Equating our socio-economic system to a modernized version of the hunter-gatherer groups of eight millennium ago is a disturbingly incomplete weltanschauung, used by some cynical conservatives to justify their social Darwinist view of the world. It was not true when men such as Thomas Hobbes and David Hume proposed it around three centuries ago, and it is not true now.
This is where Mrs. Thatcher got the idea that there are only individuals and families, not the reality of an integrated society of: clans--which are groups of related families; tribes--which are groups of clans; and peoples or nations--which are groups of interrelated tribes; and a world which is all of humanity. Anyone,like Mrs. Thatcher,who actually believes this is either ignorant of the findings of modern sociology, archaeology, and anthropology, or is ignoring them in order to make the facts fit their crackpot theories.
Two major changes in humanity's basic economic relationships have changed and expanded our economic, political and social relationships: the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.
The Agricultural Revolution started approximately eight millennium ago in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, closely followed by nearly identical developments in the Nile, Indus, and Yangtze River valleys.
This revolution began with two separate, but parallel tracks: cultivation and animal husbandry.
Cultivation replaced the gatherer segment of the "hunter-gatherer group," by finding and gathering edible plants, planting them or their seeds in concentrated plots of land, watching over them, watering them, protecting them from plant, animal, and insect predation, and then harvesting and storing the fruits of these plants. The cultivation, transport, and storage of foods--especially grains--led directly to the development of advances in technology, including irrigation, pottery, the wheel, and writing.
Animal husbandry replaced the hunter segment of the "hunter-gatherer group," by taking some of the species that they had once hunted, gathering them into herds on lands too high above or too far from the river to irrigate, and grazing them there. Using their newly domesticated friend, the dog, the herdsmen kept their animals together for protection and easy exploitation of their supplies of milk, meat, wool, and hides. This led to the development of weaving, tanning, preserving meat, and probably metal working, when they found copper in the ashes of their campfires built in circles of green-blue rocks.
Trading between the two groups--each group usually consisting of a clan with several families--led to the first economic system--barter--and the first government--the tribe--to regulate and facilitate it. The two groups in a given area also found it useful to cooperate in matters of mutual protection against brigands or the depredations of other tribes.
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