Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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inated the southern Mesopotamian region of Sumer. The population
crowding into the irrigated floodplain was now a sizable proportion of
humanity. Whereas hunting and gathering groups generally regarded
resources as owned by and available to all, the new agricultural era permitted
an unequal ownership of land and food. The first nonfarmers had
appeared.
Class distinctions began to develop once everyone no longer had to
work the fields in order to eat. The emergence of religious and political
classes that oversaw the distribution of food and resources led to development
of administrative systems to collect food from farmers and redistribute
it to other segments of society. Increasing specialization following the
emergence of social classes eventually led to the development of states and
governments. With surplus food, a society could feed priests, soldiers, and
administrators, and eventually artists, musicians, and scholars. To this day,
the amount of surplus food available to nonfarmers sets the level to which
other segments of society can develop.
The earliest known writing, cuneiform indentations baked into clay
tablets, comes from Uruk. Dating from about 3000 bc, thousands of such
tablets refer to agricultural matters and food allocation; many deal with
food rationing. Writing helped a diversifying society manage food production
and distribution, as population kept pace with food production
right from the start of the agricultural era.
Rivalries between cities grew along with their populations. The organization
of militias reflects the concentration of wealth that militarized Mesopotamian
society. Huge walls with defensive towers sprang up around cities.
A six-mile-long wall circling Uruk spread fifteen feet thick. Wars between
Sumerian city-states gave rise to secular military rulers who crowned themselves
as the governing authority. As the new rulers appropriated land from
the temples and large estates became concentrated in the hands of influential
families and hereditary rulers, the concept of private property was born.
The few million acres of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
fed a succession of civilizations as the rich valley turned one conquering
horde after another into farmers. Empires changed hands time and again,
but unlike soils on the mountain slopes where agriculture began, the rich
floodplain soil did not wash away when cleared and planted. Coalescence
of Sumerian cities into the Babylonian Empire about 1800 bc represented
the pinnacle of Mesopotamian organizational development and power.
This merger solidified a hierarchical civilization with formalized distinctions
recognizing legal classes of nobility, priests, peasants, and slaves.
rivers of life