For most of human history, people lived in small, egalitarian food foraging groups in which subsistence was based on a combination of hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. With transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture—the domestication of plants and animals—about 10,000 years ago, cultures changed. In her book Ancestral Journeys, Jean Manco writes:
“The change from foraging to farming was one of the great human revolutions. Control of food sources has an obvious appeal. Farming supports many more people per acre than foraging. It was the beginning of a population explosion, which would lead to further innovations and ultimately the first civilizations. It was a profound change in human lifestyle.”
The change to farming was probably gradual, but one of its major impacts was on population size. In a foraging group—that is, a group of nomadic hunters and gatherers—small children were a burden. Walking was often the way the band would move from one resource collection area to another and this meant that most goods and small children would have to be carried. In these bands, therefore, women would limit the number of children they had through a combination of birth control, abortion, and infanticide. Among food foraging groups it is generally estimated that the population doubles in about 5,000 years. In other words, the population is fairly stable.
With the development of farming, nomadism decreased and permanent settlements began to develop. This meant that children were less of a burden and so there was an increase in family size. In early farming societies, the population would double in 2,000 years and over a period of 10,000 years, the population would increase 32 times.
Agriculture can support a higher population density and this meant that with agriculture people could live in larger groups: villages and, eventually, cities developed. With agriculture, and cities, complex societies known as civilizations emerged. Jean Manco writes: “The definition of civilization used here is a complex and organized society with specialized crafts and mass-produced goods, public buildings, literacy and record-keeping.” The earliest civilizations developed independently from one another at different times and at different places: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica, India, and South America.
One of the specialized occupations to emerge with the early civilizations was the priesthood, people who specialized in religion and who worked full-time in the temples and in conducting ceremonies. In his book The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, Nicholas Wade reports:
“Priesthoods were instituted, and these sacerdotal officials began to control rituals and to separate people from direct communication with their gods.”
One the characteristics of civilization is the presence of cities. Jean Manco writes:
“Where there are cities we can speak of civilization.”
While cities have more people than villages, many of the city dwellers are not directly involved with agriculture. Cities are dependent on the villagers for their food.
One of the characteristics of cities is the presence of monumental architecture, that is large structures which served as temples, governmental buildings, and/or palaces for the elite. In his book Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study, Bruce Trigger writes:
“In most city-states, temples were the earliest monumental buildings. Later one large temple or temple complex in the centre of the city continued to symbolize the unity of the state.”
The monumental architecture in a city was intended to impress people with the idea that the city and its rulers had been sanctioned by the gods. Bruce Trigger writes:
“In early civilizations, art and architecture were no less vehicles for managing sacred powers and conducting relations with the supernatural than they were social-regulatory statements. Claims of supernatural power acquired meaning and validity through the expenditure of material resources.”
Each city had its own gods and goddesses. The temples were the homes of the gods and the temple priests served the gods. The rituals in which the priests would provide sacrifices and offerings to the gods were not open to the public. Bruce Trigger explains:
“Sacrificing to deities was routinely carried out by priests or officials in precincts from which most people were usually excluded. These sanctuaries constituted a ritually safe environment for encountering the supernatural and protected unconsecrated people from the dangers of inadvertent exposure to supernatural power. Such exclusion increased the mystery and importance of these rites in the minds of the people who were not permitted to participate in them.”
In addition to these private rituals, there were also public ceremonials and festivals in which the public could view the icons of the deities. These public rituals expressed the power and creativity of the deities. They reinforced the need for harmony between the people and their gods and reinforced respect for the political and social hierarchy. Bruce Trigger writes:
“The public rituals displayed the wealth, power, and privileges of the upper classes, who controlled these events, but they required the participation of ordinary people to align human activities with the cosmic and divine orders. Public rituals strengthened the cosmos and drew energy from it for the benefit of humans. They re-enacted the creation of the universe and reinforces the harmony between the annual cycles of human society and those of the natural/supernatural world. The social order was justified by proclaiming it to be modelled on the natural world and the supernatural forces that animated it.”
The public ceremonies were usually accompanied by feasting in which the temple would redistribute food to the people.
In food foraging groups, society tends to be egalitarian. While there may be some distinctions in status which are partially based on gender and age, people are generally viewed as being equal. In his book Prehistory: The Making of the Modern Mind, Colin Renfrew reports:
“Early hunter-gatherer societies, like those of our Paleolithic ancestors, seem always to have been egalitarian communities, where individuals participated on a basis of equality, and where reputations were made on the basis of personal accomplishment, such as skill in hunting.”
Colin Renfrew also writes:
“Most anthropologists agree that many small-scale societies are broadly egalitarian. Their members are more or less equal in status, and they operate without hereditary distinctions of rank or prestige.”
While there are small-scale agricultural societies which retain much of the egalitarian social structure of their food foraging ancestors, with occupational specialization social stratification begins to develop. In their reference book The Complete Practical Encyclopedia of Archaeology, Christopher Catling and Paul Bahn write:
“However, complex stratified societies begin to emerge in the Neolithic era, in which some people are more equal than others—priests, potters, and traders for example.”
Agricultural surpluses make it possible for some people to devote themselves full-time to craft specialties such as pottery, basketmaking, woodworking, metallurgy, and so on. In addition to craft specialization, there is also intellectual specialization and with this full-time governmental officials and religious specialists are also found.
In the simplest hierarchical society, we would expect to find two basic classes: an upper class and a lower class. In reality, the class system is more complex, with many strata and subgroups. The upper-most classes generally took on the responsibilities of government and religion, the lower classes provided technical support—i.e. making things—while the lowest classes provided unskilled labor. In his comparative survey of ancient civilizations, Bruce Trigger writes:
“In general, the knowledge that was of greatest practical concern to the upper classes and regarded as most worthy of elaboration had as its goal improving relations with the supernatural. Ascertaining the will of the gods through reading omens and practising divination was highly elaborated in all the early civilizations.”
Bruce Trigger also reports:
“Thus the forms of knowledge that were most assiduously cultivated under upper-class sponsorship in early civilizations were linked to trying to find ways with aspects of the natural/supernatural realm that could not be controlled by natural means. This kind of specialized knowledge remained the prerogative of the upper classes, highly trained priests, and administrative specialists.”
With regard to material culture, in a nomadic society—one which is often moving—goods are viewed as oppressive. No one individual acquires significantly more material possessions than anyone else. In the settled societies made possible by agriculture, people could accumulate more material goods and, in addition, these goods could be inherited. With agriculture, archaeologists begin to see wealth distinctions in two areas: (1) grave goods in which some individuals are buried with more goods than others; and (2) housing in which some houses are larger than others.
Social inequality in early civilizations, as in the modern world, was more than simply having more “stuff,” but the kind of “stuff” was also important. Some goods became status symbols for the wealthy elite. Colin Renfrew puts it this way:
“The key to inequality lies in worldly goods. That is to say that at a certain point in most trajectories of development, the perception was developed that material goods (at least some kinds of material goods) could have value. Nothing in the development of human society appears more significant than this ascription of meaning and value to material goods and to commodities.”
With inequality, both in terms of material culture and social prestige, the early civilizations became class-oriented societies forming a pattern that continues to today: a few people are in the upper, noble, or elite class, and the vast majority of the people belong to the lower class or classes. Not only are material goods inherited, but in a class-oriented society, social standing is also passed down along family lines. In explaining why certain family lines belong to the upper class, religious explanations were often given. In his comparison of civilizations in Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study, Bruce Trigger writes:
“In each of these civilizations the upper classes, or at least their highest levels, which traced their descent from former rulers, claimed a special supernatural origin.”
In other words, not only had the gods blessed the upper class with great wealth, but they deserved this wealth as they were directly related to the gods.
One of the forms of social stratification which was developed in the early civilizations was slavery. Jean Manco writes:
“Slavery has a long and brutal history. It probably began among the first civilizations of the Near East. Their earliest surviving law codes refer to slaves. Slaves were often human booty: captured foreigners or prisoners of war. Many a slave was born in captivity though. The child of a slave was a slave. The Greek and Roman empires ran on slavery.”
It should be noted that there are many different kinds of slavery. In his book Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study, Bruce Trigger reports:
“The conceptualization and practice of slavery differed significantly among early civilizations.”
Not all slavery systems were based on the concept of biological race (this concept is relatively recent), nor on the idea of chattel slavery in which people could be bought and sold.
In the relatively smaller food foraging bands—usually less than 100 people—social control in the form of norms and leadership was usually informal. In addition, the composition of these bands tended to be fluid: people regularly joined the band while others left to join other bands. In agricultural villages, however, there was not only an increase in population size, but a decrease in population fluidity: it was difficult for people to leave their permanent houses and developed fields to move to another village. Social controls, therefore, became more formal. This means that government became more formal, more complex, and often hereditary. In his book The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths, Michael Shermer writes:
“When populations became too large for informal means of social control (such as gossip and shunning), religion and government evolved as social watchdogs and enforcers of the rules.”
With the development of city-states, formal governmental structures begin to be developed, including the ideas of bureaucracy, kingship, and hierarchy. Michael Shermer reports:
“Around five thousand to seven thousand years ago, as bands and tribes began to coalesce into chiefdoms and states, government and religion co-evolved as social institutions to codify moral behavior into ethical principles and legal rules, and God became the ultimate enforcer of the rules.”
One of the implications of a larger population is that the potential for innovation increases. Groups with larger populations are thus more likely to be places where new material culture is invented, new forms of social organization emerge, and new ideas about religion are born. Jean Manco reports:
“A larger community gives greater scope for invention. The greater the number within a group, the more likely it is that among them will be an inventive type who thinks up something new.”
Jean Manco also writes:
“Among the small hunting bands before farming, it might be generations before an exceptionally creative individual cropped up in any band.”
The change from foraging to agriculture meant that religion also changed at this time. In his book Humans: From the Beginning Christopher Seddon writes:
“Prehistoric hunter-gatherers probably saw themselves as a part of the cosmos, along with the animals and plants they relied on. However, when the adopted agriculture, their view of the natural world changed from something to that they were a part of to something that they sought to control.”
Religion, as a part of culture, reflects social organization, so in hierarchical societies, religion is also hierarchical. Bruce Trigger writes:
“The principal differences between the religious beliefs of early civilizations and those of still earlier, more egalitarian societies was that the various forces controlling nature had come to be viewed as more unequal in power and more hierarchical as human society itself had acquired these characteristics.”
