On reflection, it’s odd that the term ‘civilization’ – one we’ve not discussed much until now – ever came to be used this way in the first place. When people talk about ‘early civilizations’ they are mostly referring to those very same societies we’ve been describing in this chapter and their direct successors: Pharaonic Egypt, Inca Peru, Aztec Mexico, Han China, Imperial Rome, ancient Greece, or others of a certain scale and monumentality. All these were deeply stratified societies, held together mostly by authoritarian government, violence and the radical subordination of women. Sacrifice,
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