The premodern phase spans a huge amount of time, from prehistory until the rise of modern institutions. The premodern can further be divided into two periods, before and after settled agriculture. Before a society adopts settled agriculture, they live of the land, hunting and gathering. The political organization of such groups is roughly like a wolf pack: there is a dominate leader figure (not necessarily male) that leads a more or less egalitarian community. An excellent example of hunter-gatherers is the Kung bushmen of the Kalahari dessert. The Kung live in small family groups in an extremely hostile environment yet they

Worldwide trade and the Internet are killing the unique cultures that exits on Earth. Just as China trades with its ideological enemy, other cultures are shedding their uniqueness in the name of easier communication. Cultural idiosyncrasies hinder trade. Traditional folk dress look peculiar among business suits. For example, the traditional drink of Russia was kvass, a dark bread beer. After the Soviet Union and the normalization of trade, Coke and Pepsi was introduced by Western business. Now, it is impossible to buy kvass in Moscow, as it was displaced by the distribution muscle of Coke and Pepsi. Children also are the weak link to keeping cultural tradition alive. The traditional folk customs are associated with the parents and the children strive to break away from this tradition. Given forty years time, the entire world will look exactly the same; one can travel from the US to the most remote location possible and it will be impossible to tell the difference once one got there.

While the birth rate climbed by the beginning of the modern age, it eventually began to decline. Children were now though of as an economic burden rather than free labor. Each child required more money spent for clothes, food and education. The size of the family declined rapidly. The older generation were moved out into retirement homes after they could not work. The family consisted of just the parents and children.

An excellent example of post modern society is Los Angeles. LA is a superficial hyper-comsuer culture. Each individual has the notion that they are the center of the universe. Everyone is a manipulative user who only cares about themselves. Each person strives for material wealth at the expense of each other. People are defined by the cloths that they wear. If one wears Ralph Laren, the people that he/she meets will check the label to make sure it is real. Appearance is everything. Los Angeles is the cosmetic surgery capital of the world. Many of the women have had breast implants, and even some of the men have surgically improved their features. Breast implants actually deaden the sensation of the breast, so they actually decrease sexual pleasure in the user. However people continue to get implants, sacrificing sensation for improved appearance.

The post modern is by no means the final stage of human development. Hopefully, humans will move past the greed of material possessions. Eventually, a balance will be found between ethnic identity and global monoculture. Rampant consumerism comes at a high price. The material wealth that America enjoys is at the cost of a huge amount of resources. If other countries try to join in on the prosperity, severe damage to the ecology could result. Imagine one billion Chinese, all driving cars. The world can only support a certain amount of people at the prosperity of Americans. The continual expansion of the world economy at the end of the twentieth century is pushing all nations to wealth yet there is no way for all to enjoy such prosperity, something must give.

Agriculture produced a huge excess. In hunter gathering societies, many square miles of land was required to support one person while that same land could support a village if the land was cultivated. Populations became urbanized. Some of the excess was used to support specialists whose sole function was not to produce food. Specialists included scribes, clerks, and metalworkers. People could not satisfy their needs with what they reaped directly from the land so they bartered, with food, with specialists for goods and services. Money was implemented to make the barter system more efficient.

The post modern period began on an exact year: 1992. In 1992, the Soviet Union crumbled from internal and external pressure. Western capitalism had proved more effective than Soviet style socialism. Huge sectors of the globe were opened to trade that had previously been denied by ideological differences. Eastern Europe, parts of Afric

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3545
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)