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According to a recent study, humanity's cultivation of cereal crops such as corn and wheat is what put the planet on the course to thousands of years of governance and taxation.
According to the study, the rise of cereal harvests allowed crops to be more easily weighed and valued, with an elite group appropriating a portion of the surplus to create early forms of government.
After a decade of investigation, this revelation calls into question prior beliefs that the general transition from hunter-gathering to farming was the trigger for the evolution of complex society.
Alternatively, according to the new research, higher agricultural productivity isn't the only factor contributing to society's rise. Instead, grain and cereal crops were a major component in the establishment of taxes and ruling classes.
The researchers used a variety of data sets, including how complex a society's level of hierarchy, how relatives of domesticated plans became geographically distributed, and whether land was suitable for cultivating crops. This allowed them to determine why, despite thousands of years of successful farming, well-functioning states did not emerge in some regions, while states that could tax and protect lives and property did emerge elsewhere.
Cereals, which could be counted as they were produced and stored, were found to be easier to tax than fruit and vegetables, according to the study. Using empirical evidence taken from different data sets spanning millennia, the researchers also proved a causal association between cereal cultivation and the rise of hierarchical civilizations. Additionally, researchers found a surplus in other fruits and vegetables, such as roots and tubers, did not contribute to the formation of taxes and a government. Simply put, hierarchy was likely to arise only where the climate and topography encouraged the production and storage of cereals and grains.
According to a key researcher, this new analysis shows the weaknesses in existing common wisdom and theory tying general improvements in land productivity and surplus to the establishment of hierarchy, both conceptually and empirically.
Instead, hierarchical societies arose because of the shift from foraging to grain cultivation. The states in which this occurred enjoyed economic development by providing security, law and order, and by allowing for industrialization and the rise of social welfare.
