Against the Grain

1. The Standard Narrative of Civilizational Progress Is Fundamentally Flawed

Given what we now know, much of this narrative is wrong or seriously misleading.

Challenging assumptions. The traditional story posits a linear progression from hunter-gatherers to nomads, then farmers, leading inevitably to settled life, civilization, and the state. This narrative, deeply embedded in our understanding, assumes each step was a clear improvement in well-being, leisure, and social order. However, recent archaeological and historical evidence contradicts these assumptions.

Sedentism preceded farming. Contrary to the idea that agriculture enabled settled life, evidence shows sedentism occurred much earlier in resource-rich areas like wetlands, long before widespread farming. Furthermore, states emerged millennia after agriculture and sedentism were established, undermining the notion that they were immediate or necessary outcomes.

Agriculture's downsides. The shift to agriculture was not a sudden, universally desired leap forward. It was often slow, reversible, and carried significant costs, including increased labor, poorer diet, and worse health compared to diverse foraging lifestyles. The idea that people eagerly abandoned mobility for farming is also challenged by historical resistance to settlement.

2. Domestication Was a Long Process Transforming Fire, Plants, Animals, and Humans

One might arguably extend this argument to the early agrarian states and their patriarchal control over the reproduction of women, captives, and slaves.

Beyond plants and animals. Domestication, broadly understood, is the process by which humans gain control over the reproduction of other species. This began long before agriculture with fire, used for landscape management and cooking, fundamentally altering human biology and diet. The domus (household) became a new evolutionary module.

Co-evolution in the domus. The concentration of humans, domesticated plants (like wheat and barley), and animals (sheep, goats, pigs) in settlements created a unique environment. This led to rapid genetic and morphological changes in domesticates, making them dependent on humans, but also transformed humans through changes in diet, activity patterns, and exposure to new pathogens.

Extending control. The state, building on this foundation, extended this logic of control over reproduction to its human subjects. This included managing the reproduction of women within patriarchal families and, crucially, controlling the labor and reproduction of war captives and slaves, treating them as a form of "domesticated" human resource.

3. Early Sedentism and Towns Flourished in Wetlands, Not Arid Lands Requiring Irrigation

The prevailing view that "making the desert bloom" by irrigated agriculture was the foundation of the first substantial sedentary communities, however, turns out to be mistaken in nearly every particular.

Wetlands as cradles. The traditional view held that early towns arose in arid river valleys, requiring state-organized irrigation to support dense populations. However, the earliest large, permanent settlements in Mesopotamia (like Eridu and Uruk in their early phases) were located in rich deltaic wetlands.

Abundant, diverse resources. These wetland environments provided a dense and diverse array of wild resources:

• Fish, birds, and turtles
• Edible plants (reeds, sedges, water lily)
• Migrating game
  This abundance supported large, sedentary populations without intensive agriculture or complex irrigation systems.

Resilience and mobility. Wetland inhabitants exploited multiple ecological zones, buffering them against reliance on a single food source. Their mobility within the watery landscape, using boats, allowed them to access resources across different areas and seasons, a stark contrast to the fixed-field agriculture later associated with states.

4. Agriculture, Especially Grain Farming, Meant More Drudgery and Worse Health

Agriculturalists, on the contrary, have never looked so bad-in terms of their diet, their health, and their leisure.

Increased labor. Compared to hunting and gathering, which often involved bursts of intense activity followed by leisure, fixed-field agriculture demanded significantly more labor: clearing, tilling, sowing, weeding, harvesting, and processing. This increased drudgery was likely adopted out of necessity (population pressure, resource decline, coercion) rather than choice.

Nutritional decline. The shift to a diet heavily reliant on one or two cereal grains led to nutritional deficiencies compared to the broad-spectrum diet of foragers. Skeletal remains of early farmers show:

• Shorter stature
• Signs of malnutrition (e.g., iron-deficiency anemia)
• Increased tooth decay and bone pathologies

Reduced leisure and health. While agriculture could support larger populations, it often did so at the cost of individual health and leisure time. The romanticized image of the yeoman farmer enjoying the fruits of his labor is largely a later construct, not reflective of the harsh realities faced by early agriculturalists.

5. Early States Were Epidemiological Hotbeds Prone to Disease Collapse

Epidemic disease is, I believe, the 'loudest' silence in the Neolithic archaeological record.

Crowding diseases. The unprecedented concentration of people, livestock, and waste in early settlements created ideal conditions for the emergence and spread of infectious diseases previously unknown or rare in dispersed populations. Diseases like measles, mumps, smallpox, and influenza likely appeared for the first time.

Zoonotic leap. The close proximity of humans and domesticated animals facilitated the jump of pathogens across species barriers, leading to new zoonotic diseases. The "multispecies resettlement camp" was a perfect environment for this, with humans sharing diseases with:

• Livestock (sheep, goats, cattle, pigs)
• Commensals (rats, mice, sparrows)
• Their parasites (fleas, lice, ticks)

Trade and warfare vectors. State activities like long-distance trade and warfare (especially involving the movement of captives and armies) acted as major vectors, spreading diseases between previously isolated populations. While hard archaeological evidence is scarce, devastating epidemics likely caused many sudden collapses of early state centers.

6. Cereal Grains Were the Unique, Essential Tax Crop for Early States

History records no cassava states, no sago, yam, taro, plantain, breadfruit, or sweet potato states.

Ideal for appropriation. Unlike root crops or legumes that ripen unevenly or are hidden underground, cereal grains (wheat, barley, rice, millet, maize) grow above ground and ripen predictably and simultaneously. This makes them uniquely visible, assessable, and easy for state officials to monitor and confiscate as taxes.

Measurable and storable. Grains are easily measured by volume and weight, making accounting and rationing straightforward. They can be dried and stored for long periods, providing a reliable surplus to feed non-producers (elites, soldiers, artisans) and provision armies or cities under siege.

Transportable wealth. Grains have a high value-to-weight ratio compared to many other foodstuffs, making them suitable for bulk transport, especially by water. This allowed states to extract resources from a wider hinterland, expanding their economic base beyond the immediate vicinity of the capital.

7. Early States Relied Heavily on Coercion and Unfree Labor to Survive

Bondage appears to have been a condition of the ancient state's survival.

Compelling surplus production. In early agrarian societies, where land was relatively abundant and alternative subsistence options existed, people were not inherently motivated to produce a surplus beyond their needs. States had to compel this production through various forms of unfree labor.

Forms of bondage. Early states utilized a mix of coerced labor systems:

• War captives and chattel slavery
• Debt bondage
• Forced resettlement of conquered populations
• Corvee labor (mandatory public works)
• Communal tribute and serfdom

Manpower imperative. Population was the key resource for early states (for labor, taxes, and soldiers). States actively sought to acquire and retain people, often through warfare aimed at capturing populations rather than territory. Flight from the state was a constant concern, leading to laws and measures to prevent it.

8. Writing Was Primarily a Technology of State Control and Legibility

To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, reformed, corrected, punished.

Bookkeeping, not literature. The earliest forms of writing, like Mesopotamian cuneiform, were not initially developed for literature, history, or religion. They were tools of state administration, used for:

• Recording taxes and tribute
• Managing labor gangs and rations
• Inventorying resources (grain, livestock, people)
• Standardizing weights, measures, and work norms

Making society legible. States needed to make their populations and resources visible and accountable for effective appropriation. Writing facilitated this by creating standardized categories, lists, and records, allowing rulers to track and manage their realm from a distance.

Fragile as the state. This early literacy was largely confined to a small scribal class serving the state. When states collapsed, administrative writing often disappeared or drastically declined, suggesting it was a technology tied to state function rather than a universal cultural achievement.

9. Early States Were Inherently Fragile and Prone to Collapse

When, against the odds, it is built to the apex, the audience holds its breath as it sways and trembles, anticipating its inevitable collapse.

Structural vulnerabilities. Building a state atop the fragile grain-and-manpower complex introduced new risks. Dependence on a single annual harvest made states vulnerable to:

• Drought, floods, pests, and crop diseases
• Soil exhaustion and salinization from intensive farming
• Deforestation and siltation from resource extraction

Acute and chronic threats. States faced both sudden catastrophes (epidemics, major floods, invasions) and slower, insidious problems (environmental degradation, declining yields, population flight). These multiple pressures meant that states often had a short lifespan, with periods of collapse or fragmentation being common.

Overexploitation of the core. States often squeezed the most productive areas closest to the capital hardest for resources, especially in times of crisis. This overexploitation could deplete the core region, provoke resistance or flight, and ultimately undermine the state's own foundation.

10. "Collapse" Often Meant Disassembly and Could Improve Human Well-being

Why deplore "collapse," when the situation it depicts is most often the disaggregation of a complex, fragile, and typically oppressive state into smaller, decentralized fragments?

Not always catastrophic. The term "collapse" often carries negative connotations of civilizational ruin. However, the disappearance of a state center did not necessarily mean a demographic crash or a loss of culture (though it might mean a loss of monumental architecture and elite literacy).

Dispersal and decentralization. "Collapse" frequently involved the dispersal of populations from vulnerable urban centers to smaller, more resilient settlements or a return to more mobile subsistence strategies. This decentralization could lead to:

• Reduced exposure to epidemics
• Lower tax burdens and less forced labor
• Greater physical mobility and freedom
• A potential improvement in diet and health

Emancipation from the state. For many state subjects, particularly those in bondage or facing heavy exploitation, the breakdown of state power may have been experienced as an emancipation rather than a tragedy. The "dark ages" that followed state collapses were often dark only from the perspective of the former state elites and their chroniclers.

11. Life Outside the State Was Often Better: The Golden Age of Barbarians

Finally, there is a strong case to be made that life outside the state -life as a 'barbarian' - may often have been materially easier, freer, and healthier than life at least for nonelites inside civilization.

Beyond state control. For millennia after the first states emerged, the vast majority of the world's population lived outside their direct control. These "barbarians" (a term used ironically to denote nonstate peoples) inhabited diverse geographies unsuitable for intensive grain farming and state control.

Advantages of the periphery. Life outside the state offered several potential advantages:

• Avoidance of taxes, conscription, and forced labor
• Greater physical mobility and freedom
• More diverse and often healthier diets
• Reduced exposure to epidemic diseases

Enhanced by states. The existence of states, while posing a threat, also created new opportunities for barbarians through trade and, paradoxically, as sites for lucrative raiding and tribute extraction. This period, before states achieved global hegemony, could be considered a "golden age" for many nonstate peoples.

12. Barbarians Were Not Primitives Left Behind, But Often Refugees and State Competitors

Many of a state's adjacent barbarian populations may well have been, in effect, refugees from the state-making process itself.

Secondary primitivism. "Barbarians" were not simply static, primitive groups who failed to civilize. Many were former state subjects who had fled the state's burdens (taxes, war, disease, oppression) and adopted non-state subsistence strategies and social organization. This "going over to the barbarians" was a common response to state fragility.

State-barbarian symbiosis. States and barbarians were often "dark twins," evolving in relation to each other. Barbarian groups, particularly mobile pastoralists, could become powerful competitors for the agrarian surplus, engaging in raiding, demanding tribute, or controlling trade routes.

Complex interactions. Relations were not just hostile. Barbarians engaged in extensive trade with states, supplying essential raw materials and goods. They also served as mercenaries for states, sometimes becoming integrated into the state's military or even conquering and ruling states themselves, demonstrating the fluid boundary between state and nonstate life.

Last updated: May 7, 2025