Orion Digest №2 — The Early Nations

To truly understand the problems we face today, we have to get to the roots of society — the beginning of human civilization, and the ancient nations that inspired us. Before I delve into world federalism as a whole, I will explore how the first nations organized themselves and how they figured out how to build long lasting empires. No matter how far we’ve come, there are always lessons to be learned from the past, and it is good to be thorough.

Humans had existed for hundreds of thousands of years by the time we invented agriculture, but it was this economic strategy that precipitated the rise of human civilization as we know it. Staying in one place to produce food meant farmers would need time and resources, and with many people clustered in tribes, this more complex system necessitated management. We changed from tribal societies to agricultural, clustered states that, when properly overseen, could produce enough food to free up others for further tasks, leading to innovation that allowed such societies to flourish and expand.

Societal structure provided a basic framework for all future nations to build on — a basis around production of the essential resources to survive, as well as ancillary industries to create a lifestyle for the citizens who lived and worked in the region. A military would exist to defend and expand the nation from its neighbors, and a government would manage the operations of the economy and settle disputes by both creating rules and arbitrating active conflicts in the social order. Over time, the people themselves would develop a culture based on the environment they lived in. While all of these elements are generally present to some degree or another in every successful society, what sets each society apart is how these components played into society and what degree of effectiveness they had in keeping the nation functioning.

For example, two societies, taken side by side, will both have a government and an economy of some sort, but what goods and services are being traded in that economy, as well as how involved the government is in the workings of that economy, will differ and have large effects on how the lifestyles of the people play out. While the Roman and Han Empires existed at the same time, Roman citizens had more social mobility and fluid social status, while in the Han Dynasty, there was a more defined social hierarchy dependent on the type of work being done.

Many functions in society needed to be fulfilled as more needs beyond survival being fulfilled. Culture rose to include the arts, evolution of military conflict and trade meant the need for greater weapons and vehicles, and as we began to explore the fringes of philosophy and higher thinking, ideas and the texts they became written on became valuable commodities in themselves. Beyond the machinations of economics, people began to think about our place in the universe, how the government itself could be improved, and what lay beyond the edge of charted territory. Stories and entertainment became popular distractions from the toil of civilization, leading to hallmarks of cultural development. As far back as 1800 BCE, civilizations were writing epic stories and mythologies down with The Epic of Gilgamesh.

But still constantly in question was how best to run a nation. With a constantly changing and improving world, learning more about the nature of humanity and civilization by the day, the heads of nations found themselves confronted with issues not seen before. One of the oldest and most obvious problem for any nation is the inevitable encounter with another civilization. This often led to war — two groups of humans, with different structures and ideologies sadly would lead to war, in hopes of taking the other’s land and resources, as well as declaring superiority over the defeated opponent. Alliances and trade could be set up, as one nation that specialized in a certain resource could gain that which they did not have in exchange for their own specialty, but even these could change with time.

In short, time proved to be the most unpredictable and dangerous weapon against any civilization, as in addition to the internal affairs that changed with the moods of the people, ancient governments had to deal with that change magnified on a global scale, as the other humans around the world developed methods of traversing the world once more, finding it much less empty than the first pioneers did. Due to a constantly shifting system of politics, individual leaders such as kings and emperors proved a risky form of government, as one unprepared leader coupled with new and uncertain times could spell disaster for the oldest of civilizations.

The kingdoms of Egypt lasted for thousands of years, but while they managed to maintain structure and culture, one pharaoh, Akhenaten, abandoned the polytheistic religion and tried to shift the capital city, leading to instability and his later attempted erasure from Egyptian history. In a more northern territory, after years of peace, emperors Caligula and Nero rose to power in the Roman Empire, and became known for their cruelty and insanity, with the former humiliating members of his own Senate, and the latter was rumored to have burned down parts of the city for a new palace.

On the other hand, having the rule be split among multiple people became a structure increasingly prevalent, leading to the theory of democracy — a government system where decisions were made by either the people or their representatives. Athens, a city-state of Greece, was the first known democracy, and saw not only prosperity, but the prompting of much political thought about the nature of democracy as a system. Democracy symbolized the reversal of roles that had existed since near the inception of civilization — rather than a class emerging above the commoner, with those elites holding the power in society, every citizen was at least represented in the decisions made about their own nation.

There are many more examples I could give of specific ancient societies, but the stories all run along the same way — in an area with resources and people, organization forms and a ruling government establishes itself over the people in it, and creates a machine (the economy) to keep the citizens and the elites fed and cared for, as well as a military to keep the nation safe and acquire more resources and space for expansion of the machine. Meanwhile, the people form a culture and over time, many societies developed schools of thought that resulted in political and societal change on grand scales. Whether within or outside, developments of military prowess or cultural enlightenment led to the evolution or destruction of early nations, and this is how the system lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years.

New nations took their place, but many of the ideas and cultures lived on. We still remember these ancient civilizations, so they didn’t disappear — and when successors arose, they would often implement the lessons of their predecessors, for better or worse. The world gradually became filled with humans, and meeting other entities in the process of expansion became all the more inevitable. Soon, as Alexander the Great found and wept over, “there were no more worlds left to conquer.” I will continue this line of thought later, in the next issue of the Orion Digest — next time, I will discuss the last few centuries, which formed modern political theory and the lasting nations present today.

- DKTC FL