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Archaeologists have found evidence of much larger societies than existed previously, from around 6000 BCE (see figure 4.2). These societies were based on the development of cities and had pronounced inequalities of wealth and power associated with the rule of kings or emperors. Because they used writing, science and art flourished, and they are usually described as civilizations.

The earliest large civilizations developed in the Middle East, usually in fertile river areas. The Chinese Empire originated around 2000 BCE, when powerful states were also founded in what are now India and Pakistan, and a number of large civilizations existed in Mexico and Latin America, such as the Aztecs of Mexico, the Mayas of the Yucatan peninsula and the Incas of Peru. Most traditional civilizations were also empires – that is, they expanded through the conquest and incorporation of other peoples (Kautsky 1982). This was true, for instance, of traditional China and Rome. At its peak, in the first century CE, the Roman Empire stretched from Britain in North-West Europe to beyond the Middle East. The Chinese Empire, which lasted more than 2,000 years, up to the threshold of the twentieth century, covered most of the region of eastern Asia now occupied by China.

The emergence of large-scale civilizations and empires shows that the very long-term process of human expansion has long involved invasion, war and violent conquest every bit as much as cooperation and mutual exchange (Mennell 1996). By the dawn of the industrial era in 1750, humans had already settled in all parts of the globe, though the world population was still relatively small, at 771 million (Livi Bacci 2012: 25). But this was about to change in a radical way.