7:  City States:  The Precursor of Modern Countries

 

The image below is a satellite image of the lower Nile from Space.  There is a bright green patch in the desert labeled ‘Faiyum.’  It sits along the Nile about 30 miles south of Cairo and 2,000 miles north of Unity.  This valley has endless water from the Nile.  The soil is exceptionally fertile, having been washed down from the tropical highlands over the course of millions of years.  The land, well into the desert, gets almost perpetual sun.  Plants love this place.  It is heaven to them. 

 

 

 

Before humans arrived, wild rice grew in all of the low-lying areas along the lower stretches of the Nile.  The Faiyum valley flooded yearly from the rains upriver.  This created the perfect conditions for rice.  The rice found this land millions of years ago and flourished.  Over the course of time, a bountiful and diverse ecosystem developed around the foundation of this amazing plant.  After floods, fish would swim in from both up and down river to eat.  They eat just about anything; this turns the materials that other animals had not eaten into fertilizer.  When the water receded and shoots came up, thousands of small animals came into feed on them.  When the plants started to grow heads, megafauna came in to feast. 

Enormous flocks of migratory birds stopped over to rest and eat.  Those coming from the south may have gone thousands of miles since they had any chance to rest.  They are hungry and tired and will spend time to recoup in this valley.   Some will lay eggs and the chicks will hatch.  To them, this place is imprinted on their memory.  For the rest of their lives, they think of it as home.  Then the river would flood again and wash the land clean, leaving more fertile soil washed down from the highlands.  The entire process would start again. 

The first people to see this valley were in the species Homo Egaster.  They moved through here about two million years ago.  The Nile corridor is the only practical way for these people to get from the tropics of Africa where they evolved to ‘the rest of the world.’   They were definitely in ‘the rest of the world’ in the year 1.85 million BP.  They had to have passed through this valley on their way.  They saw it sometime around 2 million years BP (before the present, or this many years ago.)   

The Homo Egaster, their descendants the Homo Erectus, and their descendents the denisovans, were migratory by disposition.  They descended from the non-territorial pans, the bonobos.  As youngsters grew up, they learned how to live off of the land.  It did not belong to them and they didn’t treat it as a possession.  To them, the land was a giver of gifts, a sort of mother to all living things. 

They learned that certain kinds of land were not good places for them to try to go.  There were other people around who lived very differently than they did.   These other people felt attached to land somehow, as if certain parcels of land had been created for them and belonged to them.  These others, members of the species Homo Habilis and their descendants the neanderthals, formed into tight-knit and loyal tribes.  Each tribe took control of a certain parcel of land, about 3-5 square miles in size.  The members built borders around it, and patrolled and defended the borders. 

 

We will look at the factors that determine sizes shortly.  We have plentiful artifacts to show us how large their early countries were.  Early humans can have larger countries than chimps, but, until they get some technology which won’t be available until about 6,000 BP, they can’t be much larger. 

 

If any of  the migratory people tried to even walk on the land controlled by these territorial people, the territorial people would organize to attack and kill them.  They didn’t see any reason to try to go to the areas these people controlled.  The world was big.  They were  at home wherever they went.  They liked to travel and explore.  They were raised by people who migrated and their ancestors lived this way, going back as far as anyone could remember.  They taught the children the things they would need to know to live this way. The Homo Egaster, their descendants the Homo Erectus, and their descendants the denisovans, were comfortable with this lifestyle. 

Although the Faiyum valley was rich and productive, with endless food, it had its drawbacks.  It was a dangerous place.  The rich lands attracted a large number of plant eaters.  They came in vast herds to feast on the bounty of the land.  The predators followed.  Life was good for the predators:  They always had weak animals to pick off and use to feed their children.  Humans gave up a lot to have greater resources.  We are fragile and very easy prey.  We can’t run fast.  We can’t fight well.  Our skin is thin.  Our eyesight, our hearing, and our sense of smell are all poor.  We have a hard time detecting danger.  Worst of all, we need to sleep for about a third of the day to replenish our hard-working brains.  During this time, we can’t even defend ourselves, let alone our children.  Early humans would have been easy meals for the predators.  Many would treat human camps like fast-food restaurants.  If they want something quick that they don’t have to work a lot to get, we were waiting to feed them.  The migratory people would get tired of this pretty quickly.  Areas that were not as rich didn’t attract as many herbivores and this meant fewer predators.  I don’t think they would have wanted to spend any more time in the valley than necessary.

The other people who came, the territorial Homo Habilis and their descendants the neanderthals, were different.  These people had been raised in cultures that depended on stability and security.  The people wanted their own homes, places where they could return to every night and sleep in comfortable surroundings.   They were not really fond of freedom and were willing to give it up for security.  They wanted to know that there were borders that were protected and monitored 24/7 by guards.  Their ancestors had lived this way and the ancestors of their ancestors (the territorial pans) had lived this way.  It was what they knew and what they wanted.  To live this way, they needed land that could produce enough to support them perpetually, without any need for them to ever leave.  (If they built homes and then left them, even for a short time, they couldn’t expect them to be unoccupied when they returned).  The land in Faiyum could produce immense quantities of rice.  They could collect this rice and put it into granaries.  It would keep as long as it was dry.  They could cook it when they didn’t have anything else.  As long as there was rice, they would never have to leave.  The land produced immense amounts of rice.  It was perfect for them. 

 They could build border defenses that could keep out other humans.  But they couldn’t build defenses that would keep out saber toothed tigers or other predators, or keep out mastodons or other megafauna.  Life was a struggle for them too.  Until about 70,000 BP, predators and competitors kept their populations in check.  They were part of the ecosystem in Faiyum, but were definitely not dominant there.  They were just another of the many animals with territorial sovereignty societies that lived in the valley. 

 

A Change in Conditions

 

Then, things changed.  The brain components that are responsible for complex communication developed enough that they could start to think the way we, do, with a series of the things we call ‘words’ representing the different concepts, people, places, things, actions, and modifiers. 

 

The three main brain components are :Broca’s area, the Arcuate fasciculus, and Wernicke’s area. 

 

They could turn these ‘words’ into sounds and send these sounds though the air by speaking.  Others of their species who had the necessary brain components would recognize these sounds as words and translate these words into thoughts.  People with these brain components could basically frame their thoughts and ideas in a way that allowed them to transfer these thoughts and ideas into the minds of others, using speech.  They could work together in ways that were impossible for ancestors who did not have these brain components.  They could make themselves the masters of their environment. 

Their first priority was to eliminate the threats to their lives that they faced every day.  Predators were killing their babies.  They could wipe out these predators and did wipe them out.

Megafauna were eating most of the food that the valley produced.  The plant eating animals bred rapidly and couldn’t be removed by taking a few a year.  To remove them, they would have to organize massive hunts where every single animal was killed.  They would have to do this over and over, year after year, until they were all gone.  This was a lot of work.  But we know they were able to get it done because they did it.  Humans they went from being a part of the ecosystem to the master of the ecosystem.  We were the dominant species in this valley, North Africa, and, after another 52,000 years (when the extinctions finally reached the tip of South America) the entire world. 

This change came to North Africa before it happened anywhere else.  It came to Faiyum first. 

After this change, the primary checks that nature uses to keep animal populations under control were gone.  Before, the human population was small.  We were just another animal competing with the rest of the world for survival.  After, there was no competition.  There were no predators to speak of.  Our population began to grow very rapidly. 

We measure population pressure by something called ‘fertility rate.’  This is the number of children that are born to each woman, on average, over her entire lifetime.  Before modern birth control methods were developed, fertility rates averaged more than 7 births per woman.  (I couldn’t find older data; this goes back to 1800.)  If 4 of these babies live to have children of their own, the population doubles every generation.  At this rate, the population grows by the following multiples over generations:  2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1048 times the starting population.  In 10 generations, it the population will have increased to more than a thousand times the starting population.  After another ten generations, it will be a thousand times that, or a million times the starting population.  In another 10 generations, it will be a billion times the starting population.   If a generation averages 30 years, in a millennium, the population will grow to a billion times the starting population, if there are no checks on population. 

Of course, the population isn’t going to be able to grow this much, because at some point there won’t be enough food to support more people.  The population will be able to grow to the limit of the food supply, an no higher. 

 

Faiyum in 18,000 BP

 

The people who were born inside of protected areas will want to keep monopoly rights over the land inside the borders.  They need to keep outsiders out.  Simple paths with patrols—the system chimps used—won’t be enough.  They need walls.  Small walls won’t be enough.  They need very high walls.  The walls can’t be made of wood because the attackers have fire: they can burn them down.  The walls have to be very high, very strong, and made of a very durable material. 

The picture below is an image of a border wall in the land near the valley of Faiyum.  You can see this wall is very impressive.  Note that the lowest parts of the wall are about 40 feet high.  This is too high people to climb without equipment that defenders are going to see from a long way away.  Note that there are towers at regular intervals that rise another 40 feet.  Guards in these towers can keep watch and locate any organized invaders that might be getting ready for an assault, even if they are very far away. 

 

 

The walls are very thick.  They are thick enough to support a road that is about 20 feet wide at the top.  The structures spaced at intervals along the walls are barracks for troops and armories to hold their weapons.  The troops can get to the road and move to any area they are needed very quickly.  The outside part of the road has a parapet wall that is high enough to protect the defending troops from arrows or projectiles that might come from below. Every 6 ft or so there is a slot in the parapet that allows the solders to fire arrows, burning tar balls, or other projectiles onto attackers, without any real risk to themselves. 

Note that there are windows in the walls underneath the top roadway.  These windows are small so defenders could easily block them in the event enemies started to climb the walls.  But they are large enough to use as weapons bays.  A bucket of burning oil-tar mixture that has been set on fire will discourage any who are trying to climb the wall from continuing.  Their cries of pain as they are burned alive will discourage their comrades from following them. 

The walls are faced with very hard rock.  This makes sense:  people can cut through mud walls with basic picks and shovels.  If the walls are faced with enormous rocks which are meticulously pieced together, attackers will not be able to cut through them without detection. 

Imagine you had a machine that allowed you to go back in time.  You set the ‘time’ dial to 18,000 BP and the location to Faiyum.  (Make sure you arrive inside the walls:  if you materialize outside, and try to get in, you won’t have a chance.)  

You would be arriving more than 30,000 years into the era where people were capable of using complex speech.  They currently speak a language called Nobiin. This language goes back antiquity and, there is a good chance that they spoke the same language 18,000 years ago.  If you took an online course in this language before you went back in time, and you made sure your clothes were appropriate, you could probably fit in.  You could talk to the people there.  You could find out what mattered to them.

The people who lived in Faiyum 18,000 years ago had walls like those in the picture above.  But they weren’t tourist attractions.  They were built to defend the area within and protect the monopoly rights of the people inside. 

If you talked to the people, you would soon find people who would explain to you why the walls were so high, so strong, so thick, and so well defended:  Their enemies are very smart and are always looking for weaknesses in border defenses.  There had been times in the past, when the walls weren’t so high.  The enemies were able to enter and defeat the defenders.  There had been times when the walls weren’t thick enough or strong enough. They learned from experience what they needed to do.  These walls are fantastically expensive. 

The people have to pay these expenses through taxes.  (Taxes don’t have to be in the form of money.  People can be required to do a certain number of hours of work or give up a certain amount of rice to feed workers each month.)  But people accept this great burden so they can be safe from their enemies and sleep soundly at night. 

 

The Precursors Of Modern States

 

The image below is a satellite picture of the Faiyum valley in the 21^st century.  Note the large circle that is labeled ‘the Ring Road.’ 

 

 

If you zoom in on the ring road, you will see it is a modern superhighway.  It has wide lanes, a wide median strip in the middle, wide shoulders on both sides, and enough land between the superhighway and the walls that mark the area outside of the right of way to allow for drainage if there is a storm, so the water won’t harm the road.  This road can be and is used in all weather conditions. 

Will see that the areas on both sides of the Ring Road (outside of the walls that protect the traffic) is a jumbled mess of mud and concrete huts, fields, and paths.  There doesn’t seem to be any real plan.  The superhighway appears to cut right through this mess in an organized way, with a roughly circular pattern around the richest part of the valley. 

The circle is about 5 miles in diameter and has a circumference of roughly 14 miles.  The Ring Road was built where the ancient walls used to sit.  There is a reason this road is here.  After explosive weapons were developed about a thousand years ago, these walls no longer served any purpose.  The people stopped maintaining them and they started to decay.  The governments in these areas originally built fairly small roads on top of the ruins, to make it easy for people to get around.  Recently, the governments have wanted to attract industry so they could create jobs for their people.  Industrial corporations have to compete in global markets and they need modern infrastructure to be in place, or they won’t move into an area.  The governments need to build roads so the corporations will come in.  But it is very hard for them to find real estate they can use to build roads. 

Every square inch of land is in use.  Any infringement on the rights of the people using this land will lead to riots and armed resistance.  But the land where the walls were built has been public land for thousands of years.  The government of Egypt built this road in the 1960s.  The ruins of the old wall were removed, and the new facility was built. 

You can actually find these ring roads all over Afro Eurasia.  They exist for the same reason that this one exists.  Governments wanted industry and industry needed good roads.  The old walls were no longer needed for walls and were the only contiguous areas where governments could build without displacing people whose families had lived in the same homes for centuries and would not be easy to remove.  The governments tore down the ruins of the walls and built ring roads. 

There are thousands of these roads around the world.  If you look at a few of them, you will see that there is a fairly standard size, about the size of the one in Faiyum.  It encloses about 5 square miles and is about 14 miles long. 

 

Qqq 74 ring road

 

Why This Size?

 

Look at the massive wall in the image above again.  Then consider that it was 14 miles long.  Construction was a truly a massive undertaking.  It took an immense work force many generations just to move the materials to use to make the walls to the area where they were needed.  The stones had to be cut and fit with great precision.  Then they had to be put into place, all by hand.  The stones at the top had to be lifted nearly 80 feet into the air, all without the kinds of machines we have today. 

There was a time when people were planning this wall.  How big should they make their country?  Of course, they wanted a larger country.  A larger country meant more people for soldiers and better defenses.  But there are practical limits to the size of these human countries for the same reason there were practical limits to the sizes of the chimp countries.  Longer walls are harder to defend.  If a wall is very long, an enemy can mass an attack at a certain point and overwhelm the defenses.  They can get across to the other side before the defenders can get reinforcements to the area. 

We saw that the chimp countries were about 2,000 acres, or about 3 square miles.  The human countries have larger sizes, but not much larger.  These countries are about the size of the modern entities we call ‘cities.’  Historians have name for these ‘city-sized countries.’  They call them ‘city states.’ 

If you could go back 18,000 years, you would find hundreds of these city states along the 4,000 mile length of the Nile river.  Some of the sites have been turned into tourist attractions.  (Aswan, Kom Ombo, El Kab, Cairo; you can find many if you are looking for some.)  But most of them just fell into decay after they were abandoned because they could no longer defend the people inside.  If you could go back to 18,000 BP, you would see them all along the river. 

 

The Other Societies

 

The land along the Nile is very rich.  It is monopolizable, in a practical sense.  The walls are very expensive and hard to build, but they were built and this tells us it was considered to be practical to build them.  The land inside the walls produced enough to support a population that was high enough to field and supply a military that was large enough to patrol the walls, 24/7, and backed by enough reinforcements to deal with the threats, with enough extra wealth and resources to cover the costs of keeping the walls in repair and keeping the military supplied. 

Most of  the land of the Earth is not as productive.  It isn’t monopolizable.  It can’t produce enough surplus food (above the amount needed to support the people who produce food) to cover the cost of building and maintaining the walls, the cost of the armies, and the costs of the needed supplies. 

People can live on land that is not fantastically productive.  They just can’t have societies built on territorial sovereignty.  They need to build their societies on other foundations.  If you could go back 18,000 years and just explore, you would find these enclosed city-sized states in some areas.  But most of the land you would see would not be in one of these city states.   People would live in these areas.  They would live much differently than the people lived in the city states.

 

Life in Different Societies

 

If you had been born 18,000 years ago, your life would depend a great deal on the conditions of your birth.  If you had been born in one of the city-states, you would have a certain way of life and be raised to believe and accept certain things.  If you had been born outside of the walled areas, you would have been raised with entirely different values and an entirely different point of view. 

The people born inside the city states are raised to believe that a part of the world is naturally theirs.  It is their ‘state.’  It provides wonderful things for them including freedom, justice, and liberty.  (They would be told the state gives them these things, but these terms are not really definable in any way that would allow people to tell if they actually have them.  But many believe anyway.)  The state is like a stern but loving parent. 

The state keeps order.  It has laws and rules.  You don’t have to figure out what is right or wrong to order your life, you only have to know what is legal and what is not legal.  As long as you don’t do any of the things that are illegal, you can do whatever you want.  You don’t have to worry about morality.  It is not your problem.  The state decides what is moral.  If the state says it is moral, it is; if not, it isn’t.

The state provides a foundation for an economy.  As long as you have money or trade goods, you can go to a market and get the things you need.  The state makes sure these trades are orderly and at least superficially honest. 

The state protects your property, and particularly your home.  There are people from outside the border of your state that don’t respect your rights to this land.  If they were in charge, they would not let you have your home.  Luckily, the state goes to incredible lengths to make sure they are not in charge and will never be in charge.  It builds and maintains the massive walls that keep and their  armies out.  It supports the weapons industries that your state’s troops use to protect you and your home.  It provides the troops that patrol the borders 24 hours a day to make sure you are safe from these enemies. 

The state also protects your property from internal threats.  People inside the borders must respect your property rights.  Property is very valuable so many people would like to take it.  But the state has laws and rules to protect you from them.  Even the authorities can’t take your property without following strict rules. 

Because your property is safe, you can wealth in the form of property.  Most property in the cities generates income for the owners.  If you accumulate property, you accumulate the rights to get these income streams.  If you accumulate enough property, you may end up with enough income from the property to live in a mansion with servants catering to your every whim, without doing another day’s work the rest of your life.  You can pass your property on to your children and they will inherit your wealth. 

The state provides these things.  You must provide several things in return.  First, you must pay taxes.  (Money doesn’t have to exist to have taxes:  before money, taxes were paid in kind.)   Second, you must agree to give anything you have to defend and protect your country:  if it is conquered, it has no power or ability to grant any rights to anyone.  The state can only provide the things it provides if the people in it are willing to protect it, even if they must give up their own lives to do so.  Third, you must accept its rules, even if you disagree with them.  If the rules allow people to harm the world around you, and you don’t want this to happen, you must accept you are helpless and let those who the government has given the rights to destroy do whatever the rules allow them to do.  If the government says that that a certain city-state that was once your ally is now your enemy, and all the effort of your city state must now be devoted to destroying it and killing everyone in it, you must accept that this is the way things are, even if  you have personal friends or relatives in the city-state to be destroyed. 

People who were born into this system would have a hard time imagining how anyone could ever live any other way.  Yes, there is land outside of the walls.  Yes, there are people there.  But they are not like the people in the state.  They have no rights.  They want to come in (there are always people queuing up at the border checkpoints).  But they must meet strict requirements to get in and most of them don’t meet the requirements.  It is reasonable therefore to think of them as inferior.  They want what you have.  But the people who run the border stations have determined that they are not worthy.  Why would you even consider living the way they live? 

If people are trying to harm them, they have no police to protect them.  If a state tries to conquer them and take their land, they don’t have walls to protect them or organized armies to man the walls. 

They can’t own property because there is no way for them to enforce their property rights.  They need an organized government for this and don’t have one.  They can’t accumulate property for their children for the same reason.  They have no government to take care of them, to build roads for them, to provide welfare when times are hard.  They will not likely ever have a lot of money or personal wealth of any kind because there isn’t any way to keep it safe.  If there is no way to get rich, what is the reason we are living?  To people born and raised inside the walled states, these outsiders would seem like dogs, wandering from place to place to get scraps and sleeping wherever they can find shelter. 

If you were born into one of the states, you would probably think something like this. 

You are one of the lucky ones. 

You pity the outsiders.

 

Life In Natural Law Societies

 

If you were born outside, you would have been raised an entirely different way.  You would have been taught the incredible value of good personal relationships.  You can’t depend on any outside agent (like a government) to make people be good and honest and kind.  You must make them want to be good and honest and kind, at least when dealing with you.  

You have no government to protect you.  But if you deal with others in good faith, if you have a good reputation and people trust and respect you, you don’t need a protector standing above you with a weapon to have good dealings with others.  You will learn who you can trust and who you can’t.  Your people will help you if you need help. 

There is no government.  But is this a bad thing?  Many people don’t think governments are good entities at all.  Governments ‘govern’ people.  This means they make rules for people.  Having no government doesn’t mean you can do anything you want.  You need people to respect you if you want them to deal with you in good faith.  You have to figure out the right way to behave to make this happen.  Your people will help you with this.  They will teach you.  But, in the end, you have to be responsible for your own behavior.  You can’t do things that harm others and then claim that you have the right to do this because there is no law against it.  You have to figure out what is right and you have to do it. 

If you were raised this way, the idea of having an organization governing you would be offensive.  It would imply that you aren’t capable of knowing right from wrong.  If you had a chance to actually meet people who lived under these laws and talk to them, you will see that the laws often allow people to do horrible things to others.  This is not illegal and the government protects their rights to do these things.  Why would anyone want to have a government like this?  We should all learn what is right and act the right way.  It is insane to require people to follow made-up rules that everyone can clearly see are wrong. 

It is true you can’t own property if you live outside of the state.  You can’t protect rights that you claim to have if everyone else around you disagrees and claims you don’t have the rights.    But do the people in the city-states who think they own property really own it?  Can we really own a part of the world?  The world takes care of us.  It provides our food and water, fuel for our fires and a place for us to live.  We depend on it for our lives. 

If nature or the natural world doesn’t meet our needs at some time, we can’t order it to do so as if its existence depended on us and expect it to change.  The land doesn’t follow the directions of humans.  We don’t and can’t truly be the owners of nature or parts of the natural world.   The people in the walled city-states who believe they own parts of this planet are deluded.  If you had been born and raised outside of the city walls, you would probably feel sorry for them.

People inside the walls have to pay taxes.  They have to pay for their food, for shelter, for a drink of water, for a bath, even to grab an apple from a tree as they pass.  They have to pay for everything.  This means that they are not their own masters.  They have to work or have some other source of income or they have nothing to pay for the necessities and die.  People who have to work to avoid death are not really free.  People inside the walls can never really be free.  They are always slaves to the system, to money, and to the owners.  Their lives are not their own. 

Not everyone lives this way.  If you had been raised outside of the states, some 18,000 years ago, you would almost certainly have an entirely different point of view.  You would probably think of the poor deluded people who live inside the crowded, filthy, and disgusting city states as fools who are so out of touch with reality they don’t even realize how miserable their lives really are.   They are slaves to a dangerous, destructive, and incredibly oppressive system that uses them up and throws them away.  You would almost certainly pity them.

 

Possible Societies

 

This book is about the way the human race came to be on the path we are now on, the path that leads to our extinction.  There are various different forces that put us here and various forces that are pushing us down it.  If we want to understand how we can avoid being forced along a path that we don’t want to be on at all until we are pushed over the cliff to death, we need to understand that there are other paths.  We need to understand that people are capable of living other ways. 

I know it is hard for people raised in the highly territorial and loyalty-inspiring societies we have now to understand that true humans can live differently.  But this is one important reason to understand history:  it tells us what is possible. 

We are on a path that leads to extinction.  But we are not stuck on this path.  There are other paths.  How many total paths are possible for thinking beings with physical needs?  (This is the category that includes humans.) 

Are there any take us a place where we can live in harmony with nature and other people, but still have technology and progress?  I claim there are.  The more we understand about our past—not the endless stories of good states and bad ones fighting in endless wars, but a real history that explains what was important to real people in the past—the easier it is to see that we have both the right and ability to take control of our destiny.