Joel D. Gunn

From InterSciWiki

Emergence of Complex Societies

Hi, Doug. This intermediation idea is very interesting. I certainly see it in world history. I have been working with some people on the origins of urbanism (see attached). I have also recently listened to a book by Karen Armstrong on "The Great Transformation." This has to do with the origin of modern religions around 500 BC, referred to by historians as the "Axial Age." This also, I think, is the transformation from states to empires, the golden-rule religions marking the change in mentality necessary to make a multiethnic state or empire work. From about 3k BC to 500 BC urbanism was a rather tribalized urbanism, so-called city states were just overgrown tribes from the perspective of the Balkanization that tribalism generates, "Gods of Place" as Joseph Campbell calls them. After the Axial Age, "Gods of Empire" became the ascendant feature of civilizations. This would be the intermediation phenomenon of human social organization worldwide. You can see some of the global scale background to this in the second attachment, which is as yet thinking out loud.

AGU Abstract of Emergence of Complex Societies After Sea Level Stabilized