Week Two:
The Ancient and Classic World
Part One: The Early Empires
Paleolithic Man
Omnivorous
Early tools: what nature provided
Biological and Social Evolution
End of the Wurm Glaciation (30,000 B.C.), advanced tool use
Tribal in organization; 5-6 families
Tools
Originally found
Later Formed
Only what could be carried, mostly primary tools (few tool making tools)
Only Human Power
Had Fire
Social Organization
The tribe -- The family
The individual
Trade and Barter with other tribes – evidence of social transmission
Courtship, Women, Incest, Wives and Raids
Digression: The Issue of Trust, for widely spread
out populations
Humanity; Kinship; Gaijin; Is Morality constant?
Mortality
Close to the edge of starvation
Migratory
Violent –
Digression
– time horizons
End of the Paleolithic age – perhaps 20 million, widely spread
Neolithic Man
The new Stone age – tools became more intricate; grinding replaced flaking
More intricate cave art
Higher social development?
Agriculture and Domestication
Origin in the fertile crescent – spread from there
Barley and Wheat
Sheep and goats
Later, other animals
Digression
– Kemmer’s point on domestication
Early Settlements (7,000 – 4,000 b.c.)
Agriculture allowed; indeed required, settlements
Annual vs. daily fluctuations in food
Higher population densities
Health of hunter-gatherers vs. Pastoralists vs. Farmers
Digression
– measuring early per-capita income
Greater social organization – beginning of specialized labor
Digression
– Vertical or Hierarchical organization
Digression
– The role of custom and
religion – NO EXPERIMENTATION
Digression
--Property Rights
Trade
Trade between migratory tribes
Trade between settlements
Trade over greater distances –
specialized labor or specialized products?
Spread of Agriculture
Different forms of it, Taro root, rice, wheat, millet and Soy
Pastoralists and the Horse
Generalizable?
Size – communities of 10-50 families
Early cities?
Early proto-cities
Digression
-- Imperial or trade oriented?
First empire
No natural resources – except rich agricultural land
Required extensive social organization
Digression
– example of relative price effects
Copper vs. Stone Tools
Vertical organization required
Priestly caste to organize work, specialization required
Writing
Digression
– Verse vs. Prose
Memorization
of legends vs. contracts
Self
correcting vs. alternative interpretations
Administrative needs
A large administration needed
Adopted to other commercial purchases
Contracts, debts, etc.
Quickly improved
Spread of Sumerian Civilization
Trade (Raiding) expeditions
Spread
of cultural concepts to
Spread
of concepts to Anatolia, Aegean,
Paleolithic Villages: a recap
Agrarian, very little specialized labor
Law via custom and interpretation
Communal Property rights
Deeply Conservative (Risk-adverse) societies
Limited geographic extent
Digression: Linguistic Differences of early
societies
Simplicity
of Language?
No
ability to spread?
No or limited hierarchical organization
The Early empires
Hierarchical Social Structures
New thought patterns; religions, beliefs, etc.
Digression: Materialism
Reoccurring attacks from less advanced neighbors
Plunder, Pillage, Conquest….
The early Ruling Class
Priest Class, (organizing society)
Warrior Class, (defending against other civilizations)
Origins of the early ruling class
Native, differentiated
Native, merit
Foreign Conquerors/ tribal or ethnic
Private Property rights questionable – Marxist interpretations
Imperial Competition
Grew in size, came to compete with each other
Essentially predatory in nature
Predatory in Economic and Non-Economic Ways: human ambitions
Domination, Power, Magnificence
Digression: Absolute advantages, Comparative
advantages
Digression: Infinite Human Wants
Economic Benefits of Empires
Undoubted changes in social systems, in organizational principles
Technical Innovation seems to have been sparse
Most of the technology predated the written age
Iron,
a weapon, probably from
Weapons and the art of War
The spread of Plantation Farming
Individual farmers (low taxable surplus)
Slave-estate farming (larger taxable surplus)
Payment in Kind – Payment in specie
Trade and Development
Again, few technological innovations; except military ones
Land trade always very limited; cost of transportation
100
miles by land = Novo Carthago to
Mesopotamian trade very limited, and often raids anyway
Mediterranean
sea vs.
Digression: the sea peoples
Original
traders of the
New alphabet
Independent City-states; Large neighbors
Politically independent, but Trade linked, Colonies
Digression;
Examples --
Meager Natural Resources
Politically fragmented; the mountainous city state
Became seafarers, subject to barbarian invasions
Coinage
Digression: Money is a
Store of
Value
Unit
of Account
Medium
of exchange
The
problem of “the coincidence of wants”
Digression; Examples -- Syracusa, Trapezus
Mediterranean world was still very sparsely populated
Relieve Population pressures, relocate malcontents
Exploit resources that Neolithic natives could not; fertile river valleys
Specialization: gains from specialization, or from local advantages
Phoenician’s eclipsed by the Greeks, after Alexander the Great
Alexander unified the Greeks; the Macedonian Empire
The
Successors; the cultural spread of
Digression:
The persistence of differences among Minorities
The spread of Roman Power
The Roman Legal and Political System
The role of property rights – no hindrance to commerce
The
The organizing principles – The Roman Legion
Digression – the Roman Legion, the Corvus
The civic virtues – aqueducts
1 -- Economic Digression: How big can an empire grow; and where do they come from? Since power depends on the cost of Army (fixed, but very large), resources will grow exponentially but borders will grow arithmetically, but the cost of communication grows exponentially as well. Result – natural limits to the size of an empire.
2 -- Economic Digression: Why do they always fall? Olsen’s hypothesis was distributive
coalitions; as they are stable, new
groups will arise to seek rents, once they exist they never go away. They multiply over time, until all of
society is engaged in rent-seeking, and fails.
The spread of commerce and rule of law
Internal and external security
The accumulation and application of capital
Digression
– managing large projects
Population
Average life-span
Per capita income (slaves)
Average or mean income
The barbarian pressures (age of migration)
and the changed nature of the Germans/Goths/Huns vs. Gauls
The internal Decay
The bureaucracy
The tax base
The currency crises – coinage debasement
The Manorial System
As trade contracted, self-sufficiency, and economic fragmentation
The Diocletian reforms – wage, price and work controls; complete failures
Classical Economies grew through more inputs
Gains from specialization, and trade
Gains from plunder and conquest
Gains from Organization
No incentive to save on labor
War, Government, Art and conspicuous consumption
Gains from conquest, and taking, not from ingenuity