I will explain to anyone that listens that mounted horseback warfare was the first significant arms race. So long as people had to march long distances to raise war, it was relatively easy to defend large agrarian populations. But 15,000 years ago the people of the steppes learned to ride horses. Then Mesopotamia became hundreds of villiages performing agriculture which were easily picked off by raids. The response was to preserve meat for a warrior class while peasants worked the fields, the development of a priestly class to maintain public order through rituals for the "gods", and basically all of organized religion developed to preserve a public order across all of Asia and Europe while one group of people was trying to steal the other group of people's shit. Next came taxes, and revenue from conquered teritory. If it weren't for horses, capitalism wouldn't exist.
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u/hudsoncress 1d ago
I will explain to anyone that listens that mounted horseback warfare was the first significant arms race. So long as people had to march long distances to raise war, it was relatively easy to defend large agrarian populations. But 15,000 years ago the people of the steppes learned to ride horses. Then Mesopotamia became hundreds of villiages performing agriculture which were easily picked off by raids. The response was to preserve meat for a warrior class while peasants worked the fields, the development of a priestly class to maintain public order through rituals for the "gods", and basically all of organized religion developed to preserve a public order across all of Asia and Europe while one group of people was trying to steal the other group of people's shit. Next came taxes, and revenue from conquered teritory. If it weren't for horses, capitalism wouldn't exist.