For the peasantry of Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia, the political collapse that took place by the start of the 2nd millennium BCE was the best thing that could have happened.
For the peasantry of Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia, the political collapse that took place by the start of the 2nd millennium BCE was the best thing that could have happened.
James C Scott, a political scientist and anthropologist at Yale University, notes in Against the Grain (2017) that early states ‘had to capture and hold much of their population by forms of bondage’.
James C Scott, a political scientist and anthropologist at Yale University, notes in Against the Grain (2017) that early states ‘had to capture and hold
James C Scott, a political scientist and anthropologist at Yale University, notes in Against the Grain (2017) that early states ‘had to capture and hold much of their population by forms of bondage’.
The end of the Sumerian state apparatus and the flight of elite rulers from cities meant an escape from long hours in the field, heavy taxation, rampant disease and slavery.
The end of the Sumerian state apparatus and the flight of elite rulers from cities meant an escape from long hours in the field, heavy taxation, rampant disease and slavery.
Individual hunter-gatherers might have had the knowledge to live from the land - yet people in industrial society lack not only basic survival skills, but even knowledge of how ‘basic’ items such as zippers work.
Individual hunter-gatherers might have had the knowledge to live from the land - yet people in industrial society lack not only basic survival skills, but even knowledge of how ‘basic’ items
Individual hunter-gatherers might have had the knowledge to live from the land - yet people in industrial society lack not only basic survival skills, but even knowledge of how ‘basic’ items such as zippers work.