Deserts and the rise of civilization

Despite centuries of trying to understand just what drove humanity to choose the plow over the atlatl we've only come a little closer to understanding that pivotal moment in our history, and at this point it's safe to say we'll never really know the whole story. The implications of the adoption of agriculture are so profound- for technological and economic change, for societal structure and hierarchy, even for genetic and racial heritage- that to study it is to study human nature. Needless to say, the old 'cradle of civilization' model has been showing its cracks for a while, but the dessicated view from Bikaner leads me to ask: why was it that many of the first states emerged in the most arid environments?

In China, the Middle Kingdom grew around the dry banks of the Yellow River, not the Yangtzee. In India, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, hosting the greatest agricultural land in the world, lost out to the desert-bound Indus. The arid setting of the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile are regular features in today's news. And in the New World, complex societies emerged and flourished in New Mexico, the Mesoamerican Plateau, and the Andes rather than in the rich Pacific Northwest or Amazonian rainforest. Why didn't early civilizations emerge in environments optimally suited for agriculture?

In 1957 Karl Wittfogel addressed this quandary, arguing in his 'hydraulic empire' hypothesis that it was the need to regulate and control access to water that led to the first governments, which in turn led to states. I have only been out of school for six months and I already can't recall exactly why his theory fell out of favor, but I think it had to do with the idea of necessary 'stages' of the development of civilization. That, and the title of his book was Oriental Despotism.

There are a few other reasons why deserts might have played a role in the birth of civilization. Rich farmland is also probably rich nomad-land-- for the residents of the Rhine, there was no good reason to look past hunting wild boar. A desert river, on the other hand, might force specialization, leading to a symbiosis between people who maximized the river's potential and others who dropped in on it occasionally. This situation also would drive trade, the great engine of technological development. Once settled, the people on the river would be more likely to adopt agriculture, begin to accumulate wealth, and exhibit the social and economic hierarchies associated with civilization. And once you're on that bandwagon, there's no getting off.

Deserts and chess

In my last year in college I had the good fortune to live near three tremendously gifted physicists. Occasionally they would put aside quantum field theory and supersymmetry for a game of chess, and I, with little mind for strategy, was only too happy to observe. The intricacies of their plotting was far beyond me, but I could still wonder at the vast complexity spawned by such a simple set of rules.

Real war, as Robert McNamara so aptly pointed out, is far too complicated to ever be understood by a single person-- hence the term 'the fog of war.' Games are fun because they put the excitement and challenge of strategic competition within the bounds of one individual's intellect. In chess, it is possible (but just barely) to see your will and wit acted out on the board. The number of variables has been reduced to a level where the system lacks the unfathomable complexity of reality.

The desert is a similar system. The dominance of a few variables-- sun, wind, water-- marginalizes all the others. It is simplicity and comprehensibility that grant deserts their beauty, the sublime alternation between life, meaning, and emptiness. In even ten minutes sitting alone in a desert you begin to pick up on cause and effect, on the connections between every element. Soon you start to figure out the patterns of life, and it is only a matter of time before you feel you know the rules so well that you are a part of the game.

Deserts and me

I am fascinated by deserts, and have been since I was a child. My romantic side flirts with their aridity, their purity and emptiness, and finds a truth or essence that is missing from the ever ironic world we've created. At the same time there is an analytical beauty to the desert that stems from its raw simplicity, putting its workings just within the realm of comprehension of the scientific mind. Not in the most luxuriant jungle nor in the most resplendent coral reef do these qualities come together; only in the desert do individual variables-- sun, water, plant, ego-- assume large enough roles that their interactions can be fathomed.

The desert is not just a place or environment, nor even, as the cliché goes, a frame of mind. It is a way of viewing life, particularly human life. Turning a desert-tinted lens to our history is like performing a feminist reading of a text or explaining momentum in string theory-- a mere reconsideration of the evidence using different assumptions.