David Wengrow’s “What Makes Civilization? The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West” explores the technological creations of different communities that defined success and advancement across civilisations. Within this discourse, technology describes the materials used to make instruments for work and the sustenance of societies. This provides a framework for the continuous evolution of the concept of human civilisation.
The history of civilisation is a long and complex journey marked by significant milestones and transformative events, the most important of which is making tools. It began with early human societies, which gradually evolved from hunter-gatherer groups to settled agricultural and large industrial communities. As communities evolved, so did their tools, from stone to metal.
According to most Western written sources, the Bronze Age was the age of using metal alloys from copper and tin to fashion tools, weapons, and houses. It should be noted that it did not spread as a single, monolithic wave. Instead, its adoption varied significantly across different regions and cultures. Most sources record Mesopotamia (current day Iraq) as one of the earliest centres for smelting tin and copper to form more solid metal tools dating back to the 4th millennium BCE. Egypt is also noted for bronze working independently around the same time as Mesopotamia. It is said to have spread from there to the Far East and Europe.
Often not mentioned is its development in areas of sub-Saharan Africa. While bronze was used to fashion tools for war, agriculture, trade, and urbanisation in Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies, it served a more artistic and spiritual purpose in areas such as Nok, Mali, Benin, Ife and Igbo Ugwu. The Bronze Age in West Africa is distinct from other regions due to its unique development and cultural significance. It also had an interesting intersection with brass and iron, as revealed by archaeological discoveries.
The Bronze Age came with the expansion of communities through conquests and, ultimately, colonisation and land grabbing. As tools became more sophisticated, some communities developed an appetite for spread and conquest to test out their new babies. As Foucault would theorise, power leads to control and control breeds resistance. Resistance birthed conflict. Simultaneously, improvement in agriculture encouraged larger families and expanded communities.
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These further upped the ante for conflicts and destructive conquests. These conflicts pushed people into creating new ways of marking and maintaining their territories—expanded agricultural practices, twerking natural bodies like water sources, land, flora and fauna. The continuous innovation in technology and earth engineering ultimately smelted the bronze civilization.The collapse also marked the transition to the Iron Age, as iron tools and weapons replaced bronze, enabling technological and military advancements. Political structures shifted towards localised governance, fostering innovation and adaptability in the post-collapse world.
This ultimately set a trajectory for creating the world we live in now. From the Greek Empire to the Roman Empire to the present capitalist empires, innovation continues to build structures of control and create resistance, and global conflict continues to escalate.