Read the text and do the tasks below.

AGRARIAN SOCIETIES

Key words:

Cultivation, plow, breakthrough, irrigation, dawn, specialization, distinct, abandon, standard of exchange, peasant, slave, historical link, moral obligation, privilege, dominance, absolute power, pharaoh.

Useful phrases:

To take place, to expand in size, to reinforce the power of sth, to do most of the work, to take charge of.

Answer the questions before reading.

1. What is “dawn of civilization” associated with?
2. What does “specialization” mean?
3. What is social privilege?

Read the text and do the tasks below.

About 5,000 years ago, another revolution in technology was taking place in the Middle East, one that would end up changing life on Earth. This was the discovery of agriculture, large-scale cultivation using plows harnessed to animals or more powerful energy sources. So important was the invention of the animal-drawn plow, along with other breakthroughs of the period – including irrigation, the wheel, writing, numbers, and the use of various metals – that this moment in history is often called the “dawn of civilization.”

Using animal-drawn plows, farmers could cultivate fields far bigger than the garden-sized plots planted by horticulturalists. Plows have the added advantage of turning and aerating the soil, making it more fertile. As a result, farmers could work the same land for generations, encouraging the development of permanent settlements. With the ability to grow a surplus of food and to transport goods using animal-powered wagons, agrarian societies greatly expanded in size and population.

Greater production meant even more specialization. Now there were dozens of distinct occupations, from farmers to builders to metalworkers. With so many people producing so many different things, people invented money as a common standard of exchange, and the old barter system – by which people traded one thing for another – was abandoned.

Agrarian societies have extreme social inequality, typically more than modern societies such as our own. In most cases, a large number of the people are peasants or slaves, who do most of the work. Elites therefore have time for more “refined” activities, including the study of philosophy, art, and literature. This explains the historical link between “high culture” and social privilege.

Among hunters and gatherers and also among horticulturalists, women provide most of the food, which gives then social importance. Agriculture, however, raises men to a position of social dominance. Using heavy metal plows pulled by large animals, men take charge of food production in agrarian societies. Women are left with the support tasks, such as weeding and carrying water to the fields.

In agrarian societies, religion reinforces the power of elites by defining both loyalty and hard work as moral obligations. Many of the “Wonders of the Ancient World,” such as the Great Wall of China and the Great Pyramids of Egypt, were possible only because emperors and pharaohs had almost absolute power and were able to control a large political system and order their people to work for a lifetime without pay.

Agrarian societies have the most social inequality. Agrarian technology also gives people a greater range of life choices, which is the reason that agrarian societies differ from one another than horticultural and pastoral societies do.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1476