Hammurabi's Code could inflict cruel sentences, but, although it and subsequent laws were imposed without any popular participation in decision-making, the code that appeared on stone tablets in a public place proclaimed a certain level of cooperation for which people were responsible.
Just as Mesopotamia depended on regulating the Tigris and Euphrates, the Moche state along the northwest coast of contemporary Peru seems to have galvanized certain people to band together to regulate the scarce water supplies. The culture that by the 15th century of the Common Era (ce) had developed a centralized political authority first formed between 1800 and 1500 bce on the dry land of the narrow desert valleys between the high mountains. According to archeological evidence, in times of peace or extended drought, unidentified farmers formed local groups to design and construct irrigation canals as well
This inscribed stele or post from about 1750 все shows Shamash, the Mesopotamian god of justice and of the sun, with King Hammurabi. Hammurabi's Code, which the god conferred on the king, was intended, according to its prologue, "to bring about the rule of righteousness" and "to destroy the wicked and the evil doers so that the strong should not harm the weak" so that Hammurabi would "enlighten the land to further the well-being of mankind." Louvre, Paris, © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NYas to organize religious rituals.3 These local associations to coordinate efforts and resolve differences seem to have become stronger between 200 and 800 CE, during the middle and high Moche period. Sometimes the need to regulate water brought mutually antagonistic groups into coalitions with one another so that unified states alternated with small, self-governing units in the Jequetepeque Valley. During the so-called Middle Moche period, members of the local communities united and possibly formed self-governing bodies to plan and construct four new canals in order to expand the farmland available to them all.
A similar and more easily documented pattern developed among the Maya people of contemporary Yucatan, Mexico, southwestern Guatemala, and northwestern Honduras. According to anthropologists, a so-called "Cargo System" of sharing responsibility emerged at various times between 350 bce and 700 ce in much of what we now know as Southern Mexico and Central America. Although this whole area was generally dominated by kings, other men who by birth or by talent were designated to fulfill certain tasks for a period up to a year often rose to power as local lords, and sometimes even contended with kings. In times of crisis due to drought or threats from neighboring settlements, the kings sometimes had to summon the local dignateries to form a council, as the lord of Copan in Honduras is thought to have done in the mid-eighth century ce after his predecessor was murdered.4 The council seems to have held their meetings in the so-called Popol Nah or Council House commissioned in Copan in 776 ce.
Even in ancient Egypt where the Pharaohs ruled between 1550 and 1070 bce, there seems to have been local participation in control of the Nile.5 What remained of the water after the large estates received their share flowed to the sluices, water basins, and the fields of local farms. Little is known about the ways the smaller cultivators created the water basins to store the water, constructed the canals, or built the dikes that protected the fields from the overflow of the river, but the work seems to have been widely decentralized, requiring a degree of cooperation that demanded consultation among those controlling the water.6 Participation in the distribution of water may have shaped other social and religious relationships as well. As in Mesopotamia, those who were careful not to take more than their share by building dams or otherwise diverting water for personal gain rather than promoting the collective good could expect rewards in the afterlife.7 If the prehistory of democracy undoubtedly took place around life-and-death issues such as the management of water, full-blown democratic institutions and practices flourished in ancient Greece, particularly in Athens.
From the seventh through the fourth century bce, Athens established precedent after precedent for both representative and participatory democracy. As in ancient Mesopotamia, the stories of the great lawgivers help form what we know about democracy. Solon and Pericles allegedly shaped democratic lawmaking by promoting activities that were being undertaken collectively in the agora or public market of ideas and institutionalized in the Assembly, the most democratic of all public institutions. Without doubt, from the perspectives of both representative and direct democracy, something exceptional occurred in Athens. In fact, the wonder of Athenian democracy was the creation of multiple venues in which ordinary citizens—albeit limited only to men and excluding women, slaves, and outsiders—could act for the common good.
Without romanticizing Athenian democracy or underestimating its failures, the Athenian city-state's ability to provide far-reaching opportunities for ordinary citizens to initiate laws, shape policy, and adjudicate disputes to establish new political opportunities made it distinctive for many reasons. By the sixth century bce, most of what is contemporary Greece had been organized into city-states where kings and aristocrats, some of whom bore responsibility for carrying out religious rituals, ruled.
Greece consisted of discrete enclaves on which agriculture was difficult and residents turned to the sea for their livelihood. Despite being surrounded by water, Athens in particular piped water into its towns and fields to supplement the water it secured from nearby wells and springs. Part of the sense of community Greeks developed from the eighth century bce on was due to the democratic distribution of water. Apart from the growing wealth of the Athenian empire in the fifth century bce, the silver mines worked by slaves contributed to the well-being of those who were citizens. Citizens and resident foreigners, known as metis, lived in demes or neighborhoods in the polis or city-state in which farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, and small merchants shared moderate forms of civic life, and the entire population was concerned with the availability and provision of water.
From the seventh through the fifth century BCE, Athenian dependence on naval power may have promoted democracy. Athens could not have survived without grain from Ukraine, one reason that Athens feared Persian movements toward the Dardanelles, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea, and maybe the main reason Athens extended so many rights of participatory democracy to lower-class male citizens who served in its navy. Though nobles ruled, they were constrained by legal codes and various juries, assemblies, and councils made up of ordinary male citizens committed to the rule of law. On a rotating basis they chose judges and formed committees to study the meaning of laws and apply them in individual cases.8