We switched from communities to sedentary living. The transition of ancient people to a sedentary lifestyle based on agriculture was accompanied by a transformation of the institution of property. Changes in Fertility Rate

Political organization becomes more complicated with the transition to sedentism and a productive economy (agriculture and livestock raising) In archeology this phenomenon often called the "Neolithic Revolution". The transition to a productive economy became an important, revolutionary milestone in the history of human civilization. Since that time, early primitive local groups were replaced by stable, sedentary forms of community, the number of which ranged from many tens to several thousand people. Inequality within communities increased, age statuses, property and social differentiation arose, and the beginnings of the power of elders appeared. Communities united into unstable supra-community formations, including tribes.

Early and advanced agricultural societies were characterized by a wide range of forms of political leadership. The most interesting example of leadership in early agricultural societies is the bigman institution. bigman). The fundamental difference between the power of big men and the power of leaders is the non-inheritable nature of their social status. Big men, as a rule, became the most enterprising people who stood out for their diverse abilities, had physical strength, were hard-working, were good organizers and could resolve conflicts. They were brave warriors and convincing speakers; some of them were even credited with special magical abilities and the ability to cast spells. Through this, big men increased the wealth of their families and community groups. However, an increase in wealth did not automatically lead to an increase in social position.

The source of the big man's high status is his prestige associated with organizing mass feasts and distributions. This allowed him to create a network of dependent individuals, which further contributed to his success. However, the big men's influence was not stable. It was constantly under threat of losing its adherents. Bigman was forced to demonstrate his high status, spend significant funds on organizing collective ceremonies and feasts, and give gifts to his fellow tribesmen. “Bigman saves not in order to use it for himself alone, but in order to distribute this wealth. Each an important event in a person’s life - a wedding, birth, death, and even the construction of a new house or canoe - is celebrated with a feast, and the more feasts a person throws, the more generously he displays treats, the higher his prestige.”

Political power and big man status were personal, i.e. could not be inherited, and were unstable, since they depended exclusively on the personal qualities of the candidate, his ability to ensure his prestigious position through the distribution of massive gifts.

American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins(b. 1930) notes such an aspect of the life and activities of a big man in Melanesian society as open competition of statuses. The person who has ambitions and makes his way into big men is forced to intensify his own work and the work of members of his household. He quotes Hogbin as saying that the head of a male house among the Busama of New Guinea “had to work harder than anyone else to replenish his food supplies. One who claims to honor cannot rest on his laurels, he must constantly hold great celebrations, accumulating confidence.” It is generally accepted that he has to “work hard” day and night: “his hands are constantly in the ground, and drops of sweat constantly flow from his forehead.” The point of holding festivals was to enhance one's reputation, increase the number of supporters and make others debtors. The big man's personal career had in common political significance. When he goes beyond his narrow group of supporters and begins to sponsor public celebrations, with the help of which he strengthens his prestige, he “makes a name for himself in a wide circle.” “Big men with their consumer ambitions,” writes M. Sahlins, “are the means by which a segmented society, “decapitated” and divided into small autonomous communities, overcomes this split, at least in the sphere of food provision, and forms a wider circle of interaction and a higher level of cooperation. Taking care of his own reputation, the Melanesian big man becomes the concentrating principle of the tribal structure."

Tribe. The concept of “tribe” can be interpreted in two ways: as one of the types of ethnic communities in the early stages of the historical process and as a specific form social organization and a management structure characteristic of primitiveness. From the point of view of political anthropology, the second approach to this term is important. A tribe is a supra-community political structure. Each segment of the tribal organization (community, lineage, patronymic, etc.) is economically independent. Leadership in tribes, as in local groups, is personal. It is based solely on individual abilities and does not imply any formalized positions.

Scientists highlight two historical forms tribal organization: early and “secondary”. Early, archaic tribes were amorphous, without clear structural boundaries and general leadership, a collection of segments of various taxonomic levels. The main characteristics of these tribes were: kinship relationships, a common habitat, common name, a system of rituals and ceremonies, its own language dialect. To designate them, the following terms are used: “tribe”, “maximum community”, “aggregation of local groups”, “primary tribe”, etc.

As an example, consider the Nuer tribes described by the British anthropologist Edwan Evans-Pritchard(1902-1973). The Nuer tribes are divided into segments. Evans-Pritchard calls the largest segments the primary divisions of the tribe; these, in turn, are divided into secondary divisions of tribes, and these into tertiary divisions. The tertiary division of the tribe covers several village communities, which consist of kinship and household groups. Thus, the Lu tribe is divided into the primary divisions of gunas and mors. The primary division of the gunas is divided into secondary divisions rum-jok and gaatbal. The secondary department of Gaatbal is in turn divided into the tertiary departments of Leng and Nyarkwach.

The smaller the segment of a tribe, the more compact its territory, the more united its members, the more diverse and stronger their common social ties, and therefore the stronger the sense of unity. The Nuer tribes are characterized by the principles of segmentation and opposition. Segmentation means dividing a tribe and its subdivisions into segments. The second principle reflects the opposition between segments of the tribe. Evans-Pritchard writes on this subject: “Each segment is also split, and there is opposition between its parts. The members of each segment unite for war against adjacent segments of the same order and combine with these adjacent segments against larger divisions."

"Secondary" form of the tribe in politically is a more integrated structure. She had the embryonic organs of tribal power: national assembly, a council of elders and military and/or civil leaders. L. Morgan described a similar type of society in books; "League of the Chodnosaunee, or Iroquois" and "Ancient Society". The researcher highlighted following signs Iroquois tribe: unified territory, name, dialect of language, beliefs and culture, the right to approve and remove peaceful leaders - sachems, military leaders and others. The tribes were divided into two exogamous groups - phratries, the latter consisting of clans and smaller ones structural divisions. There were five Iroquois tribes in total. They could field a total of 2,200 warriors.

The tribal council included clan leaders, military leaders, and elderly women. All meetings were held publicly, in the presence of adult members of the tribe. At the council, disputes between clan divisions were resolved, wars were declared, peace agreements were concluded, relations with neighbors were regulated, and leaders were elected. The eldest woman proposed candidates for the position of sachem from among the elderly warriors who had distinguished themselves in wars and had a reputation for generosity and wisdom. After approval at the tribal council and at the conference council, the sachem received a symbol of his power - horns. If he failed to cope with his duties, then his horns were “broken off” - he was deprived of his sacred status. The leaders were also elected at the tribal league council. The supreme chief of the conference was elected from one of the tribes. Many of the societies of nomadic pastoralists can also be considered ethnographic examples of “secondary” tribes. North Africa and Eurasia (Arabs, Tuaregs, Pashtuns, etc.).

In the 60s XX century the view of the tribe as a universal institution of the primitive era has been criticized in Western anthropology. Currently, most foreign researchers adhere to the point of view Morton Freed(1923-1986), according to which tribes arose only as a consequence of the external pressure of developed state societies on stateless ones, and this form of social organization is exclusively secondary in nature. In accordance with this opinion, “tribe” is not included in the mandatory list of forms of transition political organization from local groups to statehood.

In this regard, it should be noted that the concept of tribe is important for understanding the characteristics of the chiefdom, which was the next step on the path to statehood. A tribal society is a less complex form of government and power than a chiefdom. In a chiefdom, the people are removed from governance, while in a tribal society, the people's assembly, along with the council of elders and the institution of leaders, is an important instrument for developing and making decisions. In the chiefdom, there is a hierarchy of power, social stratification, a redistribution system, and the cult of leaders is developing. The tribe is characterized by a more declared than a real hierarchy, more egalitarian social structure, the absence of a redistributive system, the institution of leaders is just beginning to take shape.

Chiefdom. Chiefdom theory (from English, chiefdom) developed by representatives of Western political anthropology. Within this concept, the chiefdom is seen as an intermediate stage between stateless societies and state ones. The most fundamental aspects of the chiefdom theory were formulated in the works of E. Service and M. Sahlins. The history of the discovery and subsequent development of the chiefdom theory is covered in detail in the works of Russian researchers S. L. Vasilyev and N. N. Kradin. The concept of “chiefdom”, or “chiefdom”, entered the scientific apparatus of Russian researchers and was reflected in scientific and educational literature.

Chiefdom can be defined as a form of sociopolitical organization of late primitive society, characterized by centralized control, social and property inequality, a redistributive system of redistribution, ideological unity, but the absence of a repressive coercive apparatus.

The main features of a chiefdom are the following:

• a) the presence of supralocal centralization. In the chiefdoms there was a hierarchical system of decision-making and an institution of control, but the existing authorities did not have a coercive apparatus and did not have the right to use force. The ruler of the chiefdom had limited powers;
• b) chiefdoms are characterized by fairly clear social stratification and limited access simple community members to key resources; there is a tendency towards secession of the elite from simple masses into a closed one class;
• V) important role V economy chiefdoms played a role in redistribution, which meant redistribution surplus product;
• d) chiefdoms are characterized by a common ideological system, a common cult and rituals.

Chiefdoms are characterized by social differentiation. The simplest chiefdoms were divided into leaders and simple community members. In more stratified societies there were three main groups: the top - hereditary leaders and other categories of elite; middle - free full members; lowest - various groups disadvantaged and powerless persons.

An example is one of the traditional societies of North-East Tanzania, the second half of the 19th century V. Chiefdoms here usually consisted of communities of 500-1000 people. Each of them was headed by assistant chiefs (valolo) and elders (huachili), who connected communities with central settlement. General quantity these persons did not exceed several dozen people. Community members brought gifts to the leader with food, livestock, and beer. For this, the leader provided for his subjects magical protection in relations with the gods, protected from at

The beginning of the evolution of Eurasian ancient civilizations

Ten thousand years ago, people conducted an appropriative economy: they took (appropriated) directly from nature what they needed for life - they were engaged in hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants.

Small groups of hunter-gatherers moved around, so there were few permanent settlements in prehistory. This way of life excluded the possibility of accumulating property, and therefore it is impossible to talk about property relations (property - relations between people regarding the conditions of production and the results of their productive use; property - the appropriation of an economic good by some to the exclusion of others). Indeed, people treated the results of the hunt as prey, and it did not become their property. The territory was also not secured, because with exhaustion necessary resources the group left her. Even if a forest plot was later assigned to a family, it did not become its property. The family simply had to track potential prey in the forest.

Hunting and war significantly influenced the distribution of power relations within the community of ancient people. A successful hunt requires a leader who has the special qualities of an experienced hunter and a brave warrior. For these qualities, a person was respected and his word and opinion became binding for his relatives (became an authoritative decision). However, the leader was chosen by hunter-gatherers, and his status was not hereditary.

The distribution of the spoils took place in accordance with traditions. For example, the hunter whose arrow hit the animal first received half of the skin; whose arrow hit the animal second - part of the entrails, etc.

While men were engaged in hunting, women were engaged in gathering. There is a sex-age (natural) division of labor. It should be emphasized that the skills of hunting and war, as well as the weapons of hunting and war, did not differ from each other, i.e. these types of activities were not yet differentiated and existed together (syncretically). The wars did not yet have an economic basis (after all, the accumulation of property was not yet known) and were fought for the redistribution of territory, due to blood feud, for the abduction of women, for the defense of territory, i.e. were economically unattractive, since other people's prey was not yet a goal.

The transition to sedentarism and the formation of centralized empires

By the 3rd millennium BC. There is a transition to a producing economy through the development of slash-and-burn agriculture, which still left the possibility of migration. In fact, the development of the simplest technologies and the attempt to put the forces of nature at the service of man led to sedentism. This transition to sedentism was the essence of the Neolithic (agricultural) revolution, which involved the growth and improvement of the plant and animal resources available to humans.

Beyond the 3rd millennium BC human communities were forced to switch to cultivating the same piece of land, because... this resource turned out to be limited. This is how settled life arose, and with it agrarian civilization. Naturally, agricultural civilizations formed in river valleys (they were also called river civilizations). It should be said that the spread of agricultural civilization dates back to 3000 BC. 1500 century AD This is the period of formation and development of empires and eastern kingdoms (agrarian states) in the Ancient East and America and feudalism in Europe.

Let's dwell on following question: what significance does the system of withdrawals of surplus product have on the formation of the type of economic system, for one system of withdrawals contributed to the growth of the power of agrarian states, the other – to the flourishing of feudalism.

Sedentarism and centralization of withdrawals are the conditions for the formation of agrarian states.

Since settled peoples the land is the main and common factor production, then people need to know the boundaries of the cultivated plots, what part of the crop they can claim, how the land is assigned to the user, inherited, etc. This is how they appeared land relations, which influenced the social and then property differentiation of ancient settled communities and the resulting emergence of power relations. At their origins, power relations (relations of command and subordination) are built around knowledge about agricultural production and the bearers of this knowledge: knowledge about the beginning and end of agricultural work, their sequence, etc. This information was presented in religious rituals. It is no coincidence that the first ruling elites were religious elites. And the first temples were located in river valleys. In accordance with the ritual, the community members cultivated the temple land, the harvest from which provided the needs of the clergy. This is how it arose temple management - a set of economic activities related to the needs of the temple and its servants.

The second privileged group is the tribal leaders. They ruled in accordance with traditional norms. Such norms also included gifts to the leader, which constituted a fund for fulfilling public functions: protection, ransom. Over time, the leaders began to strive to make donations regular, for which they had to resort to violence, but then the donations turned into taxes.

With the development of settled life, a third privileged group appears - the bureaucracy. The fact is that agriculture requires water. And farmers are forced to build their relationships not only regarding land, but also regarding water: the creation of an irrigation (or drainage) system - the construction of irrigation structures and its subsequent distribution across the fields. For this, in turn, you need special apparatus management, which organizes the construction of structures and control of water use. This is how centralization appears in the use of the most important resource - water, and at the same time - irrigated agriculture (Sumerians, Egypt). The bureaucracy - the water and construction bureaucracy - specialized in organizing construction, operating irrigation structures and withdrawing surplus product. The usual and widespread method of seizure is violence, and this is already a transition from the temple economy to the ancient kingdoms, in which the most authoritative or powerful headed the bureaucracy. Such economic and political systems are often called agrarian states. Thus, settled life determined the power differentiation of the population.

Since in agrarian states there was an early centralization of violence on the part of the bureaucracy, the main thing in the interaction of layers of society turned out to be the bureaucracy-population relationship, and not the servant-master, which also exists, but they are secondary.

The stability of the withdrawal of the surplus product makes the agrarian state stable and prosperous, since the apparatus wants not only today, but also tomorrow to confiscate the product from its subjects, i.e. objective restrictions on seizures arose. At the same time, traditions of distributing confiscated goods were developing in agrarian states. So, for example, in Ancient India half of the income was to be spent on the army, the twelfth was to be spent on gifts and payments to officials, the twentieth was to be spent on personal expenses of the emperor (sultan), the sixth was to be reserved. Seizures gradually took the form of a capitation tax, then a land tax.

In the ancient kingdoms, property inequality increased between the bulk of the population and the elites, who actively used violence to seize part of the peasant product not only into the bins of the central government, but also into their own. Gradually, violence - robbery - spread to foreign populations, and raids to seize foreign products became the rule.

The stratified society of agrarian states differed in their territorial distribution. The bulk of the population lived in rural areas, where he was engaged in agricultural work. The ruling elite - the emperor, his retinue, the main part of the bureaucracy, the religious elite lived in the cities, from where the “tax web” stretched into the countryside. Therefore, the city remained an alien entity for the peasant.

Constant, systematic withdrawals of surplus product have given rise to the need for accounting: the tax base must be taken into account, taxes must be counted. This was a significant incentive for the development of writing and the spread of literacy, primarily among the bureaucracy.

Agrarian states were formed, as a rule, through the conquest of sedentary peoples by militant outsiders (Persians, Lombards, etc.). If the conquerors’ intentions to stay in the conquered territory were long-term, they were forced to form a special apparatus to manage the conquered population, collect tribute, taxes and other seizures, i.e. restore the destroyed system of constant withdrawals of surplus product.

Now we can formulate the most characteristic features centralized empires of antiquity:

· the presence of a minority that specializes in violence;

· stratification of society into groups (stratified society);

· a formed apparatus (bureaucracy) for collecting tribute and taxes (later taxes);

· spread of writing.

IN Central Asia in the X-XI centuries. Along with the existence of separate semi-sedentary and sedentary groups also engaged in nomadic extensive cattle breeding. Hunting was a great help to the nomads. In the cities, Oguz and Turkmen were also engaged in crafts. Approximately the same situation arose at the beginning among the Oguzes and Turkmens (who were mainly Oguzes and Turkmens) in Anatolia: their main occupation remained nomadic cattle breeding. So, the memoirist of the third crusade Tagenon wrote (1190) that the Turks in Konya lived in tents. Marco Polo gives the following description of the Turkmens of Anatolia: “they live in the mountains and in the plains, wherever they know that there are free pastures, since they are engaged in cattle breeding.” The Italian Dominican monk R. Montecroce, who visited Asia Minor at the turn of the 13th-14th centuries, described the Turkmen in approximately the same way. Marco Polo mentions “good Turkmen horses” and “good expensive mules.” Highton also talks about “good horses”. Apparently, these were the famous Turkmen horses brought by the Turkmens from across the Caspian Sea. Later, as before, Anatolia was no longer famous for horses. Marco Polo also talks about periodic migrations: in the summer, “crowds of Levantine Tatars (Turks - D.E.) come to the northeastern regions of Asia Minor, because in the summer there are free pastures, in the winter they go to where it is warm, there is grass and pastures” . It is also known that in addition to cattle breeding, they were engaged in cartage and carpet making.

However, some Oguzes and Turkmens began to settle down. Thus, in the epic “Dede Korkud”, along with stories that the Oguzes often hunt, raid infidels, migrate to summer camps, live in tents, have huge herds of sheep and herds of horses (and it is emphasized that this is their main wealth), there is a very characteristic reference to the vineyards they owned in the mountains. Thus, the Oguzes already had their own vineyards. A. Yu. Yakubovsky drew attention to this. And Ibn Battuta met a Turkmen village. Here we are dealing with the beginning of the process of settling of the Turk nomads on the land in Anatolia, which was the first step towards their permanent settlement in the occupied territories, introduction among local population, rapprochement with him and his subsequent assimilation.

Looking ahead, we note that this process lasted for a very long time: even to this day, the Yuryuks, who continue to lead a purely nomadic lifestyle, have survived in Turkey. In eastern Anatolia, some former nomads retained a semi-nomadic lifestyle. These are Turkmens. The difference between the Yuryuks and the Turkmen lies, in particular, in the fact that the former apparently retained more ancient Turkic elements (pre-Oguz and Oguz), which were more characteristic of a purely nomadic way of life. And the latter partly go back to a later layer, which absorbed many more elements of settled life, mainly Iranian. This is evidenced, for example, by the XIII-XIV centuries. It contains a lot - armud (pear), nar (pomegranate), zerdalu (peach), ka"wun (melon), leblebi (peas), marchimak (lentils), harman (threshing floor), bag (garden), bostan (vegetable garden) All these terms are of Iranian origin.

Some of the Turks settled, settling in new villages, or settling in already existing villages and cities, forming new neighborhoods in them.

Sometimes the Turks occupied villages abandoned by local residents. These settled Turks, who began to study, laid the foundation. They retained the self-name “Turk”, common to them, but lost their former tribal ethnonyms.

The squads of beys and emirs who participated in the conquest of Anatolia settled in the cities. Along with them appeared tax collectors and other servants of the administrative apparatus, imams, mullahs, etc. These elements constituted a privileged class. They most often called themselves Muslims, in contrast to other religious groups that were in an oppressed position. In addition, as we will see later, among them it was not Turks who predominated, but Muslims of other ethnic groups or converted local residents.

§2. The transition to settled life and the beginning of the property stratification of society

Stories of the transition to sedentarism and

A huge amount of literature is devoted to the formation of agrarian civilizations. A detailed discussion of these processes is beyond the scope of our topic. What is important to us are the systematic changes that occur in the organization public life at this stage.

The transition to agriculture does not immediately lead to a settled life. The first step, slash-and-burn agriculture, leaves room for community migration. However, as population density increases, such opportunities become fewer and fewer. We have to cultivate the same plots of land. This encourages sedentarism, the permanent life of the entire community and each family in the village, which remains in the same place for many generations19.

Hunter-gatherer societies are mobile. Consolidation hunting grounds if it does happen, it is not associated with strict technological necessity. The wild animals and birds living in these areas are only potential prey, but not property. In settled agriculture everything is different. A family cultivating the land must, before plowing and sowing, know the boundaries of its allotment and the harvest from which it can count. Hence the need for certain relations of land ownership: land is a key production factor of agrarian civilization. This property can be redistributed within the community, assigned to large families, inherited or not, but in any case there must be land relations established by custom and a procedure for resolving disputes. This pushes agrarian society to create more developed forms of social organization than in the previous era20. Problems associated with land ownership relations are aggravated with the arrival of agriculture in the valleys big rivers. Here, the settlements of farmers are not separated from each other by large tracts of uncultivated land, but are located nearby. Their residents communicate with their neighbors. New relationships emerge, including those related to the coordination of joint activities.

Irrigated farming technologies are labor-intensive. For land reclamation, irrigation and watering of fields, and organization of water use, many workers are needed, which may simply not be found in one village. But neighboring farmers also need water, and they unite and coordinate their efforts, introducing agricultural technologies that were advanced at that time all over the world. It is not surprising that developed civilizations - not just settled agricultural communities, but civilizations - arose in areas of irrigated agriculture - in Sumer, Egypt.

Even C. Montesquieu noted that the strengthening of central power is associated with irrigated agriculture. This same point of view is shared by many modern researchers21. K. Wittfogel, considering the specific features of eastern despotism, reduced everything to land reclamation and irrigation22. However, the foundations of the Chinese centralized bureaucracy were formed when the vast majority of the Chinese population lived on rain-fed lands. Only many centuries later did the center of Chinese civilization shift to the south, to areas of irrigated agriculture. Undoubtedly, irrigated farming technologies contributed to the formation of a centralized bureaucracy in agrarian societies, but they were not the main and only reason for it.

The authors of some works devoted to the consequences of the Neolithic revolution note that the formation of an agrarian society with its characteristic problems associated with the regulation of property relations, primarily land ownership, involves increased stratification, the allocation of specialized functions that are little compatible with regular labor in agriculture economy. Hence the need for redistribution, i.e. mobilizing part of the resources of the rural community to perform these general functions, to ensure the circle of those who control this flow of resources, its distribution. The costs of maintaining those who carry out the general management of the economy - economic, administrative , ideological - one way or another they become institutionalized and become habitual23.

For settled agriculture, it is important to know exactly the time when to start sowing and harvesting. This is especially important for the Middle Eastern center of civilization, where there is no change of seasons set by the monsoon cycle. Hence the need to accumulate and systematize astronomical knowledge and train people capable of performing this function. Such activities were associated with religious rituals. The first privileged groups that we find in the history of agrarian civilizations are the religious elites. A characteristic feature of many early civilizations is the location of temples in river valleys.

Initially, the administrative hierarchy in sedentary rural communities is not very noticeable, similar to the institutions characteristic of the era of hunting and gathering. Chiefdom is generally considered to be the first form of social organization with centralized management and a hereditary clan hierarchy, where there are property and social inequalities, but there is no formal repressive apparatus24.

The first cases recorded in extant sources in which the resources of agricultural communities were pooled to perform specific tasks facing sedentary temple households are found among the Sumerians. They allocated land for joint cultivation. The harvest went to the needs of the clergy. Examples of proto-states (chiefdoms)25, where regular taxation does not yet exist, and public functions are performed through gifts to rulers and are not of a fixed and regular nature, are Sumer of the Lagash period, China of the Shan period, India of the Vedic period.

Public work on fields belonging to the entire community is not yet perceived as a duty, but as part of a religious ritual26. Over time, it becomes possible to seize and redistribute part of the harvest, which exceeds the minimum necessary to feed the farmer’s family. And if so, someone will try to specialize in confiscation and redistribution, using violence for this27.

Thus, the transition to settled agriculture introduces an important aspect for subsequent history into the organization of society: the balance of incentives to use violence changes. If there is a large non-militant sedentary population that produces significant volumes of agricultural products over time, sooner or later an organized group will appear willing and able to redistribute part of these resources in their favor - to take away, rob, impose an irregular tribute or an orderly tax. This phenomenon has been well researched, and is not what we are talking about now. What matters to us is what this leads to. An abyss of inequality arises between the majority of the peasant population and the privileged elite, ready to forcibly appropriate part of the products produced by the peasants. This is an important feature of an agrarian society. It was during its formation that predatory raids for loot became widespread23.

Unlike hunting, where men's production skills are close to military skills, farming by its nature is a peaceful activity. Initially, as already mentioned, it was generally feminine29. On early stages transition to agriculture, men hunt. Women, traditionally engaged in gathering, are beginning to master hoe farming. Only gradually, with the growing role of agriculture in food production, with the advent of tools that require great effort, primarily the plow, the role of male labor in agriculture increases.

If collective hunting requires organizational interaction, sedentary agriculture does not require anything like that. It allows you to significantly increase the food resources obtained from the same territory. The seasonal nature of farming makes it necessary to accumulate food reserves. The further agriculture develops, the more funds are required for land improvement, irrigation, outbuildings, equipment, housing, and livestock30. The peasant has something to take away. Relocation is associated with serious costs for him; it is easier for him to pay off a belligerent neighbor than to flee from his home. The use of violence to appropriate the results of peasant labor becomes profitable and therefore becomes widespread31.

This begins the transition from temple farms in river valleys, characteristic of early civilizations, to kingdoms and despotisms. The mechanisms of this transition are conquest or resistance to conquerors. Any rigid scheme used to describe the process of socio-economic evolution is poorly compatible with the realities of the historical process. According to F. Engels, the emergence of a state is certainly preceded by the stratification of society32. According to K. Kautsky, first in wars and conquests a state arises and only then does social stratification begin33. In reality, these processes are intertwined. Agricultural production develops, the agricultural population settles on the land and concentrates, the need arises to regulate land ownership rights, organize public works, the preconditions for the appropriation and redistribution of surplus product are created, groups specializing in violence are formed, and privileged elites not engaged in agriculture are formed states. All this does not happen one by one, in some given sequence, but simultaneously, in parallel34. Specialization in violence, and the associated right to have weapons, is usually the prerogative of the elite35. In agrarian civilizations, confiscation of weapons from peasants was often practiced36.

Violence and its forms, the redistribution of material resources are the subject of special historical research. Sometimes the formed proto-state structures of the early agrarian period come into conflict with their neighbors. This brings them war booty, slaves, tribute. It happens that an aggressive proto-state entering into conflict with its neighbors creates a snowball effect: other communities have only one choice - to submit and pay tribute or to become equally strong and aggressive. Often the role of tribes specializing in organized violence is played by nomadic pastoralists37. Unlike settled farmers, their production and military skills are practically inseparable, so a nomadic tribe can field more trained warriors accustomed to joint combat operations than (with the same number) a tribe of farmers. The raids of nomads became perhaps the most important element in the formation of agrarian states38.

An illustrative example is the barbarians who lived near the centers of agricultural civilizations. They could borrow technical innovations, primarily in the field of military affairs, from their more developed neighbors; they had incentives for conquest (the wealth of the same neighbors) and the advantages of the old, uncivilized structure of life, where every man is a warrior. We are talking about the first civilization known to us from reliable historical sources - Sumerian. Unlike Egypt, Mesopotamia did not have natural, easily defended borders and was open to raids. The flourishing of the cities of Mesopotamia created incentives for the barbarians to forcibly seize wealth and plunder. At the same time, the entire social order of the Sumerian settlements was shaped by the clergy, and not by the violent structures of the state. This prevented full-fledged defense from barbarian raids.

The kingdom that arose in Mesopotamia as an organizational form differed from the evolutionary agricultural society that was governed by the clergy. This is due both to the influence of neighboring Semitic shepherds and to the Semitic conquest of the sedentary Sumerians. The founder of the Akkadian Empire, Sargon, is one of the creators of the ancient state known to us from written sources, who took advantage of the favorable geographical location of the lands and the ethnocultural characteristics of their inhabitants and neighbors39.

The conquerors, having established control over settled farmers, became a new elite, rallied around power, and contributed to its strengthening. Being strangers to the locals, they imposed high taxes on the population40. Without a foreign elite, the formation of the state proceeded more slowly: in the emerging social structures, elements of tribal kinship remained for a long time, the authorities in their actions were limited by ideas about the rights and freedoms of their fellow tribesmen.

For many years it was common to perceive the transition of primitive man from hunting and gathering to agriculture as simply obvious historical fact. Subsequently, theories were formulated that one way or another explain the mechanisms of this phenomenon, which is called the “Neolithic revolution.”

This expression was introduced by the well-known Marxist historian Vir Gordon Child, whose work was recently used by American researchers who proved.

Modern science has an impressive arsenal of developments and technologies that make it possible to at least partially transfer research from the category of purely theoretical to practical, albeit through modeling. TO the latest developments resorted to the American-Korean tandem of scientists, who showed how

the transition to agriculture was associated with a change in the already established institution of property.

A well-known Marxist and researcher in the USSR Samuel Bowles and his colleague Jeong-Kyo Choi from the American used the climatic, archaeological and geological data at their disposal

to recreate the situation that accompanied the Neolithic revolution, which occurred at the junction of two geological eras - which was ending at that time Pleistocene and still continuing Holocene- that is, approximately 12 thousand years ago.

Not so long ago, at the junction of these two eras, the Pacific aborigines destroyed unique species birds. Now the goal of the researchers was to find out how the existing conditions contributed to the transition to settled agriculture and the emergence new system ownership became possible.

It turned out that initially, at the end of the Pleistocene, the transition to agriculture was a massive phenomenon. This was facilitated not only by certain evolutionary changes that occurred with man, but also by the prevailing climatic conditions. Later, however,

nature played a cruel joke: the climate changed again, and it turned out that it was much more effective for a person to return to hunting and gathering again than to make enormous efforts to ensure that the plants he planted survived in the new conditions. This is what, for example, residents of the Australian coast were forced to do, California Peninsula and modern Western Cape SOUTH AFRICA. The agricultural revolution in these places occurred much later, namely with the arrival of European colonialists,

although the conditions for conducting Agriculture there have already become more than favorable.

On other lands, man settled much more thoroughly: for example, in India, Scandinavia and the Levant. Initially, the transition to agriculture did not seem entirely profitable: due to the low development of technology, people were not able to collect the crops necessary for survival. Nevertheless,

farmers and hunter-gatherers continued to coexist in a kind of symbiosis until agriculture and cattle breeding began to fully meet the needs of people.

However sedentary image life in itself contributed to the improvement of demographic conditions, in particular, now much more people had a chance to survive and grow more children.

Meanwhile, other mechanisms were developing that were only indirectly related to agriculture. We are talking about the property system:

If the mechanisms that existed before the start of the Neolithic revolution were based on the economy of the gift, now private property began to take their place. It turns out that certain goods and resources - land, crops and livestock - were simply privatized by the new “owners”.

Thus, the transition to agriculture occurred precisely because many people approached the problem of owning something differently and decided to use new, but at that time not very proven technologies.

It is worth noting that all this did not happen at once: the notorious transition took from 2 to 4.5 thousand years. Over such a significant period of time, gatherers and hunters finally lost their leading positions - the emerging mechanisms of family farming contributed to the development and establishment of the institution of private property.

However, it is necessary to clarify that the transition to agriculture was not only long, but sometimes bloody. This happened, for example, in the Middle East.

This is how Professor Samuel Bowles explained this process to Gazeta.Ru: “People switched to agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle not because circumstances required it.”

This happened thanks to the banal human greed: People saw that now, by growing plants and taming animals, they may well not depend on anyone except their loved ones, the professor explains.

Over time, the person already owned a sufficient number of seeds and knew first-hand how, what and in what quantities needed to be grown. The Neolithic revolution took place, and with it the institution of private property and a new way of life appeared.