Law, order, stability, trade, property-rights, writing, pottery, agriculture, these are all elements that we strongly associate with “civilization.” The mainstream paradigm that we are all taught in history is that the great ancient civilizations flourished because their leaders were “wise” and “virtuous” governors of their people. The great empires of old had constructed such wondrous public works, transportation systems, and law codes under the sage-like guidance of the imperial State.
But new empirical evidence, backed by libertarian economic theory shatters this paradigm. In fact, each and every one of these facets of civilization were developed naturally, through anarchic forces long before States. In fact, human civilization pre-dates the State by over 4,000 years. Let us investigate the fascinating truths uncovered about the Neolithic Revolution.[1]
Pre-History
Homo-sapiens was born in Africa circa 200,000 years ago, and began to migrate globally around 50,000 years ago. During this period, known as the Paleolithic period, hunter-gatherers were the predominant mode of survival for humans. Small nomadic groups of people would wander around in search of food and shelter on a near-daily basis. They were remarkably smart, and had similar capabilities to ours in terms of logic, reasoning capacity, and technological understanding. Over time they began to use stone tools and form advanced hunting tactics, in the era commonly known as The Stone Age.
The Neolithic Revolution
By 10,000 B.C. (12,000 years ago), many of these hunter-gatherers entered the Fertile Crescent, the area of Ancient Mesopotamia roughly encompassing the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (in modern-day Iraq). There, they found wild wheat, barley, seeds, legumes, and figs in abundance. As is natural for human beings, they exploited this area for its abundant natural resources. They ground the wheat into flour and made bread.
Now over time, these primitive peoples recognized the foresight of storing some of the extra seeds and flour, and developed seed banks. From this moment, they no longer lived day-to-day foraging for food, but could rely on their savings to sustain them as they were now able to focus their efforts elsewhere – to more productive tasks. It takes only a basic understanding of economics to comprehend that saving resources enables investment in capital, the ability for production of more advanced goods, and the opportunity for an economy to grow.
This action guided these nomads towards a sedentary lifestyle. Instead of foraging and hunting for food every day, they could rely on their saved food stocks. Instead of scavenging for a place to temporarily settle that would potentially have wild animals and plants, they could rest assured on the natural abundance of this region. They began to develop the first permanent villages in the area. These primitive peoples still feared nature and were at the mercy of the elements, but the new sedentary lifestyle provided security and stability for the tribes. No longer was life as unpredictable, they systematically decreased their levels of risk by ensuring that they would have a supply of food to fall back on, and shelter to protect them from nature’s ravages.
All of these discoveries took centuries of course, and were slowly developed and the significance gradually realized. But it is important to note the process inherent in human development. Discoveries are made by chance, and the implications slowly are realized, and the entire society slowly adapts to these new benefits, all independent of some authoritative agency. It is nearly equivalent to the theory of evolution. Such small changes develop adaptations for species to better dominate their surroundings.
Man had begun to conceive of himself as an entity independent from nature, in fact superior to it. No longer was he at the mercy of the jungle, but instead could begin to manipulate the jungle in his favor. The human being became the central, dominant agent in natural existence. Thus was the first implications of the Neolithic Revolution.
Social Life In the Village — Free and Equal
What was village life like? Recent discoveries in excavations sites of Abu Hureya (Syria), Ain Ghazal (Jordan), and most importantly Çatalhöyük (Turkey) reveal how shockingly different the social fabric of these prehistoric societies are from our expectations. These sites all roughly date back to 7,500 B.C. (9,500 years ago).
Excavation has discovered large villages comprised of individual cube-like dwellings clustered together so extremely close, there were no public streets in between!. Access to and from these houses were by roof, with ladders providing the means to get to and from the rooftop level to the private home. Can you imagine any stronger evidence of private property rights than a society that does not have public roads between private real estate? Each individual was sovereign over their own domain and would have to ask permission to access the property of a neighbor, and with no central coercive agency “providing” public accessways. Of course, it is also conceivable that there could have been a communal condition of consent for universal rooftop access and transportation. Evidence for this possibility is backed up by an even more startling realization of how our ancesters lived:
Ancient life in these villages was extremely egalitarian – to a degree that we have never known. There was no social hierarchy at all. How do we know this? Every single house-structure in the village was exactly the same. They were all roughly of the same size and composition, there was no way to distinguish between a rich man’s house and a poor man’s house – there were no homes that were relatively better or larger or more extravagant than any others. And what’s more is that there were no temples, no State palaces, no public institutions found.
“All the houses were very very similar because this was an egalitarian society. This was not a society in which there were strong differences in wealth, and so we do not find chieftain residences or palaces or anything like that. This is quite common in societies of this type geographically. You tend to find that there is a very strong taboo against certain people gaining a lot of status.” (Ian Hodder, leader of Çatalhöyük Excavation Site) [2]
No building was more important than another… Imagine, no State violently imposing its will over others, no bureaucracy to oversee and implement State measures, no privileged elite class – I can’t find a more compelling case for egalitarianism.
A Religious Devotion to Private Property Rights
As if the evidence of a cluster of universally similar private dwellings absent any public services wasn’t enough evidence of ancient property rights, consider their primitive concepts of spirituality and religion. Again, this is before any concept of organized religion as we know it, much less a State to enforce it, mind you. The excavations have also discovered human skulls buried just beneath the foundations of each building in the village. As is consistent with many ancient beliefs and practices, these are the skulls of the ancestors of the current dwellers. The living literally lived and slept only several inches from the dead in their own houses. The macabre fascination with death notwithstanding, the common practice of ancestor-worship ensured that the progenitors were always an intimate part of one’s daily life, and their spirit was always with them.
Having the remains of each family’s ancestors buried in their household also acts as a near eternal claim to private property. Imagine saying to a government agent coming to enforce the government’s “claim” to eminent domain something like: “You can’t take this house! My family has lived in this house for generations since my great-great-grandfather built it! We’ve got his skull, my late father’s skull, and the skulls of everyone in between in the basement to prove it! This house is ours!” Having the all-pervasive spirits of generations of your ancestors contained within your house should be sufficient enough reason for anyone else to recognize it as yours…
Agriculture
We must keep in mind that so far, we are still dealing with hunter-gatherers who still primarily acquired their food from, well, hunting and gathering often. You might think that in order to sustain these developing villages, large scale production of agriculture would be necessary. Well, it turns out that’s wrong as well. Contrary to popular historical belief, agriculture did not cause sedantism, sedantism caused agriculture.
Around 7,000 B.C (9,000 years ago), domestication of plants and animals (agriculture and husbandry, respectively) began to develop gradually. Both, much like the original process of storing seeds and settling down, were gradually realized over time. Unexpected accidents caused major reactions and adaptations slowly as people realized the benefits and the implications of the accident. The innovation of agriculture developed like so:
Some people unconsciously began to drop seeds from the wild wheat and barley into the Earth, as they recognized these seeds would return as full cereal grains. Over hundreds of years, a natural selection took place within the plants – those with the heartiest stalks, which could survive the elements and human harvesting flourished and produced ever heartier plants – while those which did not stand up were bred out of existence naturally. As a result, the heartiest plants became domesticated, as people realized the fruits of their labors were returned year after year in the form of strong crops.
The remarkable thing is that the agricultural practices that developed from these anarchic evolutionary processes were realized and adopted autonomously in several places in the world independently, and at the same time. The crops were different, but the practice was the same – in India, in China, in Peru, in Africa, in Europe, as in Mesopotamia.
Once the enormous implications of agriculture were realized – sudden changes began to develop that ended the hunter-gatherer way of life. Man would now begin cultivating his food instead of relying on nature’s abundance, he would control nature instead of be a subject to it. He would clear forests to plant crops, he would channel water away from natural sources to irrigate these new crops. These crops could sustain much larger amounts of people, and would enhance the productivity of the village by further adding to savings and further enabling longer-term investment opportunities. Children suddenly became easier to raise now that food was plentiful. The population surged from millions to tens of millions in a short period of time.
Domesticated Animals
The domestication of animals logically came next. The first animals to be domesticated, ones we consider pets – the dog and the cat, actually were domesticated long before agriculture. The wolf and the hunter-gathering human, with their pack-mentality and tactical genius, had formed a symbiotic relationship to hunt wild game for their mutual benefit. Over time, the wolf evolved into the domestic dog, a loyal friend to man. The symbiotic human-cat relationship evolved again for the benefit of both creatures. The storage of grain and wild foods in facilities attracted mice and other vermin, which were detrimental to man’s food supplies. Logically, the cat was introduced to hunt the mice as man realized how it could benefit him (and, of course, the cat).
More “wild” animals such as cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs were domesticated for different reasons. They were not actually prized initially for their meat, as these hunter-gatherers still primarily relied on hunting for sustenance, but for their milk. These animals, once the value of their milk was discovered, were captured and kept in pens so that they could continuously produce milk for their masters. Much like all the other processes listed above, this was a gradual development, and over hundreds of years, the animals in the pens became those best suited for the purpose – those that would produce the best quality and quantity of milk, and had adapted to their new domestic role.
Man again changed his outlook on life. For now he was not merely the master over the elements, but the dominant species over all others. There was now a natural hierarchy between man, animals, and plants. Man could appropriate nature to his own uses, as he was no longer bound to it as an equal. He could claim land as his own, improve it, build structures on it, harvest crops, and raise animals, all for his own self-interest.
Medicine
Of course, having many people clustered together in one area for an extended period of time (along with the proximity of domestic animals and no clear conception of hygiene) also breeds disease and promotes contagion. Granted, these primitive peoples did cling to folk remedies, incantations, and appeals to the spiritual world, but there are fascinating ancient forays into the realm of medicine.
Along with cultivating major crops, people began to realize the natural healing powers of various herbs and plants. These began to be used as remedies for ailments and to treat major illnesses and were introduced into the culture. The need for a specialist, a physician, also emerged in the realm of evolving trades.
Additionally, there is evidence of scientific inquiry into the nature of disease. While it would take milennia to develop the infection theory of disease, many primitive doctors also performed operations on the sick, probing into their bodies and even their skulls to examine the effects of the disease and attempt to treat it. Even more remarkable is the fact that of those who underwent these horribly painful and primitive “surgeries,” 70% survived.
With the rise of a study of medicine (however primitive), along with rising standards of living from productivity, the mass exposure to disease provided an enormous benefit – immunity. Like all the processes of the market and of evolution, humanity evolved to better compete against the microbes.
Pottery
Around 7000-6000 B.C., another invention emerged from the discovery of clay’s properties. Upon firing clay, it becomes easy to shape the clay into a vessel which hardens naturally. Compared to stone, this allowed for a multitude of new tools and devices to develop: plates, cups, bowls, vases, and storage containers. This discovery and adaptation of clay vessels brings two revolutionary opportunities:
First, it allows the development of more advanced and intricate culinary skills. Cooking food now becomes easier when the ingredients can be placed in a vessel to be mixed, stored, kept, cooked, etc. A revolution of new food and new cooking methods – along with the resulting occupation of skilled chef, result.
The second, and broader revolution is the implications of storage. Now that you can store any item (not just food) in a container, it not only promotes storage and savings for later, but business and trade. Items will no longer spoil, and can survive long journeys to and from other far reaching places. Now exchange and trade are allowed due to the ability to contain and store valuable items. The implications of pottery can not be overstated. No longer are villagers confined to exchanging their products with their neighbors, but now with other villages entirely. Trade routes subsequently develop, connecting formerly isolated distant villages and integrating them into the broader, more universal, human society.
Pottery, like agriculture, emerged simultaneously in many areas around the world between 14,000 and 17,000 years ago.
Metallurgy
In his quest to develop better tools for agriculture and hunting, man developed metallurgy.
Around 6,000 B.C. (8,000 years ago), man discovered traces of copper hidden in Maletite stone. It took 2,000 years for metal to make its mark on civilization fully, as more innovations and inventions were to be discovered – the crucible, the nozzle, the bellows, the anvil, etc. Each and every one the result of individual human ingenuity and/or accidental discovery to solve a problem, and its subsequent adaptation and application to society. The result was the replacement of the blunt stone tools with shiny new metal ones, along with a new trade – the blacksmith. Thus did man usher in the Copper Age, aptly named for the first utility metal to be widely used. The Copper Age gave way to the Bronze Age, around 4,000 B.C. when man began to mix copper with tin, developing Bronze.
These new metals and the subsequent tools and weapons that were created from them were undoubtedly scarce and expensive. This helped develop a whole new economy and strengthened the importance of private property and specialization. Private ownership of the metal mines became a great source of power, much like an oil field today. The blacksmith became highly sought after.
Specialization & Trade
What happens next could just as easily come from an economics treatise (or a good one at least): With such advances in savings and the productivity of each individual comes the opportunity to invest in activities other than basic survival. With such a multitude of opportunities, a large population, and a natural distribution of human talents comes the opportunities to specialize and divide labor.
A division of labor gives each person the opportunity to specialize in one area and produce his goods. The doctor, the potter, the blacksmith, the craftsman, the farmer, shepherd, the artisan, the cook, all are able to develop their skills and produce their own respective goods or services. Unless you are able to produce some sort of magical panacea of a good, it is useless for you only to own and consume the goods that you make. Thus, you desire the goods made by others, and thus comes the need for exchange of goods, or trade.
Larger cities developed on the foundations of trading posts, where people travelling along major trade routes could stop and exchange the goods that they produced (or had acquired and wished to sell) for goods produced locally or imported from other foreign traders. Craftsmen, artisans, and various tradesmen exchanged their goods in these major centers. Activity sprung up from these hubs, as many people realized the incentives to locate in the area: Inn-keepers catered to the needs of the weary travelers, street vendors took the opportunity of large crowds to make a living, performers attracted those seeking entertainment, etc.
Now, there was initially no currency, no money (in the form of metal coins) back then, it was all direct exchange, barter. One man would exchange butter for eggs or butter for shoes, etc. Obviously there comes the problem of the double-coincidence of wants (what if the egg-seller doesn’t want butter, but fish!?) where you must find a good that satisfies each seller. Over time, one good becomes chiefly desired and easily marketed to everyone, not because of its direct value in consumption, but because of its exchange value – that it is universally accepted as a medium of exchange, also known as money. In ancient societies, many different goods served the role of money: salt, seashells, iron nails, wheat, stones, gems, etc. But over time, two goods proved the test of time and became universally recognized as the best money-goods: gold and silver.
Writing & Law
Additionally, with a permanent system of exchange and flourishing businesses comes the need for documentation. Merchants and traders must keep accounts of their transactions if one wishes to stay in business for any length of time and discover which practices are best and which are poor. In order to document such things, the development of writing was necessarily spurred around 3,000 B.C. Initially, detailed pictograms sufficed to represent various objects and ideas for the purpose of communication. Over time, writing evolved from pictograms and drawings representing entire concepts, to representing sounds and phonetics that closer matched the spoken word.
The learned person who was trained to understand how to write and translate writing was known as the scribe, and he played a vital role in the economy. The scribe’s knowledge truly was his power, and his appeal to all businessmen (and unhappily, the now-emerging State) for his services. You might expect such a small elite group of people to keep the art of writing a secret amongst themselves, to amplify their power and importance, but again we are miraculously fooled.
Scribes actually permitted others to learn, and tutored the average person to learn how to write, if he wished it. Everyone had access to learn how to write, if they had the time and money, but few focused their entire professions around it.
Writing enabled the development of universal laws to be proclaimed before all. These laws, by their nature of being written, could be established by the community in order to provide “the rules of the game” in advance of any conflict. Thus, when a conflict arose, the arbitrators of the society (typically a wise elite elected by popular consensus) would negotiate a settlement (if it arose to that level) according to the written laws, known in advance. This systematically lowered the level of risk and uncertainty in business, as everyone would have an idea of how everyone else would act in a risky situation. Business was further promoted by this development.
Writing also gave way to an incredible power of communication, both within villages, across civilizations, and across time. Travelers now could spread knowledge, stories, historic accounts, new ideas, communications, laws, scientific developments, innovations, and technologies around the world, and record them for future generations.
Writing, much like the other major developments of civilization developed simultaneously in isolated civilizations around the world.
Where Was The State?*
The first recognized “State” that arose was the City-State of Uruk in Ancient Sumeria, around 3,000 B.C. (5,000 years ago). If the State did not provide all of the wonderful things listed above, what did it provide that convinced the people to have it? After all, they had lived for so long without it, had developed from so primitive a condition, and had known no major problems to have desired one.
The State was conceived in violence – one group of people necessarily must exert their power over others by force and hegemony to establish their rule. The conquering people must be subjected to rigorous punishment and kept in a constant condition of fear to quell any sentiments of rebellion. After all, the State is forcibly taking a portion of their property (keep in mind, before the days of money, a State tax-collector would have to literally enter your home and take x% of your belongings) for taxation, conscripting them to military service, ordering them to follow its arbitrary commands, and sending them to conquer other villages at the risk of their very lives. This is the only way the marginal State can arise.
But those ruthless few who value power over all else unfortunately have a great amount of cunning. The State invented religion as a reason for its existence. If the ruler was a god, or could converse with one, he could not be questioned, lest the hapless dissenter find himself in the tortuous Netherworld after his death. Thus, although the life of a subjected peasant was rough, they dared not question their pitiful place in this life, or else their next life would be even worse. Thus, an ideological State no longer needs to resort to violence as much. In addition, a new elite class develops – the clergy, to perpetuate the myth of the ruler’s divinity, the bureaucracy to enforce the whims of the ruler (since no single man can do as much as the State wishes to do), and the military to safeguard the ruler/quell dissent/aggrandize the size of the State. All of these entities, of course, thrive only on the production of the merchants and peasants that they expropriate via taxation – for the State itself produces nothing of value. What was the first thing that one of the earliest States, Egypt built? Pyramids! Pyramids, which not only contribute nothing of value to the populace and are a horrid waste of time, labor, and resources, but also further propagate and embellish the status of the ruler as a false god.
The State hijacked all the major developments of civilization. It took over metallurgy and created warfare – a scale of conflict never before seen, or even possible. It took over private property and claimed to enforce it by violating it (with taxation). It took over writing and made “public law” to extend the power of the State to distant realms. It took over trade in its attempt to oversee and regulate it. The State, contributing nothing to civilization, instead lives off of it as a parasite.
Everything that was vital for humanity to develop did not come from the State, and even have happened even in spite of it.
Conclusions – Anarchism Is the Only Progress For Humanity
We must look at all of the developments of civilization for what they are: progressive, anarchic, market forces absent any central coercive apparatus. Each and every major discovery was the result of acting individuals searching to better their existence, or a complete and fortunate accident. After the accident or development, society generally begins to examine this discovery to see if it is useful and serves others. If it does, it passes the market test, and is widely accepted, and the gains to society are enormous. If it fails to service others, it is rejected and never heard from again. Any of the above examples – agriculture, storage, domestication, pottery, writing – could easily be compared with the process of entrepreneurial innovation today: A better mousetrap must stand the market-test.
Civilizational progress is emergent; it is not designed, it is not established by any one or anything. It is evolutionary, and happens entirely voluntary. There is no need for force, violence, or central planning. In fact, those things tend to impede human progress, if not reverse it.
PART II – THE GENESIS OF STATES
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NOTES:
[1] All of this relies heavily on the two-part documentary The Rise of Man for the empirical evidence. Unhappily, by the end of Part I, the video introduces the necessity of a State to “oversee” the progress of the latter few developments. I can therefore not speak with absolute certainty that the remaining developments I chronicle in this post evolved independently of the State, but we can plainly see that it is absolutely logical for them to do so, and no major reason to conclude otherwise. The documentary itself remarkably does not examine the nature of its conclusions – that all of these developments occurred without a State! Therefore, much of the analysis here is that of my application of the facts depicted in this documentary to economic theory – that even if the State had existed for some of these later developments, they could have, and would have developed and persisted despite and in spite of the State. View the documentary on Youtube: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSO3ha8Rjzw&feature=channel_page> (II chapters, 6 parts each).
My thanks and great debt to my friend Howie Reith for showing me this wonderful documentary. You can see his article on the subject written here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=89633068636.
[2] Ibid.
* For further reading – see http://ryansafner.com/2010/02/27/the-genesis-of-states/
