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impact of the agricultural revolution on humans

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led to far more complex human societies

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foragers lived in small bands of a few dozen individuals

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farmers and peasants lived their lives in towns of hundreds, thousands and ultimately millions of people working on a daily basis towards common goals

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a reason for this growth was that agriculture could support far more people

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more food is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition

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having all of the food doesn't mean that the large number of people can agree how to divide and share the food, how to settle disputes, and how to act in times of crisis such as a drought or war

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if people cannot reach a census, then conflict spreads, even if the storehouses and granaries are full

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it was not food shortages that caused most of the big war and revolutions in history

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WWI and WWII did not begin because of a shortage of food in Britain, Germany of France

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in Yugoslavia in 1991, there was enough food to feed all the people there, their conflict arose on other issues

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in Israel and Palestine, there is no shortage of food to feed the people, but many parts of these countries have not seen a day of peace in decades because of the disagreements on the issues of land, politics, and religion

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the root of these wars and calamities is that Homo Sapiens have no natural instincts for cooperating with large numbers of strangers

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humans have evolved living in small bands comprised of a few dozens individuals at most

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sapiens had to rely on inventing stories and imagined realities that can regulate the cooperation on such a huge scale

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just as hunter/gather bands began to create stories of spirits in order for hundreds maybe thousands of people to live and fight together under a common cause, peasants and farmers began to create similar stories which allowed this cooperation on a much larger scale

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8500 B.C. the largest settlements in the world were villages such as Jericho which contained a few hundred humans at most

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3000 B.C. you had cities and kingdoms ruling 10,000 to 100,000 of people

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1000 B.C. you had the Roman and Han empire (206BC-220AD) which rules 10 million and more people

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these societies were held together by imagined realities

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imagined order

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the social and legal laws which sustained these kingdoms and empires were based not on natural instincts or personal acquaintance, but on beliefs in shared stories and imagined realities

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two of the best known imagined realities in history fundamental for the establishment and maintenance of large social order

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1772 B.C.: Code of Hammurabi

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1772 B.C. sixth Babylonian king Hammurabi enacted the code

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Babylon was the largest political entity on the globe

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it's king ruled more than 1 million subjects

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controlled most of what is today is Iraq, huge areas in Iran and Turkey

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the Gods Anu, Enlil, and Marduk appointed Hammurabi "to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak"

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there were 282 laws

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an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, depended on social status

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one-half of the Code deals with matters of contract, establishing the liability of a builder for a house that collapses, for example

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the Hammurabi laws are quite arbitrary, one had to pay "20 shekels for killing a woman"

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this code asserts that universal of justice is dictated by the gods

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people are divided into two genders and three

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superiors

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commoner

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slave

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children are the property of their parents

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if everyone accepts this then the million inhabitants would be to live together peacefully, protect itself against enemies and have enough food to feed all his people

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1776 A.D. Declaration of Independence

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13 colonies got together in Philadelphia

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declared universal laws of justice

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where Babylonian laws dictated inequality, the laws of the American colonies dictated equality

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also promises that if people act according to these principles, they will be peaceful and prosperous

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200 years after this Declaration are still copying and learning this text by heart

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both of these claim universal and eternal laws

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both Hammurabi and Thomas Jefferson imagined immutable principles of justice, one that equality is higher than hierarchy and the other that hierarchy is higher than equality.

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the only place that justice exists is in the fertile imagination of Homo sapiens

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there are no objective laws of justice which are true everywhere for everybody

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declaration of independence states that all men are created equal

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yet biologically, every person is different

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people are created through evolution pursuing its goals, but evolutions goals have no reason or purpose other than to perpetuate a particular species of organism

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unalienable rights

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in biology, there are no rights

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birds fly because they have wings, not because they have the right to fly, so in biology instead there are "mutable traits"

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life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

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can't be measured objectively in biology

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you can, however, measure pleasure

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becomes: life and the pursuit of pleasure

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rebuttal

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we know that people are not equal in essence, but if we believe this, we can create a stable and prosperous society, so we better believe it, even though it is not a biological fact

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we believe in an imagined order not because it is objectively true, not because it is scientific fact, but by believing in this imagined reality, it enables us to cooperate effectively and to forge stable societies. Imagined orders are not mere stories or useless mirages in any way, as they are the only way that large numbers of humans can cooperate effectively. They are necessary. However, this doesn't mean that they are objectively true.

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Hammurabi may have believed this as well, that his laws were imagined but necessary to maintain social order