How Civilization Started

The dawn of human civilization is often pinned down to the rise of farming. As food production grew, so did human populations, trade, and tax.

Or so the prevailing story goes.

Economists have now put forward a competing hypothesis, and it suggests a surplus of food on its own was not enough to drive the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to the hierarchical states that eventually led to civilization as we know it.

Instead, multiple data sets covering several thousand years show this reigning theory is empirically flawed.

Even when some parts of the world adopted farming and began producing a surplus of food, it did not necessarily lead to complex hierarchies or tax-levied states.

Only when humans began farming food that could be stored, divvied up, traded, and taxed, did social structures begin to take shape.

That's probably why cereal grains like wheat, barley, and rice – rather than taro, yams, or potatoes – are at the root of virtually all classical civilizations. If the land was capable of cultivating grains, evidence shows it was much more likely to host complex societal structures.

"The relative ease of confiscating stored cereals, their high energy density, and their durability enhances their appropriability, thereby facilitating the emergence of tax-levying elites," the authors of the hypothesis write.

"Roots and tubers, in contrast, are typically perennial and do not have to be reaped in a particular period, but once harvested are rather perishable."

In parts of South America, for instance, perennial root crops like cassava can be harvested all year round. Unfortunately, however, cassava rots easily and is difficult to transport.  READ MORE...