MINDLESS MUSINGS

The world I have envisaged at this point remains tribal and by extension familial. Besides inter-tribal marriage and mob mergers, by force or mutual agreement, even the largest villages had a generational lineage. After enough time these tribes would have something resembling a royal family. You know, the descendants of successful scoundrels. Okay, there probably was a few noble and worthy leaders (automatically passing it on to your kids is a whole other argument), but either way the upper and lower crusts were in place.

Towns were a different kind of set-up. I’m pretty sure they weren’t created through conscious planning at first. Maybe they sprung up around a tavern or inn on a busy trade/pilgrim route. Some budding entrepreneur passed by a nice spot on a well-worn path between two villages and thought I can smell opportunity here. I sense an itch in need of scratching. For a fee of course.

A meal, a beverage and a place to crash – bingo!

Maybe the place gets so popular that other enterprises start popping up alongside. Gambling, women of the night and other forms of entertainment. An ancient version of a kebab shop or hotdog stand perhaps. I don’t know. What I’m getting at was that it wasn’t necessarily “build it and they will come.” My theory is that people were already going by; but the successful establishments made people change their route just to visit them. The towns sprung from these places when people started visiting for the sake of visiting.

These places weren’t just for passing through anymore; they had become the destination. More traffic equals more merchants and bigger operations requiring staff. Some of those visitors decide to stay and my hypothetical town is born!

An alternate idea could be something like a trading post situation. Prior to this, tribes and villages might meet and trade directly amongst themselves or with travelling herdsmen etc. – but there was no actual marketplace. Did this spring up outside a tavern or did the savvy seller set-up their tavern alongside the bazaar?

Something similar may have sprung up alongside a large village, but I can’t believe the village aristocracy would give it the green light without a nice kickback – maybe the first business tax or racketeering scheme, depending on how you look at it.

While this could hardly be called the good life, things were looking up for the species as a whole, especially if you were one of the prosperous merchants or village aristocracy. Of course, everyone was susceptible to disease and ill health. After all hygiene, nutrition and medicine were literally ancient. You could die from a fucken splinter! The poor still starved and froze to death, I’m sure. However, the upper crust they were looking damn good for the era.

Maybe for the first time, this group of people now had an added threat to replace the peasants’ perils – other humans. Now, murder was not a new thing, and crimes of passion are as old as the species. Vengeance for betrayal or maybe a misappropriated cow. Jealousy and envy are intrinsically human.  However, in these times of haves and have nots, homicide as a means to expedite an increase in wealth or status would be popping into the heads of many an aspiring social climber. I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Let me just pause and see where this realm of mine is at this point:

• We’ve got small, settled tribes all the way up to big ass villages.
• We’ve got nomadic bands of hunter gatherers, herders and thieves/raiders.
• We now have towns springing up one the edges and in between villages.
• With those we can now add wandering entertainers, merchants, charlatans, craftsmen and tradesmen.
• We may probably expect to find the earliest manifestation of the backpacker: a traveller, a pilgrim or maybe a wandering bum – depending on your point of view.

Well, there you go. This is all coming together nicely. Which undoubtably means that it is wrong, but I intend to follow this line of reasoning to the present and beyond, so if you’re still on board we will move on.

Next, we are getting really big. We are entering the domain of cities and empires!