Pyramids and ziggurats, the remains of ancient times, prompt big questions for today. What is civilisation? What caused it? What are its prospects?
‘Civilisation’ is marked by complementary divisions of technical, political and symbolic work. How did authority, responsibility and power become linked with distinctions of wealth? What were the early varieties of the state? Did they arise gradually and by consensus or were they produced by conflict and revolution; and, once established, how effective and stable were they?
Was early civilisation wrought through leaders’ vision and policies or by sociological and geographical conditions beyond people’s control? How fundamental were geographical, technological, ethical and philosophical or religious differences between civilisations? Do sociological or political similarities in the structures and histories of ancient civilisations reveal a universal pattern of development? Where it did occur, did the rise of civilisation create seeds of its own destruction?
Were certain causes – geographical, sociological, economic or religious – more fundamental than others? Or was the development of complex society, in one region and another, the effect of different processes among various factors? Do diverse ways of life show that the rise of civilisation was not inevitable at all?
Comparing the archaeology of the Middle East, and specifically the land of the Sumerians, with the separate developments among the ancestors of the Aztecs and Zapotecs in Mexico enables us to appraise a range of theories in these age-old issues. Our enquiries lead over a sweep of evidence for aristocrats and commoners, town and country, housing and burials, diet and health, farming and warfare, crafts and industry, arts and worship.
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