Oddbean new post about | logout
▲ ▼
Loukas Christodoulou | 1 years ago (raw) | export | reply | flag 
 Today I learned there are six places where cities emerged independently of any other centre, the so-called 'pristine civilizations,'

    Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia
    Nile Valley
    Indo-Gangetic Plain
    North China Plain
    Andean Coast
    Mesoamerican Gulf Coast

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_civilization
▲ ▼
Tom Stoneham | 1 years ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 @b870d4c8 Have you read James C Scott's *Against the Grain*?

If not, I cannot recommend it more highly for an exceptionally well informed 'anarchist squint' on this period of history.

TL;DR it isn't 'civilisation' but the forced domestication of human labour.
▲ ▼
Loukas Christodoulou | 1 years ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 And this is the map of Roman coin hoards. The one furthest east is coins of Constantine found while excavating a medieval Okinawan castle. https://chre.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/

https://media.mastodon.nu/media_attachments/files/111/079/033/759/746/816/original/7f2bd7206a6a672c.png
▲ ▼
Andreas Svensson | 1 years ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 @b870d4c8 I highly recommend “The Human Web”, by the McNeills (father and son). It touches on the earliest civilisations, what created them and also how they sooner or later got caught up in the global, human web. http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780393051797