The Bronze Age

Inevitably when you aver that the state is unjust, the law unfair, society mere coercion, etc. etc. and so forth, someone pops up to explain that while you may not like it, buster, if it weren't for our institutions, however flawed they may be, then you would be raped, killed, and eaten any second now. Then everyone yells Sudan!, jumps around, and demands an historical counterexample. In fact, the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley seems to have existed as a peaceful urban culture for thousands of years with no indication of a ruling elite or priestly class, indeed with no presntly known indication of an army. Of course, their script is as yet undeciphered and our knowledge of them remains scattered and incomplete. It may have been that some sort of commercial class exercised oligarchic control--certainly the regularized systems of weights and measures as well as what appear to be codified systems of urban planning and building construction suggest some mechanism of large-scale cooperation, but again: there is no evidence of a governing structure that we would recognize from any other historic example. Keep in mind that not only was Harappan civilization durable, it was far-flung, occupying much of what is now Pakistan at its peak. It is in any case interesting to consider that such a thing not only existed, but endured.