What economic changed led to civilizations arise?

Answer 1

When peoples passed from the 'hunter gatherer' phase into the 'crop grower' phase, it became necessary to account for the contributions of the members, and also to have systems for organizing a barter system.

This developed further when crops could be stored from one season to another (other than for seed). It was necessary to know who had contributed the oil and the grain, and who had paid for services such as irrigation.

Shameful as it seems, the Accountants may have been the originators of writing. At least, when cuneiform was eventually decoded, much of the records were indeed that, records of who had paid his rent, his irrigation bill, and how much grain and oil he had stored.

Writing can be seen as a powerful unifying force in creating commerce groups.

The Alphabet Effect by R K Logan has some powerful arguments for this.

Once we have a group of people with common interests then they will by natural (?) competitive actions attempt to create a 'Them' and an 'Us'. This will lead to developing 'rules of behavior', and that may be taken as the beginning of a civilization.

But Rules of Behavior are a feature of ant colonies and of chimpanzee groups, but we would not consider these to be societies based on economics.

The concept of exchange of goods and services is probably the base of economics in modern times.

So Economics is merely one of the features of a modern civilization; it was of importance in developing writing and rules of exchange, but other features such as morals and ethics and religion are probably more important.

Answer 2

Clique