0:04

the summer of 2014,

0:06

i was in iraq kurdistan

0:09

with a team of

0:11

archaeologists, finishing

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season the the field excavations near

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the border town of halabja a

0:19

project was looking into something

0:21

which is and then treats

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me ever since i began, studying theology,

0:26

with told to believe

0:29

that thousands of years ago when

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our ancestors first invented,

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agriculture in that part of the world

0:36

that it's set in motion a chain of consequences

0:40

that would save our modern world

0:42

in a particular direction on

0:44

a particular

0:45

the whole

0:47

farming week iran

0:50

sisters supposedly developed

0:52

new attachments to the land they lived on

0:55

private , was invented and

0:57

with that the need to defend

0:59

it it with new opportunities

1:02

for some people to accumulate

1:04

surpluses came new

1:06

labour demands tying most

1:08

people to a hard regime the

1:11

pending their crops while

1:14

a privileged few receive

1:16

freedom the leisure the

1:19

do other things to think

1:22

the experiments the creates

1:24

the foundations of what we refer

1:27

to civilization the

1:29

according to this familiar story

1:31

what happens next is that

1:34

population spoons villages

1:36

turned into towns tens became

1:38

settings and with the emergence of cities

1:41

are species was locked on

1:44

a familiar trajectory of

1:46

developments worth spiraling

1:48

populations and technological

1:51

change would sound up

1:53

with the kind of dreadful inequalities

1:56

that we see around us today

2:00

is

2:02

anyone can tell you he's looked at

2:04

the evidence from the middle east almost

2:08

nothing of what i've just been saying

2:11

he's actually

2:12

true

2:14

the consequences i'm going to

2:16

suggests a quite profound actually

2:20

what happened after the invention of agriculture

2:23

around ten thousand years ago the

2:26

long period of around another

2:28

four thousand years in which villages

2:31

largely remained villages

2:33

and actually there's very little evidence for

2:35

the emergence of rigid social

2:38

classes just not to say that

2:40

nothing happened that

2:42

is full thousand years technological

2:44

change actually proceeded hey

2:48

without things without bureaucracies

2:51

without standing armies these early

2:53

funding populations of that

2:56

the development of mathematical knowledge

2:58

advanced mythology they

3:00

learned to cultivate all it's

3:02

vines and date palms they

3:04

invented leavened bread

3:07

in

3:08

they develop textile technologies

3:10

the process we'll the sale they

3:13

spread all of these innovations far

3:15

and wide from the shores of eastern

3:18

mediterranean up to the black sea

3:20

and from the persian gulf the

3:23

way over to the mountains

3:25

of kurdistan where

3:28

are excavations were taking

3:30

place i've

3:32

often referred half jokingly to this long

3:34

period of human history the

3:37

the era of the first global

3:39

village because it's not just

3:42

the technological innovations the the so

3:44

remarkable but also the social

3:46

innovations which enables people

3:48

to do all these things without

3:50

forming senses and without

3:53

raising up a class of permanent

3:55

leaders over everybody else

3:58

the only enough

4:00

this efflorescence of culture

4:03

that's not what we usually refer

4:05

to the civilization

4:09

instead that term is usually

4:11

reserved for horsemeat

4:14

unequal societies which came

4:16

thousands of years later dynastic

4:18

mesopotamia several next each

4:21

imperial rule societies

4:23

that was deeply stresses

4:25

of it the sort i've

4:29

always felt that there was basically something

4:31

very weird about our

4:33

concepts of civilization

4:36

something that leaves this loss for words

4:38

tongue tied when we're confronted with

4:40

thousands of years of human beings

4:43

say practicing agriculture

4:45

creating new technologies that

4:48

not loading it's over each other

4:50

or exploiting each other to

4:52

the maximum why don't

4:54

we have better words whereas our lexicon

4:57

for those long expanses of human

4:59

history which we once the

5:01

hazing that way

5:04

over the past ten years or more i

5:06

worked closely together with

5:09

the late great anthropologists

5:12

david grab to

5:14

, some of these questions

5:17

but we did a summer months large scale because

5:19

from our perspective as an archaeologist

5:21

and and anthropologists anthropologists

5:24

clash between siri

5:26

and data between the standard

5:28

narrative of human history and the evidence

5:31

that we have before us today it's

5:33

not just confined to the early

5:35

middle east the

5:37

everything the whole picture

5:40

of human history that we've been selling for centuries

5:43

basically wrong

5:45

try and explain a few more

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the reasons why let's

5:49

go back to some of those core concepts

5:52

the stable reference points

5:54

around which we've been organizing

5:57

and orchestrating our understanding

5:59

of world the street the hundreds of years

6:03

take for instance that notion that

6:05

for most of it's history the human

6:07

species lives in tiny

6:09

egalitarianism bands of hunter gatherers

6:12

until the advent of agriculture

6:15

ushered in a new age of inequality

6:18

or the notion that with the arrival of

6:20

cities hang social

6:23

classes sacred

6:25

kings and rapacious

6:28

oligarchs trampling everyone else

6:30

on the from a very

6:32

first history lessons with taught

6:35

to believe that our modern

6:37

world with all of its advantages

6:39

and demeanor six modern

6:41

healthcare space travel all

6:43

the things that a good and exciting

6:46

couldn't possibly exist without

6:49

that original concentration

6:51

of humanity into larger and larger

6:53

units and the

6:56

relentless build up of

6:58

inequalities that came with it

7:00

inequality the taught

7:02

to believe the necessary

7:05

price of civilization

7:09

so then what are we to make

7:11

of the early middle east perhaps one

7:13

might say that was just a very very very

7:15

long lag time for thousand

7:17

years before all these developments

7:20

took place inequality was bound to happen

7:22

if is bound set in system

7:24

matter of time that

7:27

the rest of the story so works

7:29

for other parts of the world well

7:33

let's think a bitch about what we can

7:35

actually say today about

7:37

the origin of cities surely

7:40

you might think we'll see appearance

7:42

of cities came the appearance

7:44

of social classes think

7:46

about ancient egypt with

7:49

it's pyramid temples shanghai

7:52

china with it's lavish tunes

7:55

the classic maya with a warlike

7:57

rulers the inca

7:59

m there with it's mummified kings

8:02

and queens actually

8:04

the pics of these days is not so clear

8:07

what modern archaeology tells us for

8:09

example they were already

8:12

cities on the lower reaches

8:14

of the yellow river over a thousand

8:16

years before the rise of the shirt

8:19

and on the other side of the pacific in

8:21

peruse real superior we

8:24

already see huge agglomerations

8:26

of people with monumental architecture

8:29

four thousand years before

8:31

the income in

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south asia for and a half thousand

8:36

years ago the first cities appeared

8:38

at places like mahindra dot harper

8:42

in the indus valley but these

8:44

huge settlements present no

8:47

evidence of kings queens

8:52

no royal monuments

8:54

know aggrandizing arts and what's more

8:57

we know that much of the population

8:59

lives in high quality housing

9:02

with excellent sanitation not

9:04

that the black sea in the

9:06

modern country of you crazy archaeologists

9:10

have found evidence of even more ancient

9:12

cities going back six thousand

9:14

years the gain you

9:17

settlements then no

9:20

evidence of authoritarian

9:23

room

9:24

no temples palaces

9:27

the even any evidence of central storage facilities

9:29

or top down bureaucracy actually

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what we see in those cases are these great

9:35

concentric rings at houses

9:37

arranged rather like the inside

9:39

of a tree trunk around neighborhood

9:42

assembly holes stay

9:44

that way for about eight

9:47

hundred years

9:51

the what this means is that long before

9:54

the birth of democracy in ancient

9:56

greece they were

9:58

already well the nice cities

10:01

on several of the world's continents

10:03

which presents no evidence for

10:06

ruling dynasty some

10:08

of them also seem to have managed perfectly

10:10

well without three

10:13

mandarins and warrior politicians

10:16

course summer we cities

10:18

did go on to become the capitals of

10:20

kingdoms and empires but

10:23

it's important to note that others wins

10:25

in completely the opposite direction

10:29

the take one well documented example

10:32

around the year two hundred and sixty

10:34

a d the city

10:36

as tennessee walk come in

10:38

the valley of mexico with a population

10:40

of around one hundred thousand people

10:43

haven't spanish

10:45

pyramid temples and human

10:47

sacrifices and reconstituted

10:50

itself as a vast collection

10:53

of comfortable villas housing

10:56

most of the city's population

10:59

when archaeologists first investigated

11:01

these buildings a they assumed

11:04

they were palaces than they realize

11:06

that just about everyone in the city

11:08

living in a palace with spaces

11:10

patios and some sort drainage

11:13

isn't gorgeous murals on the walls

11:16

what we shouldn't get carry the way none

11:19

of the the societies that i've been describing

11:22

was actually egalitarian

11:26

then we might also remember that sensory

11:29

essence which we look to

11:31

was the birthplace of democracy

11:33

there's also a militaristic

11:36

society i wanted on

11:38

chattel slavery where

11:40

women were completely excluded

11:43

the politics

11:45

the maybe by comparison somewhere like to

11:47

to walk on this not doing so badly

11:49

at keeping the genie is inequality

11:52

in it's possible that maybe we can just

11:54

forget about all that we can look away stamps

11:57

all of these things i'm talking about are

11:59

basically

12:00

the pliers

12:03

maybe we can still keep our familiar

12:05

story of civilization intact

12:09

the after all it's cities

12:11

without rulers were really such

12:13

a common thing in human history why

12:16

didn't cause hurts and desire

12:18

of and all the other countries the doors many

12:22

they began their invasion of the americas

12:24

why did they find only moctezuma

12:27

a , loading it's over the

12:30

empire's

12:32

that's not true either

12:35

actually the city where have another

12:37

cortez found his military allies

12:39

the ones who enabled his successful

12:41

assault on the as tech capital

12:44

of finished his lung was

12:46

exactly one such city

12:49

without rulers an

12:51

indigenous republic the name

12:53

of plus color calvin

12:55

by an urban parliament which had some

12:58

pretty interesting initiation rituals

13:00

for would be politicians they'd be

13:03

periodically whipped and subject

13:05

to public abuse by their constituents

13:07

to sources break down their egos

13:10

some mindless

13:12

is nearly and chance the

13:15

little bit different from what we expect

13:17

about politicians today an

13:19

archaeologist by the way of also works

13:21

at this place to scholar excavating

13:24

the remains of be pre conquest city

13:27

and what they find those really remarkable again

13:30

the most impressive architectures not temples

13:32

and palaces well

13:34

appointed residences of ordinary

13:37

citizens of raid along these grand

13:39

terraces overlooking

13:42

district pluses

13:44

and it's not just the history of cities

13:47

that mobile archaeological

13:49

science is turning on it's head

13:53

we also know now that the history of human

13:55

societies before becoming of agriculture

13:57

is just nothing like what we want to much

14:01

from this idea of people living all the time

14:04

and tiny bands of hunter gatherers

14:06

actually what we see these days is

14:08

evidence for a really wild

14:10

variety of social experimentation

14:13

before the coming of farming in

14:15

africa sixty thousand years

14:17

ago hunter gatherers were

14:20

already creating suits

14:22

networks social networks

14:24

covering large parts of the continent

14:26

in ice age years twenty five

14:29

thousand two years ago we see evidence

14:31

of individuals singled out

14:33

for special brand variables

14:36

that bodies seized with ornamentation

14:39

weapons and even what looked like regalia

14:42

as we see public buildings constructed

14:44

on the bones and tusks

14:46

of woolly mammoth and

14:49

around eleven thousand years ago in

14:52

the middle east west started hunter

14:55

gatherers constructed enormous

14:57

stone pimples at

15:00

a place called go back lit test

15:02

if in thirty

15:05

the north america

15:07

long before the coming of maize farming indigenous

15:09

populations created the massive

15:12

earthworks of poverty point in

15:14

louisiana capable of hosting

15:16

hunter gatherer of public's in their thousands

15:19

and been japan again long

15:21

before the arrival of rice farming the

15:23

storehouse's of santa maria

15:26

much could already hold rate surpluses

15:29

of wild plants since know what

15:31

all these details amount to

15:33

what is it all mean the

15:35

very least i'd suggest it's

15:38

really a bit far fetched these days

15:40

to cling to this notion the

15:43

invention of agriculture then

15:46

a departure from some egalitarianism

15:49

eden or to cling to

15:51

the idea that small scale societies

15:54

are specially likely to be egalitarian

15:57

while large scale ones must

15:59

nasa

15:59

the really have things presidents

16:02

and takedown structures of management

16:05

there are also some contemporary implications

16:07

take for example the commonplace notion

16:10

that participates hurry democracy

16:13

is somehow natural in natural small

16:15

community or perhaps an

16:17

activist groups but couldn't possibly

16:19

ever scale up for anything

16:21

like the city the

16:23

nation or even a reach actually

16:27

be evidence of human history if

16:29

we prepared some look at it the

16:32

opposite cities

16:35

and regional confederacy's held

16:37

together mostly by consensus

16:39

and corporation existed

16:42

thousands of years ago stop

16:46

creating them again today

16:48

with technologies that allow

16:51

us to overcome the friction assistance

16:54

and numbers perhaps

16:56

if not too late to

16:58

begin learning from all this

17:00

new evidence of the human past

17:03

even to begin imagining,

17:05

what other kinds of civilization?

17:08

we might create, we

17:11

can just stop this

17:15

particular was is

17:17

the only one possible

17:19

thanks

17:21

very much