This Fleeting World

Acceleration: The Agrarian Era 45
tainly all early states engaged enthusiastically in warfare. The rulers of the
earliest states also engaged in symbolic activities that were equally vital to
the maintenance of their power. They organized extravagant displays of
wealth, often involving human sacrifices, and built palaces, temples, and
monuments to the dead, often in the form of pyramids or ziggurats (temple
towers consisting of a lofty pyramidal structure built in successive stages
with outside staircases and a shrine at the top). These elaborate structures
were designed to raise the prestige of local rulers and of the cities they
ruled and the gods they worshiped.
Imperial States
Through time the scale of state systems expanded as city-states traded
with and sometimes absorbed other city-states. Eventually imperial systems
emerged in which a single ruler controlled a large region of many
cities and towns. Sargon of Akkad (reigned c. 2334 bce–2279 bce) may
have established the first imperial state, in Mesopotamia, north of Sumer.
By the middle of the second millennium bce the Shang dynasty (approximately
1766–1045 bce) had created an imperial state in northern China.
Through time such states became more common. As states expanded,
they taxed and administered larger areas, either directly or indirectly
through local rulers. Improvements in transportation and communications,
such as the appearance of wheeled vehicles in Afro-Eurasia during
the second millennium bce, extended the reach of states, their officials,
and their armies.
However, their influence reached much further than their power, as
traders bridged the gaps between states, creating large networks of commercial
and cultural exchange. Indeed, some experts have claimed that as
early as 2000 bce exchanges along the Silk Roads connecting China and
the Mediterranean had already created a single, Eurasia-wide system of
exchanges.
As impressive as these large and powerful communities were, we
should remember the limits of their power and influence. Few agrarian
states took much interest in the lives of their citizens as long as they paid
their taxes and supplied their labor power when it was needed. Maintaining
law and order outside of the major cities was usually left to regional
rulers or nobles. Vast territories also lay beyond the direct control of imperial
rulers. The scholar Rein Taagepera has estimated that early during the