Diseases and Human Evolution

11: The Coming of Civilization

CHAPTER 11 The Coming of Civilization The coming of civilization brought another major paradigm shift to human cultural evolution. Around ten thousand years ago, the stage was set for the development of civilization, as human beings began to cultivate the land and domesticate animals. Five thousand years later, civilization began to stir. Civilization: what does the word mean? The dictionary defines it as reaching a relatively high level of development in culture and technology. People involved in agriculture for several centuries managed to tailor domesticated crops and animals to their needs and to invent more efficient ways of farming and water management, such as irrigation. The discovery of metal, the invention of the wheel and the plow, and the use of draft animals radically changed the human way of life in the Old World. These changes quickened the pace of human cultural evolution toward civilization. They also contributed to the evolution of human diseases. The dictionary also defines civilization as relative to urbanization or city life, and as a stage of cultural development marked by the keeping of written records. Urban cultural development includes organized economic and social cooperation within a governing structure. Government provides infrastructure for urban life and military protection. Wealth is accumulated, allowing for monumental architecture and creative pursuits in science and the arts. These changes could only take place following development of more refined agricultural methods capable of producing large surpluses of food. 185 Excess food and manufactured goods opened the door to controlled management , calling for the development of a tracking system for the movement and distribution of these surpluses. Excess food and goods increased trading options for raw materials needed for developing urban industries. Farming villages grew into market towns with ever increasing use of the environment for agriculture. Emerging markets and trade encouraged specialization in craft skills. As greater numbers of people came together in ever larger towns, changes in social organization were inevitable. Leadership roles expanded with greater centralized authority for increasing management of larger numbers of people, markets, industry, and trade. Roles in society changed with the need for greater specialization, particularly civil and military roles that often intertwined with religious authority. The role of the scribe developed to keep written records of transactions, and new classes of people evolved to fit the changing social structure. Ironically, those involved in agriculture, the motive force for the development of civilization, usually occupied the bottom of the evolving class systems. Moving up the class system depended on knowledge that went beyond farming. Opportunity and greed added to the development of civilization. The stage was set for the rapid changes to come. The centers of early agriculture became the focal regions for human cultural evolution. They evolved into centers of civilization , differing according to local environmental and cultural resources. Trade routes spread new ideas and technology to other regions. They also facilitated the spread of diseases. The Lands of Plenty By 5000 b.c. village farming in the flood plains bordering the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) began adapting to irrigation farming. Control over water use brought more extensive cultivation of crops that produced large surpluses. These large food surpluses permitted the development of the earliest known civilization, the Sumerian (Adams 1979). The first known cities appeared by 4500 b.c. as large numbers of people became concentrated within and around walled Sumerian enclaves. Most of the citizens farmed the land outside the city, while others took up specialized crafts and sociopolitical roles. The social structure came under governance by a central ruling authority that dictated the rules and requirements for citizenship. 186 CHAPTER 11 The earliest known form of writing comes from Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, the oldest known city in the world and the home of the epic hero-king Gilgamesh. Farming villages spread out from the city for miles, providing the food surpluses needed to keep it alive. By 3500 b.c. Uruk had become a sophisticated urban center of about fifty thousand people densely packed within its walls; it lasted for four thousand years (Whitehouse and Wilkins 1986). The Sumerians expanded their trading networks throughout Western Asia, from the Mediterranean Levant to the Persian Gulf, and from the Black Sea area into Afghanistan, to the Nile valley, and extending eastward to the Indus Valley on the western edge of the Indian subcontinent. As trade increased with new ideas and technology...