Die Mühlen der Zivilisation

Eine Tiefengeschichte der frühesten Staaten

329 pages

German language

Published Feb. 20, 2020 by Suhrkamp Verlag.

ISBN:
978-3-518-29934-0
Copied ISBN!

View on Inventaire

5 stars (2 reviews)

Against The Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States is a 2017 book by James C. Scott that sets out to undermine what he calls the "standard civilizational narrative" that suggests humans chose to live settled lives based on intensive agriculture because this made people safer and more prosperous. Instead, he argues, people had to be forced to live in the early states, which were hierarchical, beset by malnutrition and disease, and often based on slavery. The book has been praised for re-opening some of the biggest questions in human history. A review in Science concludes that the book's thesis "is fascinating and represents an alternative, nuanced, if somewhat speculative, scenario on how civilized society came into being."

6 editions

De l'humain sauvage à sa domestication

5 stars

Ouvrage passionnant où l'auteur déboulonne des idées reçues sur le passage des humains à l'époque néolithique en s'appuyant sur les récentes découvertes de l'archéologie. Il est démontré ici que ce passage ne s'est pas fait sans heurs et qu'il est à l'origine des premières formes de domination et d'esclavage.

Review of 'Against the Grain' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

There has long been a debate over the merits of the life of the "civilized" human being over that of the "noble savage," one that seemingly turned decisively in favor of the modern state as the European empires expanded over the last several centuries. As the Thomas Hobbes memorably stated in his description of the state of nature, “and the life of man, nasty, poor, brutish, and short.” But what if Hobbes was wrong? Perhaps if he had considered the lives of London slum dwellers and American slaves versus the hunters and gatherers who persisted in much of Africa and the Americas at the time, he might have reached a different conclusion. History, after all, is written by the victors.

Perhaps the concentration of power in urban centers with its attendant dependence on a restricted diet of monocultures, especially grain, its problems of sanitation, concentration of germs and parasites and …