Introduction to Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

First Civilizations

Cities, States, and Unequal Societies 3500 B.C.E.–500 B.C.E.

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Raherka and Mersankh Writing was among the defining features of civilizations almost everywhere. In ancient Egyptian civilization, the scribes who possessed this skill enjoyed both social prestige and political influence. This famous statue shows Raherka, an “inspector of the scribes” during Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty (ca. 2350 B.C.E.), in an affectionate pose with his wife, Mersankh. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France/© RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

SomethingNew: The Emergence of Civilizations

Introducing the First Civilizations

The Question of Origins

An Urban Revolution

The Erosion of Equality

Hierarchies of Class

Hierarchies of Gender

Patriarchy in Practice

The Rise of the State

Coercion and Consent

Writing and Accounting

The Grandeur of Kings

Comparing Mesopotamia and Egypt

Environment and Culture

Cities and States

Interaction and Exchange

Reflections: “Civilization”: What’s in a Word?

Zooming In: Caral, a City of Norte Chico

Zooming In: Paneb, an Egyptian Troublemaker

Working with Evidence: Indus Valley Civilization

“Sometimes the weight of civilization can be overwhelming. The fast pace … the burdens of relationships … the political strife … the technological complexity — it’s enough to make you dream of escaping to a simpler life more in touch with nature.”1 Found on the Web site of an organization called Mother Nature Network, this expression of discontent with modernity reflects the perspectives of the back-to-the-land movement that began in the mid-1960s as an alternative to the pervasive materialism of modern life. Growing numbers of urban dwellers, perhaps as many as a million in North America, exchanged their busy city lives for a few acres of rural land and a very different way of living.

This urge to “escape from civilization” has long been a central feature in modern life. It found expression in Henry David Thoreau’s musings on his sojourn at Walden Pond. It is also a major theme in Mark Twain’s famous novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which the restless and rebellious Huck resists all efforts to “sivilize” him by fleeing to the freedom of life on the river. In addition, it is a large part of the “cowboy” image in American culture, and it permeates environmentalist efforts to protect the remaining wilderness areas of the country. Nor has this impulse been limited to modern societies and the Western world. The ancient Chinese teachers of Daoism likewise urged their followers to abandon the structured and demanding world of urban and civilized life and to immerse themselves in the eternal patterns of the natural order. It is a strange paradox that we count the creation of civilizations among the major achievements of humankind and yet people within them have often sought to escape the constraints, artificiality, hierarchies, and other discontents of civilized living.

So what exactly are these civilizations that have generated such ambivalent responses among their inhabitants? When, where, and how did they first arise in human history? What changes did they bring to the people who lived within them? Why might some people criticize or seek to escape from them?

As historians commonly use the term, “civilization” represents a new and particular type of human society, made possible by the immense productivity of the Agricultural Revolution. Such societies encompassed far larger populations than any earlier form of human community and for the first time concentrated some of those people in sizable cities. Both within and beyond these cities, people were organized and controlled by states whose leaders could use force to compel obedience. Profound differences in economic function, skill, wealth, and status sharply divided the people of civilizations, making them far less equal and subject to much greater oppression than had been the case in earlier Paleolithic communities, agricultural villages, pastoral societies, or chiefdoms. Pyramids, temples, palaces, elaborate sculptures, written literature, and complex calendars, as well as more elaborate class and gender hierarchies, slavery, and large-scale warfare — all of these have been among the cultural products of civilization.

A MAP OF TIME (All dates B.C.E.)
3500–3000 Beginnings of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Norte Chico civilizations
3400–3200 Nubian kingdom of Ta-Seti
3200–2350 Period of independent Sumerian city-states
2663–2195 Old Kingdom Egypt (high point of pharaoh’s power and pyramid building)
2200–2000 Beginnings of Chinese, Indus Valley, and Central Asian (Oxus) civilizations
2070–1600 Xia dynasty in China (traditionally seen as first dynasty of Chinese history)
After 2000 Epic of Gilgamesh compiled
1900–1500 Babylonian Empire
1792–1750 Reign of Hammurabi
1700 Abandonment of Indus Valley cities
1550–1064 New Kingdom Egypt
1200 Beginnings of Olmec civilization
760–660 Kush conquest of Egypt
586 Babylonian conquest of Judah
By 500 Egypt and Mesopotamia incorporated into Persian Empire

SEEKING THE MAIN POINT

What distinguished “civilizations” from earlier Paleolithic and Neolithic societies?