Guided Response: Review and respond to at least two of your peers postings, one of which addresses the same question you chose and one that chose the other and compare findings.
Provide recommendations to extend their thinking. Challenge your peers by asking a question that may cause them to reevaluate elements of their positions.
Your grade for this assignment will be based upon your substantive participation, i.e., whether or not you posted in your groups forum space at least three times (initial posts or replies to classmates). Each response should be at least 50 words each in length.
Brooke
I think that social stratification is a natural consequence of civilization. Even before agriculture came about, monuments show that there was social and political order.
For example, those that built Gobekli Tepe relied on food that was hunted and gathered to have the strength to build the large monuments. The sizeable labor force needed to produce the large stones and the detail necessary to complete the task shows the social and political complexity during that time.
With the rise of agriculture, as the population increased, came the modification of a social and political structure established in the home, among family, to a more complex arrangement.
As population increases, there becomes issues of food supply, disagreements among the people, and overall chaos in the civilizations. A social and political structure had to be created to control these and other issues that came about. For a civilization to be efficient and have order, social stratification was put into place.
Social stratification put people in a civilization into social levels. This caused a social order that defined one's status in life in which there were now rich and poor. With this shift came a government, that implemented the social classes, in which the kings and pharaohs had power over those below them and could enforce laws in their favor. Also, with this complexity came craftsmen that worked for the upper class, a system of records to monitor the food supply and labor, and more monuments were created.
For any civilization to thrive, there must be social and political organization. Social stratification naturally came about, both before and after the development of agriculture, because there was a need in the civilizations for order. It would not be possible to have a civilization without stratification if they want to prosper.
Justin
Is social stratification a natural consequence of civilization, or would it be possible to have a civilization without stratification? Explain.
Social stratification is a natural consequence of civilization in which exists in todays world. Social stratification was not a natural consequence of civilization though when it came to the start of humanity as we know it. Social stratification is defined as "in a complex civilization is a division of society into levels, or strata, that one does not achieve but into which one is born" (Feder 2013). With evolution creating homo sapiens, over a period of time people of power began to come into play.
All people I believe were considered equal until it came to the agriculture period where some sort of wealth was beginning to come into play when it came to having power. Once that power is received, that power will most of the time always be in that family for a greater period of time after them. A natural consequence led to those people having this power, the first to have this power though weren't just given this power.
In order to become Pharaohs, emperors, and kings these persons had to been created by a group of people who looked up to these powerful people in order for them to create that title. There is no telling if a civilization would be possible without social stratification because we have not lived in a time where this did not exist. It possibly could have existed before wealth was a factor and working to survive was just a way of life.
What can we learn about social stratification from the past that can shed light on the problems of the present?
We can learn a few things about social stratification from the past that can shed light on the problems that exist today. Understanding that it is harder for a normal person that isn't born into royalty or wealth to get to that point is a perfect understanding of how social stratification works.
There are different societies in today's world that is achieved mostly through social stratification. Although it may not apply to everybody, but most of the people who are born into a rich family are most likely to become rich as well. Like I said this does not apply to everybody because there are families always turning the ways of what we can call poverty into riches. We can learn that during the past that those who had more power were able to be in a higher society which can be related to how todays society also lives.