[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
The state isn’t possible without civilization in the first place.[/quote]
The cart does not push the horse, Lifty.
A civilisation is any complex state society characterized by urban development, social stratification, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment. Civilisations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralisation, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labor, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon agriculture, and expansionism.
(Yeah, it’s Wiki. Sue me.)
You cannot have things like centralisation of power, taxation, urbanisation, and monumental architecture without some form of state apparatus.
The word “civilisation” comes from the word “civilis”, meaning “citizen”, which in turn means “resident of a city”. If you don’t live in a city, you are, by definition, not civilised.
Name for me one city in the history of human society that did not have some form of government. Sure, it may have started out as a loose confederation of hamlets or villages, but all of the things necessary to make it a city (building walls, roads, defences, water and sanitation systems etc.), i.e., civilisation required a government: a class of people who were NOT labourers, farmers of fishermen, to make plans, raise money, obtain materials, and tell other people what to do so it would get done.
The Incas and Mayans built cities, and thus, by definition, they had civilisation. The Cherokee and Apache did not. Not saying they weren’t lovely people, but they were definitely not civilised.
