Recently watched a super interesting documentary about the city of Jericho. It's one of the most ancient cities in the world, perhaps as old as 10,000 BC. TEN THOUSAND BC! The mind reels to even imagine it.
The earliest ruins of Jericho are these circular houses. It seems like an extended family lived in one house, and there was a time that the entire city consisted of these dwellings.
The dwellings are interesting for a few reasons - one is that they're all the same. There didn't seem to be any class differences back then, or at least, we haven't found any evidence of some people living better than others. The organizations of houses suggest that there were different "tribes" within the city. Maybe independent tribes chose to live near each other and share resources -- that might be what the city originally was.
The other interesting thing is that each house has its own grain storage area, which tells us that everybody had control over their own food. This isn't true of other ancient prehistoric cities - in many of them, food was alotted and labor was organized by the priest class, who lived in opulence compared to regular people.
Many other ancient fertile-crescent proto-cities probably started as religious sites. Hunter/gatherers and eventually farmers would travel to visit temples and attend ceremonies. Likely, this is where/when agricultural knowledge was exchanged. Priests lived off of tributes, and it's possible that the world's first Ruling Class was a product of religious authority and central organization.
Jericho was eventually taken over by old empire Egyptians. At that point in the archaeological record, you see a big lifestyle change - there are no more of the round houses, and you start seeing temples and palaces and the signs of central organization.
In my imagination, this represents a fork in the history of humanity. Maybe there was a time when we lived in happy anarchy, with no incentive to war on each other or serve a ruling class. I mean, I'm sure people still murdered each other, and tribes probably had rivalries, but there might not have been WAR in the sense that we know it. The original people of Jerico shared space, cooperated.
But this style of civilization is almost defenseless against an organized military. It is a classic human pattern--a disorganized group is easily coopted and subsumed by an organized one. If, today, you start a commune where everyone is equal, it can only last so long until power is concentrated and culture is imposed from above rather than generated from below.
Those round, familial houses weren't unique to the city of Jericho itself -- there are settlements throughout that region which belonged to that culture. Over time, they were all conquered by the Egyptians, and that mode of living vanished from the earth.
The whole thing reminds me of the Coordination Trap. Like, the world would be better off without armies, but if one group has an army, then everybody has to have one or be conquered.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy reminds me of it too -- the martian colonists are originally scientists, who share resources and do not operate on capitalist logic. But once capitalists arrive, money is in the system, everybody begins to operate with money, private property, resource hoarding.... to ignore money is to become "poor". Private capital has a huge advantage over peaceful cooperative anarchy. A society of givers is vulnerable takers.
don't get me wrong, I would never want to live in the ancient world
but maybe, just maybe, we got it right--and then lost it
The earliest ruins of Jericho are these circular houses. It seems like an extended family lived in one house, and there was a time that the entire city consisted of these dwellings.
The dwellings are interesting for a few reasons - one is that they're all the same. There didn't seem to be any class differences back then, or at least, we haven't found any evidence of some people living better than others. The organizations of houses suggest that there were different "tribes" within the city. Maybe independent tribes chose to live near each other and share resources -- that might be what the city originally was.
The other interesting thing is that each house has its own grain storage area, which tells us that everybody had control over their own food. This isn't true of other ancient prehistoric cities - in many of them, food was alotted and labor was organized by the priest class, who lived in opulence compared to regular people.
Many other ancient fertile-crescent proto-cities probably started as religious sites. Hunter/gatherers and eventually farmers would travel to visit temples and attend ceremonies. Likely, this is where/when agricultural knowledge was exchanged. Priests lived off of tributes, and it's possible that the world's first Ruling Class was a product of religious authority and central organization.
Jericho was eventually taken over by old empire Egyptians. At that point in the archaeological record, you see a big lifestyle change - there are no more of the round houses, and you start seeing temples and palaces and the signs of central organization.
In my imagination, this represents a fork in the history of humanity. Maybe there was a time when we lived in happy anarchy, with no incentive to war on each other or serve a ruling class. I mean, I'm sure people still murdered each other, and tribes probably had rivalries, but there might not have been WAR in the sense that we know it. The original people of Jerico shared space, cooperated.
But this style of civilization is almost defenseless against an organized military. It is a classic human pattern--a disorganized group is easily coopted and subsumed by an organized one. If, today, you start a commune where everyone is equal, it can only last so long until power is concentrated and culture is imposed from above rather than generated from below.
Those round, familial houses weren't unique to the city of Jericho itself -- there are settlements throughout that region which belonged to that culture. Over time, they were all conquered by the Egyptians, and that mode of living vanished from the earth.
The whole thing reminds me of the Coordination Trap. Like, the world would be better off without armies, but if one group has an army, then everybody has to have one or be conquered.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy reminds me of it too -- the martian colonists are originally scientists, who share resources and do not operate on capitalist logic. But once capitalists arrive, money is in the system, everybody begins to operate with money, private property, resource hoarding.... to ignore money is to become "poor". Private capital has a huge advantage over peaceful cooperative anarchy. A society of givers is vulnerable takers.
don't get me wrong, I would never want to live in the ancient world
but maybe, just maybe, we got it right--and then lost it
reaction and find my own way to enjoy the thread.
