Exploring the Origins of the World's Earliest Civilizations: A History of the Pre-State Era

Jonathan Korshin: Welldonr!

United Kingdom on Sep 16, 2023

Phil Scott: This book is a welcome correction to the mythology that the advent of widespread agriculture [with burgeoning populations] was an advance over a static hunter/gatherer mode of existence. If one is willing to assume that the mere inflation of population is the "greater good", this is not a book to make you more content.

United States on Jul 25, 2023

Christopher Taylor: muy buen libro

Spain on Jul 13, 2023

Leon: Although this is a good book, the author makes one glaring omission over and over again: the influence of religion and religious institutions on pre-state, protostate, and state institutions.

Spain on Mar 16, 2023

Best Reviewer: I enjoyed Scott's book "Against the Grain". You will like it if you liked Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" or Harari's "Sapiens".
"Against the Grain" is a quick read. Scott writes: "...why have no "lentil states", chickpea states, taro states, sago states, breadfruit states, yam states, cassava states, potato states, peanut states, or banana states appeared in the historical record?" (p. 29)
Scott believes the reason is that grain can more easily be assessed by the tax collector because it is all harvested at the same time, it is above ground, and it can be stored for long periods in one centralized spot.
The Incan empire which was largely based on potatoes would seem to be an exception to this hypothesis. Scott acknowledges this, but says corn was the primary basis for taxation among the Inca (p. 28). But Scott doesn't back it up with papers which break down Incan dependence on corn vs. potato vs. quinoa, etc., economically.
He just makes statements without always providing empirical support. Nonetheless, I still recommend the book.

United States on Nov 26, 2022

Fabrice PatrickFabrice Patrick: La formation des premiers États apparaît comme une suite logique de la sédentarisation qui accompagna le développement de l’agriculture. En général, les historiens présentent cette évolution sociale de manière assez positive, dans la mesure où elle aurait permis aux chasseurs-cueilleurs de quitter une vie misérable pour des conditions davantage propices au développement culturel. L’architecture, l’écriture, la science seraient ainsi nées des premières structures étatiques. Pourtant, comme James Scott le fait remarquer dans ce livre, ce scénario classique est confronté à des découvertes archéologiques qui révèlent un hiatus : entre environ 8000 et 3500 ans avant l’ère commune, on observe des communautés maitrisant les techniques de l’agriculture et développant un artisanat, mais aucune où l’autorité étatique ne semble présente. Pour ce professeur de science politique, la raison est que les premiers chasseurs-cueilleurs résistèrent au développement de la « civilisation ». D’ailleurs, même après la création des premiers États, la plupart des communautés qui gravitaient autour n’auraient pas cherché à s’y assimiler pendant...

France on Nov 01, 2021

cat47: Professeur de sciences politiques à Yale, spécialiste en sociétés agraires, James C. Scott nous emmène dans un voyage multi-disciplinaire. Il passe en revue quelques dizaines de millénaires d'histoire du genre homo pour développer un argumentaire sur la naissance des premiers états. Sa thèse : ce ne sont pas le sédentarisme ni l'agriculture qui sont à l'origine de ceux-ci mais les céréales! Les sociétés pré-étatiques n'avaient pas besoin de surplus autre que celui qui servait à faire le joint entre les périodes de plus ou moins grande abondance ou éventuellement à échanger (oui, il n'y a pas besoin de civilisation pour faire du commerce). C'est uniquement lorsque qu'il a fallu financer des organisations proto-étatiques par une confiscation du surplus (par et pour des élites guerrières ou religieuses) par l'impôt que la culture des céréales s'est intensifiée, et avec elle l'élevage, malgré tous les maux liés à cette évolution (intensification du travail, épidémies, hiérarchisation de la société et violence qui vont avec). Le gros avantage de certaines céréales ? Elles ont un très bon rendement à défaut d'avoir une valeur nutritive...

France on Sep 10, 2018

Athan: This is a controversial, if highly erudite, book. It owes its title to a hymn sung in ancient Ur ahead of the construction of a major temple, when the ordinary life of slaves and enslaved debtors was temporarily suspended in favor of a brief egalitarian moment (pp. 162 – 164). The main thesis of the book is that civilization as we know and celebrate it is a prison, of sorts.

The topic is rather fashionable. Everybody who’s read the 2011 blockbuster Sapiens can repeat the cute little argument about how wheat domesticated man, rather than the other way round, citing that it was man, not wheat, who moved from the wild into a domus -Latin for house- to pursue agriculture and tend to his crops. And that foragers had a much healthier and varied diet, lived better and longer and grew to be taller than their civilized counterparts inside the walls.

This is a rather more serious effort, in that it provides the reader with a very wide background before any such thesis is made. And it sets the record straight: when it comes to the eating, it’s man who eats the wheat / pork / whatever so that’s who’s been doing the domesticating. But there is a story to tell here and...

United States on Mar 23, 2018

Richard Reese (author of Understanding Sustainability): James C. Scott teaches political science and anthropology at Yale. He’s a smooth writer and a deep thinker. A while back, he decided to update two lectures on agrarian societies that he had been giving for 20 years. He began studying recent research and — gasp! — realized that significant portions of traditional textbook history had the strong odor of moldy cultural myths. So, a quick update project turned into five years, and resulted in a manuscript that I found to be remarkably stimulating, from cover to cover — Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States.

While the human saga is several million years old, and Homo sapiens appeared on the stage maybe 200,000 years ago, the origin myth I was taught began just 10,000 years ago, with domestication and civilization. We were transformed from hungry, dirty, dolts into brilliant philosophers, scientists, and artists, who lived indoors, wore cool clothes, and owned lots of slaves.

As a curious animal interested in ecological sustainability, I’m amazed that every other animal species has, for millions of years, lived on this planet without destabilizing the climate, spurring mass extinctions,...

United States on Sep 24, 2017