An Edible History of Humanity (5 page)

The trouble is that the archaeological evidence does not reveal much about the mechanism of stratification. The first signs
of change are usually greater variations in grave goods and the emergence of more elaborate regional pottery styles, which
appear around 5500 B.C. in Mesopotamia, 2300 B.C. in northern China, and 900 B.C. in the Americas. Such pottery suggests some
degree of specialization, and possibly the emergence of elites capable of supporting full-time craft workers. Huge numbers
of pottery bowls made in standard sizes appear in Mesopotamia around 3500 B.C., which suggests that their manufacture had
been placed under centralized control and that standard measures of grain and other commodities were used when paying taxes
and distributing rations.

In northern China, settlements from the Longshan period (3000– 2000 B.C.) start to have large walls, and weapons such as spears
and clubs become more widespread. In Mesopotamia, L-shaped entrances to buildings, caches of stones for use in slingshots,
and defensive earthworks appear. All are suggestive of organization for the purpose of defense. Just as telling are the first
steps toward writing, in the form of tokens and seals used for administration in Western Asia and symbols written on bones
by specialist fortune-tellers in northern China. Ever-larger settlements, as villages grow into towns, indicate greater political
organization for the simple reason that without some accepted authority to adjudicate when disputes arise, villages seem unable
to grow beyond a certain size.

By the start of the Shang dynasty in China around 1850 B.C. there are dedicated craft workshops, and some settlements have
some kinds of workshop but not others, suggesting deliberate local specialization. The ability to work bronze in the Near
East and China and gold in South America is another sign of craft specialization, and the presence of fine metalwork in grave
goods signals stratification, in some cases to an extraordinary degree. In the “royal” tombs of the Mesopotamian city of Ur,
dating from around 2500 B.C., the dead were entombed with gold, silver, and jewel-encrusted items. They were also accompanied
by dozens of sacrificed servants, musicians, and bodyguards, and even by oxen to draw their chariots. These tombs, and similar
examples in China, provide striking and gruesome evidence of social stratification.

By the time the first cities appear, with their specialist craftsmen organized into districts, and monumental buildings such
as temples and pyramids, there is no question that social stratification has occurred. Indeed, there is direct written evidence
of it. In China, documents detail a complex hierarchy of nobles, each with his own territory, under a king. In Mesopotamia’s
city-states, clay tablets record taxes paid, commodities produced, and rations issued; there are also membership lists for
specialist guilds, from brewers to snake charmers. In Egypt, the Overseer of All the Works of the King in the Fourth Dynasty
(the period in which the pyramids were built) had a large staff of officials and scribes who scheduled, fed, and organized
large numbers of full-time masons and even more numerous rotating teams of construction workers. This involved a mountain
of ration lists and timetables.

The appearance of monumental architecture, many examples of which are still standing today around the world, undoubtedly provides
the most direct and enduring evidence of the social stratification of the first civilizations. Such large-scale building works
can only be carried out under an efficient system of administration, with a system to store surplus food and issue it as rations
to building workers and an ideology to convince people that the construction project is worthwhile—in short, by a hierarchical
society ruled by an all-powerful king. The defining characteristic of such tombs, temples, and palaces is that they are far
bigger and more elaborate than they need to be. Such buildings are statements of power, and as societies become more stratified,
these buildings become more prominent.

The pyramids of Egypt, the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, and the stepped temples of central and southern Mexico were made possible
by agricultural food surpluses and the associated increase in social complexity. Hunter-gatherers would not have dreamed of
building them, and even if they had, they lacked the means—the wealth in the form of surplus food, and the necessary organizational
structures—to do so. These great edifices stand as monuments to the rise of the first civilizations, but also to the emergence
of a new and unprecedented degree of inequality and social stratification that has persisted ever since.

For the Incas, agriculture was closely linked to warfare: The earth was defeated, as if in battle, by the plow. So the harvest
ceremony was carried out by young noblemen as part of their initiation as warriors, and they sang a haylli as they harvested
the maize to celebrate their victory over the earth. At the beginning of the next growing season, only the ruling Inca had
the power to defeat the earth and capture its reproductive energies to ensure the success of the agricultural cycle, so he
had to break the ground first. This emphasized his power over his people: Without him, they would starve. The symbolic defeat
of the earth was also a reenactment of the battle between the first Incas and the indigenous inhabitants of Cuzco, the Hualla,
whom the Incas had defeated before planting the first corn. As the Incas saw it, they had triumphed over nature in two ways:
by defeating the local savages and then by introducing agriculture. The ruling elite claimed to be the direct descendants
of the winners of that original battle. The ceremonies highlighted this link, and hence the right of the elite to rule over
the masses, while also suggesting that the hierarchical structure of society was part of an ancient natural order. The implication
was that if the king and his nobles were overthrown, there would be nobody to make the crops grow.

Food-related activities of this kind were widely used to define and reinforce the privileged position of the elite in early
civilizations. Food, or food-production capacity, was used to pay tax. Food was extracted as tribute after military victories.
Food offerings and sacrifices were used to maintain the stability of the universe and ensure the continuation of the agricultural
cycle. Formal handouts of food, as rations and wages and at feasts and festivals, also emphasized how food, and hence power,
was distributed. In the modern world, you follow the money to determine where power lies. In the ancient world it is food
that reveals power structures. To illuminate the organization of the first civilizations, you must follow the food.

Food was used within early civilizations as a form of currency, in barter transactions, and to pay wages and taxes. Food was
passed upward from the farmers to the ruling elite in various ways and then redistributed as wages and rations to support
the elite’s activities: building, administration, warfare, and so on. The principle that some or all of the agricultural surplus
had to be handed over is common to all early civilizations, since the appropriation of the surplus had been central to their
emergence in the first place. There were many different schemes. But in each case the structure of society—who people worked
for, where their sustenance came from, and where their loyalties lay—was defined by food.

In Egypt and Mesopotamia, tax was paid both directly in the form of food and indirectly in the form of agricultural labor.
Most Egyptian farmers did not own their own land but rented it from landowners, who claimed a fraction of the resulting harvest.
The state owned a lot of land, so this produced a lot of food income. Other land belonged to officials, temples, nobles, and
the pharaoh himself, and this too was rented to farmers in return for a share of their harvest, with a fraction of that rent
going as tax to the state. The rent charged and tax levied depended on the agricultural potential of the land, given its proximity
to wells and canals and the level of each year’s Nile flood.

The Hekanakhte Papers, a set of letters dating from around 1950 B.C. written by a priest to his family while he was away from
his estate, give details of this system in action, while also providing a rare glimpse of everyday life in Ancient Egypt.
Hekanakhte seems to have been in charge of land belonging to a temple, and in his letters he advises his family about which
bits of land to cultivate and how much each can be expected to yield, how many sacks of barley to charge when renting land
to other farmers, and how many sacks of barley to pay the laborers on the estate. Evidently times are bad and food is scarce,
and Hekanakhte reminds his family that they are eating better than most people. There is a quarrel over a handmaiden named
Senen, and much indulgence is shown to a spoiled young man named Snofru. Debts and rents are collected in barley and wheat,
and in some cases jars of oil are accepted as payment instead: one jar of oil is worth two sacks of barley, or three of wheat.

Tax, like rent, was also paid in the form of food, and tax collectors took the resulting goods to regional administrative
centers, where they were redistributed as pay to government officials, craft workers, and farmers seconded to work for the
state as corvée laborers. Such workers built and maintained irrigation systems, constructed tombs and pyramids, worked in
mines, and performed military service. During a stint of corvée work, which might last for several months, laborers were fed,
housed, and clothed by the state. It was corvée workers who built the pyramids; surviving ration lists show that they received
daily portions of bread and beer, supplemented with onions and fish. A similar scheme prevailed in Mesopotamia, where land
was owned by wealthy families, temples, city councils, or the palace. Farmers handed over a fraction of their harvest to rent
land, and the king levied taxes on non-palace fields. In this way most of the surplus went to the king, the temples belonging
to various gods, and landowners. As in Egypt, corvée labor was used in large construction projects.

Food also flowed from subject states in the form of tribute, extracted by dominant states and city-states from the weaker
neighbors under threat of military force, usually after a military defeat. Following the defeat of one city-state by another
in Mesopotamia, for example, the losing city would be looted and would also have to pay regular tribute to the winning city.
Sargon of Akkad, who conquered the city-states of Mesopotamia around 2300 B.C. and unified them into an empire, demanded vast
amounts of tribute from each city: Inscriptions speak of entire warehouses of grain being paid. As well as emphasizing his
superiority, this kept the subject cities weak and Sargon’s capital strong. It also allowed him to support a huge staff: He
boasted of feeding 5,400 men every day. By redistributing tribute among their followers, rulers could reinforce their leadership
and maintain support for further military campaigns.

Perhaps the best example of tribute collection is that of the Aztec “triple alliance” between Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan.
These three city-states collected tribute from the whole of central Mexico. Nearby subject states in and around the Valley
of Mexico had to supply huge quantities of food: Every day the chief of Tex-coco received enough maize, beans, squashes, chiles,
tomatoes, and salt to feed more than two thousand people. More distant states supplied cotton, cloth, precious metals, exotic
birds, and manufactured items. The level of tribute paid depended on each state’s distance from the three capitals (the alliance’s
control over those farther away was weaker, so it demanded less in tribute from them) and on whether the state put up a fight
or not before submitting to alliance rule (states that gave in without a fight paid less). The constant flow of food and other
goods toward the capital meant there was no doubt where the power lay. Aztec rulers used this tribute to pay officials, provision
the army, and support public works. Tribute handed out to the nobility reinforced the ruler’s position and simultaneously
weakened the rulers of subordinate states, who ended up with less to distribute among their own followers: less food meant
less power.

As systems of social organization became more elaborate, so too did the religious practices that provided cosmological justification
for the elite’s right to levy all these taxes. Religious beliefs and traditions varied widely among the world’s first civilizations,
but in many cases there was a clear congruence between the payment of taxes by the masses to the elite and the “payment” of
sacrifices and offerings by the elite to the gods. Such offerings were believed to return energy to its divine source, so
that the source could continue to animate nature and supply humans with food. Rather than being so powerful that they could
exist without humanity’s support, the gods were thought to be dependent on humans, and humans were thought to be dependent
in turn on the gods. An Egyptian text from around 2070 B.C. refers to humans as the creator god’s “cattle,” for example, implying
that the god both looked after humans and depended upon them for his own sustenance. Similarly, many cultures believed that
the gods had created mankind to provide spiritual nourishment in the form of sacrifices and prayers. In return, the gods provided
physical nourishment for humans by making plants and animals grow. Sacrifices were regarded as an essential means of maintaining
this cycle.

Some Mesoamerican cultures believed that the gods even sacrificed themselves or each other from time to time to ensure the
continued existence of the universe and survival of mankind. The Maya, for example, believed that maize was the flesh of the
gods containing divine power, and at harvest time the gods were, in effect, sacrificing themselves to sustain humanity. This
divine power passed into humans as they ate, and was particularly concentrated in their blood. Human sacrifices in which blood
was spilled were a way to repay this debt and return the divine power to the gods. Food and incense were provided as offerings
as well, but human sacrifices were thought to be most important of all.

The Aztecs also regarded human sacrifices as a way to repay energy owed to the gods. The Earth Mother was nourished by human
blood, they believed, and the crops would only grow if she was given enough of it. It was supposedly an honor to be sacrificed,
but even so victims seem not to have belonged to the ruling elite. Instead, they were mostly criminals, prisoners of war,
and children. Human flesh and blood were thought to be made from maize, so these sacrifices sustained the cosmic cycle: Maize
became blood, and blood was then transformed back into maize. Sacrificial victims were referred to as “tortillas for the gods.”
The Incas also thought sacrifice was necessary to nourish the gods. They offered llamas, guinea pigs, birds, cooked vegetables,
fermented drinks, cocoa, gold, silver, and elaborately woven cloth, which was burned to release the energy that had gone into
weaving it. Food and alcoholic drinks made from maize were thought to be particularly favored by the gods. But most valued
of all were human sacrifices. After subjugating a new region, the Incas sacrificed its most beautiful people.