The world circumference

Abstract

[Extract] Most states in human history have been patrimonies or have possessed significant patrimonial features. Today patrimony, or more precisely neo-patrimony, is still the most common state form to be found across the world. Under the surface of modernity lurks a deep and abiding archaism. Patrimonial states took shape sometime in the fourth millennium BCE, and attained a mature form with the Sumerians, Hittites, and Egyptians. These states replaced technological adaptation to nature - prized by the first human societies, the nomad societies - with the social organization of labor. Whereas peripatetic nomad societies advanced through technological metabolism with nature, patrimonial states advanced by escalating the range and types of face-to-face social relationships. This was far from a happy condition. They deployed techniques of slavery, status hierarchy, serfdom, patron-client relations, and command-and-obedience relations to enforce or compel sedentary life. The state in effect asserted ownership over human beings. Even while patrimonial states produced the first urban communities, their command of face-to-face social structures proved more often than not to be sadistic, punitive, and terrifying. Cruelty was the norm of these thick social relationships.