Cycle Of Civilisations part 1 - Origins

[Elliot Kane]

Because I can't get to the interesting bit without this

This is really more of a prologue piece to what will follow, and is hardly likely to strike anyone as new or original.

Still, I hope some of you may find it of some interest regardless. And it will definitely be useful later when I get to examine the Cycle itself in full detail.

[Elliot Kane]

The Cycle Of Civilisations part 1 - Origins

The age of the nomadic tribe ends with the invention of farming. Once a crop is planted, it needs tending for many months before it will produce food, and the tribe cannot wander away somewhere else while the crop is growing. So a camp is established which over time becomes a permanent settlement. It is also at this time that true job specialisation starts to occur, and fairly soon, as the community grows, barter will follow.

The age of civilisation has begun.

The first true specialisation is the division between the hunters and the farmers. Both perform the vital duty of feeding the community, and the whole community will help bring in the harvest, but a hunter does not have time to commit to farming, and vice versa. In the early years, when farming is a matter of scattering seeds and hoping for the best, the women may tend the farms whille the men hunt, but sooner or later someone will invent heavy agricultural devices that require a man's strength, and a true division of labour will occur between the men of the settlement.

Greater availability of food, allied to the security of a permanent settlement, will create a growing population which will, in time, allow for more specialised trades to occur. The domestication of birds and animals that cannot be easily kept by a travelling tribe also becomes possible, leading to a wider range of foodstuffs. The alliance between man and cat that helps keep rats out of the barn where the grain is stored also has its origins here.

So far, all communities are small and widely spaced, with most being walled villages that have little or no contact with other settlements.

With the creation of specialist professions will come, inevitably, the development of trade. Potters, smiths and metal workers, jewelers, saddlers, boot makers, cartwrights - professions of all kinds will be springing up as communities grow in size to the point where every member of the population is no longer required to work only towards feeding the community. Each of these professions and every other manufacturer of goods will have a need to find new customers, and so the development of the mercantile class and the establishment of trade becomes inevitable.

In the beginning, the only trade will be between nearby settlements, and will probably be a somewhat cautious affair as up until this time 'stranger' and 'enemy' are synonymous terms. this is the origin of the parity of those two words in many languages right up to the present day.

Trade leads to trust (Or war, but I'll deal with the likely favourable possibilities here), and a growing sense of friendship between settlements which will see the slow formation of alliances which will help both communities to survive. Communities that grow closer will tend to intermarry, making the links stronger and the alliance more permanent.

During this time, another natural process is also occuring. The population of the more prosperous and successful settlements starts reaching a point where the community is no longer capable of feeding everyone, so a number of people leave the settlement in order to settle into a new area close by. This naturally leads to two closely allied settlements in close proximity.

By now, the upshot of all this careful spreading out is obvious. A large band of marauders will start raiding the prosperous settlements, so the leaders will meet to elect a war leader to command their combined forces, and the raiders will be exterminated or driven away. In either case, a new concept has arisen - that of the 'over leader' who commands many settlements.

A single leader allows greater co-ordination between settlements and can resolve disputes a lot more easily than a council of equals - a fact which will soon be apparent to all. So, in the interests of greater social cohesion - at this point in human development an absolutely vital concern - a primitive feudal system comes into being. The 'over-leader' becomes king, the leaders of each settlement are dukes, and so on down. Not that the names matter, as the concept is always the same.

A need to ally against outside threat has created the first nascent kingdoms. No longer are humans bound into small roving tribes that are mutually antagonistic. We have now reached an age where much of humanity is settled into small kingdoms, and where trade and commerce between settlements and sometimes even between countries is encouraged.

This is a time when humanity prospers - but also a time when every tiny kingdom must regard its neighbours with fear and suspicion, and must be prepared at any moment to defend its people and its goods from foreign agression. Raiders, sanctioned and otherwise, are rampant, and nothing can be countenanced that divides or disrupts the community, as where untiy is strength, so division is a weakness that every enemy can exploit.

A strong, outward looking community that is clearly focused on defending itself from enemies without, and united in common cause within, is one that will have the best chance to survive. In the world that humanity is building, just as in nature, the strong will survive and the weak will be swept away.

We are now but one step removed from the first age of empires.