Stratfor 203:Ancient Civilizations

April 2009

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A Geographic Reminder

• Things you want– Flat tracts internally– Difficult borders– Low sloped rivers

• In ancient times add...– Consistent climate

• Things you don’t want– Flat tracts on borders– Difficult internal terrain

– Too big of a territory

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What Is Civilization?

• Sedentary agriculture that requires artificial infrastructure (typically for water management)

• Ability to store large amounts of surplus food production to survive lean times (starving season)

• Specialization of labor– Professional farmers– Builders (irrigators)– Record keepers (literates)– Surplus labor

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Early Societies

• Hunter/gather - nomadic - family-based tribes

• New Stone Age humans in a belt from modern day France to Central Asia develop dry agriculture (~8000BC)

• “Dry agriculture” originally meant simply having locations for reliable gathering – over time transitioned into intentional planting

• As agriculture supplanted wild gathering in terms of importance to food supply, nomadism gave way to sedentary societies and full dry farming began

• Resulted in a gradual push south to warmer climes (longer growing seasons)

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The Agricultural Revolution

• Dry farming proved unreliable, because not every year brought even rain

• Need for reliable water control prompts migration into river valleys

• Optimal settling spots: long, flat river valley, large catchment basin, and warm year-round• reliable water supply • multiple growing seasons• short to negligible starving season

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The Downside• The starving season (spring) sucks• Agriculture requires extremely flat land• Extremely flat land is extremely easy to march

across• Warm climes and large catchment basins

support greater populations and thus more rivals• Inconsistent water supply creates famine and

civilizational collapse (too populated to revert to hunting/gathering)

• Solution: terminal desert floodplains– limited local rivals in size and technology– Provided limited measure of defense

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The Spots

Tigris/EuphratesSumerianIraq

NileEgyptianEgypt

Ghaggar-HakraHarappanPakistan

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Sumeria / Mesopotamia

• Why here first?– Two rivers with

somewhat different catchment basins, so fairly reliable water supplies

– Rather easy to move in from Anatolia or Iraqi Kurdistan (follow the water)

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Sumeria’s End• Regular competition between the Sumerian

cities (no geographic barriers between the various cities) ensured that none were able to ultimately overpower the others

• Eventually Sumeria’s advances leaked into the neighbors who did not use irrigated farming– Sumeria planted the seeds of (for example) ancient

Persia, classical Greece and the Assyrian Empire

• The struggle for domination among the Sumerian city-states is the origin of all dominant human civilizations to the current day

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Egypt: History• c6000BC – 3150BC:

– pre-dynastic

• 3150BC – 2575BC:– split kingdom

• 2575BC – 1650BC:– unification

• 1650BC – 1525BC:– the first occupation

• 1525BC – 1213BC:– acting like a country

• 1213BC – 525BC:– decline

• 525BC – 1952:– foreign control

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Egypt: Why Second? Why Not Africa?• Origin likely the same as Sumeria (Anatolia) but

had to work their way down the Levant and Sinai)

• Jungles are the least likely regions to develop dry farming because of the effort needed to clear and fertilize the land

• Nomads from today’s Sudan probably settled the southern Nile, but Sudan’s rivers are not amenable to irrigation

• Southern Nile requires more engineering than the northern, so these Sudanese populations were likely absorbed into north Nile culture

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Why Egypt Never Had An Impact on Human Development

• Most insulated from outside forces of the three original civilizations

• Two rivers with completely different catchment basins make up the Nile, making both floods and droughts a rarity

• No wild beasts• No meaningful nomadic groups• No storms• Always sunny• Only necessary agricultural work was to capture the

floodwaters for about a month a year to ensure that all the wheat basins get their annual dose of water

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Harappa: Why Third?• Origin likely in today’s Turkmenistan -- had to cross

Afghanistan• Most exposed to outside forces of the three civilizations• Large river system linked to a sheltered sea allowed for

many competing centers of power, so water engineering had to be supplemented with large defensive works -- all the cities are also forts

• Required the most pre-planning of the three -- ergo why the cities are so symmetrical and why they have the most advanced water management (including indoor plumbing and sewage -- in 2000BC!)

• Least reliable water supply (all tributaries had the same source)

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• The Rise and

(Rapid) Fall of

Harappa

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The Echo Civilizations

• Minoan – an experiment with islands• Mycenae – proto-Hellenic, ultimate

progenitors of Rome and the West (for Sparta!)

• Hittite – couldn’t stand up to the Persians

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A Few Words on China (aka why “civilization” took longer here)

• Yellow River requires taming

• Control of the Yellow does not equal control of China (the millet factor)

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A Few Words on China

(aka why “civilization” took longer here)

• Rice is more manpower intensive than wheat

• Yangtze River region is semi-tropical

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Q&A