The Rise and Fall of Ancient Civilizations

Examining the Theories and Evidence

Factors in the "Urban Revolution"

Between about 4000 B.C. and 2500 B.C., from the late Ubaid period through the first part of Early Dynastic III, Sumerian society underwent a series of transformations . These developments are summarized below, listed in alphabetical (not chronological) order.

Demographic Shifts
Populations, which had been widely distributed in small villages, became concentrated in larger towns and a few cities. Settlements tended to be distributed in "rank-size" hierarchies, perhaps as a reflection of administrative control or a desire to make trade easier. The largest cities and towns lay near rivers or major canals.

Division of Labor: Technology and Specialization
Technical elaboration and the mass production of ceramics, metal, and other crafts indicate that the division of labor became increasingly complex and specialized. There were full-time craftworkers of many types, as well as merchants, accountants, scribes, warriors, etc. More complicated division of labor required temple and palace administration to integrate the different sectors of the economy. In turn, craftworkers and other specialists reinforced the authority of the temple and palace elites by providing them with prestigious goods and services.

Irrigation Technology
Small-scale, locally maintained irrigation systems were expanded and coordinated into large networks of canals requiring careful regulation. Towns and cities tended to be located along the major canals, near highly productive fields. Differences in the value of property became pronounced because some fields were irrigated and others were not. Conflicts arose over the ownership of land and distribution of water and needed to be resolved.

Religion
The simpler ceremonial centers of Ubaid times were replaced by great temple precincts with ziggurat platforms, mosaic decorations, and elaborate artwork, as well as storage buildings, administrative offices, and libraries. The temples employed hundreds of priests. In addition to being religious specialists, these priests were administrators who controlled the temple's sector of a city's economy, including the storage of grain, herding, and the recording of all transactions on cuneiform tablets.

Social and Economic Stratification
Differences in status and wealth became highly pronounced. Differentiation was evidenced first by the wealth of the temples, and then by the elaborate tombs of the nobles and rulers. Commoners had simple burials. Social stratification was also reflected in variations in the size and quality of houses, as well as in the elaborate art and architecture of the temple precincts and secular palaces.

Trade
Long-distance trade increased greatly, as is shown by numerous imports (flint, lapis lazuli, chlorite bowls, copper, gold, etc.) from Iranian Elam and other regions. Tokens, then cylinder seals, and finally cuneiform tablets provide further evidence of trade and its administration.

Warfare and Secularization
Secular rulership arose in the form of lugal war leaders. Originally the lugals seem to have been elected by the town elders as temporary leaders. With armies under their control, however, the lugals soon became permanent rulers. By 2600 B.C. palaces and fortifications characterized most large centers, but the warfare that produced this pattern may have begun much earlier.

These factors--population shifts, specialization, irrigation, religion, stratification, trade, and warfare--were all involved in Mesopotamia's "Urban Revolution." However, archaeologists disagree over which factor or factors came first, triggering the process that created Sumer, the world's first civilization.
 
 

Theories on the Rise of the State and Civilization
The following are simplified summaries of several theories on the rise of the state. Some of these theories were proposed specifically to explain the Sumerian case, while others were not. All of them have been influential in archaeological thinking about the origins of civilization.

Theories Emphasizing Technology

Wittfogel's Hydraulic Theory (Irrigation)
Karl Wittfogel argued that state organization first emerged in arid regions to control large-scale hydraulic networks--systems of irrigation, drainage, and flood control, for example. According to his theory, only a complex state organization can manage the problems and activities associated with large-scale irrigation agriculture: the construction, enlargement, and maintenance of hydraulic works; the allocation of water between upstream and downstream cultivators; the arbitration of conflicts (downstream cultivators may feel that upstream cultivators are using too much water); etc. Wittfogel believed that the complexities involved in major irrigation systems led to the rise of bureaucratic states in arid riverine environments such as Mesopotamia. Furthermore, the centralized power given by control of a resource as basic as water resulted in the despotic nature of the early irrigation states.
 

Childe's Theory (Technology and Specialization)
Influenced by Marx and Engels, V. Gordon Childe emphasized the ties between technology, surplus production, and the development of society. Childe believed that the Mesopotamian environment required irrigation agriculture to produce surplus foodstuffs that could be traded for missing resources (wood, stone, ores, etc.). The surpluses produced by irrigation agriculture could also support increased craft specialization, which led to technological refinements. In turn, technical advances--metallurgy, the plow, the wheel, writing, etc.--created an even more productive and rapidly changing society. Furthermore, specialization increased the need for centralized authority to regulate the production and distribution of goods. It also gave rise to intra-societal conflicts as wealth and power were acquired by religious functionaries, secular leaders, and craft specialists. The state arose both to coordinate the complex division of labor and to repress conflicts among the emerging social classes.
 
 

Theories Emphasizing Demography

Boserup's Agricultural Demography Theory (Population Pressure)
At the end of the 18th century Thomas Robert Malthus wrote an essay on population, in which he stated that advances in technology are soon outstripped by consequent increases in population. (Technological advance in food production leads to increases in population.) Economic historian Ester Boserup has challenged this view and reversed Malthus's argument. She states that population growth precedes agricultural development. (Increases in population lead to technological advances in food production.) Increases in population require greater yields from farming. Therefore, population growth requires labor intensification and/or technological advances, which in turn require more complex forms of social and political organization. In Boserup's view population growth is itself an inherent characteristic of agricultural societies, so that the causal cycle population growth--> agricultural intensification--> more complex organization repeated itself until it eventually produced the state.
 

Carneiro's Circumscription Theory (Population Growth and Warfare)
Robert Carneiro argues that in order to explain why state organization developed in some societies and not in others, we need to consider whether the population occupied an open environment or a circumscribed one. If the environment was open and population expanded, excess population could be accommodated by the splitting up of social groups and the colonization of new areas. However, many environments are circumscribed. Circumscription may be physical or social. Islands and alluvial plains in deserts are physically circumscribed areas. Social circumscription exists when the possibility of fissioning and colonization is blocked by neighboring populations. After a time, there is no escape route for excess population in a circumscribed environment. There is simply no place left to go. Carneiro argues that the inevitable result will be conflict over the limited fertile land and other strategic resources. In conditions of conflict over limited resources there is an advantage for groups that develop centralized authority, which improves a group's military efficiency and its chances of victory. Carneiro believes that the pristine states and their administrative hierarchies arose from such military leadership in circumscribed environments.
 
 

Theories Emphasizing Trade

Rathje's Resource-Poor Area Theory (Imported Goods)
Early complex societies often arose in areas that had high fertility and agricultural potential, but lacked important non-agricultural resources (stone, timber, metal ores, etc.). William Rathje argues that in order to insure the availability of such resources, trade networks were established. Some members of local societies became traders or acted as middlemen with foreign traders. Through time the traders, because of their control of resources, formed a kind of administrative hierarchy. Members of society who were not directly involved in trade had to give up something in order to acquire necessary goods. For example, they might have to contribute labor or agricultural products. It was in everyone's best interest to perpetuate this system, which in many cases developed into a religious hierarchy as well as a socioeconomic entity--perhaps because of its control of exotic, foreign goods. Rathje's theory argues that in any region complex societies developed first in the resource-poor areas because of the need for trade (which could be controlled by chiefs, priests, or entrepreneurs).
 

Sanders' Economic Symbiosis Theory (Environmental Diversity)
William Sanders has suggested that state-level organization tended to arise in areas of environmental diversity, where many important resources were present but unevenly distributed. Sanders argues that states emerged in order to regulate the production and distribution of diverse goods from a variety of environmental niches in such areas. Central coordination, Sanders assumes, is the most efficient adaptation to conditions of environmental diversity. Therefore, there has been a tendency for societies to evolve toward greater centralization and to expand their control across diversified areas. This process produced the first states in areas of environmental diversity and economic interdependence ("economic symbiosis").
 
 

A Theory Emphasizing Religion

Drennan's Insecurity Theory (Religion) There are numerous insecurities inherent in the human condition (death, disease, etc.). Religious specialists exist in virtually every society, partly because of the desire to control or influence nature, thereby allaying human insecurities and fears. Many religious specialists increase their prestige and "power" through the possession of exotic goods and ritual paraphernalia.

In the shift to Neolithic subsistence patterns, two new factors came into play:

Robert Drennan argues that religious specialists in early farming societies benefited from these two factors and were able to draw on their prestige and influence to recruit labor during lulls in the agricultural cycle. This labor could be used to acquire exotic goods through trade, to create ceremonial paraphernalia through craftwork, or to build temples (often atop mounds or platforms). The control of these exotic objects or "ritual settings" increased the prestige and influence of the religious specialists. In turn, their heightened prestige allowed them to draw on an even larger and more obedient pool of labor. With this increased labor force, the religious specialists could obtain even more impressive, prestige-reinforcing ritual paraphernalia and ceremonial architecture, and so on... This feedback cycle ultimately led to the rise of ceremonial centers dominated by a theocratic elite, which in this model is the initial form of the state.
 
 

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Last updated: 4 January 2000
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