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Living
in the Leviathan |
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Symbiosis |
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Mali
Village Drawing on paper |
The one factor that most characterises the Urban
communities is their symbiotic basis, that is
to say, the extent to which they are many species
living together to their mutual advantage. Human
beings are central to the whole of course on account
of their brains and their ability to take on a
multiplicity of specialist roles, but they are
only the neural hub of a complex mass of creatures;
Plants, animals and microorganisms share an ecosystem
of bewildering complexity. The genetic stock of
an early Neolithic community was considerably
diverse, and the growth of social complexity undoubtedly
went hand in hand with a growth in genetic diversity.
Molecular diversity also characterises these superorgamgms,
as new materials and processes became incorporated
into the growing cities. Never before on earth
has such a converging of diverse species taken
place, often a converging of superorganisms, like
the keeping of bees or the maintainance of animal
herds. The Linnean diversity model has been supplemented
by new models of convergence.
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The complex late Neolithic farming communities
of the Middle East, like this one of Sesklo
in Northern Greece, relatively self-sufficient
in its own territory, was not a mass of individual
Linean points of seperate life. It was a whole
being within which order and harmony characterised
the dynamic balancing act between the needs
and drives of the individuals and those of
the community, the whole community.
The human core was inextricable locked into
a mesh of fruitful courtyards, gardens, granneres,
vineyards, stables, orchards and fields. The
fruitfulness of each were in interdependance.
Moreover the organic whole could only remain
self sustaining when all the parts were nurtured
and enriched, including the creatures within
the soil. A sheep in a field represents in
its body weight only 1/6th of the life sustained
by the earth on which it is standing. Beneath
the earth of the village state and its fields
was a mass of life on which the symbiotic
community depended.
The cities who failed to understand this (and
many of them did and do) paid for their ignorance
with their deaths. Ur chopped down its trees
to make bricks, and its remaining shell is
now in the desert.
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