ABSTRACT
By 5000 Bc, the neolithic ‘revolution’ was well advanced and this transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies had created the conditions under which urban settlements first appeared in Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus Valley. While the dawn of urban settlement involved a change in the organized use of nature, it was also accompanied by more centralized systems of social organization based upon religious and monarchical authority. Premodern state societies span a period from 3000 Bc to the near present, and display a wide variety of social and environmental relations. This chapter begins by briefly examining the intensification of environmental transformations that began with the urban revolution. On the one hand it explores the evolving patterns of human transformation of nature and, on the other hand, it examines the related changes in social organization. Having established some general features of premodern states, a more detailed study is made of late medieval England.
