Economics in Ancient Civilization
It is said that "Rome was not built in a day." Indeed, the Roman Empire was the last of a series of civilizations to emerge in the Mediterranean by the First Millennium, B.C. Precursors to the culture most identified as the seat of Western political economy, the Ancient Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks, Syrians, Carthaginians and Phoenicians all had contact with the Romans, and eventually were incorporated through territorial expansion of the Empire in Asia Minor, Cyrenaica, Europe, and North Africa. Prior to the Roman period, Europe was primarily occupied by Barbarian tribes; societies where no written language, legal system or alternative mechanism of governance was in place. When we discuss the advancement of Ancient civilizations, then, it is through the transmission of law, literacy and polity that we find source to retrospect on early economic forms. In Feinman and Nicholas (2004), Perspectives on Political Economies, the difficulties of studying Ancient economy are addressed in that,
"The economy, and all the institutions, activities, and relationships we are accustomed to thinking of as composing it, was from prehistoric times onward for a millennium or more a fairly amorphous category conforming only poorly to any modern abstractions of what an economy ought to be. In other words, it was deeply intertwined with other cultural patterns whose articulations we can seldom do more than dimly surmise" (Feinman and Nicholas, 43).
Where state institutions are concerned, the primacy of archaeological and artistic record as a resource to rendering an accurate historiography of the Ancient world is discussed extensively in Angus Maddison (2007) Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History. As Maddison confirms, the study of ancient economics is an exercise in exploratory patience, and one which requires great attention to oft competitive analysis where research conducted at different stages in modern history since the nineteenth century is so sparse in terms of number of investigations that details to accessible and legible official records such as an urban population census are worth their weight in gold.
Although documentation of laws scripted in stone or in scroll provide perhaps the best insight into the ancient historical record, comparative study of transcription in sculpture with a broader range of artifacts from the various period sheds more light on the economic activities of everyday life, than those afforded through legal proscription (Smith). Finally, theoretical impetus to the study of ancient economy is benefited by Walter Benjamin's mid-twentieth century musings on the role of archaeological artifacts as 'Ur' elements to social forms (Buck Norss, and Eiland & McLaughlin). If Benjamin's query is presumptive of later economic forces in market capitalization, the episteme is classical in the last instance: recapitulated into the present from the Mesopotamian valley of Ur.
MESOPOTAMIA
In what is now contemporary Iraq, commencement of the Neolithic Revolution (12,000 -- 8,000 BC) marked the shift from the hunting and gather societies of the Paleolithic cultures. The beginnings of pastoral and agricultural society are evidenced in the Near Eastern record prior to other parts of the Mediterranean region and the appearance of cities along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers shortly after the appearance of the Copper Age 3500 BC in Mesopotamia also affecting Egypt during the same period (de la Croix and Tansey). Collective recognition of the city-state formation is known as Sumer, with representation of Sumerian cultural developments, including protoliterate writings called cuneiform. Political organization of the Sumerian city-state was first administered under the leadership of a 'divine' ruler, and theocratic socialist system (Maddison).
In Yofee (1995), the political economy of the earliest states in ancient Mesopotamia is explored in an investigation to appraise the network of the region's great manorial estates, comprised of temples and palaces. Evidence to the study shows that local systems of power and authority coexisted with, and at times resisted the centralized governments of the Indus Valley. The nascent organization of the city-state afforded permeable social institutions to the point that individuals were conscripted to serve multiple and varied roles as economic actors; hence leading to the reduction of risks, and increased cooperation in competitive benefit as political leadership transformed over time. Of considerable importance is the noted interaction of the autonomous city-states within Mesopotamia, and the development of a cultural sphere supportive of proto-capitalist style value abstraction linked to the circulation of goods through production, trade, and consumption, from c. 3200-1600 B.C.
Interestingly, work on the ancient cultures of Southern Arabia is increasingly informative...
The nation-state that grew around the trade zones, like ancient Egypt, served to establish boundaries between trade zones, trading populations, and defined their zones by the locations of trading goods (16). A for the territory of a city-state. Early Etruria (fig. 5) offers another instance of an arguably "pristine" civilization, which emerged into history as a hegemony of 12 city-states. The mean distance between neighbors (with common terrestrial boundaries) is
" 4. Social and Political Life There is a general paucity of information about the actual societal and political structure of the Olmec. While there is not much evidence to build a comprehensive picture of the daily and social life of these people, there is enough available data from certain archeological sites to provide some reasonable speculations. One of the assumptions that is derived from the excavation of sites at San Lorenzo and
Finally, these changes established the practice of deferring to previous decisions issued by courts that in modern times is recognized as the concept of legal precedent that is essential to the American system of justice in both the realm of civil and criminal law. Political Changes: It is believed that the first King of ancient Egypt, Menes, established the first national system of government more than 3,000 years before the Common
their political systems were far less developed too, and although Egyptian religion had taken root in most of the communities of Upper and Lower Egypt temples had yet to reach their characteristic grandiose size until the pharaonic period. The rise of the great pharaohs meant an enormous boost in wealth and political power to the demigod/kings who could commission the large architectural projects that epitomize dynastic Egypt. During the
The history from the Renaissance to the Machine Age was defined by major technical and stylistic advances that allowed for much larger, taller, more elegant buildings, and higher degrees of functionality and architectural expression. In cultural and scientific matters, the Modern Era was characterized by an increasingly rationalistic trajectory of thought which was based on an ethos of the humanistic exploration of reality and truth. While in a cultural sense
Anu was considered to be the supreme God of the sky, and also the Lord of the Heavens, as mentioned earlier, and the 'Supreme Manager' of all the other Mesopotamian Gods. Inanna was the beautiful Goddess of words, language, syntax and meaning. Inanna was probably the daughter of Anu. Humbaba was the monster of the cedar forests, and he was taken on by many Gods, and would get into
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