How subcultures unified ancient Rome into a governing state

Ancient Civilizations: Society Subcultures and the State

The dynamics of early civilizations that in their totality form the society that subordinates itself to the state, or leadership, and perhaps in very early civilizations means the stronger forces within the society. Those dynamics fall into subculture categories like religion, trade and exchange, the protections afforded the society in the action of warfare, and the technology that is created to support the society and to protect it; and the need to coordinate these subcultures and to organize it into an effective and cohesive working system gives rise to the state. Through archeological excavation and study and analysis remains and artifacts from the ancient civilizations, a pattern emerges in the socialization of the ancient society, the rise of its state, and, time and again, the demise of the ancient state (Lamberg-Karlovsky, C.C., and Sabloff, Jeremy a., 1974). Archeology tells us that new societies emerged over fallen societies, and the progress of each subsequent one tends to incorporate some lessons learned of the past societies.

This brief essay explores the ways in the elements of the society's subcultures come together to form the overall social culture, and how, once formed, they give rise to the governing state. This essay relies upon the academic knowledge and expertise of renowned scholars and researchers who have studied the patterns of ancient civilizations. The existing bodies of works of the scholars and researchers whose work contributes to the understanding gained through this essay substantiate the rise of the nation-state governance through the unification of individual elements of the subculture.

Roman Society

There were people living in Western Europe before the ancient Romans expanded their empire into those locales (Maisels, Charles Keith, 2001: 1-2). The early Roman Empire was ahead of other European societies in unifying the subcultures, and in the emergence of the Roman Republic as its nation-state. Rome grew out of simplistic Etruscan beginnings, seemingly the same place in their social evolution as were the societies they conquered in Western Europe after Rome evolved into a more complex organized social order (Harle, Vilho, 1998:25).

To expand its realm of control, the state used warfare to secure its own state, to expend that state, and to conquer other societies that had not yet come together in their subcultures to have a dominant and strong leadership that could form armies to assault Rome. Rome's own civilization had grown in a way that demonstrates a population explosion, and the nation put together a massive Roman army that was able to conduct its warfare exercises on more than one front.

That Rome would expand its geographical area of power in an aggressive way is perhaps exemplified by its subcultures that brought it together in an organized society. Early Roman society had itself been conquered by outside forces (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff, 24). Both Rome and Greece, in the social forms that gave rise to the great philosophers and empire building for Roman society, was the product of earlier ancient cultures that assimilated the technologies, religions, and leadership philosophies of its earlier societies that had been conquered (38).

It is an interesting commentary on nineteenth-century political philosophy that the starting point of so many theories was, of necessity, the Classical world of Greece and Rome. According to the present hypothesis, however, both of these great political developments of antiquity were not pristine but secondary formations which built on cultural foundations laid two thousand years and more before the rise of Greece. Furthermore, it would seem that the active commercial and military influences of the truly ancient pristine states, mediated through the earliest of the secondary states to appear in Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean littoral, were catalysts in the events of the northern and western Mediterranean (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff, 38-38)."

This unified stratification of the Roman (and Greek) elements of sub-culture into an organized nation-state. Also, the early Roman society incorporated into its structural framework slave labor in agriculture, which came from peoples conquered by the Romans (16). Rome was successful in establishing itself as a Mediterranean hegemony (Harle, 24). It was able to do this by bringing together its skilled worker classes, and leaving its unskilled slave population to perform the backbreaking task of agriculture. The skilled labor was able to create the necessary technology for the slave labor to utilize in agriculture that would feed the people.

According to a conventional image, Rome expanded its power not by an explicit design but an impersonal strategy, as one move of preventive action led to another. The process was an unplanned result of pragmatic military skill (Jackson Knight 1985: 11; Russell 1972; cf. Ogilvie 1982: 20-21). However, this picture must be inherently wrong: the Romans purposefully applied their military talents in order to promote their economic and political interests. This expansion required a solid theoretical basis of political and international ideas. This basis remained rather implicit, but towards the end of the expansion process the ideas had to become more and more explicit (Harle, 25)."

As Rome harnessed the intellectual resources of its citizenry, and as it was able to feed its multitudes thanks in large part to slave labor in their agriculture, Rome was able to create substantial armies with which to conquer and expand its empire (25). Feeding, clothing, and providing weapons and armor to those armies were in no small way conducive to the success of what was for that expansion period a warring nation-state. This, and the other social disciplines that come together to form the foundation of a body-politic, which then governs its society in a way that protects, and, in the case of Rome, expands it, is how city-states are born. Rome will stand as the example cited here of the rise by warfare.

China and Socialization

China was a society that demonstrated early on in its history one of the necessary tools for moving toward the ideal of a nation-state, because it developed laws by which to bring together its population under a central governance by way of putting into writing laws for governance and morality (Peerenboom, R.P., 1993:1). When a society begins observing behaviors of its members and judging those behaviors as deviant and not good for the whole of society, and begin to put those observations down in a form of governance, that is establishing a governance of behavior of the society. The logical direction for such a society is expand its governance over the physical body too, and devise a philosophy of religion that people hold at the center of their existence, and design their lives and behavior around.

In 140 B.C. that body of governance, Huang-Lao, was outlawed by that sector of China's society that rose as the more powerful, physically forceful element in Chinese society.

A around 140 B.C. when Han Wu Di, siding with the Confucians and Dong Zhongshu, prohibited other ideologies and banned Huang-Lao thought from court. 5 and one knew that by the late Han, Huang-Lao was associated with Daoist religion, immortality, sexual yoga, and traditional medicine. Apart from these tantalizing tidbits, little was known (Peerenboom, 2)."

What we see here is that the governance of behavior and morals led to a more forceful power in China, and one that then by way of force wielded power, even usurped the power of the governance of behaviors and morals, and incorporated that governance unto their own along with physical governance. This is one way that a nation-state arises out of the social fabric, taking unto its own that part of the fabric, religion, which the binds the society.

Chinese society became technologically adept, developing early irrigation systems as a means to increase and sustain crop production (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff, 19). They shared this in common with Rome, which was able to develop in its governance much the same as the Chinese did: through the social structure and bonding of its populace emerged a governing body that took charge of organizing society in mind, body, and spirit.

Societies move towards certain human characteristics like war and religion, and as they do, along the way, they bond in ways that bring them together under a form of governance. Usually the stronger forces in the social environment prevailing over the lesser capable or those who do not exhibit the physical strength as the dominating forces do.

MesoAmerica

MesoAmerican society existed long before the first Conquistadors stepped onto the coast of that area constituting northern Mexico, to what is now Honduras and El Salvador (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff, Jeremy a., 1979:214). In 1943, archeologists and anthropologist Paul Kirchoff found evidence to convince them that this entire span of area constituted a single great society, the MesoAmerican society, or the "Middle America" society (214). The archeological ruins and excavations in conjunction with the anthropological investigation and study of the era indicate that there was a leadership hierarchy that governed their society, and that it was subsistent in nature, but came together as a city-state when there began to spread common interests in religion and technology that could benefit the independent groups as a whole (217).

Their society evolved over a period of thousands of years, beginning independently, as in other societies, they came together in trade, warfare, and religious beliefs that bound them as a culture (217).

In contrast to the situation in the Near East, our data on the rise of agriculture and settled village life in Mesoamerica are relatively meager and not nearly so well synthesized. Whereas the richness of archaeological materials on the Neolithic period of the Near East obliged us to devote a full chapter to our discussions of these data, there is very little published information on the comparable time period in Mesoamerica -- a situation which forces us to include our examination of early agriculture as a background section to this chapter's discussion: the rise of civilization in Mesoamerica. Fortunately, however, the published data for one particular area in Mexico, the Tehuacan Valley of southern Puebla (see Map 4.2), are as strong as any comparable site or area in the Near East. From an examination of the developments that took place in that highland valley, we can draw some inferences about this period in other areas of Mesoamerica (217)."

We see this culture rise as a result of their subsistent dependency, and they eventually came together in support of their needs as a society.

Summary

In summary, we find that humankind's first three million years demonstrate a pattern of moving towards an organized society (Wenke, Robert and Oslewski, Deborah, 2007:145-172). Archeology helps to find the patterns in humankind's history that demonstrate that mankind was a social creature, not one to reside in isolation, but also one that could not live together without civil and international warfare. It shows, too, using Rome as a prime example that civilizations rose, and fell through warfare, and from the haughtiness of their governors. History and archeology demonstrate patterns of civilizations that were highly structured, like those of Mesoamerica, and Egypt. As societies grew, so did their propensity to be warlike, and to look for expansionism and enslavement of other cultures.

It is only in the more recent history of mankind that we find even though there continues to be war, there is also a heightened awareness of the need to come together in celebration of our cultural differences as a part of the history of humankind. Religion and cultural identities have brought mankind together, yet has been instrumental in keeping humankind separate and at war (Aitken, Ellen Bradshaw and Jennifer K. Berenson Maclean, eds. 2004). There are signs, however, that mankind is moving toward an understanding of his own humanity, and that we are indeed social creatures that seek the cohesiveness of the social order, and that we appreciate governance of the state.

Each society of the four cultures cited here experienced transitions that lead them to form bonds first out of their needs as individuals, which brought them together in societies, and then cultures giving rise to the organization and rise of the nation-state. The tendency toward governance is as much a pattern as is the moving together as a society into a cultural enclave that is bound by the rules of the culture under the governance of the nation-states.

This is the pattern that emerges from the earliest periods of ancient civilization, into the most current and modern periods of man's evolution as an intellectual being. We now find ourselves moving toward a global community, one that embraces the identities of the various cultures that form the world. We need not merge those cultures into one, but only appreciate them for their differences and their cultural richness to become a society that is bound in humanity. The direction of the world toward a world governance appears inevitable at this point in time, and it is reflective of the patterns of mankind's evolution.