3 ms·

I don't think it's about people being able to communicate with each other and enjoy leisure, but people developing the tools to handle larger and larger communi

I don't think it's about people being able to communicate with each other and enjoy leisure, but people developing the tools to handle larger and larger communities. One of the oldest written documents we have is a customer complaint https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir Hammurabi is still one of the most popular characters in history because of his code that planted the seed of the embryo of "presumption of innocence", a huge revolution for humanity. He was also very good and efficient at tax collection, so he could finance huge irrigation projects that made it possible to give cultivable fields to the poorer segment of the population, partially solving land abandonment. In a sentence. he was good at politics. So as fire and the wheel are symbols of the birth of the modern man, politics is the tool that bootstrapped modern societies.

jvb1000 4y ago
Politics existed long before. The decision to embrace or avoid agriculture were political decisions too.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  as the article points out The Yanomamö simply killed each other efficiently enough to keep populations down. In practice they ran into violent neighbors long before they ran out of land to farm och game to hunt. For security reasons they had to leave large swathes of land as buffers between villages. That's the result of the lack of politics, what you are referring to is policies that kept the different groups separated based on their choices or caused splits among them. Hammurabi was a great politician because he reunited the Mesopotamian tribes in a single state city, convincing them to work for a common goal, making them all prosper together.
  - jvb1000 4y ago
    The Yanomamo were one of probably thousands of different groups that lives in the prehistoric era. One problem in the study of prehistoric human life is that only a few groups kept their way of life consistent from prehistoric times to modern. So these groups have strongly influenced our perceptions of what life was like in the prehistoric era. But this is inaccurate sampling if we want to draw conclusions about prehistoric life. More nuanced looks at the evidence, such as the dawn of everything, find more diversity, including politics among different groups in the prehistoric age.
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      Yanomamö are not prehistoric people, they live in the Amazon and are still alive.

jvb1000 4y ago

Politics existed long before. The decision to embrace or avoid agriculture were political decisions too.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
as the article points out The Yanomamö simply killed each other efficiently enough to keep populations down. In practice they ran into violent neighbors long before they ran out of land to farm och game to hunt. For security reasons they had to leave large swathes of land as buffers between villages. That's the result of the lack of politics, what you are referring to is policies that kept the different groups separated based on their choices or caused splits among them. Hammurabi was a great politician because he reunited the Mesopotamian tribes in a single state city, convincing them to work for a common goal, making them all prosper together.
- jvb1000 4y ago
  The Yanomamo were one of probably thousands of different groups that lives in the prehistoric era. One problem in the study of prehistoric human life is that only a few groups kept their way of life consistent from prehistoric times to modern. So these groups have strongly influenced our perceptions of what life was like in the prehistoric era. But this is inaccurate sampling if we want to draw conclusions about prehistoric life. More nuanced looks at the evidence, such as the dawn of everything, find more diversity, including politics among different groups in the prehistoric age.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    Yanomamö are not prehistoric people, they live in the Amazon and are still alive.