Past Lives of Humans 2
Descent into Empire-Building
10,000 BCE (11,950 BP, BP=Before Present=before 1950 CE): Agriculture begins to transform human life in the Neolithic. Hunter-gatherer cultures tend to be matriarchal, as are Early and many Mid Modern Human non-empire-building Neolithic societies whose mythologies (narratives) are Great Mother/goddess based as Joseph Campbell noted. The social systems tend towards the egalitarian and the economic system is based on sharing/gifting.
Early settlements in the Fertile Crescent were by foragers within high productivity wetlands having a high diversity of resources that were not subject to long-term storage. Settlements remained relatively small and egalitarian. For empire-building, later grain production was selected for as it could be taxed, stored, and stolen. Payment in grain served to create the early monetary culture we are all products of. "Civilization" could be viewed as a pathology enabled by grain production, but we products of civilization do not like that story. We remain for, and not "Against the Grain".
From small agricultural village beginnings, it took about four thousand years to transition to ever larger-scale chiefdoms and empire-building that was being selected for, which lead to city-states and then state-level complex societies or "true empires" such as we descendants of empire-builders might admire. A state-level complex society that does not engage in empire-building is possible, has been done (e.g. Tairona, Muisca), but without a means to make the world safe from empire-builders like us, then empire-building is selected for. Alternative is the proposed United Federation of Watersheds as without limits to conquest of Nature and other humans, manageable sized complex societies and their watershed-based life-support system appear to not persist for long (>1,000 years).
Overview: A Chronology of Overcomplex Societies
21000 BCE (23,000 BP): The earliest evidence of small-scale cultivation of edible grasses is from the Ohalo II people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Early Agriculture and the transition from hunting-gathering life may have begun 13,000 years earlier than its use became widespread enough to be noticeable in the archaeological record about 12,000 BP, which transformed human societies as hunter-gatherers could not compete with the high populations that agriculture supported. Agriculture spread to the Upper Nile and Fertile Crescent regions.
Notes:
1. 69,784 total empire years, 134 named empires = 520 years average lifespan.
2. Human ecology, when empowered by agriculture or by fossil fuels/industrial agriculture in an unmanaged commons, appears to follow a pulsing paradigm independent of changes in climate or variation in environmental resources or services. The repeating over-pulsing paradigm pattern is one of unmanaged growth exceeding sustainable limits unto overshoot followed by forced descent. A sustainable system, a managed commons — one managed to maintain a viable equilibrium between Man’s demands and Nature’s resources, would oscillate with environmental variations, but could avoid the boom and bust pattern.
3. Unsustainable system pulsing maximizes empower in the short term (as does cancerous growth), hence the empire-building pulses appear dramatic and often are. A managed system, such as a complex society that self-imposes limits, maximizes empower over a long-term period and so will be selected for if humans learn to understand and live with the planet properly as determined by Nature’s laws.
4. BP=Before Present, but ‘present’ is defined as 1950 CE, which will only become further removed from the idea of ‘present’. An alternative is needed. Proposed is BP=BA (Before Acceleration) as 1950 CE was the start of the Great Acceleration. For years after 0 BA, use AA (After Acceleration). So 2016 CE = 66 AA or 66 years After Acceleration kicked in.
5. 1st millennium BP/BA, 950 CE to 1950 CE, Holy Roman Empire to Soviet Empire, 31 complex societies, 6,967/31= 225 years average lifespan.
6. 2nd millennium BA, 50 BCE to 950 CE, Imperial Roman Empire to Tuʻi Tonga Empire, 43 complex societies, 17,364/43= 404 years average lifespan.
7. 3rd millennium BA, 1050 BCE to 50 BCE, Kingdom of Israel and Judah to Three Kingdoms of Korea, 41 complex societies, 20,969/41= 511 years average lifespan.
8. 4th millennium BA, 2050 BCE to 1050 BCE, Middle Kingdom of Egypt to Zhou Empire, 13 complex societies, 7,957/13= 612 years average lifespan.
9. 5th millennium BA, 3050 BCE to 2050 BCE, Stonehenge to Xia Dynasty, 9 complex societies, 9,077/9= 1,009 years average lifespan.
10. 6th millennium BA, 4050 BCE to 3050 BCE, Uruk to Indus Valley Civilization, 4 complex societies, 6,800/4= 1,700 years average lifespan.
11. The Tairona lifespan shows the 200 year phase 1 pulse, 400 year phase 2 pulse, and the phase 3 steady-state economy that pulsed within boundaries to avoided overshoot while managing “sustainable development” as environmental resources (e.g. soil, forests) recovered following the degradation of prior unmanaged pulsing, until 1650 CE when the Spanish genocide and assimilation eliminated all but the Kogi. The nearby and later Muisca were also non-empire-builders whose managed steady-state society was conquered by the Spanish, but no remnant population survived.
12. The typical curve is a Seneca curve, a pulsing dynamic that better represents the rise and fall of empires than a line, as there are limits to the rate of growth but the rate of descent can be, often is, “rapid.” “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” Letters to Lucilius #91, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 64 CE. One definition of “civilization” is “a complex society large enough to leave ruins.”
13. A modified Seneca curve is common as in descent an empire/kingdom/dynasty/state is increasingly subject to conquest by neighboring upstart empire-builders.
14. The Indus Valley Civilization had no near-enough empires to allow conquest, so as it weakened, descent was forced by failure of environmental and human (commoner) services, which takes longer than conquest, but the outcome is similar. Rome wasn’t conquered by barbarians at the height of its power, but as Orwell noted, the “fall” part (that may involve conquest or revolution) is usually the “kicking in of a rotten door.” Conquest and revolution may be incidental. The American Revolution was to see who would take a continent, while more often revolt and civil war is merely to see who will (for a time) inherit the rubble.
15. Alternative to collapse/conquest/revolt is being subsumed into an emerging dynamic, an if-you-can’t-beat’m-join’m option. The Portuguese, Spanish, British, Russian, American, French, Japanese, and Soviet empires/economies were subsumed into the emerging global Euro-Sino Empire of commerce that won over nation-state political control SYSTEMs, especially following WWII, because that was what was selected for along with the spread of democracy (e.g. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). The Sino/SE Asian region had been a land for the taking by Portuguese, Spanish, British, Russian, American, French and Japanese empire-builders, but China has ended up, by embracing (as Japan had before it) the Euro Empire of commerce. China now consumes half of the planet’s coal burned per year, along with many other resources, to manufacture products for the world’s consumers (for a time), hence the Euro-Sino. After the Sino region climaxes, there is nowhere else to go but up, as there is a solar system for the taking, so to continue growing we’ll have to build a Dyson Sphere before spreading to other solar systems to turn the galaxy into an infrared emitter. Or maybe we won’t.
16. Another view of longevity over time; from The vulnerability of aging states: A survival analysis across premodern societies.
17. The ‘pulsing paradigm’ is from the Odum brothers (and son), stretched to include the overpulsing of overcomplex societies as dissipative systems. The difference is that ecosystems pulse to maximize the empower (MPP/MePP) of the whole system, while the rise and dissipation of chiefdoms to global empires (or locust swarms) is an MEP (maximum entropy principle) dynamic comparable to that of a whirlwind or hurricane (a complex, adaptive, dissipative structure/system that is not evolvable, selected against long term including locusts swarming over the very long term). MPP is what evolvable systems having information (e.g. genetic, memetic, learned behavior) as part of their subsystem that determines future iterations and can be selected for. The pulsing of hurricanes depends on solar induced oceanic temperature gradients, a repeatable pulsing paradigm (Jurassic hurricanes looked like today’s, i.e. have not evolved). The one-off plague-phase pulsing to unsustainable agrarian supplied energy are one-off MEP events that may again pulse in a region after 500+ years of soil/environmental restoration (e.g. reforestation). The fossil fueled pulse we are living in will not be repeated by non-evolvable modern techno-industrialized humans.
18. The initial graphic is outdated, dozens of overcomplex societies need to be added, but overall no change in the narrative of local/regional civilizational overshoot and descent, fall, conquest, collapse, or fading away of non-viable long-term forms of overcomplex society above the chiefdom level. If there was a complete history of 75k years of chiefdom level rise and dissipation, the numbers would be much higher but the pattern would remain. A mental note that they existed long before 12k years ago and during the expansion of mid and late modern humans is important for context. No implication that only state-level overcomplex societies merit consideration/value/interest/celebration.
The chart of empires is cool. MPP in action!