Larger and denser cities appeared worldwide in areas like the Tigris-Euphrates, Huang, Indus, and Nile river basins. Large populations of people who share various traits, including an agricultural economy, a social hierarchy, a centralized government, monuments, writing and record-keeping, intricate belief systems, and the division of labor and specialization, define complex societies or civilizations. A complex civilization has seven features: cities, surplus, intensification of agriculture, specialization, inequality, and difficult political and economic institutions.
Uruk and Ur were city-states with advanced civilizations. These ancient cities combined production, innovation, culture, and power. Maintaining these cities’ viability took a lot of work. Energy extraction from firewood, construction materials (like stone), and resources (like food and water) sometimes necessitates irrevocable environmental change (Algaze, 2018). Because of this, these cities were especially vulnerable to extreme weather. Floods would kill all barley. Water would be scarce in a drought. This densely populated society exacerbated sickness, warfare, and shortages. It would just take a little illness outbreak to become widespread. These weaknesses led these cultures to save food and water for environmental shifts.
Twelve thousand years ago, human societies behaved differently. Many cultures prioritized food production over hunting and gathering. Early agricultural settlements appeared about 10,000 BCE. Larger, denser, and more permanent settlements grew, and not everyone had to work the earth to feed their families (Algaze, 2018). This marked a major change in society. Since no one had to labor in agriculture full-time, individuals might specialize. The surplus food that didn’t reach farmers’ houses assisted the community.
Farming was not suddenly adopted worldwide; it expanded over time, with some communities adopting it earlier or more fully than others. Notwithstanding this variance, farming surely marked the beginning of a new phase in human evolution (Skourtanioti et al., 2020). While hunting and gathering have been a way of life for humans for over a million years, farming has mostly replaced foraging in the last twelve thousand years, leading to the rapid global expansion of agricultural societies. Foraging-based systems are almost nonexistent in modern systems.
The intensification of farming increased the number of calories produced per acre, increasing population density per unit of land area. As a result, the population of the world grew quickly (Skourtanioti et al., 2020). Between 10,000 and 1000 BCE, a worldwide population explosion resulted in a rise from 6 million to 120 million people. Societies had to undergo radical changes to accommodate additional people and become more sophisticated in organizing human life.
Even though the agricultural revolution aided in developing more complex societies, there is still much debate about why certain agrarian cultures could reach advanced civilizations while others still needed to. Some advances in agricultural systems seemed not to be products of complex political arrangements but rather their driving force. Historians and archaeologists disagree over the significance of other elements like large-scale irrigation initiatives, warfare, trade, geography, and rivalry. Every civilization evolved into a more advanced civilization due to certain political, social, and environmental constraints.
Conclusively, the agricultural revolution led to more advanced societies, although it is unclear why certain agrarian cultures became great civilizations and others did not. Historians and archaeologists disagree on irrigation projects, war, trade, geography, and competitiveness.
References
Algaze, G. (2018). Entropic cities: The paradox of urbanism in ancient Mesopotamia. Current anthropology, 59(1), 23-54.
Skourtanioti, E., Erdal, Y. S., Frangipane, M., Restelli, F. B., Yener, K. A., Pinnock, F., … & Krause, J. (2020). Genomic history of neolithic to bronze age Anatolia, northern Levant, and southern Caucasus. Cell, 181(5), 1158-1175.
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