Development of Complex Societies Essay

In the early stages of the development of coordination compound societies, many various factors had a powerful impact on the way the societies essential. In whatever disciplines of the world, religion was the primary force that led to the insane asylum of organized societies. some other areas developed on tack r surface(p)es that made it requirement to develop complex societies to incorporate the growth of different economic classes and the wealth they generated into the structure of the government. In each part of the world where complex societies emerged, the communities were responding to different types of challenges and the complexities each guild created forced them to confront new challenges which then led to the great, complex societies of history. The urban golf club of Mesopotamia developed because of the engineering discoveries that allowed residents of the area between the Tigris and Euphrates to plus nutrition production, while the predictability of the Nil e River allowed the Egyptians and Nubians to build large, complex societies around their commercial and spectral activities. many a(prenominal) simple early societies were based around farming. Through cultivating crops and the land, people lettered they could settle bug out in one place instead of be nomads and support a larger population of people. These villages needed a neighborly structure, just now their sizes were limited by the amount of food they could produce. In Mesopotamia, oddly Sumeria and Babylon, there is not much rainfall, but farmers learned they could artificially wet their crops using the fresh water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers1. The large-scale engineering projects essential greater social organization than the simple farming communities that came before, but they overly resulted in increased food production that allowed them to build cities. The urban centers that resulted need more sophisticated organization to make sure that the population w as creative that edifice projects could be completed, that resources were distributed fairly, and that the city could continue to grow2.The segment of labor in any case created different economic classes, which resulted in various social classes as well. round merchants grew wealthy catering to customers who came to the city from other places, and community building projects undeniable supervision, organization, and funding3. Such a large society could not exist as small farmers trading with one another(prenominal). Political authority was needed to oppose order between the citizens and protect the interests of the entire community, particularly the cropland that existed outside the city walls.An example of the way that authority influenced society is the codification of laws by Hammurabi, especially as they related to family relationships and how economises could treat their wives. Upper-class people whose marriages represented semipolitical and economic alliances were s ubject to the same law, so that even if a husband had a right to punish his wife for a suspected affair, he could not do anything to her unless he caught her in the act. If he did act out on his jealousy, he would be punished. Hammurabis laws treated women like the blank space of their husbands and fathers, but they as well as described certain standards of behavior that citizens should be expect to follow for the sake of stability and to reign in peoples behavior4.The innovation of urban development in addition led to the Sumerian creation of military power, as each city-state had to protect its farmland and irrigation projects from one another and from outside invaders. Once the city-states had organized themselves into relatively peaceful social organizations join under a single government, their growing populations often led them to go out and try to conquer other city-states or areas with more resources to increase their wealth5. In Mesopotamia, the social organization crea ted in the first cities led to the innovation of the first empires.Along the Nile River in northern Africa, small city states also emerged due to the increased production of food that agriculture made possible. factory farm first developed in Sudan, where people first cultivated stalk crops and domesticated animals that roamed the grassland. The growing populations made these cities into cultural and commercial centers, as well, and they also required political authority to keep the peace and maintain the surgery of all of the complex institutions of a city dividing up resources, keeping the peace, and protect their resources from other city-states6. These cities were often ruled over by Kings who were not notwithstanding thought of as political authority but were also considered to be divine themselves, so they also held a great deal of ghostlike authority7.Over time, the grasslands became desert and agricultural activity centered along the floodplains of the Nile River in Egy pt and Nubia. Egypt, particularly, had a very wide and predictable floodplain which attracted immigrants and allowed the population to grow. coupled under one ruler, who was also considered to be divine, Egyptian society became progressively complex. Massive amounts of resources, especially wheat from the fertile harvests, had to be dealt with, marketplaces had to be managed, and armies had to be raised to protect the fertile land from invaders. The main organizing force in Egyptian society was its strong religious component.The Pharaoh was considered a god as well as a king, and the religious power he held was save as important as the political power. The colossal building projects that the Egyptians embarked on, such as the pyramids and temples, required a very complex society and highly skilled workers and engineers8. They developed a very complex writing remains not only to keep commercial go ins, but also to land their spiritual beliefs and the history of their empire. H arkhuf used it to document his exploration of Nubia and opening of trade routes there, showing the high levels of complexity that each of those societies had risen to9.Both the African and Mesopotamian civilizations developed out of small farming communities who practiced small-scale agriculture. In both areas, advances in agriculture led to increased populations living in densely-populated cities, which allowed the people to divide labor and specialize in different things. The division of labor led to advancement in almost every area from engineering and agriculture to art and, especially, the political organizations that organized the whole society and made all of those things possible. Both civilizations developed writing systems, originally developed to keep records, but soon used to express imaginations, beliefs, and to write down the histories of their nations.While Mesopotamian cultures were organized around the complex building projects needed to water their fields, societi es in the Nile River had other pressures. Their cropland was regularly fertilized and irrigated, so their complexity developed out of a need to organize the wealth of the city-state and the empire that came as a result. Without the pressure of constantly trying to keep their crops irrigated, the Egyptians organized around religious beliefs, which they expressed in their greatest building projects and influenced almost everything they did.The pressures that led small societies to develop more complex structures were different in each case, but they both resulted in the building of the first great cities which are necessary for the political, social, and technological innovations of complex society. Although the places they lived were very different, the Sumerians and the Egyptians both developed writing to record their progress, political innovations to maintain control of growing populations, and laid the foundations for great building projects and the great civilizations that woul d come after them.BibliographyBentley, Jerry H. and Ziegler, Herbert F., Traditions and Encounters Vol. 1 from The Beginning to 1500, 5th ed. spic-and-span York McGraw-Hill, 2010 1 Jerry H. Bentley and Herbert F. Ziegler, Traditions and Encounters Vol. 1 from The Beginning to 1500, 5th ed. (New York McGraw-Hill, 2010), 25 2 Bentley and Ziegel, Traditions, 273 Bentley and Ziegler, Traditions, 334 Bentley and Ziegler, Traditions, 365 Bentley and Ziegler, Traditions, 296 Bentley and Ziegel, Traditions, 50-517 Bentley and Ziegel, Traditions, 528 Bentley and Ziegel, Traditions, 539 Bentley and Ziegel, Traditions, 56