The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (71 page)

This should not surprise us. There are almost certainly U.S. citizens who would rather surrender a sitting president than give up Mount Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty.

To be sure, more than a half century of colonial rule broke down many institutions of Asante society. After an abortive Asante uprising in the late nineteenth century, British authorities burned down the royal mausoleum at Bantama. Fortunately, by that time the Asante priests had quietly removed everything of value. The British then torched the entire village of Bantama. “And a splendid blaze it made,” wrote Sir Robert Baden-Powell in his 1896 memoirs.

In 1957 the Gold Coast was awarded its independence from Britain, leaving the Asante in command of their own future. The term Ghana, or “warrior king,” was chosen as a name for the new nation. In 1960 it became the Republic of Ghana. The royal Asante mausoleum may be gone, but the golden stool and the collective soul of the Asante people live on.

TWENTY-ONE

The Nursery of Civilization

Of all the world’s first-generation states, none were earlier than those of the Near East. They formed at a time when it was still not certain that Hierakonpolis would emerge triumphant in Upper Egypt. They formed at a time when permanent villages had yet to appear in Mexico and Peru.

Thirty years ago, Southern Mesopotamia was considered “the cradle of civilization.” Today we know that proto-states were also forming in Northern Mesopotamia and southwest Iran at about the same time (
Figure 64
). These three regions were all in contact with each other, providing us with another example of a chain reaction: the rise of multiple early states in response to the first aggressive one. The title of this chapter reflects our belief that when you have three cradles, it is a nursery.

The ‘Ubaid 4 period ended about 5,700 years ago. During the subsequent Uruk period, 5,700 to 5,200 years ago, states formed in both Iran and Iraq. The first political hierarchy with four administrative levels may have appeared in Iran, but the early state in Iraq was larger. Our use of the generic term “state” reflects the fact that some of these societies were more oligarchy than monarchy.

THE SUSIANA PLAIN

The Susiana plain is southwest Iran’s version of the great Mesopotamian plain. It lies between the Karkheh and Karun Rivers at an elevation of 130–550 feet and covers roughly 1,000 square miles.

FIGURE 64.
   One of the world’s earliest cases of chain-reaction state formation involved Northern Mesopotamia, Southern Mesopotamia, and the Susiana region of southwest Iran. Once leaders began to expand aggressively, encouraging their subjects to cluster together in defensible cities, their neighbors had to follow suit or lose their independence. (On this map the distance from Uruk to Hacinebi is 780 miles, and dotted lines mark the approximate limits of the alluvial lowlands.)

While Susiana is sometimes described as a smaller version of Mesopotamia, there are two significant differences. Because the Susiana plain was formed by outwash fans from the nearby Zagros Mountains, it has an underlying layer of gravel that reduces the problems of waterlogging and salinization that accompany irrigation. It also receives more rain than Southern Mesopotamia, and this complements canal irrigation from rivers such as the Shaour, Dez, Shur, and Karun.

There has been more than a century of archaeology in Susiana. Some of that work has included surveys for ancient sites, as well as attempts to answer social and political questions with archaeological information. The archaeologists carrying out this work include Robert McC. Adams, Frank Hole, Henry Wright, Gregory
Johnson
, and James Neely.

Let us pick up the story some 6,400 to 6,200 years ago, a time equivalent to the ‘Ubaid 3 period in Southern Mesopotamia. In southwest Iran, this period is known as Susiana d. There were between 85 and 90 villages on the Susiana plain at that time. At least 20 of these villages lay within an easy walk of Chogha Mish, a 27-acre chiefly center on the Shur River floodplain.

Excavations at Chogha Mish by Pinhas Delougaz and Helene Kantor suggest that the family of its
khan
(Persian for “chief”) lived in a mud-brick building greater than 48 by 32 feet in size. This building, which may have had a second story, was protected by exterior walls three to six feet thick. One interior room was dedicated to converting flint nodules into blades such as those used for sickles. Another room seems to have been used by potters, who left it filled with carefully stacked storage jars.

The community of Chogha Mish grew bread wheat, barley, oats, peas and lentils, and flax whose seeds were in the size range associated with irrigation. Families at Chogha Mish collected pistachio nuts and caper fruits and harvested clover, perhaps as fodder for their sheep, goats, and cattle.

At least one young woman buried at Chogha Mish displayed cranial deformation. Her skull had been bound shortly after birth, leaving her head elongated as a sign of rank or beauty.

Unfortunately, about 6,200 years ago, the khan’s enemies torched his house. The fire preserved the walls of the building to the height of the ceiling and temporarily ended Chogha Mish’s role as the dominant chiefly center on the Susiana plain.

The chiefly center that took over from Chogha Mish (and might be implicated in the burning of the khan’s house) was Susa on the Shaour River, 18 miles to the west. Between 6,200 and 6,000 years ago, Susa grew to cover 37 acres and seems to have had at least 20 satellite villages. This growth took place during the Susa A period, equivalent in time to ‘Ubaid 4 in Mesopotamia.

During Susa A, the villages of the Susiana plain began to decrease in number and increase in average size. Of the 85 to 90 villages occupied in the previous period, only 60 were still occupied, and that number would drop to 30 over the next few centuries. New villages sprang up, but not in sufficient numbers to counteract the trend, which almost certainly reflects the need to concentrate people in larger settlements for defense against raiding.

By the end of Susa A, the leaders of Susa had erected a mud-brick platform 225 feet on a side and 30 to 35 feet high. Unfortunately, the public buildings on this platform were too eroded to excavate. Near the platform was a cemetery with more than 1,000 burials. These burials reflect a wide range of social ranks. At one extreme were people buried with hordes of copper and masterpieces of painted pottery; at the other extreme were people buried only with cooking pots.

At some time during its period of use, the huge brick platform at Susa suffered the same fate as the khan’s house at Chogha Mish: it was so destroyed by fire that its façade collapsed. Susiana, like Northern Mesopotamia, was a region where archaeologists should expect to find evidence for chiefly cycling, endemic warfare, and an individualizing hereditary elite who made use of sumptuary goods.

The Uruk Period

Roughly 5,700 years ago, societies in the Susiana plain entered the Uruk period. The name of this period is borrowed from the ancient city of Uruk in southern Iraq. It is revealing that the pottery of Southern Mesopotamia and southwest Iran was so similar at this time that archaeologists feel comfortable using the term “Uruk” for both areas. When the pottery of two regions displays such similarity, it suggests that their societies were actively involved with each other.

While the people of Susiana and Southern Mesopotamia clearly interacted, they almost certainly belonged to different ethnic groups. We find this likely because of differences in the writing that the two regions later created. The writing in Susiana reflects an early form of the Elamite language. The writing in Southern Mesopotamia reflects an early form of the Sumerian language. Elamite and Sumerian do not even belong to the same language family. As a result, many community leaders and traders were probably bilingual.

It was during the Uruk period that first-generation states formed in both regions. In order to document all the steps in this process, the archaeologists working in Susiana have subdivided the period into Early Uruk (5,700 to 5,500 years ago); Middle Uruk (5,500 to 5,300 years ago); and Late Uruk (5,300 to 5,100 years ago).

The Early Uruk period was one of social and political reorganization. During the preceding period, both of Susiana’s most powerful communities, Chogha Mish and Susa, had been attacked and burned. One result was a temporary loss of population.

Susa rebounded before Chogha Mish did. It grew to 30 acres and emerged as the lone Level 1 community in a political hierarchy of three levels. There were two 15–17-acre villages in Level 2 and more than 45 Level 3 villages covering less than eight acres each.

Gregory
Johnson
was curious to see how much of the population of the Susiana plain might have been directly or indirectly controlled by Susa. He answered this question by dividing all Early Uruk settlements into three groups: those near Susa, those near the 17-acre community of Abu Fanduweh, and those in the area formerly dominated by Chogha Mish. He then ranked the settlements of each group in order of size.

We will not dwell here on the mathematical details of
Johnson’s
study. To understand what he discovered, we need only consider the following ideas. Geographers have found that many ancient and modern systems of settlement are characterized by a pattern in which the population of the largest settlement is about twice that of the second largest, three times that of the third largest, four times that of the fourth largest, and so on, down to the smallest settlement. Even geographers are not sure why this “ideal” pattern forms, but they suspect that it reflects a well-integrated society.

Geographers, of course, also encounter regions where the rank order of settlements deviates from the ideal. In some cases a region’s largest settlement is many times larger than the second, third, and so on. For example, Monte Albán, the capital of Mexico’s Zapotec kingdom, was seven to 15 times the size of its Level 2 administrative centers. Such regions tend to be ones in which the capital city has not only integrated its hinterland but also monopolized its region’s political and economic interaction with the outside world.

At the opposite extreme are regions in which the second, third, and fourth settlements (and so on) are larger than expected. Geographers suspect that this happens when a region is only weakly integrated, or when the smaller settlements in the region belong to politically independent societies.

What
Johnson’s
discoveries indicated was that Susa was many times larger than the ideal. The region once subject to Chogha Mish, on the other hand, seemed to include a group of independent, or only weakly integrated, societies.
Johnson
eventually estimated that the Early Uruk population of the Susiana plain was roughly 19,000, of which 9,800 people probably considered themselves subjects of Susa.

The Middle Uruk Period and the Creation of a First-Generation Kingdom

The Middle Uruk period, only two centuries long, was a crucial time for Susiana. At the start of this period Susa grew to cover 60 acres. Taking advantage of Chogha Mish’s decline and Abu Fanduweh’s smaller size, Susa extended its political control to the entire Susiana plain. The result was a kingdom with a political hierarchy of four levels. Susa remained dominant, even as Abu Fanduweh and Chogha Mish began to grow.

This Middle Uruk state was the first in southwest Iran, and possibly the first in the world. Level 1 of the hierarchy included Susa, followed closely by Chogha Mish and Abu Fanduweh. Level 2 consisted of four administrative centers in the 10- to 17-acre range. Level 3 included 17 villages of five to seven acres. Level 4 consisted of all the remaining villages in the region, most of which covered less than three and a half acres. In 1975 Wright and
Johnson
, drawing on this Susiana evidence, became the first archaeologists to point out that the appearance of a four-level political hierarchy might be one clue to the creation of a first-generation kingdom.

The Susiana plain of 5,500 years ago thus provides an analogy for what happened in the Oaxaca Valley some 3,500 years later. Both regions had formerly been occupied by rival chiefly societies. The largest of these societies sought to take over the territories of the others, and eventually succeeded. The result in both cases was an early kingdom.

Both of these early kingdoms, to continue the analogy, remained strong until key districts decided to break away from the capital, seeking control of their own territory, tribute, and external relations. This did not happen to Monte Albán until six or seven centuries after it became the capital of a kingdom. It would happen to Susa, however, at the start of the Late Uruk period.

Sacred authority seems to be implicated by the fact that the Middle Uruk leaders built temples at most of their Level 1 and 2 communities. We know this because the Uruk architects had developed a new way of decorating temples. Recall that earlier villages such as Eridu and Tepe Gawra had relieved the monotony of their temple façades by giving them recessed piers, pilasters, and wall niches. The Uruk architects added thousands of ceramic cones that could be set into the wall. The exposed end of each cone was colored white, black, or red. By carefully inserting the cones in the wall before the plaster had set, the masons gave each temple’s exterior a series of multicolored geometric designs.