Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by David Graeber

The question is, obviously, Why? The standard explanation in the Sumerian case has been the gradual infiltration of pastoralists from the surrounding deserts who, presumably, always had more patriarchal mores. There was, after all, only a narrow strip of land along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that could support intensive irrigation, and hence, urban life. Civilization was thus from early times surrounded by a fringe of desert people, who lived much like those described in Genesis and spoke the same Semitic languages. It is undeniably true that, over the course of time, the Sumerian language was gradually replaced—first by Akkadian, then by Amorite, then by Aramaic languages, and finally, most recently of all, by Arabic, which was also brought to Mesopotamia and the Levant by desert pastoralists. While all this did, clearly, bring with it profound cultural changes as well, it’s not a particularly satisfying explanation.33 Former nomads appear to have been willing to adapt to urban life in any number of other ways. Why not that one? And it’s very much a local explanation and does nothing, really, to explain the broader pattern. Feminist scholarship has instead tended to emphasize the growing scale and social importance of war, and the increasing centralization of the state that accompanied it.34 This is more convincing. Certainly, the more militaristic the state, the harsher its laws tended to be toward women.