ANTH 2820 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Fertile Crescent, Mudbrick, Ziggurat
28 Feb 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Long answer: there have been many proposed theories, but it was probably do to a number of factors not just one overarching theory. Voluntaristic theory: at some point in their history, certain peoples spontaneously, rationally and voluntarily gave up their individual sovereignties and united with other communities to form a larger political unit deserving to be called a state. Automatic hypothesis: invention of agriculture automatically brought in a surplus, enabling some individuals to become specialists, out of which came political integration. Hydraulic hypothesis: where people decided it would be advantageous to set aside their individual autonomies and merge their villages into a single unit capable of carrying out irrigation on a large scale. Where force, and not enlightened self-interest, is the mechanism by which pol. Evolution has led from autonomous villages to the state i. e. war: why coercive, its not the only factor.
