I. Introduction: Understanding Ourselves
• State societies involve large differences in status, power, wealth, and privilege. These
societies differ considerably from earlier forms of social organization associated with
foraging economies.
• State societies involve a marked division of labor with various specialists supported by a
mass of ordinary citizens who provide them with the food necessary to sustain them and
the labor necessary for their projects.
• Although modern states generally do not draft their citizens for work or war, they share
other similarities. They’re stratified, their people pay taxes, and ordinary citizens work a
lot harder than foragers ever did.
II. State Formation
• A state is a form of social and political organization that has a formal, central government
and social stratification—a division of society into classes. As Neolithic economies spread,
new political entities, or polities, developed to manage them.
o Chiefdoms were precursors to states, with hereditary, privileged leaders (chiefs) and
a permanent political structure.
▪ The closer one is to the chief the greater one’s social importance, although it is
a matter of degree rather than of kind.
▪ Chiefdoms lack the sharp class divisions that characterize states.
o A state is a polity that has a formal, central government and social stratification—a
division of society into classes.
▪ To deal with the development and spread of the Neolithic economy, systems of
political authority arose to manage regulatory problems as a given population
grew and its economy increased in scale and diversity.
▪ The first states had formed in Mesopotamia by 5500 B.P. and in Mesoamerica
about 3,000 years later.
o The term primary states refers to those that arose on their own, emerging from
competition among chiefdoms.
▪ These first-generation states are known to have developed in Egypt,
Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, northern China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.
o Multiple factors, taking effect over a long period of time, contributed to the
formation of states.
A. Regulation of Hydraulic Economies
• In certain arid areas such as ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, states emerged to manage
systems of irrigation, drainage, and flood control (Wittfogel).
• Water control increases agricultural production, which may fuel population growth.
Having a larger population requires a political system able to regulate interpersonal and
intergroup relations as well as the means of production.
B. Regional Trade
• All states have well-developed trade networks. States may arise to control and regulate
key nodes in regional trade.
• Long-distance trade was important in the formation of states in Mesopotamia,
Mesoamerica, and Peru.
C. Population, War, and Circumscription
• Robert Carneiro saw three key factors interacting to promote state formation:
environmental circumscription, population increase, and warfare.
• Environmental circumscription may be physical or social.
o Physically circumscribed environments include small islands, river plains, oases,
and valleys with streams.
o Social circumscription exists when neighboring societies block expansion,
emigration, or access to resources.
• This theory explains many, but not all, cases of state formation. For instance, it seems to
explain state formation in the Andes. Highland Papua New Guinea, however, has had
environmental circumscription, warfare, and increasing population, but the region has
never been host to a state.
• Key aspects of state formation are changes in patterns of control over resources,
resulting in social stratification, and increasing regulatory concerns, fostering
management by state machinery.
• The changeover to a farming economy did not always lead to chiefdoms and states.
III. Attributes of States
• Six attributes can be used to distinguish states from earlier forms of society: A state controls a specific regional territory.
o Early states had productive agricultural economies, supporting dense populations.
▪ Often, these populations were nucleated in cities.
▪ The agricultural economies usually involved some form of water control or
irrigation.
o Early states used tribute and taxation to accumulate, at a central place, the resources
needed to support hundreds, or thousands, of specialists.
o States are stratified into social classes (e.g., elites, commoners, and slaves).
o Early states had imposing public buildings and monumental architecture, including
temples, palaces, and storehouses.
o Early states developed some form of record-keeping system, frequently a written
script.
IV. State Formation in the Middle East
• By 6,000 B.P., population was increasing most rapidly in the alluvial plain of southern
Mesopotamia.
o Mesopotamia refers to the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is
now southern Iraq and southwestern Iran.
o The growing population supported itself through irrigation and intensive river valley
agriculture.
o The first Middle Eastern towns appeared around 10,000 B.P.
o By 5500 B.P., towns had grown into cities. The earliest city-states were Sumer
(southern Iraq) and Elam (southwestern Iran).
A. Urban Life
• In early Middle Eastern settlements, houses of mud brick were built and rebuilt over
generations. Tells, or mounds, grew from the debris.
Jericho
• The earliest known town was Jericho, in what is now Israel, first settled by Natufian
foragers around 11,000 B.P. and later developing into a town of about 2,000 people.
• Around 9000 B.P., the town of Jericho was destroyed. It was rebuilt later as a town
with square houses with plaster floors and burial chambers beneath the floors.
• Pottery reached Jericho around 8000 B.P.
Çatalhöyük
• Çatalhöyük, a site located in the central part of what is now Turkey, prospered through long-distance trade—especially of obsidian, which was used to make tools
and ornaments. It was probably the largest settlement of the Neolithic, flourishing
between 8000 and 7000 B.P. with a population of up to 10,000 people.
• People lived in mud-brick dwellings that had separate areas for secular and ritual
activities.
• Ritual spaces were decorated with wall paintings centered on animals, danger, and
death.
• Two or three generations of a family were buried beneath their houses; and after two
or three generations of burials, the dwelling was burned.
• Çatalhöyük shows no signs of state-level sociopolitical organization.
B. An Early Ritual Center
• The earliest evidence for monumental architecture is found at Göbekli Tepe, in
southeastern Turkey.
• Göbekli Tepe was a ritual center of limestone blocks built by hunter-gatherers between
about 11,600 B.P. and 8200 B.P.
o Other known prehistoric megalithic sites, such as Stonehenge, were built much
later and by chiefdoms rather than foragers.
• The region offered plenty of wild game, fruits and nuts, migratory waterfowl, and dense
stands of wheat.
• Flint tools were used to carve massive T-shaped limestone pillars, many of which were
carved with images of animals, which may refer to origin myths, along with what may
be mythical ancestral figures.
• These ritual houses were eventually abandoned and filled in with dirt.
C. The Halafian and Ubaid Periods
• Halafian pottery (7500–6500 B.P.) is an early, widespread pottery style, first found at
Tell Halaf in the mountains of northern Syria.
o The small number of Halafian ceramics found suggests that they were luxury
goods associated with a social hierarchy.
• Ubaid pottery (7000–6000 B.P.), discovered in the deep levels of the Mesopotamian
cities of Ur, Uruk, and Eridu, diffused rapidly over a large area.
o It was first found and identified at the site of Tell al-Ubaid, located in the southern
part of what is now Iraq.
o Ubaid pottery is associated with advanced chiefdoms and perhaps the earliest
states.
• Emerging urbanism dating back more than 6,000 years has been identified in northern
Syria, including dwellings with hearths and other artifacts along with evidence of irrigated agriculture, long-distance trade, political leadership, and social differentiation.
• Political unrest and war have impeded archaeological research in sites in Iraq and Syria.
D. Social Ranking and Chiefdoms
• The anthropologist Morton Fried (1960) divided societies into three types (egalitarian,
ranked, and stratified) based on the kinds of status distinctions within society.
• Egalitarian societies are most typically found among foragers.
o These societies lack status distinctions except for those based on age, gender, and
individual qualities, talents, and achievements.
o Status distinctions are usually not inherited.
• Ranked societies have hereditary inequality but lack social stratification.
o Individuals are often ranked according to their genealogical distance from the
chief.
o There are two kinds of ranked societies.
▪ Type 1: Individuals are ranked, but villages are independent of one another.
▪ Type 2: Both individuals and villages are ranked, and there is loss of village
autonomy. Flannery has argued that only this second type should be called a
chiefdom, because it is marked by differences in rank among both
individuals and communities.
• Stratified societies are characterized by social stratification—organization into sharp
social divisions—based on unequal access to resources.
o Class status in these societies is often hereditary.
• Chiefdoms first appeared in the Middle East around 7300 B.P.
o High-status people were buried with distinctive items, such as vessels, statuettes,
necklaces, and high-quality ceramics. Such goods were buried with children too
young to have achieved or earned prestige on their own.
o Other clues of the existence of chiefdoms that arise from the archaeological record
include the presence of a common canal to irrigate several villages and the
emergence of a two-tier settlement hierarchy, with small villages clustering
around a large village that has public buildings.
E. Advanced Chiefdoms
• Excavations at Tell Hamoukar dating back more than 5,500 years suggest that advanced
chiefdoms arose in northern areas of the Middle East independently of developments in
southern Mesopotamia.
• The Tell Hamoukar site covers 32 acres that, by 5700 B.P., were enclosed by a
defensive wall.
• There is evidence at Tell Hamoukar of large-scale food storage and preparation, which indicates that its elites were hosting and entertaining in the manner of a chief.
• Excavators have also uncovered an array of seals used to mark storage containers as
well as stamp more elaborate goods with a mark of administrative authority.
• A huge battle destroyed Tell Hamoukar around 5500 B.P. The site provides the earliest
evidence of large-scale organized warfare in the Middle East.
• Archaeological excavation at this and most other sites in Syria and Iraq has been halted
by ongoing warfare.
F. The Rise of the State
• Early states emerged in the Middle East between 6000 and 5500 B.P.
o Evidence includes monumental architecture, aqueducts, central storehouses, and
written records.
o By 5700 B.P., irrigation had allowed Ubaid communities to spread; travel and
trade were expanding, and social differentiation increased.
• The Uruk period (6000–5200 B.P.), named after a prominent city-state in southern
Mesopotamia, is characterized by the appearance of the first major cities ruled by local
kings.
o This period established Mesopotamia as the “cradle of civilization.”
• Writing originated in Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia, around 5600 B.P.
o Writing was initially used to develop and handle administrative accounts and
recordkeeping for a centralized economy, reflecting the needs of trade.
o Both the Sumerian (southern Mesopotamia) and the Akkadian (northern
Mesopotamia) languages were written in cuneiform, a style of writing in which
wedge-shaped impressions were made on raw clay.
o Mesopotamian priests managed herding, farming, manufacture, and trade; and
after writing was invented, priests used cuneiform writing to keep track of
temples’ economic activities.
• Metallurgy is the knowledge of the properties of metals, including their extraction and
processing and the manufacture of metal tools.
o The discovery of smelting, the process of using high temperatures to extract pure
metal from an ore, aided the rapid development of metallurgy after 5000 B.P.
o The Bronze Age began when alloys of arsenic and copper, or tin and copper,
became common and greatly extended the use of metals.
o The Iron Age began once high-temperature iron smelting was mastered; in the Old
World after 3200 B.P., the use of iron spread rapidly.
• Large populations in Bronze Age Mesopotamia were densely concentrated in walled
cities.
o Secular authority replaced temple rule around 4600 B.P.
o Land became private property that was bought and sold.o These societies had a well-defined class structure, with a complex stratification of
nobles, commoners, and slaves.
V. Other Early States
A. Asian States
• The Indus River Valley, located in modern northwestern India and Pakistan, was the site
of a state that flourished between 4600 and 3900 B.P., incorporating at its peak 1,000
cities, towns, and villages, spanning 280,000 square miles.
o The major cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, exhibited urban planning with
carefully laid out waste-water systems and residential sectors, as well as evidence
of social stratification.
o The writing system has yet to be deciphered.
o The state collapsed, apparently through warfare, around 3900 B.P.
• The first Chinese state was that of the Shang dynasty (3750 B.P.), which arose in the
Huang He (Yellow) River area of northern China.
o The Shang state was characterized by urbanism, palaces, human sacrifice, and
distinct social classes.
o The Shang had bronze metallurgy and an elaborate writing system, and in warfare
they used chariots and took prisoners.
• Other early states, including in the Peruvian Andes, also came to rely on metallurgy.
o Andean civilization, like Mesoamerican state formation, was truncated by Spanish
conquest.
B. The Andes and the Inka
• As in Mesopotamia and China, many other early civilizations came to rely on
metallurgy.
• A hemisphere away, in the Peruvian Andes, metalworking appeared around 4000 B.P.
• Ancient Andeans were skilled workers of bronze, copper, and gold.
• Andean civilizations culminated with the Inka empire (ca 1400–1532 C.E.), the largest
in the Americas.
• Andean civilization, like Mesoamerican state formation, was truncated by Spanish
conquest.
C. African States
• Egypt developed as one of the world’s first states, with the Egyptian influence
extending south along the Nile into what is now Sudan.• The emergence of several states in sub-Saharan Africa is associated with the diffusion
of iron smelting, aided by the migrations of Bantu speakers that began around 2100 B.P.
o The Mwenemutapa empire and, later, the Great Zimbabwe state, developed in
what is now Zimbabwe. The Mwenemutapa kingdom emerged through powerful
networks of trade. The capital city of the Great Zimbabwe state was protected by a
stone enclosure.
o The kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, Songhay, and Kanem-Bornu emerged in the Sahel
region of western Africa, an area rich in gold, precious metals, ivory, and other
resources that were extensively traded after 1250 B.P.
o Cities in the Sahel also served as southern terminal points for trans-Saharan trade.
The ancient kingdom of Ghana was the first of these states to form, with a capital
at Kumbi Saleh.
o Benin, which thrived in the 15th century C.E., developed in what is now southern
Nigeria. Benin is known for its artistic creativity, expressed in terra-cotta, ivory,
and brass sculpture.
VI. State Formation in Mesoamerica
A. Early Chiefdoms and Elites
• The Olmec chiefdoms on Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast flourished between 3200 and
2500 B.P.
o The chiefdoms’ centers consisted of large earthen mounds arranged around a
central plaza, demonstrating their chiefs’ ability to harness human labor for large
construction projects.
o The Olmec also carved massive stone heads, perhaps as images of their chiefs or
ancestors.
• Long-distance trade routes linked the Olmec with other parts of Mesoamerica, such as
the Oaxaca Valley in the southern highlands and the Valley of Mexico.
• These chiefdoms expanded rapidly through intense competitive interaction. Around
3000 B.P., 25 or so separate and autonomous chiefly centers in Mexico were
nevertheless sufficiently interactive and competitive to borrow and incorporate new
ideas and innovations from other regions.
• State formation involves one chiefdom incorporating several others into an emergent
state that it then controls. Waging warfare and attracting followers are two key elements
in state formation.
B. Warfare and State Formation: The Zapotec Case
• The first Mesoamerican state, the Zapotec state, arose in the Valley of Oaxaca. Zapotec was a chiefdom from about 500 B.C.E. to 100 B.C.E., and then a state
from 100 B.C.E. to 700 C.E.
o The city of Monte Albán served as its capital for 1,200 years.
• Armed conflict in Oaxaca began as raiding, with no permanent acquisition of territory.
The first evidence for organized conquest warfare in Oaxaca occurs simultaneously with
evidence for emerging state organization.
• As states emerge and grow, they develop an internally specialized administrative
organization—a bureaucracy.
o States typically have at least a four-level hierarchy of settlements. (Chiefdoms
have no more than three.)
o Conquest warfare helps the state build its bureaucracy.
o To expand, a state must be able to send delegates to subjugate and rule in distant
territories, suggesting the importance of administrative hierarchies.
• The conquest of distant polities and bureaucratic growth were integral parts of the
process of Zapotec primary state formation.
o Surrounding the Main Plaza at Monte Albán were specialized buildings, including
palaces, temples, and ball courts. Hieroglyphs on one building record how the
Zapotec conquered regions to the north, west, and southwest, while certain areas
to the east and south resisted.
o Eventually, Monte Albán lost its prominence as other Zapotec centers challenged
its authority.
C. States in the Valley of Mexico
• The city of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico flourished between 100 and 700 C.E.
• After 500 B.C.E., new maize varieties and small-scale irrigation appeared in the
southern part of the Valley of Mexico, leading the population to increase and begin to
spread north.
• By the beginning of the common era, a settlement hierarchy—with communities of
different size, function, and types of structures—had emerged.
• The four-tiered settlement hierarchy here is considered evidence for state organization.
• In the case of Teotihuacán, this pattern was associated with intensive, irrigation-based
agriculture, status differentiation, and complex architecture.
• After its peak (100–700 C.E.), Teotihuacán experienced a rapid decline in size and
power, its population dispersed, and it was succeeded by the lesser Toltec state (900–
1200 C.E.) and then the Aztecs.
• As agriculture intensified, trade networks expanded, and immigration brought greater
population growth to the valley (1200–1520 C.E.), forming the basis for the Aztec state.
o Trade was another factor in the renaissance of the Valley of Mexico. The
manufacture of luxury goods for export was an important part of the economy of the Aztec capital.
VII. Why States Collapse
• The factors that may contribute to state collapse include invasion, disease, famine,
prolonged drought, and environmental degradation.
o In ancient Mesopotamia, as water evaporated from irrigation canals, water-borne
salts became concentrated in the fields, eventually creating a poisonous environment
for plants.
A. The Maya and Their Fall
• The Maya state of the classic period flourished between 300 and 900 C.E. in parts of
what are now Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Belize.
• Archaeological clues to the Maya decline have been found at Copán in western
Honduras.
o Copán was the largest site in the southeastern region of the Maya area.
o The last inscribed, but unfinished, monument has the date of 822 C.E.; the site
was probably abandoned by 830 C.E.
o Copán’s collapse has been linked to deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion
linked to overpopulation and overfarming. At Copán, 80 percent of the buried
skeletons show signs of anemia, and skeletal evidence suggests that
malnourishment was experienced by all who lived there, including nobles.
• Increased warfare and political competition also destabilized the Maya state.
o The archaeological record shows an increased concern with fortifications just
before the state’s collapse.
o In this time period, some structures were burned, some sites were abandoned, and
bodily remains show signs of violence.
o Maya texts document competition and warfare between dynasties jockeying for
position and power.
▪ Archeologists now believe that social, political, and military upheaval and
competition have as much to do with Maya decline and abandonment of
cities as do natural environmental factors.