THE KEY FOR CIVILIZATION WAS SOMETHING THAT COULD BE STOLEN, STORED, AND TAXED: Researchers Have a Controversial New Hypothesis For How Civilization First Started. “The relative ease of confiscating stored cereals, their high energy density, and their durability enhances their appropriability, thereby facilitating the emergence of tax-levying elites. . . . Farming was obviously a necessary step to improve food production, but researchers suspect only those crops that could be easily confiscated led to the rise of an elite class.”