IT WAS SURPRISING TO LEARN...

     
         It was surprising to learn about the Hierarchies of Class.  I found it quite interesting how they would decipher who was more "upper class" than the rest. 

"As ingenuity and technology created more productive economies, the greater wealth now available was everywhere piled up rather than spread out. Early signs of this erosion of equality were evident in the more settled and complex gathering and hunting societies and in agricultural chiefdoms, but the advent of urban-based civilizations multiplied and magnified these inequalities many times over, as the more egalitarian values of earlier cultures were everywhere displaced. This transition represents one of the major turning points in the social history of humankind, (71)." 

As the First Civilizations took place, it was surprising to hear that even just in the beginning stages of hierarchies, that there was already such a powerful rank to be seen.  Plus, they had already figured out that if they had better materials to make better clothing, or the houses they lived in, or how elaborately they were laid to rest.  With all this surplus came taxation, higher rents, required labor, and payments.. that supported upper class.  It is MIND BLOWING to me that even though this was a newly imagined system, it was so detailed and now embedded into their way of life.  Such an ingenious group of early humans to think of a system like this.  It also makes me sad, however, to know that we didn't necessarily need to add this into our way of life, in regards to how people are these days...

At the bottom of social hierarchies everywhere were slaves. Evidence for slavery dates to well before the emergence of civilization and was clearly present in some gathering and hunting societies and early agricultural communities. But the practice of “ people owning people” flourished on a larger scale in the urban- and state-based societies of civilizations.

An ancient poem compared the exploiting landlords to rats and expressed the farmers’ vision of a better life:

"Large rats! Large rats! Do not eat our spring grain! Three years have we had to do with you. And you have not been willing to think of our toil. Q Change In what ways was social inequality expressed in early civilizations? We will leave you, And go to those happy borders. Happy borders, happy borders! Who will there make us always to groan? (72)."