People lived much more peacefully, in an egalitarian way for most of our 250,000 year history. They were highly organized and highly developed with towns and trade, but they didnt have privileged rulers. In the last 3%, (6,000 years ago) ... quite suddenly... kings appeared, priests appeared, temples, slaves, wars appeared. Rather than believing that this is something that simply you necessarily have to have when societies develop, I think it was an innovation. I think that the two things that distinguish our species most from others is that we make tools and we domesticate animals. We harness external sources of energy. Once the Neolithic communities had reached a certain degree of wealth and complexity, it was possible for small groups of men to domesticate the communities. That is what political power actually is -- its a system of institutions that were developed with the purpose of putting entire communities under central control. ~ Mark Corske Thank you, Mark, for releasing the Best Documentary of 2014:
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:27:57 +0000