Once this embryonic politico-economic organization was in place, social structures began to become more definite. The farming village consisting of a few families grew into a populous trading city that was ruled by one leader, supported in the exercise of power by a class of civil servants. Some cities, like Mari and Ebla, dominated and exploited neighboring territories to ensure that their own citizens had enough food even though these people were engaged in specialized, non-agricultural tasks. As the sphere of influence of these agglomerations grew, they became city-states. The trade they engaged in brought prosperity but also required that certain members of the community become specialized in management.

Later, Syrian lands, or rather various parts of this territory, were integrated, sometimes forcefully, into kingdoms that were usually controlled by some dominant ethnic group, whether Amorite, Assyrian, Hurrian, Hittite or Aramaean. These peoples were not necessarily newcomers to the territory they occupied, and their ways of managing society respected local interests. It was in this period that the first “Arab” populations appeared in Syria.

Later still, the Syrian territory as a whole was annexed to immense political structures encompassing several other regions as well. These structures were the empires. One after the other, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic rulers imposed their centralized government control over the economy and politics. However, they also showed some flexibility in adapting to regional differences