Figure 1.--

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.

Sumeria

Hunter-gather people had no concept of land ownership. This only began to develop with the Agricultural Revolution and settled life styles. Sumer is the earliest known human civilization, located in southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), the fertile flood plain of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Sumer emerged during the early Bronze Ages. Sumerian farmers likekly moved to the rising cities to be closer to the new the temples of their gods and for safety. They were expected to make an offering before important actions like building a new home, And they contribute a part of what they grew to the temple. This woulkd gradually become taxes as state developed continued. There were originally 12 major independent Sumerian city states. As state formation began, political power originally belonged to the population, but as rivalry between the various city-states intensified over land and water rights, each of these city states created the institution of kingship, in the case of Sumer priest-kings. The gods (and therefore their temples) were seen as owning the land, This meant in reality, the temple priests owned the land. One source writes, "This translated into the temple elite or priests directly controlling much of the land and labor of the city and its surrounding area." And as the state apparatus grew, the aristocracy also achieved land holdings. Thus for the most part, the land was not owned by the peasantry which worked it. One scholar wrires, ":Most of the land was owned by the nobility. Nobles owned large estates where most of the land was purchased from poorer citizens. It is possible the temple dominated the land and the economy." 【Kramer】 The temples also owned land directly. It was land that could not be bought, sold, or otherwise alienated. Sumerians began the Agricultural Revolution (about 8,000 BC). State formation began (about 4,000 BC). probably because of the need to maintain irrigation systems. Another author writes, "There were concepts of private property. Many economic activities were recorded on cuneiform tablets, including transactions concerning land." In Sumer and Mesopotamian society, there is no term that expresses the modern understanding of 'private property'. Cuneiform tablets do not describe the concept of private property. There are references that clearly indicate private ownership of fields, orchards, livestock, houses, furniture, and even slaves. We see phrases like 'Gimillu’s field, the divination priest' or 'Enlil-bani’s ox, the metal smith' are very common. In the countless cuneiform tablet, none touch the abstract concept of property, whether private, communal, or state-owned. Land ownership in Sumer and ancient Mesopotamia in general, was mainly held by the state or the temple. The king or other rulers controlled vast tracts of land, which were then distributed among nobles, military officials, and priests as grants or rewards. These individuals became the primary landowners and oversaw the cultivation of the land by tenants or dependent labourers." Private ownership of land by wealthy individuals did exist, but it was much less common. The relative rarity of private land ownership in Sumer has to be assessed. Various factors appear to be involved. These include: 1) the role of the Sumerian state in land distribution and regulating land usage, 2) the socioeconomic structure of Sumerian society, and 3) the need to maintain agricultural productivity as the economic base of the society. Sumer became the core or at least a major part of a steady stream of successor states.(Akkad, Babylon, Assyrian, Chaldean/Neo-Babylonian, and Persian) centered on what has become known as the Fertile Crescent. All these civilizations despte the many differences show the founding imprint of the civilization created in Sumer. The Sumerians essentially invented the future and that future was of a landless peasantry.

Egypt

Egypt developed as what is the Sahara Desert began to form. the Nile River Valley was the only reliable source of water over a vast area. In ancient Egypt most land was came to be owned by the Pharaoh, the royal family, and the temples (3000 BC). As in Sumer, the land was seen to be owned by the gods, but Pharaoh was the god's human representative. Until recently it was largely believed that slavery was widespread in Egypt and provided the agricultural work force as well as workers for major projects like budding the pyramids. We now know that this was not the case. agricultural workers were mostly landless peasants. Workers for major projects may have been conscripted peasants, but they were paid wages. There was some private land ownership. One author writes, "Pharaonic Egypt provides some evidence about private possession of land in which markets and a business-oriented mentality operated in a social and economic environment rational but alien to modern capitalist values. Kinship ties limited the emergence of individualist interests, but kings promoted such behavior in an attempt to curve down the power of noble families. Yet individualist strategies remained limited because institutions (particularly temples and the crown) were crucial in the formation of private land portfolios and narrowed the possibilities for the emergence of a significant market of land." Unlike Mesopotamia there was no formation of numerous competing successor states, but a steady string of dynasties with a considerable degree of cultural continuity. And the general land ownership pattern in ancient Egypt, was a centralization of land ownership toward pharaoh and the royal family. This is not to suggest that there was no change. One source suggests that were periods, most notably the New Kingdom (16th-11th century BC), where private land ownership was of some importance. The general pattern, even during the New Kingdom was,however, that the land was owned by Pharaoh, the royal family, aristocrats, and temple priests. One source describes the Egyptian pattern as, "The king [pharaoh] had ultimate control over the land and allocated it to various officials, temples, and nobles. The land was cultivated by peasants, who worked the fields and paid a portion of their produce as rent or taxes to the landowner. Additionally, some land could be privately owned by individuals, although the state maintained control over the overall land distribution." The overarching underpinning of Egyptian land ownership pattern was that the land belonged to the gods. And Pharaoh was the living manifestation of Horus--the most significant of the Egyptian gods through millennia of Egyptian history. (The eye of Horus even appears ion the American dollar bill.) Thus the primary right to the land was vested in Pharaoh, the omnipotent human authority for the the gods and land administration was one of his most important functions. But Pharaoh did not convey actual ownership in the modern sense--merely usufructuary rights. Thus is the the legal right of enjoying the use of land to a person. This means the rights to not only possess and occupy, but to exclude. And most importantly, entitles to to a substantial share of the income derives from that land. 【Ramsey, et. al. 】 The final, Ptolemaic Dynasty may be more a relection of Greek than Egyptian land ownership practices. A reader reports thatb Cleopatra was teaching Ceasar about trusts and landownership.

Harapa

We know virtually nothing about Harapian (Indus River) civilization. And it is probably unknowable. It is intriguing, however, to speculate. The only common theme among archeologists working on Harapa is that city organization shows little signature of elite control. There are, for example, no great palaces. Does that mean that there was a greater degree of private land ownership in Harapa? Ancient Indian land ownership patterns were shaped by the caste system. Brahman priests were regarded as the principal representative of the gods on earth. They could not assign ownership, but they could dispense actual ownership as in Egypt in the modern sense--merely usufructuary rights. But this was the civilization that replaced Harapa. It is not known the extent to which any of Harapan land ownership patterns impacted the civilizations that replaced it. These concepts are deeply rooted in the religious/cultural texts of ancient India. The Manusmriti, a Hindu legal text dates to (around 200 BC to 200 AD). It details various various laws, including those touching on property and inheritance.

China

China was the last of the four great river valleys to develop, but proved to be the longest of the four river valley civilizations which would have a continued existence as a coherent society. And they developed an entirely new crop--rice. The rural Chinese population was divided into several categories. Landlords possessed large land holdings and performed no manual labor themselves. Rich peasants owned land, but actually worked it themselves as well as hiring workers to assist with the farming. They also might rent land for others to farm. The term rich is a misnomer. Middle peasants owned some land and worked it themselves without hiring others. Several authors report that the peasant family that worked its own land is a societal institution that has proved remarkably stable over time. 【Mazoyer and Roudart】 This structure has been "impressively resistant" over time, including the two decades of forced Communist collectivization and Red Guard rampages (1958-1978). Today in China, these urban migrant laborers are experiencing trouble finding work. Those from middle peasantry families can return to the farm. At the bottom of rural society were poor peasants and laborers. Poor peasants had virtually no land or farming equipment. They might rent land from the land owners. Casual laborers were the bottom rung. They owned no land and survived on often meager, frequently having to borrow money, often at high interest rates. What we do not know was the size of each cohort and the land area they controlled, especially the poor peasants and laborers. Of course this has varied over time. We have seen estimates that some 85-90 percent of the Chinese population was the rural peasantry. Now just how much of that population were poor peasants and casual laborers, we do not know. The Chinese regarded this as an important issue from an early point in their history. And we note references to land reform during many dynasties. This is something we do not notice in the West until the 20th century. China had early programs of land distribution systems dating as far back as the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BC).

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.

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