ABSTRACT
Cortés and his followers were almost the last Westerners to witness a preindustrial civilization at the height of its powers. The Aztecs lived under the rule of a remote leader, Moctezuma, who was considered a living god. Divided into rigid social classes, the Aztecs were taught from birth that conformity was expected of them. Most wealth and all economic, political, and religious power fl owed to the ruler, to his benefi t and that of a tiny class of nobles, priests, and high
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Historical and Anthropological Perspectives 25 Civilizationists and World Systems 25 Evolutionary Schemes 26 Prestate and State-Organized Societies 26 Chiefdoms 27 Settlement Hierarchy 28
Four Classic Theories for the Emergence of State Societies 29 Childe and the Urban Revolution 30 Irrigation 31 Technology and Trade 33 Warfare 35
Coercive versus Voluntaristic Theories 36 Cultural Systems and Civilization 36 Ecological Theories 37 Social Theories 39
Power in Three Domains 39 Ideology and Factionalism 40 Individuals and Gender 42
Cycling Chiefdoms: Processes and Agents 44 The Collapse of Civilizations 46 Civilization and Sustainability 48 Western and Indigenous Science 52
offi cials. Everyone learned that they were on earth to serve the state and the divine Huitzilopochtli, whose soul was nourished by human hearts. Like many other ancient civilizations, the Aztecs believed there was a continuum between the realm of the living and that of the spiritual world. Their worldview was totally different from that of the Christians who encountered them-which makes it very hard for us to study and understand their society or that of other early civilizations, for that matter. This chapter surveys some of the theories of the origin of states and the major factors that may have contributed to the rise of civilization.
