I find much of this article wholly perverse and utterly alien to my way of thinking. It presents a very one-sided view of civilisation as nothing more than an elaborate but oppressive dictatorship; almost depicting taxes as worse than murder. The purpose of technology, down to fire and writing, is nothing but control. Civilisation was entirely built on the backs of slaves that served cruel elites. Technology is divorced from science with an absurd crudeness because the author fails utterly to define what science is. Keyne's quote about abandoning the love of money being a route to happiness is badly misinterpreted, or at least poorly chosen : the article says he thought happiness would come from more abundant wealth, but in the quote he he says very clearly that it's money perceived as social status that should be changed - a completely different condition !
I am not so sure the consensus on "the neolithic being a disaster for everyone who lived through it" is as strong as the article claims. Francis Pryor's Britain BC and Home (see also Paul Kriwaczek's Babylon, and many others I can't think of off the top of my head) certainly don't give that impression and nor do any of the other archaeologists he quotes. Of course it wouldn't have been very nice compared to what we're used to, and of course there would certainly have been plenty of horror stories in various places. But this universal disaster portrayed in the article ? I rather doubt it. Or more accurately, it concentrates heavily on Mesopotamia, which may be a problem.
Via Matt Hall.
Originally shared by Ancient History Encyclopedia
Did our hunter-gatherer ancestors have it better? https://buff.ly/2ghlNCh
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Civilization is the worst form of human society, except for all the others.
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