266 CHAPTER 11 | The Emergence of Cities and States
EVIDENCE OF CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY
Evidence of centralized authority in ancient civilizations
comes from sources such as law codes, temple records, and
royal chronicles. Excavation of the city structures them-
selves provides additional evidence because they can show
definite signs of city planning. The precise astronomical
layout of the Mesoamerican city Teotihuacan, described
earlier, attests to strong, centralized control.
Monumental buildings and temples, palaces, and
large sculptures are usually found in ancient civilizations.
For example, the Great Pyramid for the tomb of Khufu,
the Egyptian pharaoh, is 755 feet long (236 meters) and
481 feet high (147 meters); it contains about 2.3 million
stone blocks, each with an average weight of 2.5 tons. The
Greek historian Herodotus reports that it took 100,000
men twenty years to build this tomb. Such gigantic struc-
tures required a powerful central authority to harness the
considerable labor force, engineering skills, and raw ma-
terials necessary for their construction.
Another indicator of the existence of centralized au-
thority is writing, or some form of recorded information
(Figure 11.5). With writing, central authorities could dis-
seminate information and store, systematize, and deploy
memory for political, religious, and economic purposes.
Scholars attribute the initial motive for the develop-
ment of writing in Mesopotamia to record keeping of
state affairs. Writing allowed early governments to track
accounts of their food surplus, tribute records, and other
business receipts. Some of the earliest documents appear
to be just such records—accountings of bought and sold
vegetables and animals, taxes, and storehouse inventories.
Before 5,500 years ago, records were comprised of
tokens—ceramic pieces with different shapes indicative
of different commercial objects. Thus a cone shape could
represent a measure of grain, or a cylinder could be an
animal. As the system developed, tokens became more
sophisticated, representing different animals; processed
foods such as oil, trussed ducks, or bread; and manufac-
tured or imported goods such as textiles and metal.^6 Ul-
timately, clay tablets with impressed marks representing
objects replaced these tokens.
By 5,000 years ago in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk
in Iraq (which likely derives its modern name from
this ancient place), a new writing technique emerged.
Writers would use a reed stylus to make wedge-shaped
markings on a tablet of damp clay. Originally, each mark-
ing stood for a word. Because most words in this language
were monosyllabic, over time the markings came to stand
for syllables (Figure 11.6).
Controversy surrounds the question of the earliest
evidence of writing. Traditionally, the earliest writing was
linked to Mesopotamia. However, in 2003 archaeologists
working in the Henan Province of central China discov-
ered signs carved into 8,600-year-old tortoise shells; these
markings resemble later-written characters and predate
the Mesopotamian evidence by about 2,000 years.^7Figure 11.5 The
impermanence
of spoken words
contrasts with the
relative permanence
of written records.
In all of human
history, writing has
been independently
invented at least
five times.(^6) Lawler, A. (2001). Writing gets a rewrite. Science 292, 2419.
(^7) Li, X., et al. (2003). The earliest writing? Sign use in the seventh millen-
nium bc at Jiahu, Henan Province, China. Antiquity 77, 31–44.