Early Empires
From Mbscientific_wiki
Mega Empires: Persians, Greeks, and Romans
In the last section we saw empires where relatively small. Then around 500 BC we see the start of mega empires with the expansion of Persian Empire.
Persians - Circa 500 BC (Source for the next 5 slides: https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/globe.html
At the same time period Classical Greece City States covered relative small geographical areas. - Circa 500 BC
But that changed via the conquests of Alexander The Great - 340 BC
The Roman Empire absorbed Hellenistic Greece (146 BC) in its process of expansion. Roman Empire - 100 BC - 100 AD:
Morphological Markers
1- Social Cohesion - Achieving Social Cohesion was rather difficult. Conquered territories were occupied by various people with their own languages, customs and religions. So, integration was achieved primarily through military might, and to an extend by economic dependencies. The result of the lack of cohesion was constant warfare, to pacify rebellions and/or gain new territories. As a rule the central kingdoms retained local Puppet Head Rulers attached to a military commander and his garrison.
Morphologically such an arrangement is inherently unstable. Anything that might disrupt the military machine, whether internal or external, could and did derail the rule replacing it with another, or even disintegrating the system altogether. In fact, if you look at the history of these empires you will see just that, the rise and fall of one dynasty after another as well as the eventual disintegration of the mega empires.
Notably, in this period the Athenians created a form of system governance which they called Democracy, an anomaly in those times and for the next 1700 years.
2- Technology- Although early science and engineering was produced by the priestly kingdoms, increasingly the memetic flow of ideas spread out from the priestly casts and took on a life of its own among this new cast of early thinkers. By the Age Of Access, about 500 BC, Confucius, Buddha, and Zoroaster where putting distinctly nonsectarian flavors on social behavior.
Through this period we find extensive irrigation projects supporting agricultural, animal husbandry, and the large populations that supported the empires. We see extensive roadworks crisscrossing the land, large naval capacities, both required to support massive movements of people, products and armies. Architectural evidence suggest sufficient understanding of mathematics and engineering. There were substantial metalworking capacity capable of outfitting large standing armies. And, tactical and strategic planning were employed to maneuver the military in joint land and sea operations.
But, it was in the city states of Greece that scientific thinking had come to its own. Until then, the domain of the known was relatively small, therefore the need for the religious cast to interpret the supernatural. From then on science bifurcated to an evolutionary path of its own, examining and defining nature. For the first time we see the segregation of the natural and the supernatural and the beginnings of what would eventually become scientific thinking.
In the Greek city states, a relatively small number of individuals established disciplines of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, botany, biology, etc. And they devised philosophical frameworks to integrate these new disciplines into a whole. And the results of this new scientific practice was self evident, in expansive water works, road works, ship building, metal works, etc. Architectural practices evolved to use intricate mathematics to design and all manners of buildings that are wondrous even today. The creation and implementation of these scientific abstractions provided for a competitive advantage, a better way of living. One that was evident for all to see, just the kind of impetus that memetic evolution needs to take off.
Though the Greeks city states where eventually conquered, the scientific disciplines perpetuated memetically, in the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, and later in the Islamic Empire, eventually giving rise to European Renaissances some 1500 years later.
3- Economics- We see the first evidence of coins by 650 BC in Asia Minor. The significance of these events is that it tightly binds government with trade. Prior to that any two parties could engage in an act of barter as a rule. But when legal tender was established the rules changed. Now the two trading parties needed a third party, the government, which created and guaranteed the value of the legal tender. So by 600 BC we see the personification of the third party in the form of the merchant banker in Asia Minor and soon after through out the Greek city-states. The banker is directly bound to the government because that is the source and the guarantor of the legal currency. The banker is also directly bound with the traders whomever they may be. Sprinkle these bankers all over the ancient world and you get a trading network that crosses national territories, resulting in the start of the international trade and a directly bound international community. With trade networks potentially running from Africa to the South, to Western Europe, to Russian Steps to the North and India to the East. Though trade generally happened within the sphere of influence of these empires most frequently, there where traders that crossed the boundaries.
So from 500 BC on we have had a flow of trade throughout nations which were mortal enemies. It provided the binding glue for societies that would be in a normal state of conflict. It provided for the exchange of goods, ideas, technology, belief systems and all of the things that are needed to create a transnational community, even though most of the time they desperately sought to kill each other.
Another significant event in the evolution of economics where the introduction of stocks in form of venture shares. It is not clear exactly when that took place, but it isn't hard to imagine early merchant bankers pooling their resources to form larger ventures that they individually wouldn't be able to afford. That established the advent of big business. Prior to that only governments could afford big projects, but those were all intra-national, i.e. within their domains of influence. Venture Share offerings allowed businesses to be established internationally, utilizing traders that could cross boundaries. That meant that investors that would normally be mortal enemies could forge tight bonds based on economic interests. This was and is to this day the key to forging a tightly bound international community out of what could otherwise be nations in conflict, with different backgrounds, languages, belief systems and otherwise little commonality at all.
4- Military- The very existence of mega empires depended on very large professional armies as well as naval power. Armies where mostly constituted by infantry and to some extent cavalry. Persian and Roman armies consisted of multiple cores (legions, or garrisons). Cores where deployed far and wide throughout the empire, but could be brought together for larger conflicts as needed (e.g. wars between mega empires).
Greek armies where raised by the Greek City States, which from time to time were at war with each other. But, from time to time, e.g. when faced with Persian invasion, these armies could converge to face the common enemy.
Naval power consisted of sail and/or oar powered ships. Some ship designs served troop transport, others served ship to ship battles at sea.
Movement of large armies and navies required extensive engineering and management, e.g. road works which criss crossed the mega empires, ship construction techniques, building and deployment of catapults, siege equipment and tactics, tactical and strategic warfare planning and execution, and weaponry design and manufacturing in large scales.
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