A complex society and a classical society and their effect to the world
The world societies have been transforming since the beginning of history. The earliest forms of societies were of a rather complex nature. These eventually gave way to more classical societies that later paved way for the current modern societies. Several factors which included in most cases political and economic contributed to the transition inherent in these societies. The complete change of government structures from the complex to the classical societies could not go unnoticed. This change had a rather significant transformation to the human society as a whole.
This paper will analyze two ancient societies, Mesopotamia a complex society and the Roman Empire a classical society. It is imperative first to understand what these two different societies entailed. Complex societies entailed social formation that was complex in all its forms (Charvat, 2002). A complex society had members of the society specialized to specific activities. There was a high form of division of labor which had people depend entirely on each other. Complex societies were characterized by chiefdoms mostly kingship based societies. They kept on revising and re-revising their legislations to maintain their supremacy and rule of the people.
They thus became very complex due to existence of very many laws, political leaders and legislations. No one was above the other as every member depended on the other (Charvat, 2002). This complexity was made even more complex as the population grew bigger. Complexity was also inherent in these societies political sphere. There was a complicated form of hierarchy of the ruling elite. This complexity was what led to the collapse of most of the complex societies including Mesopotamia. This is because there existed a number of rulers who all wanted to gain power thus leading to brutal wars that accelerated the collapse of this societies (Postgate, 1994).
The structure of a complex society collapses entirely when one part of this structure is interfered with. The collapse is not only inherent in the political structure of the complex society but also in the economic sector. As the population increases, the sources of livelihood are depleted as competition for the diminishing resources increases. This means that the members of such a society might result in armed struggle as they compete for the scarce resources.
Mesopotamia is considered not only as one of the complex ancient societies, but also the cradle of civilization. Bronze Age is accredited to have had its origins in this ancient empire (Postgate, 1994). This age include Assyrian, Akkadian and the Sumer empires and later the Iron Age which was under the control of Neo Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian empires. These economic activities have had a great significance to the modern world. A lot of developments emerged from the Mesopotamian economic activities and have continued to have a significant contribution to the modern world.
In terms of the legal system, Mesopotamia was a highly complex society.
Basing our argument on the code of Hammurabi it is evident that this ancient society was dominated by too many laws that were conflicting in themselves (Horne, 1915). This code for instance had 282 laws that helped govern the people of Mesopotamia. Some of these laws were very brutal as the major punishment for breaking them was death. Law number six in this code which states that “if a man has stolen goods from a temple, or house, he shall be put to death; and he that has received the stolen property from him shall be put to death” (Horne, 1915). This law was brutal to the person receiving the stolen goods since he would have no idea whether the goods were legitimate.
Another law in contention in this code is law number nine 11 “if on the other hand, the claimant of the lost property has not brought the witnesses that know his lost property, he has been guilty of slander, he has stirred up strife, he shall be put to death” (Horne, 1915). It was not really easy to get a person who had a full knowledge of your property. Further still, the person with the stolen goods could also bring his own witnesses for the claimed property. It would be difficult therefore to determine the actual ownership of the goods. This could in most cases lead to the innocent person being killed to rush conclusions.
Eight out of the first ten laws of this code hade the guilty person being punished by death. The brutality of this judicial system probably was one of the causes of aggression that led to the collapse of this society. These laws though have had a great significance in the development of the modern judicial system as well as in the classical period. The laws though have been revised putting more consideration to the respect of human life.
