3.1. About Early Kingdoms and Empires
Some 11,700 years ago an abrupt climate warming put in motion a cascade of events that unleashed a deep destabilization of the life conditions that had prevailed over the past tens of thousands of years during which people had been living in tribal societies the world over. It was this destabilization that put in motion a societal chain reaction which ultimately set humanity on the long and tortuous path of civilization building.
That chain of events was set in motion by an abrupt increase in the average surface temperature of the earth by a whopping 2-3 degree C. that came on top of an initial increase of some 4 degree C over the preceding 8,000 years. Such a warming ended the Last Glacial Period and opened the path to an Inter-Glacial period that was unusual in term of temperature stability. It is this temperature stability that permitted the slow process of human societal evolution to move forward unhindered gaining it an ever higher momentum.
The Geological temperature record shows that the world's average temperatures increased by a further 2-3 degrees C on average between 11,700 and 8,000 BC. Those temperatures then stabilized within a very narrow band of variation (+0.5 to -0.5 degree C) that was maintained till roughly 1750 when the industrial revolution started pumping ever larger volumes of CO2 in the atmosphere which caused the climate to start warming again outside its long and narrow band of variation of the past eight thousand years.
The ups and down, of plus 0.5 to minus 0.5 degree C, appear to have been crucially influential in recorded history. The turning point to Early-Modernity, for example, saw a modest increase in average temperatures that resulted in increasing agricultural productions which allowed some Western European peasant families to leave the manorial domains and agglomerate with others in what soon would become cities. Without this boom in city development long distance trade would perhaps never have succeeded to emerge. The same can be said of the period known as “the little ice age” that peaked around 1600 :
“Disease tends to intensify under the same conditions that unemployment and economic difficulties arise: prolonged, cold, dry seasons. Both of these outcomes – disease and unemployment – enhance each other, generating a lethal positive feedback loop. Although these communities had some contingency plans, such as better crop mixes, emergency grain stocks, and international food trade, these did not always prove effective. Communities often lashed out via violent crimes, including robbery and murder; sexual offense accusations increased as well, such as adultery, bestiality, and rape. Europeans sought explanations for the famine, disease, and social unrest that they were experiencing, and blamed the innocent. Evidence from several studies indicate that increases in violent actions against marginalized groups that were held responsible for the Little Ice Age overlap with years of particularly cold, dry weather.” (1)
This gives us a sense of the true enormity of what has been unleashed by our present anthropogenic climate change. In the last 250 years the world's average temperatures increased indeed by over 2 degrees C. and further increases have already been factored in that will only appear in the measurements along the following 3 decades. It was considered at the turn of the century that this would take place before the end of the 21st century. Later new studies shortened this to before 2050. But the 2°C threshold was reached in February 2020. (2)
Climatologists rushed for explanations and they have nearly unanimously concluded that climate change is a direct result from increases or decreases in the levels of greenhouse gases; CO2 and methane being among the primary such gases :
Climatologists rushed for explanations and they have nearly unanimously concluded that climate change is a direct result from increases or decreases in the levels of greenhouse gases; CO2 and methane being among the primary such gases :
“A greenhouse gas is any gaseous compound in the atmosphere that is capable of absorbing infrared radiation, thereby trapping and holding heat in the atmosphere. By increasing the heat in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases are responsible for the greenhouse effect, which ultimately leads to climate change” (3).
Most of the scientists who disagree that greenhouse gases are unleashing climate change are not climatologists and if they take this position it is most often for reason of financial compensation by the oil industry.
Most of the 2 degree C. over the base line of 1750 ( Industrial revolution) have been unleashed over the last 40 years. Now the fact is that an increase in CO2 provokes a glass house effect that sets in, over the next 30 years, after the CO2 has been effectively released in the atmosphere. Most climate studies that factor the CO2 emitted as of today, in their models, conclude that the surface temperatures around the world are bound to increase by an average of a further 1 more degree C. (at a minimum) over the next 30 years.
This means that, as of today, humanity’s activity is already responsible for an increase of the surface temperatures around the world of some 3 degree C. Scientific publication, and mass media, do not publish about this reality ! On the contrary, to reduce the real figures, they continuously shift the base line nearer to the present. Today the baseline is set at 1980 and so the temperature increase appears something as 1.5 degree C. ! But why in the world is the establishment hiding the reality of humanity’s predicament to the citizens ?
The last climate studies, in the first quarter or 2021, portend possible increases of up to 7 degrees C or more by the end of the century ! In most climatologists' eyes the earth is on a path of life extinction that could possibly wipe out humanity along the next decades. I slightly digressed here from the causes of the emergence of civilization to our present condition simply because the same kinds of mechanisms were at work then as what we observe now. But those mechanisms indicate that the warming that started the movement toward civilization could now well be the root cause of its demise !
The warming 11,700 years ago was caused by a natural dynamic inherent to the earth itself while today's warming is a direct consequence of human activity which is why this last warming period is presented as the new geologic age of the 'Anthropocene'. This average warming of the world surface temperature, by 2 degrees C some 11,700 years ago, was so abrupt that sea levels rose between twenty to sixty meters depending on the studies one refers to. Needless to say the impact on life was immediate. Are there no longer any adults left in decision making positions in the West to understand that the 3 degrees C that are already factored in today are going to have devastating effects tomorrow ?
At the time 11,700 years ago a great deal of the tribal populations were living along or near rivers or seas and the increase in sea levels displaced a great quantity of them to higher lands. But the most important impact by far was the melting of ice over the whole Northern hemisphere that carried rich alluvial sediments down the rivers that formed rich alluvial plains where an explosion of the flora attracted all kinds of animals on gathering and hunting. This included humans living in tribes.
The same phenomenon, of population concentration in alluvial plains, was observed everywhere on earth. It is where civilizations ultimately emerged. But the abundance of flora and fauna also acted as the primary reason why tribal societies, which had shown such a great resilience along the entirety of the last glaciation period, came into trouble. Unfortunately having erred ideologically for centuries on the side of dualism academic Euro-centrism got stranded in the swamp of its exceptionalism where it got infected by the virus of racism, by the plague of imperialism and colonialism, and by the cancer of “the reason that is at work within capital” that by Late-Modernity has metastasized to the whole body of humanity.
These plagues of the Western mind calcified the synapses of its archaeologists, geologists anthropologists paleo-anthropologists, and other researchers who in consequence got stuck on a highway to nowhere from where they proposed all kinds of stories that have one common particularity in the fact that these studies never try to earnestly understand what tribal life and animism were all about and how they started a first stage of societal evolution in parallel to biological evolution.
We had to wait till the end of the 20th century for a critique of the scourge of ideology to emerge. And those who are plunged in the unearthing of the past are now starting to discover a completely different universe than the stories peddled over the last 2 centuries by the Western academy. It will nevertheless take some time before a coherent synthesis emerges that makes sense of the transition from tribal to power societies which concluded some 5,000 years ago.
My personal adventure in these pages is part of that effort at synthesizing a more truthful picture of the past and by extension of the present.
This section 3.1 expands further in the following sub-sections :
3.1.1. agriculture had been experimented long before being implemented
3.1.2. Force stabilized village life
3.1.3. Population growth calls for more force
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Notes
1. In “Little Ice Age” Wikipedia
2. ; "2°C crossed" in Artic-News by Sam Carana.
3. In “Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Causes & Sources” by Marc Lallanilla in Live Sciences Magazine. February 10, 2015
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