Differentiate between a city, a state, and an agrarian civilization.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Although it is thought that the first city and state emerged in Mesopotamia about 3200 BCE, the significant fact is that cities and states emerged, probably independently, in at least seven other places around the world at nearly the same time, when viewed on a large time scale. In Egypt and Nubia, along the Nile River, there were states by about 3100 BCE. Northern India had a state and China had evidenceof states by about 2000 BCE, with Mesoamerica and Peru in the Americas having them by approximately 1000 BCE.

To think about what a city is, imagine a person moving from a town to a city in 3000 BCE. Such a person would find herself or himself among many more people in the city—say, tens of thousands, instead of thousands in towns or hundreds in villages. Cities, however, were not simply larger; they had a complex internal division of labor, with most people working full time in some specialized occupation such as metalworker, brewer, potter, weaver, priest, stone mason, musician, artist, or soldier. With the emergence of cities, the basic struggle, as always, was to provide enough food for everyone, but in a city the forms of cooperation became much more complex.Using the products of specialized artisans like pottersand metalworkers, farmers in the outlying areas ofcities were able to produce enough surplus food to feedthe people in the cities. As a rough rule of thumb, it tookabout nine farmers to support one city dweller until theModern era.

Astateis a regionally organized society of a city and itsnearby towns and farms, or of several cities and their environs,with a population of tens of thousands to hundredsof thousands or even millions. A state has political, social,and economic hierarchies, or power structures, that reston systematic and institutionalized coercion, as well as onpopular consent. State is not a synonym for government;government is only one aspect of a state. Cities and statesarose at about the same time because the increased populationdensity of cities required leadership and multiplied theresources available to those taking charge. As cities and states traded with each other, some absorbedeach other, and the scale of state systems expanded,eventually to be called empires, or imperial systems, when a single ruler controlled a large territory of many cities and states.Possibly the first imperial system was establishedabout 3100 BCE by Menes, or Narmer, in the NileRiver valley. Sargon of Akkad, who ruled from about 2334to 2279 BCE, set up an imperial system in the Tigris–
Euphrates valley. By about 1500 BCE the Shang Dynastymay have established an imperial system in northern China.

States and empires are embedded in large regions thatshare cultural characteristics and include the tribute-payingfarmers on whom the states depend. Tribute is definedfollowing the work of the influential American anthropologist,Eric Wolf (1923–99), as resources, which couldinclude goods, labor, cash, or even people, controlled bythe state largely through the threat of coercion. Slavery isthe most obvious form of tribute, but a tribute-taking societyis one in which many flows of resources are controlledby the threat of force and in which physical violence isregarded as admirable in many situations.

These complex arrangements are sometimes called civilizations. The termcivilizationisused with many different meanings and often implies stagesof progress, or the superiority of more “advanced” societiesover other forms. To avoid implying progress archaeologistsfrequently substitute complex society for the termcivilization. The term agrarian civilization refersto large state and imperial systems; the termagrarian is used toremind people that civilizations always depend on theiragricultural surroundings. This does not mean thatagrarian civilizations are superior, or more “advanced,” thanearlier kinds of societies; they are, however, more complexand controlled far more human and material resources.