Re: First civilizations - common factors?
- What caused slavery?
Lack of cheap, disposable labour
- What caused larger-scale warfare as opposed to the more biological teasing and scaring games? The biological scaring and teasing games could be spotted as late as in tribal warfare around year 0, as well as today sometimes in football supporter fights But what caused the determined struggle to kill opponents? When was the first case we can consider an example of this in nature totally unique behavior, which differs us humans from the lower animals?
Conflict of interests, eg in the Warring States period in China when different families who were all influential and with military support, all fought, vying for the throne of the Emperor.
- What caused human sacrifice? I mean, not the normal explanation "people believed in religions and wanted to sacrifice to the gods". I mean - why did they initially decide their gods wanted sacrifice? Also could there have been Freudian subconscious thoughts behind human sacrifice, such as wanting power to kill competitors for women, or competitors for power?
Maybe the priests wanted power, and invented stories about the gods. eg the Mayan priests were the only ones to be able to talk to their 'Gods', keeping them and their family powerful for generations. Also, having human sacrifice would show them how bloodthirsty the gods were even in times of peace, so if you offend them something very bad would happen.
- Could carthaginian infant sacrifice have begun as birth control, later gone wrong by becoming a religious tradition?
It isn't actually definitely true, with only Plutarch and some other Romans mentioning it. Maybe the babies found were just stillborn and buried together.
- When did power over a group become a goal of an individual? In biology, it's status and rank that matters, not power to tell people to do things, or power over deciding whether someone should be allowed to live or not. Leaders in nature don't have the same control over the subjects as human leaders have. So when did humans start getting hungry for power in this way? Hungry for depriving people of their free will and self-control by being able to control their actions, through power?
- When were the first weapons made for killing humans, rather than hunting, made?
- Did making fire really have such a huge impact on man? Initially, they couldn't grow things, so the usage of fire to prepare fields from forest couldn't have mattered in the early stages. Did making fire cause religion and mysticism, as is sometimes claimed?
Religion, and also as defense from animals as early as the last ice age, I believe.
- Why did gold become valuable? It can't be that it's rare, because panda extrement is rare, but isn't a valuable trade good because of it. Is it that humans have a thing for shiny things, in combination with being rare? Truly, the only reason why gold is valuable is because there's a silent agreement that gold is valuable. End that agreement, and gold is worth nothing, because it can't be used for anything practical (very few exceptions at least, and even fewer exceptions in pre-civilization societies and early civilizations).
Shiny objects are usually precious in a human's view. Silver is also valuable, and was even more so than gold in the Egyptians' point of view. In China it was jade that was valuable due to a lack of gold mines.
- Where the first cave drawings/art really art? Couldn't the drawings of animals they hunted have been used to instruct new, young hunters? Did spirals and geometrical figures really have a religious importance, or where they just decorations? Geometrical figures are quite natural things for a modern man to draw on a paper when you don't know what to draw and just move the pen around. So wouldn't the geometrical figures rather be explained because it's a biological-mathematical necessity that geometrical figures are simpler to draw?
The cave drawings were religious I think. The fire in the cave would make it appears as if the drawing was moving, so again the priests use this to become influential and powerful in the tribe.
- Usage of clothes - did this happen before or after humans got less hairy than their relatives? What is more probable: that clothes were made to cover certain... uhm... parts, or to keep warm?
Probably look more intimidating to others. Gradually as the humans wore clothes, they lost their fur and clothing was necessary to keep warm. I think.
- When exactly did people stop "worshipping" fertility and start "worshipping" sex? When were the around ice-age period with pregnant women and phallos men statues replaced by only phallos cults?
When religion came to be.
- When did explosion of birth numbers begin? Much indicates that "casualties", diseases, suffering etc. was higher in early farming societies than in hunter and collecting societies, at least until growing of wheat, corn etc. had been altered to become more effective. So the only way the population in farming societies could increase more in numbers than population in hunter societies would be by a huge explosion of number of children born. Why did humans suddenly have significantly more children and start overpopulating, which has for example today made a nomadic hunting life-style became impossible?
There wasn't an explosion of birth. Birth and death rates were always very high, and recently (somewhere a few centuries back) medical advances lowered the death rates, while the birth rates remained high, thus the population skyrocketed.
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