Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

by David Christian

Viewed ecologically, states and their rulers represent a new step in the food chain, a new trophic level. We have seen how energy from sunlight enters the biosphere through photosynthesis and travels from plants to herbivores to carnivores. And we have seen how most of that energy gets wasted at each trophic level, in a sort of garbage tax. That leaves much less energy to support the higher levels, which is why there are fewer lions than antelopes. Agriculture increased the resources available to humans, so states could add one more trophic level at the top of the hierarchy. Rulers and nobles and officials began to squeeze wealth from the labor and produce of peasants, who in turn got their energy and food from farming. States used these new flows of labor, produce, and energy to pay for the armies, bureaucracies, palaces, and goods that made them powerful and wealthy.