The accumulation of wealth gives rise to civilization

I left myself this note:

see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization

and an excerpt from the file it links to:

All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence, with the possible exception of some early civilizations in Peru which may have depended upon maritime resources. Grain farms can result in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificial fertilization, irrigation and crop rotation. It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural production, and so civilizations based on horticultural gardening have been very rare. Grain surpluses have been especially important because grain can be stored for a long time. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living: early civilizations included soldiers, artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labour and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations. However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture. It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labour predates plant and animal domestication.

Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word "civilization" is sometimes simply defined as "'living in cities'". Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade.

Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality.

I want to look at this, a fragment at a time.

"Grain farms can result in accumulated storage and a surplus of food" -- That's wealth. Grain farms can result in the accumulation of wealth, which is the basis of civilization.

"It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural production, and so civilizations based on horticultural gardening have been very rare." -- Supporting the view that the accumulation of wealth is necessary for the rise of civilization.

"Grain surpluses have been especially important because grain can be stored for a long time." -- Grain surpluses, important not because we know everyone has enough to eat, but because we can add the surplus to our accumulation and be confident it won't go bad "for a long time". We're not treating grain as food here. We're treating it as wealth.

"A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living... A surplus of food results in a division of labour and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations." -- Yes. And this defining trait of civilization arises because of the accumulation of wealth: The accumulation of wealth gives rise to civilization.

"However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture. It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labour predates plant and animal domestication."

Okay, now I have to stop. They begin this thought with the word however which means they're about to disagree with the previous thoughts in the paragraph (and with my evaluation of them). Here:

"However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses..."

It's easy to guess the unstated conclusion of that thought:

... but they were only hunter-gatherers, not a civilization.

This interpretation of their meaning is supported elsewhere in the article:

Morton Fried, a conflict theorist and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories

• Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
• Horticultural/pastoral societies in which there are generally two inherited social classes; chief and commoner.
• Highly stratified structures, or chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave.
• Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.

By this list, hunter-gatherers are the least complex category and civilizations the most complex category of human culture.

Okay. Perhaps we should say the accumulation of wealth is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for the rise of civilization. Perhaps; but we don't know that for sure. So let's just say the accumulation of wealth does not necessarily give rise to civilization.

But we don't know that, either. "All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence," the article says. It may be that, given enough time, the accumulation of wealth does necessarily give rise to civilization. In any case there is a clear connection between civilization and accumulation of wealth.


Go back to what Wikipedia said about the hunter-gatherers: "in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses". They give one example and one perhaps:

• some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest
• and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture.

"It is possible," they conclude, that food surpluses (and relatively large scale social organization, and the division of labor) predate plant and animal domestication.

Okay. But a natural surplus of food -- good hunting and fishing, say -- is not the same as accumulation of wealth. The salmon that were "central" to the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast were a "resource" provided by nature and owned by no one.

The natural surplus didn't exist because people had been accumulating it.

It's not that food was plentiful because the people were good gatherers. Rather the reverse: The people did well and their population grew because food was plentiful. "At one point the region had the highest population density of a region inhabited by Aboriginal peoples in Canada."

And they did develop "relatively large scale social organization and division of labour". Sounds like they were on their way to becoming a civilization.

I can see that a natural surplus of food could make civilization slow to develop. For the accumulation of wealth would have to depend on needs other than food. Newer, bigger, nicer homes, for example, or better tools to hunt and gather with.

The accumulation of wealth also depends on the concept of ownership. You know: This land is your land, this land is my land.

(with apologies to Woody Guthrie)

Development of the concept of ownership might be hindered by plentiful food. And if cultural development got the jump on wealth accumulation, and cultural growth outpaced the growth of wealth -- likely conditions, I should think, early on, among the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest -- then the concept of ownership might even have been suppressed by a cultural imperative.

And as for the Natufians:

The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduction of agriculture. The Natufian communities may be the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. Natufians founded Jericho which may be the oldest city in the world. Some evidence suggests deliberate cultivation of cereals...

Generally, though, Natufians exploited wild cereals.

Wild cereals. And they hunted gazelle. So again, nature provided. So there wasn't much need for farming. So there wasn't much of a chance for wealth to accumulate. And they didn't develop a civilization. Coincidence? Not likely.

More likely, the absence of civilization is evidence that they did indeed have natural food surpluses, not possibly, but definitely.