Packing boxes to the Fall of Civilizations podcast
This post has been delayed due to moving.
Packing all one's belongings into boxes is a revealing exercise. I'm almost finished with Monica Smith's book, Cities: The First 6,000 Years. An archaeologist, Smith reflects on how cities as an entity ramped up humans’ consumption of all kinds of goods, resulting in what makes every archaeologist’s heart beat a little faster: ancient trash. It’s a good read, covering ancient cities in multiple different global regions, and asking what the history of cities tells us about their present. More on this book later — I want to actually finish it before writing more.
It’s worth noting, however, what a departure urban consumption (and production) represented from most of prior human history. In Sapiens, Yuval Harari notes that ancient hunter gatherers would have possessed only a handful of artifacts in their entire lives. Having to carry everything with you incentivizes traveling light. Modern humans, in contrast, may own millions of artifacts over the course of their lives, from milk cartons to fine jewelry.
While packing boxes, I’ve been binging the Fall of Civilizations Podcast, courtesy of Paul M. Cooper. I just completed episode 5, about the collapse of the ancient Khmer empire. It’s a delightful listen, and one that has kept me amused while trying to empty my house of all personal artifacts. In episode one, on the fall of Roman Britain, Cooper notes that the real religion of the Romans was not that of Jupiter and Mt. Olympus, but of urbanism. He notes that the Romans filled the Mediterranean coastline with cities that were built, organized, and run similarly. It’s a fascinating way to look at cities as an entity.
Back I go to packing artifacts. But before I do, a parting note: today would have been my Grandma Illa’s 97th birthday. She died in 2019. During my time in Japan, I wrote this blog post about population decline and cultural transformation, inspired by her.