdad became the center of learning (from about 800 CE), where knowledge from other civilizations--Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese--was translated into Arabic

c) The economic growth also fostered by the geography of Baghdad, which is located in the heart of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates Rives (making producing a surplus easier, and therefore fostering its growth as an urban area), plus the fact that it lied along a major overland trading route between east and west.

d) Era of relative peace--although a number of European peoples would dispute this assessment, the Abbasid period ushered in a period of relative peace--or, at least, internal peace within the movement. Muslim forces did move into the Iberian Peninsula, eventually controlling the entire area except for the northwestern corner, which remained under Christian control, from 711 CE. After that period until the beginning of the Crusades, Islam and Christian forces remained at peace. Europe entered the so-called “Dark Ages,” and had little of value for Muslims to lust after; Europe, for the most part, was a cultural backwater during this period.


G. Center of Learning--after the fall of Rome, European elites largely concentrated upon consolidating their political power within their particular fiefdoms. Muslim leaders, on the other hand, were commissioning scholars to translate ancient works into Arabic, as well as consolidating the knowledge the Arabs themselves had already gained.

1. Did the Irish Save Civilization? Or Did Islam?

2. Sharia law--certainly has a bad connotation today, but when it was formulated it reflected the values of traders, merchants, and artisans, whom it protected from arbitrary rule by elites.

H. Decline of Islam

1. Lack of technological advancements--while trade expanded (benefiting merchants), after the initial infrastructure improvements were made in the countryside, the infrastructure was ignored by ruling elites in favor of ever more opulent palaces and monuments to themselves.

a) Local officials began enriching themselves more with bribes and diverting a larger portion of state revenues to themselves.

b) decreasing productivity on farms; increased salinity of the soil due to irrigation.

2. Economic decline--Political instability--Further Economic Decline: as tax revenue fell, the imperial court increasingly attempted to finance itself at the expense of merchants, and gave governors the responsibility for finances; the governors used this power to further line their pockets.

3. 11th Century (1000 CE)--the empire had largely fallen apart; Muslims remained in power in some places for another 500 years or so (Iberia), and some places continued to flourish (Egypt, Selukman Turkey), but the creative synergy that had characterized Islam was gone.




II. Africa

A. Production of the surplus--throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, Europeans argued that Africans were “a people without a history”--or, at least a history that did not involve their dominance by Europeans.

1. West Africans--developed metalworking capabilities around 1000 BCE, about the same time as Eurasia--but independently of Eurasia, because they used significantly different techniques.

2. Agriculture--Sub-Saharan Africa domesticated different plants than Eurasia, because the plants that grow naturally through much of Eurasia will no grow in tropical or sub-tropical climates.

3. Trade--the creation of the surplus gave sub-Saharan Africans the opportunity to develop trade networks on the eastern coast of the continent--and connected them to traders from the Arabian Peninsula, India, and even the Far East.




B. Climatic Differences

1. Eurasia v. Africa--the east-west orientation of the Eurasian land mass meant that people on the continent shared many food-raising techniques; Africa, because of its north-south orientation, did not share this advantage.

Christianity and the Fall of the Roman Empire

A. Roman Empire



1. Wars of conquest--The Roman practice of expropriating land from conquered peoples initially kept the plebians who did most of the fighting content, since they shared in a portion of the spoils of war. As time wore on, however, plebians received less and less land, while land prices in these conquered areas increased, causing them to go into debt and often lose the land they previously had received.

2. Slavery--became increasingly important to the ruling elite, who used slaves on the land they acquired to produce the surplus that provided them with the patrician lifestyle.

a) By the 1st century BCE there were more than 2 million slaves out of a population of 5.25 million people in the empire (or nearly 40% of the population)

b) Slavery led to the gradual impoverishment of free labor in Rome; the free populations stagnated, and many poor parents abandoned their children that they could no longer afford; these children often ended up being sold in slave markets.

C. Fall of the Roman Empire--according to the English historian Edward Gibbon, the fall of the empire was caused by its adoption of Christianity; the real cause was the internal difficulties caused by the reliance on slavery to produce a surplus (undermining the living that peasants could make from the land, and increasing the disparity in wealth distribution), while the costs of maintaining the empire were rising due to the necessity of a mercenary army and paying bribes to the “barbarians” to keep them pacified.

1. Mercenary Army--as slavery impoverished the plebian class (driving down wages and the capability of plebians to retain their land), plebians became less likely to serve in the army, and the population of plebians stagnated, so there were fewer of the to serve, anyway); this necessitate hiring mercenaries in ever greater numbers.

2. Empire’s main source of income--was from agriculture. Although the ruling class and its civilization was based in cities, the economy was based almost entirely upon rural agriculture, and most of the population was made up of peasants--and the income of the ruling class depended almost entirely upon rents collected from these peasants.


3. Trade--consisted largely of luxury goods consumed by the ruling elite. The vaunted infrastructure of roads and aqueducts was used to support the army, rather than to transport goods, which stifled trade (the cost to move a ton of wheat 300 miles, for example, doubled its price).

4. Cities--were largely parasites on the countryside, rather than a source of innovation--technology was not created in Roman cities and then moved out into the countryside.

5. Expenses of slavey--as Rome conquered all the areas that it could reasonably hope to administer, the sources for new slaves dried up and purchasing slaves became more expensive.

6. Rents--became a heavier burden for peasants; peasants were expected to pay taxes to both the imperial government and local officials. This burden grew at the imperial level from about 10% to more than 33%--and they still had to pay local taxes.


D. Western and Eastern Empires--in response to these increasing pressures, in 330 CE the emperor Constantine moved the capital of the empire east to the Straits of Bosporus; ruling the western part of the empire from this vantage point, and the empire was split into two halves


1. Barbarian invasions--in the west, “barbarians” proved to be a threat to retaining control of the empire. They were temporarily bought off with bribes (after one group was successful in sacking Rome), but eventually they decided to exercise control over their areas themselves.

2. Mercenary armies--with no reason to have any allegiance to Rome itself, mercenaries were used by ambitious commanders to sack and pillage the very areas they were suppose to be protecting.

II. Rise of Christianity

A. Monotheism--the belief that one supreme being is responsible for the creation of mankind. Judaism and its offspring, Christianity, are but two varieties of monotheism that began in the Middle East.


1. Zoroasterism--founded by Persian man named Zoroaster. Zoroasterism is thought to be the oldest “revealed” religion (that is, a supreme being appeared before Zoroaster and told him to found religion). Zoroaster lived between 1500 and 1000BCE, it is though

a) It is also thought that the other regional monotheistic religions borrowed heavily from Zoroasterism, including the concept of God and Satan, virgin birth, messiah (christos, in Greek)

B. Judaism--if Genesis is to be believed, god revealed himself to Abraham. God is named Jehovah or Yaweh. Judaism developed a number of practices that set them apart from their neighbors, particularly in regard to diet (the various kosher prohibitions against consuming pork, shellfish, mixing preparation areas for meat and dairy products, etc.) and the bris milah, or male circumcision. While Jewish theology proved somewhat attractive to religious converts, the dietary restrictions and the circumcision requirement inhibited its popularity.

C. Christianity--or Judaism lite; similar theology with fewer dietary restrictions and no circumcision requirement helped it become more popular than Judaism.

1. The Messiah--a number of men within a couple of hundred years either side of the supposed time of Jesus called themselves the Messiah (Christos, the Christ); some even led rebellions against the Romans and ruling class Jews like Herod.

2. The Jewish Connection--Christianity borrowed heavily from Judaism, and lays claim to its inheritance (Jesus, Christians claim, is the Messiah that the Jews were awaiting), and spread earliest among the Jewish diaspora.


3. Persecution of Christians--while early Christians were sometimes persecuted, that persecution was not systematic; Roman’s tended to tolerate different religious practices, as long as the religion and its belief system did not constitute a threat to Roman political control.

4. Constantius--this emperor’s deathbed conversion--after a lifetime of debauchery and sinful pleasure--ensured that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.



a) Son Constantine moved seat of government east to a city he had build, which he humbly named Constantinople; eventually the Empire split in two, and then slowly disintegrated.


b) Rome remained the location of the Bishop of Rome, who claimed descent from the first of Jesus disciples, Peter, the “rock” of the church--and therefore, supremacy in religious matters--but whose alleged supremacy was ignored by the bishops of churches in the east.

Greece, Rome, and Western Civilization

I. Greek City States

A. Emergence--many of the same forces that aided the emergence of a new civilization in Greece were similar to those forces that helped to create new civilizations in northern India and China--diffusion of new techniques in iron working and agriculture, the growth of trade, the growth of craft skills, and the development of an alphabet

B. Barrenness of land--in contrast to the development of other civilizations, however, Greece offered little in the way of agriculture--which led Greeks to “colonize” other lands.

1. Contact with Phoenician traders--who were widely travelled within the Mediterranean, and who exposed the Greeks to a wider diffusion of knowledge and techniques

2. Dispersal of Greeks--as mercenaries and exiles also led to the collection of disparate knowledge in Greece.


C. Importance of slavery--unlike other great civilizations, the creation of the surplus in Greece was largely reliant upon the use of slaves.

1. Slavery existed before civilization, but was used largely to supplement other labor, or to provide personal service to the ruling elites; agricultural work and artisnal crafts were left to the free and semi-free citizens

2. Slaves were usually non-Greeks seized as prizes of war. Their polyglot origins kept plotting among slaves at a minimum.



3. Spartan exception--there were no slaves in Sparta (located on the most fertile plain in Greece), although the ruling class lived off the tribute from “Helot” cultivators--and the ruling class emphasized austerity to minimize stress in the society.

4. Why no slave revolts?—Greeks obtained slaves as spoils of war, from much of the Mediterranean basin. Often, the only common language these slaves shared was the Greek of their captors. While slaves performed much of the agricultural work that provided the food surplus—and the ability for the Greeks to spend time on philosophy and mathematics.

D. Gifts of the Surplus--without slaves to produce the surplus, their would be little of what we think of as the flowering of Greek civilization.

1. Aristotle and Polybus spoke to the “necessity” of slavery

2. Democracy--most Greek city-states were ruled by oligarchies, who taxed those under them for state expenditures that benefited mainly themselves. This created pressure from below to reform government; in Athens, this led to “democracy” (rule by the people) for male citizens--excluding women and slaves.

a) This in turn led to reaction from the economic elites, who accused those politicians who saw themselves as representing the non-elites of “demagoguery” and “rule by mob,” and often looked to forces outside Athens to help them overthrow democratic forces.

3. Advances in science, math, philosophy.



II. Roman Empire--Rome largely appropriated most of their cultural and political institutions from the Greeks; Rome’s innovations lie in administering a huge empire and in feats of civil engineering (roads and aqueducts). The Romans, however, did little to advance the knowledge that they appropriated from other peoples.

A. Roman Republic--after defeating the Etruscans in the 6th century BCE, Rome established a republic, and used the infantry conscripted (drafted) from the independent peasantry to fight wars of conquest to bring other settlements into the Roman sphere of influence.

1. Patrician control--this Roman Republic was not a true republic, in that not all people were represented in the political institutions, which were controlled by a few patrician families.

2. Patrician greed--as commanders of the Roman Legion, patricians took the lion’s share of conquered land.

3. Plebian resistance--patrician greed fed resistance to their rule by the lower sort, or “plebians,” but with relatively minor changes (allowing a few select plebians the right to hold political office) the patrician families were able to retain control of the government.



B. Roman Empire

1. Wars of conquest--The Roman practice of expropriating land from conquered peoples initially kept the plebians who did most of the fighting content, since they shared in a portion of the spoils of war. As time wore on, however, plebians received less and less land, while land prices in these conquered areas increased, causing them to go into debt and often lose the land they previously had received.


2. Slavery--became increasingly important to the ruling elite, who used slaves on the land they acquired to produce the surplus that provided them with the patrician lifestyle.

a) By the 1st century BCE there were more than 2 million slaves out of a population of 5.25 million people in the empire (or nearly 40% of the population)

b) Slavery led to the gradual impoverishment of free labor in Rome; the free populations stagnated, and many poor parents abandoned their children that they could no longer afford; these children often ended up being sold in slave markets.

Maps, Time, and World History

Use this link to go to the Bridging World History website. From that page, at the lower left-hand corner, you will find the link to the video. It may take more than one attempt to get the video up and running--the website seems not to be running at optimal capacity.

Other Ancient Civilizations

I. Age of the Warring States

A. Early Neolithic period

1. 2000 BCE--Rise of cities and “states”

2. 1700 BCE--China enters the Bronze Age

a) Shang Dynasty--dominated by an aristocracy that combined military, priestly, and administrative roles


3. Chou Dynasty (1100 BCE)--kings delegated much of their power to 100 or so local rulers in a quasi-feudalistic political system--about 2000 years before Europe itself developed such a system.

B. Warfare and technological advances

1. The need to remain abreast of technological advances of adversarial states in order to not get overtaken by them

a) Draining of marshes, spread of irrigation to make more land available for cultivation to ensure the continuation of food surplus

b) Development of intensive farming--deep plowing with oxen, the use of organic fertilizers (animal dung and human night soil), planting of leguminous crops to restore nitrogen to the soil, and the cultivation of wheat and soya beans

c) Development of consumer products in addition to tools of war--in addition to swords, spears, and knives, Chinese craftsmen also manufactured spades, hoes, sickles, plows, axes, and chisels for use by peasants (Recall that in Egypt, the used of these kinds of tools was restricted to workers working on pyramids, monuments, temples)

2. Advances in agriculture fed the growth of cities, which provided a market to feed the growth of agriculture (a dialectic process, rather than a causitive one)

II. Ch’in Dynasty

A. Revolution from above--the Ch’in Dynasty consolidated its power at the expense of the ruling elites.


1. State of war--the 150 years of almost constant warfare that led to the establishment of the Ch’in Dynasty caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people (perhaps up to 1.5 million)--including thousands gratiously murdered (beheadings). In addition, as many as 120,000 people belonging to old elite families were exiled.

2. War on the merchant class--the Ch’in Dynasty, and the Han Dynasty that succeeded, were fearful of the potential threat posed by the growing wealth of the merchant class, and to counteract that the states seized control of the most lucrative trade--salt and iron making--in order to suppress rich traders and rich merchants. Taxes were higher on trading profits than on agriculture.

a) in order to survive, merchants and traders had to align themselves with either local bureaucrats, or with the royal court.

B. Religion and Philosophy--the years in which these elite classes battled each other for dominance also saw the emergence of rival philosophical systems to justify the conflicting political systems

1. Confucianism--Confucius (6th Century BCE) and his follower Mencius (4th century BCE) advocated a respect for tradition and ritual, combined with personal honesty and self-control.

a) Motzer sect demonstrated that even philosophy used to buttress rule by the elites could be used to undermine that authority (if elites failed to meet their obligations to rest of society).

b) Taoism--preached that individual salvation lie in withdrawing from world in order to master it, rather than engaging in collective action to attempt to change the world. Vied with Buddhism as a religious practice in much of Asia.

C. Emergence of “legalism”--emphasized government administrators rationally and objectively enforcing government edicts, which were portrayed as being for the well-being of the entire society.

D. Atttempts to close out the rest of the world

1. Great Wall of China

2. Destruction by first emperor of all references to prior traditions

3. Resulted in stagnation of technological advances--after initial flowering in the early centuries of empire

a) merchants became dependent upon state intervention, rather than developing an independent power base

4. Peasant life remained little changed--revolts caused by increasing pressure (particularly during times of famine), but even when these revolts were successful (like the revolt that succeeded in toppling the Ch’in Dynasty) simply changed leadership at the top, and resulted in negligible change at the bottom of society.



III. Greek City States

A. Emergence--many of the same forces that aided the emergence of a new civilization in Greece were similar to those forces that helped to create new civilizations in northern India and China--diffusion of new techniques in iron working and agriculture, the growth of trade, the growth of craft skills, and the development of an alphabet

B. Barrenness of land--in contrast to the development of other civilizations, however, Greece offered little in the way of agriculture--which led Greeks to “colonize” other lands.

1. Contact with Phoenician traders--who were widely travelled within the Mediterranean, and who exposed the Greeks to a wider diffusion of knowledge and techniques

2. Dispersal of Greeks--as mercenaries and exiles also led to the collection of disparate knowledge in Greece.


C. Importance of slavery--unlike other great civilizations, the creation of the surplus in Greece was largely reliant upon the use of slaves.

1. Slavery existed before civilization, but was used largely to supplement other labor, or to provide personal service to the ruling elites; agricultural work and artisnal crafts were left to the free and semi-free citizens

2. Slaves were usually non-Greeks seized as prizes of war. Their polyglot origins kept plotting among slaves at a minimum.

3. Spartan exception--there were no slaves in Sparta (located on the most fertile plain in Greece), although the ruling class lived off the tribute from “Helot” cultivators--and the ruling class emphasized austerity to minimize stress in the society.

D. Gifts of the Surplus--without slaves to produce the surplus, their would be little of what we think of as the flowering of Greek civilization.

1. Aristotle and Polybus spoke to the “necessity” of slavery

2. Democracy--most Greek city-states were ruled by oligarchies, who taxed those under them for state expenditures that benefitted mainly themselves. This created pressure from below to reform government; in Athens, this led to “democracy” (rule by the people) for male citizens--excluding women and slaves.

a) This in turn led to reaction from the economic elites, who accused those politicians who saw themselves as representing the non-elites of “demagoguery” and “rule by mob,” and often looked to forces outside Athens to help them overthrow democratic forces.

3. Advances in science, math, philosophy.

IV. Roman Empire--Rome largely appropriated most of their cultural and political institutions from the Greeks; Rome’s innovations lie in administering a huge empire and in feats of civil engineering (roads and aqueducts).

A. Roman Republic--after defeating the Etruscans in the 6th century BCE, Rome established a republic, and used the infantry conscripted (drafted) from the independent peasantry to fight wars of conquest to bring other settlements into the Roman sphere of influence.

1. Patrician control--this Roman Republic was not a true republic, in that not all people were represented in the political institutions, which were controlled by a few patrician families.

2. Patrician greed--as commanders of the Roman Legion, patricians took the lion’s share of conquered land.

3. Plebian resistance--patrician greed fed resistance to their rule by the lower sort, or “plebians,” but with relatively minor changes (allowing a few select plebians the right to hold political office) the patrician families were able to retain control of the government.

B. Roman Empire


1. Wars of conquest--The Roman practice of expropriating land from conquered peoples initially kept the plebians who did most of the fighting content, since they shared in a portion of the spoils of war. As time wore on, however, plebians received less and less land, while land prices in these conquered areas increased, causing them to go into debt and often lose the land they previously had received.

2. Slavery--became increasingly important to the ruling elite, who used slaves on the land they acquired to produce the surplus that provided them with the patrician lifestyle.

a) By the 1st century BCE there were more than 2 million slaves out of a population of 5.25 million people in the empire (or nearly 40% of the population)

b) Slavery led to the gradual impoverishment of free labor in Rome; the free populations stagnated, and many poor parents abandoned their children that they could no longer afford; these children often ended up being sold in slave markets.

Creating Civilization

Neolithic Revolution

A. Revolution--or Evolution?


1. Invention of farming--is something of a misnomer. People did not “invent” farming, because they did not make a conscious decision between food production and hunting/gathering. People began simply to adopt (or not adopt) food production for certain foods, while retaining the option to hunt or gather other foods

2. Creating the surplus--farming becomes attractive because domesticated plants prove to be a fairly reliable source of food; so much so, that farmers are actually able to produce more than they need to subsist--and therefore producing a surplus, which they can then trade for other goods.

B. Why farming wins out


1. Changes in climate--in certain areas meant that gathering food enough to survive on became more difficult, and made raising food a more attractive option (the Fertile Crescent, for example, became more arid, and people living there were forced to begin raising food--both grain and animals--in order to remain there).

2. Changes in Technology--the ability to store a harvest (whether from raising food or gathering it) led people to become more sedentary (it is, after all, difficult to transport a granary to support a nomadic lifestyle). Using domesticated animals to iron-tipped plows also made farming more bountiful as well, and freed up labor from plowing to undertake other duties.


3. Sedentary lifestyle--promoted by the rise of farming led to more children being born. Nomadic peoples tended not to have more children at one time than they were able to carry; with farming families remaining in one location, children were born closer in age in many families, which caused the population of farming groups to grow faster than their nomadic cousins.

4. Productivity of farming--even though food producers were often less well-nourished than their nomadic counterparts, the greater populations of sedentary groups meant that they often prevailed in conflicts between the two groups (that later changes as nomads develop horsey skills and become more mobile).

I. The Development of “Civilization”--the term has become somewhat controversial; here we will adopt Harman’s use of the word, meaning urban settlement.

1. Production of the surplus--people were able to live in cities because with Agri-Culture, the production of food beyong the needs of immediate subsistence--surplus food--became the norm. This allowed people to regularly engage in other activities rather than working to ensure their own subsistence. People began to specialize in various artisnal crafts at this point.

II. Control of the surplus--living in urban areas meant living in groups larger than one’s extended kin network (which was the usual bond between people in paleolithic bands). This led to less reliance upon cooperation, and greater emphasis being placed on coercion to control surplus food production.

A. Armed force--professional soldiers were developed along with urban living areas because they could be used to appropriate surplus food supplies, both from within people within their settlement as well as without

B. Accounting for the surplus--with the development of the surplus there also developed a need to account for it--to be able to tell where the surplus went, to whom--and eventually at what cost. The need for this accounting system led to the development of both a system of writing (for record keeping), and the development of mathematics (for the actual accounting).

C. Rulers and priests--with the development of agriculture, it became important to also keep track of the seasons, and to be able to read (or, even better, influence) the portents so that it could be determined the best time to plant. Among many peoples, the development of a priestly class reinforced the emergence of a ruling class, who emerged because they were able to claim the favor of a particular deity.

1. Early sedentary farming communities were established without class divisions on fertile soil, but as the communities expanded to less fertile soil, improvements to the land (irrigation, etc.) were made. Those making the improvements needed to expand agricultural production, and felt justified in controlling access to these improvements and to exercising control over the surplus produced.

2. In this way, in some areas of the world, community leadership grew to expect tribute to be offered to them (usually in goods)

3. As the means of production changed during the neolithic era, the relationship of people to the means of production changed as well. People tended to accept these changes because of the gradual nature in which they took place, and because the abundance of food during peak periods made the increasingly authoritarian nature of rulers more palatable.



III. Egyptian Civilization

A. Pyramids and Monuments--when we think of Egypt today, we still think of it as the land of pyramids and monuments like the Great Sphinx. But for what purpose were those structures built? To impress onlookers (present and future) of the power and longevity of the ruling class in Egypt--although the monuments outlived the rulers.

1. When the great pyramid/monument building binge took place, Egypt was still on the cusp between the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages; although workers on the monuments worked with iron and bronze tools, the people supplying the food to access to those kinds of tools.


2. The sheer scale of exploitation of the mass population--an exploitation that grew in direct proportion to the growth in the magnificence of the temples, palaces, tombs, and ruling-class lifestyles. This led to the stagnation of the means of providing a livelihood for the greater part of society. That section of society that had been freed from daily toil in the fields no longer had any interest in furthering humanity’s control over nature.

3. With much of the surplus being spent on monuments to their own greatness, spending on infrastructure suffered; as a result, when crops failed due to famine, flood, climate change, insect infestation (see Moses, Bible), leaders in Egypt saw the surplus vanish, and their civilization crumble; this process has been repeated numerous times in history.

B. Technology and Urban Development--the next “great civilizations” to emerge occurred in areas less fertile than the Nile Valley, and had to promote the development of technology in order to produce a sufficient surplus.



IV. Ancient India

A. Aryan invaders--the Aryan people originated in the Caucus Mountains, and invaded India about 1500 BCE


B. Vedic Religion (evolved into the Hindu religion)

1. Ritual centered on the sacrifice of animals--including cattle--and long sagas extolling the exploits of warrior gods

a) This practice of worshipping warrior gods made the expropriation of food belonging to non-warriors more palatable; bulk of goods went to warriors and their brahmin allies.

C. Iron technology

1. Iron implements--the development of the iron axe and the iron-tipped plow made it possible to clear the jungles along the Ganges River and plow the heavy soil of the Deccan Plain, and to make a nomadic people who relied upon raising cattle for beef to begin to rely upon those cattle to pull plows.

2. From Vedic to Hindu--Vedic practives of eating beef became taboo, because the elites relied upon the production of surplus grain as their main source of wealth; therefore, farming peasants had to be discouraged from eating their cattle at all costs.

3. Indian caste system--Aryans had brought with them an ideology that set up a rigid class structure that justified expropriation of the surplus; in the emerging agricultural society solidified into a four-tiered class system, or varna.

a) Brahmin--the priestly caste

b) kshtriyas--warriors and rulers

c) vaishyas--landowners and merchants

d) shudras--artisans and toilers

Fluidity of system--this caste system remained somewhat fluid, although as more castes were added to the system, it became more rigid

Out of Africa: The Human Diaspora

Paleolithic Age



A. Descent from gorillas—man’s closest relatives in the animal kingdom are three members of the ape family: the modern gorilla, the chimpanzee, and the bonobo (aka pygmy chimp)



B. Early humans—about 7 million years ago (or 5 to 9 million years ago), a population of apes in Africa broke up into several populations: the gorilla, the two species of chimpanzee, and the group that eventually evolved into humans.


1. Australopithecus africanas—inhabited the earth between 2-3 million years ago; characterized by a larger brain than simian counterparts. Began the use of crude stone tools (which some apes use, as well)


2. Homo habilis—is thought to have lived between 2.5 and 1.6 million years ago. Homo habilis is the least human-like of the early humans, and its cranial capacity was about half that of modern humans.



3. Homo erectus—believed to be the first true human to venture out of Africa; fossils from Homo erectus were discovered in Asia (on the island of Java—aka Java Man), and date from about 1.8 million years ago. Scientists recently have argued that Homo habilis and Homo erectus share a common ancestor (a kind of “missing link”), rather than erectus evolving from habilis


C. Homo sapiens—generally recognized as the earliest man. Still had smaller brains than modern humans, still relied upon the use of crude stone tools, and their migration pattern still relied upon those areas that they could walk to

D. Homo neanderthalensis—the world Neanderthal is commonly used today as a put-down for behavior we find crude or offensive (or to sell us insurance), but Neanderthal man himself actually had a larger brain than modern man. Neanderthal man populated much of Europe and western Asia, and are the first humans we have evidence of caring for their sick and burying their dead.


E. “The Great Leap Forward”

1. East African sites—Homo sapiens begin using standardized stone tools (meaning several tools of similar manufacture and apparently used for similar purposes), as well as the first jewelry (ostrich shell beads) about 50,000 years ago.


2. Near East (the so-called “Fertile Crescent”) experienced similar developments about 40,000 years ago, which implies that these two areas were in contact with one another (an early trade network)



3. Cro-Magnon man—first to begin to use more complex tools, and material other than stone


a. Bones—bone can be shaped into specific types of tools like fish hooks, needles, and awls, which allowed Cro-Magnon man to expand and diversify their diet, and led to the manufacture of clothing, which permitted these people to better withstand colder climates


b. Also manufactured weapons like harpoons, spear throwers, and eventually the bow and arrow, which allowed them to more safely hunt and kill larger, more dangerous animals—and increase their caloric intake, as well. Neanderthals had been susceptible to broken bones, thought to have been caused by having to wrestle down the larger animals.


b. Developed artwork—Cro-Magnon people were among the first to produce works of art; the best known example is Lascaux Cave in southwestern France



c. Cro-Magnon people in Europe seem to have fairly quickly replaced the Neanderthal people living there previously; whether this was by conquest, or by inter-breeding and assimilation scientists cannot say definitively.


F. Early colonization

1. The Ice Ages—over various millennia, the amount of ice on the earth has waxed and waned (this is one of the arguments used by global warming denialists to argue against human causes for global warming). During periods of glacialization, a great deal of water was locked up as ice, dropping ocean levels significantly, and allowing some early peoples to migrate to areas that previously had been islands (and would return to being islands when that particular ice age ended). It also eventually allowed early humans to cross the Bering Strait, separating Asia from North America, as recently as 10,000 years ago.

b. “Virgin” hunting grounds—these peoples found plentiful game, which the probably quickly hunted into extinction, since their new technology greatly increased the killing capability of humans, and the animals had developed no fear of humans to this point; at any rate, large numbers of large mammals die off as these new people begin to share the continent with them (does this lead to the creation of the belief that man should live in harmony with nature? Quite possibly).


II. Paleolithic societies

A. Foraging societies—all early Paleolithic societies were foraging societies—that is, hunters/gatherers. Since hunting was very much a hit or miss proposition (and still mostly miss at this point, before the development of accurate spear throwing and the bow and arrow), and most of the diet of these peoples was reliant upon the grains, fruit, roots, and shoots that the gatherers were able to find.

Gender-based societal roles—at this early point, hunting was already a male occupation, while gathering the other food was largely the domain of females; however, because most of the band was reliant upon the food gathered for their day-to-day sustenance, this was not a low status occupation.

1. Gathering was a way not only for women to gain status in the band, but also fostered bonds to feed all the members of the band.

2. Hunting—although the luck of hunters was much more hit and miss, meat from the hunt was still highly sought after; hunting itself was an act of cooperation among all of the hunters, because these groups were most successful in frightening an animal to fun off a cliff or into a snare they laid, rather than relying upon one or two superior hunters to kill of prey.

3. Cooperation between members of the band made their survival possible (“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”).


III. Neolithic Revolution

A. Revolution?—or Evolution?—the ‘invention” of farming is really a misnomer. People did not just “invent” farming, because they did not chose to simply begin to cultivate and domesticate certain plants; these things happened gradually over the years, as people chose to cultivate some plants, not others, and still venture forth to gather other foods to supplement their diets. People gradually changed their food procurement processes.


B. Why farming eventually wins out (in most of the world)


1. Changes in climate—in certain areas meant that gathering food necessary for subsistence became increasingly more difficult, and therefore made sedentary farming a more attractive option.


2. Changes in technology—the ability to store a harvest (whether from raising the food by cultivation or by foraging) led people to become more sedentary, since it was difficult to carry large granaries from place to place.


3. Sedentary lifestyle leads to greater population growth—nomadic peoples tend to space children so that they only had to carry one child at a time when they were on the move; living a more sedentary lifestyle led people to begin to have children closer together, and in greater numbers than previously. The move to farming is an example of an autocatalytic process—one that catalylizes itself in a positive feedback cycle, and going faster once it started. This growth in population was larger than could be sustained by hunter/gatherer societies (and, in fact, was often even faster than farming societies could sustain; surprisingly, hunter gatherer groups usually had a higher caloric intake that did farming societies.


C. The Development of “Civilization”—the term civilization has become a somewhat controversial term; but we will adopt Harman’s use of the word, meaning urban settlement.

1. Production of surpluses—people were able to live in cities because of Agri-Culture, the production of food beyond the immediate need for survival—surplus food—became the norm. This allowed people to regularly engage in other activities, rather than to work to assure their own survival


2. Control of the Surplus—living in urban areas meant living in groups larger than one’s extended kin network and meant that the values of cooperation and repricocity declined, and that the control of surplus food production was up for grabs


3. Armed force—professional soldiers developed along with urban living area, both to “protect” the urban population, and to help expropriate the surplus.



4. Accounting for the surplus—with the development of the surplus there also grew a need to account for it—to be able to tell where the surplus went, and to whom; and, eventually, at what cost. The need for this accounting system led not only to the profession of Certified Public Accountants, but contributed to the development of writing and counting—and to the development of a recognizable class system.


5. Kings and priests—with the turn to Agri-Culture, it became important to people to keep track of the season, and to be able to read and reckon when the best time to plant was. It also became increasingly important for someone to be able to foretell when misfortune would occur—or, even better, to stave off that misfortune. Among many peoples, the development of a priestly class reinforced the emergence of a ruling class, because of their claim of a special relationship with a particular deity.