What were the earliest laws like?

https://worldhistory.substack.com/p/what-were-the-earliest-laws-really

131 62 1 year ago

worldhistory.substack.com

mcphage• 1 year ago

One thing I’ve heard historians mention, that is like to know more about, is that these law stelae, while impressive, aren’t actually referenced in legal cases during their time. So they’re the laws as written, not actually the laws as practiced.

protocolture2• 1 year ago

I think I read that these might even just be proposals or a statement of ideals, especially in Hammurabi's case.

samrus4• 1 year ago

A bill being condiered by legislative bodies (priesthood) parhaps?

ethan_smith• 1 year ago

Mesopotamian court records from Nippur and Larsa show legal decisions often diverged from Hammurabi's code, with judges frequently applying local customs and precedent rather than citing the written laws.

samrus4• 1 year ago

Federal versus local authority? Crazy how mesopotamia was advanced enough to deal with these problems all that time ago

ChrisMarshallNY• 1 year ago

I really like that story!

I appreciate it being shared.

I had no idea about this chap.

w10-1• 1 year ago

TLDR: earlier than Hammurabi's eye-for-an-eye justice was Urukagina, who presented himself as a savior for the people, including getting them out of debt and protecting them from corrupt officials. (But OP is most excellent and worth reading.)

It reminded me of Solon's changes in Athens, to broker some fairness, wipe prior debts and outlaw debtor's prisons, require military service (paid for the lower classes), and of course opening decisions beyond to hereditary aristocrats (land owners) to those with wealth (traders). In both cases, leaders seemed to be responding to stasis borne of economic oppression.

However, ideology is not evidence of justice; both Putin and Xi present themselves as champions of the people against the corrupt bureaucracy (and discipline their governments via discretionary application of high standards).

But the brutality of eye-for-an-eye might obscure the point: Hammurabi seems to be distinct in not associating power with the person, but establishing settled expectations so people could sort out their differences directly (freeing the leader from the no-win situation of judging disputes). That makes it easier for the laws to continue largely the same, regardless of the style of government (much as we in the US and EU still apply English and Roman law).

It's a shame our sampling of ancient governance is limited to stone and clay tablets from the middle east. There's evidence of other societies of a similar sophistication but without the hierarchical dependence on gods and beer.

lwansbrough• 1 year ago

I’m supposed to believe these were the first guys to make laws? Put 10 guys in a small room for a few hours and I guarantee some rules will develop. There are thousands of years we’re missing records for!

irrational• 1 year ago

Earliest historical laws. By definition, anything before writing is pre-history.

Defletter2• 1 year ago

I guess that's an interesting distinction: what's the difference between a law and a rule. I think there are two main differences:

1. In your example, the group of buddies all created the rules and consented to them. This is not true for laws which instead invent concepts like the social contract to justify itself.

2. When you break the law, say murder, the ultimate victim is the state. The person you murdered is just evidence in the state's case against you. This is why there are Victims Right's movements. This is not really true with such buddie rules: breaking them may hurt your friends' feelings, but there wont really be an equivalent to it harming the social fabric.

3. Laws imply law enforcement, which implies use of force. Are you and your buddies willing to enforce your rules on each other with lethal force?

AlotOfReading• 1 year ago

The "state" didn't exist for the laws in the article, being a much later concept and some of the oldest systems of law we have good records for are religious laws like those of the old testament. The victim in that case isn't even in society, but rather a diety outside it. In case that seems like a stretched usage of the word "law", there are instances in the prophetic books where God brings lawsuits against the israelites.

A simple definition used by anthropologists is a system of codes enforced by external parties.

kybernetikos• 1 year ago

I think probably the distinction we're making here is just one of scale and acceptance. I don't see your distinctions as fundamental:

1. If 9 of the ten friends consent and one doesn't they can still be forced to follow the rule the nine friends decided on.

2. Although it's a smaller scale, there absolutely is a 'social fabric' that can be harmed in a group of ten friends.

3. I don't think laws necessitate the use of lethal force, but yes, groups of people e.g. in sports or school do sometimes use violence to enforce group decisions on their members.

In some early societies, there was a basic assumption that broadly speaking the head of a household should have the right to manage their affairs as they wished. Laws were there to mediate between households (rather than individuals) and the big benefit they give to justify the loss of freedom is the control and management of blood feuds, which otherwise can be devastatingly destructive.

9rx• 1 year ago

what's the difference between a law and a rule.

A law is a rule within a system. A rule, however, may exist outside of a system. Thus all laws are rules, but not all rules are laws.

There is no real difference, though. Just silly semantics.

Telemakhos• 1 year ago

what's the difference between a law and a rule

In ancient Greek, I'm not sure there is one. νόμος covers a lot of ground that English divides into laws, rules, and customs. There are, of course, other terms for each category: νόμοι for laws; κανώνες for rules, both in the sense of laws that straighten crooked behavior and straightedges for drawing straight lines; and καθεστῶτα for institutions or customs; but νόμοι generally does duty for all of them, especially in, say, Herodotus, who means all three with the word.

The victim of murder is the victim of the murder; in ancient Athens, anyone who wanted (ὁ βουλόμενος, an important concept in early democracy) could bring a charge against you, but there was no prosecutor for the state. That's why anyone who wanted could bring the charge. The idea that the state is the victim is a very new phenomenon. There also wasn't much in the way of public law enforcement in Athens, at least not in terms of a standing police force, which doesn't really come around until the eighteenth century.

jowea• 1 year ago

3. Laws imply law enforcement, which implies use of force. Are you and your buddies willing to enforce your rules on each other with lethal force?

In the example, assuming they were locked in a bare room, maybe they will come up with some situation specific rule like "that corner is for pissing". I think it's plausible they would enforce that physically. Or at least what I heard about prison makes me think that.

But there are also some immemorial rules/laws that they wouldn't need to come up with it because everyone already knows them, like the ban on unjustified violence, theft and rape. I think 10 normal guys would be willing to physically enforce those rules on each other with lethal force.

2. When you break the law, say murder, the ultimate victim is the state. The person you murdered is just evidence in the state's case against you. This is why there are Victims Right's movements. This is not really true with such buddie rules: breaking them may hurt your friends' feelings, but there wont really be an equivalent to it harming the social fabric.

I think that's a bit of a modern perspective. There are still countries that allow private criminal prosecution. And for that matter most of civil law does not directly involve the state I imagine.

withinboredom• 1 year ago

When you break the law, say murder, the ultimate victim is the state.

Umm... aren't they just representing the victim because the victim is dead? If you steal, it is the victim who brings forward the crime (reporting it). When you perform other crimes, again, the victim may be society itself and society needs to be represented -- not the state.

inglor_cz3• 1 year ago

"When you break the law, say murder, the ultimate victim is the state."

This wasn't the case until relatively recently (the 1700s or so, depending on where you live), and still isn't case in places that use, say, traditional Islamic law (Iran).

Before modernity, people were considered parts of their family/household, and if someone was raped or murdered, the ultimate victim was the family/household, represented by whoever was its head, paterfamilias etc. And the punishment was often a form of blood money (weregild, qisas), to compensate the familial unit for injury or loss of a person.

Current reader will likely find this appaling, but, for example, rape of a young girl was considered harmful against the future value of the bride, thus the father got a bag of money as a compensation.

The past is truly a different country.

ivape5• 1 year ago

A lot of how we live today will be illegal in a sophisticated society a few generations from now.

chatmasta• 1 year ago

Like what? Specifically

userbinator• 1 year ago

Only if you (and everyone else) don't resist.

samrus4• 1 year ago

I mean yeah. Thats the sad/exciting thing about history. That the earliest written account we know about of something implies that it was already in the middle of a very mature environment for that thing, so was most definiteky not the first. We just dont know what the first was because we havent found records.

Like idk maybe we find neandrathal records being like "grug ate meat first even though the children are supposed to eat first, so we punched him in the shoulder and said 'bro! Not cool' and now hes good"

bawolff5• 1 year ago

I don't think anyone is suggesting they are the first person to ever make laws. They're important archeologically because they are the earliest we have records of.

lo_zamoyski• 1 year ago

Indeed. The title, taken at face value, is misleading. This is in part because English doesn’t distinguish between the various kinds of law, save as modifiers of the word “law”.

The prototype for all social organization is the family, as the family is the origin of all human beings and the context in which human beings are raised. The parents, especially the father, is the prototype for the ruler or lawgiver or king. The family is the primordial society that serves as the basic pattern for everything else. When there is disdorder in the family, there is disorder in society in general.

But contrary to tyrannical legal positivism, which posits that all it takes for a law to be a law is that is is “willed into existence”, the classical legal tradition makes a distinction between lex and ius, and ius itself is divided into the ius gentium and ius naturale. The last, the natural law, is morality, so the remainder of the law is a matter of determination of broad moral principles to concrete circumstances. The “law” in this article is therefore “lex.

tbrownaw2• 1 year ago

Sound like these earliest written laws (that we know about, so far) were meant to answer problems people had with some previous laws.

samrus4• 1 year ago

Legislation is a dynamical and iterative process so that makes sense.

We always make laws by looking at the previous set of laws, the society they resulted in, the society we wanna live in, and then adjusting the laws.

Even the firsr laws would have been introduced to a society that was the result of anarchy, which is a type of law, like being bald is a hairstyle

niemandhier• 1 year ago

Walking through the Louvre or the British museum I always feel a mixture of awe, sadness and relief.

Awe of the artefacts. Sadness that they have been taken from their native lands. Relieve that they are safe.

I hope at some point in the future we can come up with a solution that will enable all humans to appreciate these parts of our shared cultural heritage, without ripping them from their current sanctuaries or forcing the formerly conquered to engage in a pilgrimage to the capitals of their conquerors.

badpun• 1 year ago

Right now, every responsible country that is even vaguely threatened by their neighbor has a concrete plan in place on how and where to evacaute their most valueable cultural artfacts, in an event of an invasion. And likewise, every serious invader has special units that include historians, whose role is to locate and plunder those valuable artifacts. I'd say we're pretty far from your desired state.

kindkang20243• 1 year ago

Schoolchildren all over the world learn that Hammurabi’s code — famous for its “eye for an eye” vision of retributive justice — was the world’s first.

The more I think about ancient laws, the more I appreciate the wisdom of the ancients. The law that says “an eye for an eye, and a life for a life” contains a depth of insight that many today overlook. In modern society, it’s often dismissed as outdated, cruel, or inhumane. But personally, I believe that rejecting this principle entirely is a serious—and dangerous—mistake.

"Eye for an eye, life for a life" was never meant to destroy or harm, but to protect. This becomes clear when we examine it closely. If justice is reduced merely to financial compensation, then the wealthy can harm the poor and simply pay their way out. Is that truly justice? And what if someone takes a life—yet remains alive in prison, or even walks free years later? How is that fair to the victims? Just imagine yourself as the victim—your eye deliberately and seriously injured, or your life shattered by someone’s malice. Isn't the answer more obvious then?

This principle has never brought chaos to humanity. It’s often misunderstood as promoting endless cycles of revenge, but that interpretation misses the point. In fact, the principle becomes clearer through the lens of individual responsibility. As the Bible puts it: “The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.” In a just system built on individual accountability, those who seek justice are still free to forgive. If those in conflicts choose not to, and let endless hatred consume them, they both suffer. In this way, the principle actually has a natural tendency to limit conflict and promote resolution over time.

In The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod, this dynamic is explained scientifically: when bad actions are punished and good actions rewarded, cooperation thrives. (His findings, such as the “tit-for-tat” strategy starting with kindness fosters cooperation.) Human civilizations is possible with very truth. It may not always be written into law—but it lives through free will and moral instinct.

Let those who dare to do evil face the consequences of their actions. Let their wrongdoing diminish their standing—their fitness, as some might say. Only those who intend to do evil fear the law “an eye for an eye, a life for a life.” For good people, it means the opposite: that kindness begets kindness to make all great again.

Yet today, many focus only on blind forgiveness. In my view, this is misguided—especially when it leads to abolishing the death penalty. The dead cannot forgive. They are already gone. If we truly believe that all lives matter—worldwide—then this principle deserves far more respect and appreciation than it receives today.

adrian_b• 1 year ago

The main risk of “an eye for an eye, and a life for a life” is the risk of wrong punishments that cannot be reversed.

On the other hand, when someone has caused an irreparable damage, by causing death or permanent invalidity, or by destroying something that cannot be recreated, e.g. an ancient historical artifact, or an entire animal species, then being punished in a limited way, e.g. with a fine or some time in prison, does not seem equivalent with the punished deed.

I believe that punishment by prison is extremely stupid and inefficient. In many places prisons are more like criminal academies than something that may educate the inmates to no longer do what they have been punished for. No wonder that in the ancient societies this kind of punishment was unknown.

In many ancient societies the main method of punishment was a fine, but in order to be a true deterrent the value of the fine was always a multiple of the damage that had been caused. In more lenient societies a thief or someone who had caused property or body damage would have payed a sum equivalent with the double of the damage value, but in more severe societies the fine was quadruple and in some societies the fines were even ten times greater than the estimated value of the damage.

Such a multiple-valued fine seems a much better punishment than any kind of prison, for any kind of damage that can be repaired.

For the other damages, like death or permanent invalidity, the appropriate punishment would seem to be the obligation to periodically pay some amount for the rest of the life of the punished person, instead of paying a one-time fine.

In the ancient societies, the cases when a punished person was unwilling or unable to pay the fine were solved simply, by converting that person into a slave. Such cases would be more difficult to solve in a modern society, but spending time in a prison cannot be considered as an improvement over slavery.

kindkang20243• 1 year ago

The main risk of “an eye for an eye, and a life for a life” is the risk of wrong punishments that cannot be reversed.

If harm is caused by accident and without malicious intent, then yes—“life for life” shouldn’t apply. But we should never underestimate the darkness that exists in human nature. No matter how carefully a system is designed, there will always be those who can game it.

That’s why I still believe the spirit of “life for life, eye for eye” should remain a guiding principle—not out of revenge, but out of love and protection.

Such a multiple-valued fine seems a much better punishment than any kind of prison, for any kind of damage that can be repaired.

I completely agree with this. Wrongdoers typically commit harmful acts for personal gain, and if they’re only required to repay the exact value of what they took, they still come out ahead in the long run. We need systems that ensure the net profit from wrongdoing falls below zero—so that it’s absolutely clear: crime is silly.

I’ve even heard news reports that in California, theft under a certain dollar amount often goes unpunished. The result? The exact opposite of justice. It acts like gravity, pulling people’s free will toward sin and crime.

inglor_cz3• 1 year ago

Most of the ancients used fines or weregild instead of "life for life".

First, it was a way to stop a potentially endless cycle of retaliatory violence, especially where a central government was weak or nonexistent (Islamic deserts, Corsica, the Vikings, Indian tribes).

Second, the logic behind blood money was in some contexts quite compelling. Look up Ex parte Crow Dog, an American legal case from the 1880s. Even the family of the murder victim was against the perp hanging, because they had nothing to gain from a corpse. They lost a valuable person and its ability to work and protect his relatives, and they wanted this ability compensated. A winter on the Plains is dangerous and it made no sense to weaken the tribe further by killing yet another strong, adult man. It made sense to make him compensate and protect the victim's family.

Big centralized settled states can afford to waste lives, in war or by judicial punishment. Other, pre-state units, cannot.

kindkang20243• 1 year ago

It made sense to make him compensate and protect the victim's family.

I don’t think that’s a good idea/practice—mainly because it underestimates the darkness within human free will. Wrongdoers can game such systems and kill without hesitation, which ultimately weakens the tribe even more.

Humans have all kinds of ideas and wills, but in the long run, only the fittest wills survive and prevail. And I believe that "life for life" wasn’t invented to hate and kill, but to love and protect. I hope it triumphs.

IAmBroom• 1 year ago

My unwavering belief is that laws are not, and never have been, about "justice". The government is interested in its own survival, from the individual (reelection, lifetime monarchy, etc.) to the complete entity (both parties in the US almost invariably increase the government size).

Law is like that joke that parents don't want fairness; they want silence. The law wants a cooperative public, and will do (first) the minimum necessary to achieve that ("I'm tough on crime!!!"), and (second) whatever is in its own interest (speed traps, licensing as revenue, etc.).

Only with a cooperative public can the government afford to pursue survival and growth. If bread and circuses are enough, you'll get circuses and bread! If not, maybe public regulation and security theater is needed.

I'm not saying all politics is heartlessly unconcerned with the common good, but that the public's perception of the common good is more important to the law.

greenhearth• 1 year ago

Laws are many things and one of those things is a concern for justice. As far as self-perpetuation of the state, yes this is how a state operates, this is the nature of it. As for "the government," what is it? It's not a monolithic thing that you can just point your finger to. It depends on the nature and character of the citizens and the established customs of the nation, of which laws are a part. If we're talking about ancient Mesopotamia, then this is probably a tyrannical aspect. But there are many types of governments and constitutions. This dismissive attitude for "the government" is really not a practical, and even kind of a juvenile mentality.

What were the earliest laws like?

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