Dawn and Bloom

Chapter 1 Dawn and Bloom 09/09/19 ; pages 9-10 incomplete “You can have a lord, you can have a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector” (Sumerian proverb).1 The oldest testimonies by which we can relate to our ancestors have been left on the walls of caves in Indonesia (40,000 BC) and in Europe where humans moved during the last glaciation. From lives that cannot have been only “nasty” and “brutish,” they have bequeathed us in the caves of Chauvet (30,000 BC), Altamira, Lascaux, paintings whose subtleties surpass those of some later millenaries. They lived from hunting and gathering the natural products of the earth in a region that must have been like Northern Scandinavia today. We know that hunting, especially hunting large animals, requires collaboration and coordination between individuals that are individually much weaker than their prey. Neuroscience shows that a critical development in the human brain concerns the neocortex and the Grotte Chauvet (30,000 years ago) parts that are involved in communication.2 Aristotle empha- sized in Politics that men are di↵erent from, say, bees, because they are endowed with language for complex interactions. 1Kramer, N. S. 2See Shultz and Dunbar (2010), McNally et al. (2012). We also know, now..., that solitary confinement is one of the harshest forms of punishment. 1 2 CHAPTER 1. BEGINNINGS A critical step in human development took place with the invention of agriculture soon after the end of the last ice age, 12 000 years ago. The two essential el- ements for agriculture are water and light, (This is well known by anyone who had to care for a garden). After the last glaciation, two places o↵ered a perfect combination of light and water. These two places appear clearly in a photograph from space, despite the climate changes that have taken place in the last 15 000 years. The first is the dark green spot in what is now Irak. In the lower plain of Mesopotamia, a flat area is exquisitely embraced by the two arms of the Tigris and the Euphrates. (Mesopotamia, in greek, “between rivers”). The second is the valley of the Nile. The fertile crescent The region from lower Mesopotamia through upper Mesopotamia, to the Mediterranean shore and the valley of the Nile has been called the “fertile crescent”.3 Geography determined the cradle of civilization as we know it. The story begins in the part on the left and on the top of the crescent, from Jericho to the north of Mesopotamia “that had sufficient rainfall to support dry-farming” (Garfinkel, 2013). Humans had passed through that hinge from Africa to the Euro-Asian continent for tens of thousands or years. At the end of the last ice age, the region presented favorable conditions between deserts, mountains and seas, with abundant sunlight, for the introduction of the culture of germi- nated seeds under seasonal rains. Already in the 10th millenary BCE, agriculture could generate a surplus that fed urban activities, as attested by remains of settlements in Jericho. Our knowledge about this pe- riod is fragmentary but good progress is being made. Göbekli Tepe, dated in the 10th millenary, was discovered only in 1963, and most of it is still buried. 3The expression has been introduced by Breasted (1916) of the University of Chicago in high school textbooks. 3 The Sumerian Takeo↵ As so often in our journey through history, geography comes first. Mesopotamia is divided in two regions. The northern part is relatively high while the southern part is flat: the elevation of Bagdad, 400 miles from the sea is only 150 feet. In Northern Mesopotamia, the land is higher than the river bed. It is rain fed and at the end of the last glaciation, there was sufficient rain for the development of agriculture. This is where the oldest human construc- tions have been found. In this geographical context, villages present the proper scale of settlement concen- tration for the capture of positive externalities (social and cultural interactions, collaborations in construc- tions or large e↵orts, insurance). The productivity of the land was not sufficient for the nourishment of cities. The archeological evidence confirms that the first social organizations took place first in villages. Some of them evolved, through a slow process, into small cities. In the South, the productive area has the shape of a diamond (or an egg) that is inserted between two rivers. Coming from the mountains of what is now Eastern Turkey, the Tigris (North) and the Euphrates are subject to a strong yearly cycle with a more than seven fold variation between trough (in September) and peak (around April-May), as represented in Figure 1.1. People did not settle in the southern part before the end of the 4th millenium BC. This evolution may have been caused by two factors. First, a reduction of the rainfall led to a receding of the water in the swamps of the flatlands (verify). Second, the geographical conditions require an evolution of the social relations that enables strong coordination between individuals. Contrary to the North, the ground is not higher than the rivers (in some periods of the year, it may be below), and there is little rain. The protection from the dangerous rivers, the adaptation to the strong yearly cycle (left part of Figure 1.1) which could alter their course, and the capture the water when needed for irrigation required the construction of an elaborate system of dikes and levies. Traces of these networks are presented in the right part of Figure 1.1. Under proper water management, these lands became extraordinarily productive with more than one crop per year. The yields that were much higher than in the North led to an explosion of population, and the agricultural surplus led to the birth and the growth of cities. 4 CHAPTER 1. BEGINNINGS Figure 1.1: Discharge profiles and canals networks Source: Adams (1981), Fig 1, p. 4, Fig 6, p. 34. Cities The separate and sequential evolution of cities in Northern and Southern Mesopotamia have been summarized by Jason Ur (2010) in a remarquable diagram that is reproduced here (Figure 1.2). On the right panel, cities are defined by an area of more than 40 hectares while villages have less than 10 ha. (1 ha is equal to 2.5 acres). Hence, the sum of the two settled areas is less than 100 percent. Note however that the “intermediate size” between 10 and 40ha represents only 10 to 20 percent of the settled area. Cities must have a minimum size to benefit from the increasing returns that are generated by positive externalities. Lower Mesopotamia presented after 3000 BCE a hotbed for the first network of cities in the history of mankind. These cities were autonomous and formed independent states. In their contribution to the development of civilization, the city-states of Mesopotamia rival with the city-states of Italy before the Renaissance. The interactions in cities, and the emulation of people living close together, stimulates inno- vation. The most spectacular has been the invention of writing which started as a necessary accounting tool for the management of the agricultural resources (to be seen below). However, the emulation and rivalries between cities also lead to costly warfare. These, and changes in 1 5 Southern Mesopotamia Northern Mesopotamia 5000 BC Village Societies 4500 BC Kh. Fakhar Extensive & 4000 BC Non-Nucleated Brak (“proto-urbanism”) (no data) 3500 BC Initial ? Urbanism Brak Uruk 3000 BC “Hyper- Deurban- Urbanism” ization Uruk 2500 BC “City- Territorial States” Polities 2000 BC Figure 2. Schematic illustration of the scale and distribution of urban places in southernSource: and Ur (2010,northern 2012). Mesopotamia, 5000- 2000 BC. Points with solid outlines are extensive “proto- urban” settlements. Figure 1.2: Uban evolutions and cities (3500-1000 BCE) the water regimes,4 eventually weakened the cities that become preys to outsiders attracted by their wealth. They eventually declined in the midst of exploitative empires. December 27, 2012 DRAFT A necessary condition for a city is the agricultural surplus of the surrounding land. That agricultural surplus was generated by technological progress, seeder plow, draft animals5 and especially, irrigation. The productive contribution of a city is generated by the increasing returns to scale in activities. In Egypt, cities remained small with the late exception of Alexandria. They remained by and large centers of administration and temples that lived o↵the extraordinary fertileFig. 1 valley of the Nile. Why does Chicago exist? Going up the waterway of the Great Lakes and aiming for the center of the land mass of Northern American continent, the most natural point to disembark is... Chicago. The location provided a starting point for the building of the city. A city can be defined economically by increasing returns. Many activities generate externalities or require fixed costs that are profitable only when the local market is of a sufficient scale. Specialization (e.g. the pin factory of Adam Smith) increases efficiency. But specialization requires a market larger than the city and therefore trade with other areas. In the cities of Mesopotamia, the standardization of some ceramics improved the efficient of production. But this standardization requires trade in order to reach a variety of customers. The specialization of a city creates a demand for goods that are not produced in the city. Cities, increasing returns, specialization and 4MORE on Euphrates’ change of course, salinization, etc... 5Garfinkel ch 3 p.100 6 CHAPTER 1. BEGINNINGS Neighborhood, Ur around 2000 BC Neighborhood, Ghadames (Lybia) today On the left, gray areas are public space; buildings identified as neighborhood chapels are marked ‘C.’ ” The city of Ghadames is at the intersection of Libya, Tunisia and Algeria.

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