- Oct 1, 2014
- 6,760
- 14,601
- AFL Club
- Hawthorn
There has been a general belief agriculture led to the development of the first states, the story was it resulted in surplus production, enabling the formation of hierarchies with elites controlling the new states. However, agriculture preceded the development of the first states in Mesopotamia by many thousands of years. Some years ago anthropologist James Scott suggested it was specifically the use of grains that was the driver.
"Scott argues that cereal grains, which require fixed fields, grow above ground, ripen at a predictable time and are readily stored, provide the ideal crop for tax collection. By contrast, roots and tubers are not easily discoverable, have no fixed ripening time, can be left in the ground until needed and do not store well once harvested. Wheat, barley, millet and more recently rice and maize would therefore have provided the key to state formation because of their taxable potential. Scott also points to the fact that all the earliest states that emerged were based on grain"
"Trying to test causal claims about complex social changes in the deep past is inherently uncertain, but our results provide new evidence in support of Scott’s theory – that grain agriculture fuelled the formation of states, and that writing, invented and adopted to record taxation, was then used by states to maintain themselves through a very hierarchical system of laws and societal structures."
theconversation.com
There is a link in the article to the original Nature paper for the scholars. It's heavy going.
"Scott argues that cereal grains, which require fixed fields, grow above ground, ripen at a predictable time and are readily stored, provide the ideal crop for tax collection. By contrast, roots and tubers are not easily discoverable, have no fixed ripening time, can be left in the ground until needed and do not store well once harvested. Wheat, barley, millet and more recently rice and maize would therefore have provided the key to state formation because of their taxable potential. Scott also points to the fact that all the earliest states that emerged were based on grain"
"Trying to test causal claims about complex social changes in the deep past is inherently uncertain, but our results provide new evidence in support of Scott’s theory – that grain agriculture fuelled the formation of states, and that writing, invented and adopted to record taxation, was then used by states to maintain themselves through a very hierarchical system of laws and societal structures."
The real reason states first emerged thousands of years ago – new research
New findings add weight to the theory that states didn’t just spring up from any kind of farming – it had to be grain.
theconversation.com
There is a link in the article to the original Nature paper for the scholars. It's heavy going.