ABSTRACT
The organizational mode of hunter-gatherers represents the fundamental social structure in which all species of the genus Homo (including Homo sapiens) have evolved. About 11,500 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, agriculture and pastoralism were invented for the first time (Neolithic revolution), significantly modifying numerous aspects of human life at the economic, reproductive and cultural levels. After a few millennia, in the same geographical area, the first cities were formed, which divided society into “producers” (90% of the population devoted to agriculture) and “specialists” (administrators, scribes, priests, craftsmen and soldiers by profession). Specialists have invented calculus, writing and mythological and religious narratives aimed at justifying existing differences in status. Around the end of the third millennium BC in Mesopotamia the first empire was formed, characterized – like all subsequent ones – by a wide geographical extension, by the presence of numerous nations (with different languages, cultures and religions) and by a dominant group that exercised its hegemony through an appropriate repressive force consisting of an army of professional soldiers. In the modern and contemporary eras, three industrial revolutions have taken place within states or empires. The first, in 1700, was based on the use of the steam engine (powered by coal), the second, in the late 1800s, was based on electricity and internal combustion engines (petrol and diesel) and the third, called the information revolution, is still in progress today. The scientific and technological development that has characterized these three revolutions has not only been placed at the service of the civilian sphere but, above all, of the military one. This gave rise in the twentieth century to two world wars that resulted in more than 60 million deaths. It was a question of “total wars” (with widespread involvement of unarmed civilian populations), in which science and technology played a decisive role.
