so what is civilization real quick a major culture system based around cities that's going to be our definition excellent uh the key here is to remember that Civilization is to be a useful word there has to be some sort of tied to Urban culture to cities otherwise it's just a synonym for culture and that's I know popularly that's how we use it but in this class when we talk about civilization we're talking about cities so what's barbarism sort of a pejorative but right originally people who don't speak the way they do babblers right but yeah it's come in historical terms it's come to mean those outside of a civilizational sphere not in cities usually pastoralists and next time we will talk a little bit more about the eternal struggle at least up into this to about 1700 A.D what seemed like an eternal struggle between the agriculturalists the civilized and the pastoralis the Barbarian and you can make a pretty good argument some historians have that history for most of agricultural history since the Neolithic Revolution history revolves more than anything else around that struggle between the civilized and the Barbarian every major world event in some ways connected to that struggle when you you be the judge of whether or not you think that's true remind me again too what the Neolithic Revolution was we spent the first day talking about Paleolithic Era then we briefly mentioned the Neolithic Agriculture and the domestication of animals that's right that's right everything before the Neolithic was hunter-gatherer when talking about human beings hunter-gatherer Neolithic Revolution maybe 10 12 000 years ago it starts and then it takes a few thousand years and by the time we get to maybe seven or eight thousand BC uh we've got systematic large-scale farming and that's different than just a little agriculture so maybe 10 12 000 years ago you have some people discovering that they can grow things and supplementing their hunter-gatherer ways with Gardens or something but then independently in West Africa in South Asia in West Asia in the Andean Andes Peru and Ecuador we have for some reason all at the same time systematic Big Field farming show up why that all happens at the same time is a mystery um and that changes the game because now you're not just supplementing a way of life you're creating a whole new way of life I want you to turn to the person next to you and I'll give you 30 seconds maybe I'll give you one minute I want you to come up with three or four ways that Big Field agriculture systematic cultivation completely changes the human way of life go what do we got how does the Neolithic Revolution completely transform human life yes but you don't have to go out into dangerous territories so much okay so certainly the the the necessity of Mobility greatly reduced and probably you put yourself in a dangerous situation a lot less now you're exposed to that sort of danger yeah danger of the hunt that frees up the rest of the group to do other tasks great in fact this if there's anything I want you to remember about today this is it Surplus Surplus what starts as Gardens and develops into fields you know as as techniques improve as people learn new things as tools improve as as knowledge is diffused people get better at this and what used to be sort of subsistence farming where you know maybe a family can produce what they need and not much beyond that well as things improve this techniques improve as tools improve suddenly they can you get to the point where they can produce 10 percent more than they need or 30 percent more than they need or two hundred percent more than they need we'll get to that eventually but we call this Surplus more than they need and so that Surplus frees up theoretically that'll free up somebody now not every single person needs to be involved seen the hunter-gatherer era everyone is involved in food production men women children everyone's involved in food production but in Agricultural Society that is not the case at least not after a while once you start producing Surplus you free up people and now you can have what we call specialists specialists what sort of Specialists come to mind now that not everyone has to be a food producer you can be a full-time Builder right priest scribe we'll see Warrior Soldier Artisan Trader a musician eventually right medicine man whatever the point is you can now devote all of your time to this and be someone else produces the food and trades that food to you for your services whatever they are and as more and more Surplus is produced pretty soon I mean what else what else did you come up with how else does the nail with the gravel I want to see if one of you comes up with this on your own okay how so agriculture as Surplus is produced you're going to eventually have some who have a lot and some who have less and when you have a lot you have the means you have the necessity to protect it and the means to protect it maybe you start hiring full-time guards or something like that soldiers maybe this is all theoretical that puts you in a place of even more power you can see how generation after generation eventually the Neolithic Revolution sedentary lifestyle Surplus and then more Surplus eventually develops into a class system a hierarchy a hierarchy where you have more powerful less powerful very much less powerful and so on there are some Scholars out there I'm not one of them but there are some Scholars out there who point to the Neolithic Revolution for this reason and say that it was one of the greatest disasters in the human story because it created hierarchy I find that a little kooky but you don't have to agree with me there are some Scholars who argue this yeah the class thing kind of holiday good ownership excellent yeah if you are a food producer and you're able to take care of your family and you have your field I mean over time in a hunter-gatherer Society you're all sort of working together in bands you're roaming so this idea of like fixed property not even a conception but once you start you know this is my field I work this field produces food that feeds my family this this idea of property then develops and certainly those who have are able to produce more Surplus able to begin defending their stake in this real estate and we can see the concept of property and eventually this will develop into the idea of property rights the idea of actual theft um good what else how else is human existence completely transforms if it is by the Neolithic Revolution yeah stability as in because you're sort of in you can be in one place move around right you don't have to be nomadic anymore that is true all the dangers and instability that maybe nomadism comes with what else yeah it is eventually come alive from that so from as a result of the Neolithic Revolution you have more and more people living in more and more dense circumstances population wise because now they only need a relatively small piece of land to survive and someone else right next to them relatively small piece of land and pretty soon you have communities developing Villages towns and these Villages and towns these neighbors May collectively find that it's in their interest to collectively protect themselves and so maybe that we start to see the first Cooperative efforts at things like building walls Paving streets irrigation uh you know brick making stuff like that and we see the development of the first Villages and towns and today we'll talk about the first cities yeah so sedentary lifestyle with the domestication of animals we have the introduction of much higher production practices over time we'll see that some of the first villages and certainly large towns that we see are in what is now Southern turkey north of the northern Iraq Southern turkey north of the Fertile Crescent where we'll see the first cities we see the first towns and you guys all looked up a couple days ago which was really an exception you guys remember anything about chapter one of the great Neolithic sites in the world most Neolithic sites are villages okay they're little Villages a few dozen to a few hundred people if you find a village of a few hundred people in Neolithic times that's wow look at this Big Town but then there's Chapel Hill which is this weird place uh 6 000 people 32 Acres houses built one right next to the other like like an apartment building with holes in the top you climb ladders to get in from the top I mean it's just strange hundreds of religious shrines 12 different food items produced on this one site very unique so I don't know what was going on in Chateau starting around 7 500 BC but that's different that's a very unique site but it's a town the whole thing was walled clearly there was some major Cooperative effort and that's only made possible by the Neolithic Revolution you have all sorts of ornate jewelry weapons again religious artifacts being produced there clearly they had Specialists you only have Specialists if you have Surplus and so anyway these guys clearly traded hundreds of miles in every direction I mean it's really a unique Neolithic site what we'll see today is that fast forward a few millennia to the first cities and even Chateau yuk looks like nothing I mean the first cities in southern Mesopotamia as we'll see are 10 times bigger than Chateau here and hundreds of times bigger than any other Neolithic site so something really changes around I don't know 3 500 BC or so but all of that is made possible by the Neolithic Revolution and by Surplus with Surplus you can have specialists with Specialists you can have what we call the division of labor and the division of labor makes wealth creation possible and in order to materially progress you have to create wealth to illustrate how the division of labor creates wealth just think about I mean we can make something up we could say you know let's say you are awesome at uh rabbit catching you're an awesome rabbit Hunter you you catch 10 rabbits a day when you set your mind to it but when you fish you only catch a couple fish a day you're like me actually that would be zero but let's say two let's say you can catch two you are what are you awesome at let's say you're you're a great Fisher I can tell you're a great Fisher you catch eight fish a day but when you rabbit hunting you only you know catch five well if you spend all your time rabbit hunting we'll work this out with the person next to you eight fish five rabbits if she spent the whole day uh if she spent the whole day fishing she would catch 10 fish if she spent the whole day rabbit catching she'd only catch two rabbits so if they divide their time so if you if you spent half your day fishing and half your day rabbit catching what would you get what would you get eight and five so she would get four fish two or three rabbits something like that that's what you can do what about here ten and two she could catch oh no 10 rabbits yeah that's right so about five rabbits and maybe a fish so what happens if they divide labor they specialize and you do what you're best at she catches what was it eight or was it ten fish a day eight fish a day and you catch 10 rabbits a day and then you trade with each other and split it in half well now they're both getting five fish a day and they're both getting what was it four rabbits I can't remember something like that so in other words they both now have more than they would have if they'd split their time that is wealth creation and that's the power of the division of labor now times that by all the different Specialties and throw in Long Distance trade which as Surplus develops starts entering into the picture and you can see how material wealth comes to be I mean all if you've looked out the window of course our window is blocked so this is a terrible example but if you look out the window you will see tons of stuff huge structures and you know they're filled with things material things well if you were to come here a couple hundred years ago and look out the window none of that it was there this all came from something it didn't come from nothing it came from Surplus the division of labor long distance trade that's where it came from that's where material progress comes from good or for ill that's where it comes from I say for good but you can totally disagree with me that's totally fine all right so do we understand the significance we just ran rough shot right through the Neolithic Revolution but do we understand the significance of this revolution it really was a revolution it completely changed the human existence and still is we've thrown in over the last couple hundred years the you know Industrial Level production so the whole game has changed now often people make comparisons between modern things and ancient things one of the most common and popular ones is to look at like the fall of Rome and does it parallel the U.S today those can be useful but when you throw in the industrial element it sort of changes everything so we are in we we are in the midst of our own Revolution right now but man the Neolithic Revolution changed everything um so I don't want to shortchange it by jumping right to civilization this is the great intermediary step between hunter-gatherer and civilized living and it lasts you know there's a several thousand years about five thousand years between the discovery of Agriculture the emergence of Agriculture all over the world and the first cities so that's a long time I mean five thousand years ago that's how long it's been since the first cities arose and now so about that same amount of time had to pass from the emergence of Agriculture for the first time and the first cities and the first cities to now