Figure 1.-- Egypt is a rare ancient civilization in which the rural peasantry is depicted in some detail. As far as we can tell the Egyptian peasantry was a largely landless peasantry. Wheat is a crop that dies best in dry, sunny, and warm locations. And because bread was so important, it also became the preferred crop in Europe despite the fact is that many countries like England, Scandinavia, and Germany have colder, wetter growing conditions where wheat despite its prominence grew less well.

One topic that does not get the attention it deserves is land ownership patterns. The world is a complicated place, but from a very early point we see land ownership becoming concentrated in the hands of elites and the people actually doing the arduous work of farming descending into the status of a landless peasantry. As societies developed, elites for the most part appear to have decided that slavery was not the optimal societal pattern, but a landless peasantry was better suited to maintaining societal order, although not necessarily the system tailored to maximizing productivity Nothing is known about Harapa. We are still assessing China. After the first river valley civilizations, the world becomes a much more complicated place. Agriculture was the primary economic activity supporting human society since the Agricultural Revolution. 3. When you say that the rural population only sustained a meager existence, one reason for that was technology. But the other reason that needs to be explained is that the great bulk of farmers did not own the land that they farmed., not only in the ancient world but for modern society as well.

River Valley Civilizations

Civilization began with four river valley civilizations -- Sumer, Egypt, Harapa, and China. Except for Harapa (Indus Valley civilization) we have some information on the general pattern of land ownership in these civilizations, but not to the precision on land ownership we would like. We do not think that scholars attach the needed importance to this question it deserves. The great bulk of the ancient population was rural as will be case until the 20th century was rural, but in ancient times the rural population was the great bulk of the population, in part because of he low productivity of farming technology. and the rural population was largely a landless peasantry. The basic principal was that the land belonged to the gods. And the the gods were represent on earth by temple priests and political state officials. This was the situation for most of the history of human population. Slavery existed throughout the ancient world, but with few exception, the really large number of the population were a landless peasantry. And it worked so well for elites that it explains why slavery was not more common. (Classical Greece and Rome were outliers.) There were costs associated with maintaining a slave system that were avoided with a landless peasantry. Notably societies involving both slaves and landless peasants tended to be societies limited economic change over time. Low labor costs meant that land owners had little incentives to modernize and make costly changes to increase productivity which changed only glacially.

Other Ancient Civilizations

After these first four civilizations, the world becomes a much more complicated place. We see civilizations springing up throughout the known world as well as civilizations in the Americas that were unknown to Europeans. These include both major civilization as well as many smaller ones. We have information on some of these societies, but others are basically unknown, especially the smaller ones. We note that many internet write-ups, just ignore the subject. Given that agriculture was the economic base for almost all of these civilizations, e believe that this is a topic that should be addressed. The general pattern was farming being done by a landless peasantry. The basic exception was classical Greece and Rome.

Byzantium

Carthage

Celts

Germans

Greece

Land in anient Grrece has been described as typically being held by free citizens, with large estates owned by the aristocracy. There were small farmers that owned plots of land. Less clear is how important were these holdings. And of course the patern changed over time and varied from polis to polis. The the land ownership pattern is much more complicated than this over view suggests. As with Rome, a great deal is know about land ownership in ancient Greece, but much of what we know is confusing because it is based on a variety of references in scattered texts and archological finds. There is no known ancient text providing an overview of the land owning system. And there was no unified Greek state until King Philip of Macedonia and his son Alexander conquered Greece. The final showdown came at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC). Thus we have many different systems in individual polis. We know there was land ownership in Athens with individual farmers owning the land they worked. There are numerous recordsof land cases being argued in Athenian courts. They must have hired landless citizes or acquired slaves to help ok the land. We have no derails in this. Land onership in Sparta is even more obsure. We do know that adult male Spatans wee assigned farms in Messenia and other conquered reas where slave Helots tied to the land worked the land. This land was not owned by indivuduals, but owned by the Spartan state. One author writes, " In the archaic and classical eras of Greek history, in many city-states the evidence suggests that the citizens did indeed own their small family farms. For example, we have surviving foundation charters of a number of cities that were founded as colonies by existing Greek city-states, and one of the most common features of such legal texts is that the land in the new colony was divided equally among the settlers meaning that all the colonists of the city owned the land they farmed and that they all started out approximately equal in status and wealth. Slaves were not common in such settings, so each family was itself working land that they personally owned. When such states went to war, success usually went to the city that could field the largest army, and since the army was really a militia formed of the city body, and since the citizen body were almost all farmers, and since the farmers supplied their own arms and armor, there was therefore a strong incentive for the survival of the state to have a large as possible a body of citizen-solider-farmers. This rough economic equality and ownership of property was also one of the strong forces pushing the development of democracy as a form of government." 【Aldrete】 The basic question concerning Greece is wether realestate as opposed to movables was inalienable. 【Michell】 This seems to have been a widekly held pattern in the eraly history of Greece. Land was belonged to the family and was inalienable. The owner at any time was a kind of life who had only the usufruct for his life. There was a belief butressed by religion that families never lost land and never died out. While land was inalienable, it could be encumbered, mortagaged. This was common in Athens and city states associated with Athens. Just how common it was throughout Greece we are unsure. Archeologistrs have found stones and pillars attesting to such encumberance, known oday as 'mortgage pillars'. Women in most Greek city states could not own property. If a landowner had no males heirs, the dauhter or daughters (epikleroi) were required to marry the nearest relative on their father's side of the family. This system was called the epiklerate.

Hebrews

Thanks to the Bible, we know more about land ownership among he ancient Hebrews than any other people except Greece and Rome. This is bery clear the subject of the Land comes up again and again in the Old Testament. For the ancient Hebrews like the Sumerians and others in Mesopotamia along with the Egyptians, the land belonged to God. In fact, all property belonged to God which Leviticus 25:23 made crystal clear, "the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.” Yahweh is the one and only Lord and as result ultimate king over Israel, he was also Lord of the soil and all its products. Thus the Holy Land was God's domain (Josh. 22:19) and that land was the land of Yahweh (Hos. 9:3; Ps. 85:1 [2]; Jer. 16:18). But unlike Mesopotamia and Egyopt, the land did not become cintolled by the temples and stte auhorities. The temples may have owned land, but there is no mention of it in the Bible. There is mention of private ownerhip. The land appears to be nostly ubn the hands of the gamiklyb partiarch. The Bible details how people can acquired byproperty--by work, inheitance, and industionous. The Bible is very clear that people should be paid appropriately for hard work (1 Cor. 9:9–11) and it is wrong to withhold wages due workers (Lev. 19:13). the Bible is silent on slavery. We are not alwys certain if servent avtally mean t slave. But there was no large slave popuation. Possessions including property may acquired through inheritance (Deut. 21:16; Prov. 19:14). Other ways of acuiring possessions and land land include industriousness (Prov. 10:4; 13:4; 14:23), wisdom (Prov. 3:16; 24:3), nsight (Prov. 14:15). The book of Proverbs, emphasized of hard work and the justifiable pride and satisfaction gained by completing a job well (Prov. 12:24). Especially notable is the Bible's respect for small land holders whose land is coveted by eveb the most powerful. here the ecample is Naboth's Vineyard. Thee the prophet Elijah confronted King Ahab and Queen Jezebel over the way they were treating a small landowner named Naboth. King Ahab wanted Naboth’s land which was adjacent to the royal summer palace in Jezreel. Naboth refused to turn over hais land, "The LORD forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my ancestors. (1 Kings 21:3). He appealed to the Lord himself who in Leviticus 25:23 had said, "The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine." Another land issue was land boundary markets. There ware biblical injunction against moving or shifting the ancient boundary markers on any land. One example is Deuteronomy 19:14: "Do not move your neighbor’s boundary stone set up by your predecessors in the inheritance you receive in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess." 【Kaiser】

Hittites

India

Land rights and regulations were strongly influenced by customary patterns and then local governance. These of course across both regions and kingdoms. Harapa is an enigma. After Harapa many diffent states followed> We have not yet found a lot oniformatioin, but the general pattern seems to have been the rightbof of the conqueror was the initial form of land right. Tribes appear to have owned the land and allotted it to individual families land for their use. The jungle which covered much of the land had no economic value. Whoever cleared a juncle plot had the right to farm it. If the plot was was abandoned, ownership reverted to the tribe. One sources writes, "Thus, at an early period already, there were individual and joint land rights. But landed property, as known in the West, did not exist at all. The rights were a privilege granting inheritable utilization rights and included social obligations, especially taking consideration of the village community's interests." 【Kuhnen】 As state formation began, rulers began acquiring a share of kland rughts. Lland ownership became shaped bhy the caste system along with prevalent agricultural practices. The Brahmins (priests) became regarded as the legal owners of the land, but they often leased it to cultivators, such as the Kshatriyas (warriors) or Vaishyas (merchants and farmers) who did the actul farming. Thus the land was commionly cultivated by a combination of peasant farmers and tenants. They paid rent or a share of the produce to the landowners. Inevitably land ownership and administration influenced by the many ruling powers of the countless kingdoms that came and went over time along with regional differences. There were esoecially important empires like the Maurya and Gupta dynasties. There were land grants to religious institutions, including temples and monasteries, whivh plyed an important role in land ownership and agricultural practices.

Mesopotamia

Land in ancient Summer was seen as belonging to the gods. The temple priests and than the king an aristicratrs came to control the land which was worked by what became and landless peasantry. Summer was conquered by Sargo of Akkad (abiout 2300 BC). Land was owned by the king, temples, and wealthy individuals. Commoners could lease land from these owners. While Sumer was conquered, sumerian civilization was commonly adopted by the cinqueris. Whike we know that alandless peasantry appeared in Sumer. We are not sure about the kand onersip patterns of the many successor states in the Fertile Cressent, but it is likeku=y that a landless peaantry was the general pattern. There seem to have been vast estates. One source notes Mesopotamian scrolls concerning trusts and landownership. We are not sure just which Fertile Cresent states to which these refer.

Persians

The Persians created one of the great empires of all time, especially during the Cyrus' Achaemenid period. The Empire was vast and included many regions and peoples. Mesopotamia with its very productive agriculture and comparative proximity to the Iranian homeland was a major aquisition with the conquest of Babylon. The general Persian policy was to leave the local culture intact. Land may have been different. One source describes, "... the spread of a Persian or Iranian landowning class. When the Persians conquered a kingdom, some of the vanquished kings’ and nobles’ estates were confiscated and taken over by the Persian king. He kept much for himself and the royal family, but he also distributed much of it to his high officials and members of the Persian nobility. The extensive estates of the Persian ruling class thus came to be scattered throughout the empire, from Egypt and Asia Minor to Bactria."

Phonecians

A reader reports coming across documentation of Phoenician groups forming what today we would call mutual insurance companies to protect ships and trade which implies that at least vessels were owned and possibly land as well."

Rome

Rome has a histiory spanning a mellennia. And land ownership patterns varied greatly over that time, especially between the Republic and the Empire. What did not change is that under Roman law both land and movable property could be owned absolutely in the modern sence by individuals. This conception of absolute ownership (dominium) is characteristically Roman. As was the case in most ancient socities, land ownership was imprtant in building wealth and central to social status. Owning land was indicative of wealth and social standing. An exprrt innanciengistory wroyes, "Exactly the same thing applies in Rome as in Greece for the first 500 years of Roman history from the 8th century BC through the unification of Italy around the end of the 3rd century BC. For this long span of Roman history, and especially during the first 3 centuries of the Roman Republic, the average citizen was a family farmer who owned his own farm and served in the militia when the state went to war. Admittedly, later in Roman history when Rome had conquered overseas areas thereby acquiring slaves and the army had become a professional one rather than a militia, many of the small family farms were lost and replaced by large plantations owned by the wealthy and worked by slaves. Not surprisingly, this is when the Republic collapsed and the Empire began, but we can't just ignore the 500 year stretch of Roman history when the farmer-citizen-soldier model was dominant. It was this period that directly inspired the Founding Fathers of the US when forming the American Republic in emulation of the Roman." 【Aldrete】 Land ownership as Rome evolved into a great spraling empire became more amore concentrayed in the hands of the patrician class which owned vast agricuktural estates known as latifundai. The growing conflict between the patricians and plebians was primarily over land ownership. As Rome expanded and beame an increasingly slave society, the lebians found it more difficult to compete. Some may have been drawn tonurban life and the opportunities created by the expanding empire. And it was the patricuans who coul purchase slabes to wok their estates. This put the plebians at a comptitive disadvantage. The incrasing dominance of the patricians gave rise to calls for land reform. most notaby by the Gracchi brothers. Their murder by the patricins was a major factor in destabilising the Reopublic. One author describes a functioning Roman market for land. He notes how Rome had three important atrributes for the operation of a functioning market. "Three attributes of land ownership can indicate a functioning market for land. First, there is a price for land that can change freely when conditions change. Second, people can buy and sell land at this price without reference to many outside authorities, that is, they can make their own decisions rather than reflecting the decisions of people not directly involved in the land sale. Finally, there are few restrictions on or obligations from most landholdings and land transfers other than the payment of taxes." 【Temin】

Sources

Alderete, Geregory. Professor Emeritus of History and Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Personal commuication (September 5, 2004)

Erdkamp, Paul and Koenraad Verboven. eds. Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World.

Hudson, Michael and Baruch Levin. eds. Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East.

Kaiser, Walter C. "Ownership and property in the Old Testament economy," Faith Work & Economics (September 12, 2012).

Kramer, Samuel Noah. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (University of Chicago Press: 2010).

Kuhnen, Frithjof. "Land tenure in ancient Indiua," Man and Land: An Introduction into the Problems of Agrarian Structure and Agrarian Reform

Linklater, Andro. Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership.

Mazoyer, M. and L. Roudart. A History of World Agriculture from the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis (Roudart: London, 2006), 512 p.

Michell, H. "Land tenure in ancient Greece," The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne d'Economique et de Science politique Vol. 19, No. 2 (May, 1953), pp. 245-53.

Ramsey, Christopher Bronk, Michael W. Dee, Joanne M. Rowland, Thomas F. G. Higham, Stephen AHarris, Fionna Brock, Anita Quiles, Eva M. Wild, Ezra S. Marcus, and Andrew J. Shortland. (2010). "Radiocarbon-based chronology for Dynastic Egypt."Science. Vol. 328, No. 5985 2010), pp. 1554–57.

Temin, Peter. The Roman Market Economy (2012). Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical World, edited by Michael Hudson and Baruch Levin.

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