Lecture 32: The World That Agrarian Civilizations Made

The World That Agrarian Civilizations Made ..................................

LECTURE

So, the many striking similarities between Agrarian civilizations, even

where there were no signi¿ cant contacts, count as one of the most

interesting and important factors about human history because they

provide powerful reasons for thinking that human history is in some

sense directional—that it was shaped by large, general factors that you

could only see if you look at human history on a large scale.

W

hy were all Agrarian civilizations so similar despite the limited

contact between them? Why did human societies in different

parts of the world not evolve in utterly different ways? The fact

that they did not suggests that there are large forces, perhaps related to our

astonishing adaptability as a species, that drive human history in particular

directions despite local differences in geography and cultural traditions.

It is tempting to think that, ultimately, those similarities derive from the

human capacity for collective learning, which ensured that, over time,

human societies—wherever they might appear—would acquire increasing

resources that would allow the appearance of larger and more complex

societies. In short, it may be collective learning, the de¿ ning feature of our

species, that helps explain the apparent directionality of human history. This

lecture concentrates on general features of the 4,000-year era dominated

by Agrarian civilizations. Instead of discussing each civilization in turn,

we will discuss Agrarian civilization in general. As Robert Wright puts it,

“if we relax our vision, and let these details go fuzzy, then a larger picture

comes into focus: As the centuries À y by, civilizations may come and go, but

civilization À ourishes, growing in scope and complexity” (Christian, Maps of

Time, p. 283).

Though labels for eras and types of societies are arti¿ cial, we need them

because to understand the past we have to break it into manageable

chunks. Chronologically, we will use two interchangeable labels for the

epoch from 3000 B.C.E. to about 1000 C.E.: the “later Agrarian” era and

the “era of Agrarian civilizations.” This epoch was dominated by Agrarian

civilizations.