In general, therefore, no household could cultivate more than a certain amount, and only prosperous households tried to produce more than enough for their own needs.
As sons reached maturity the household was able to expand its land holding. This would make possible, and require, an increase in its animal population as well. Thus the wealth controlled by the head increased, the surpluses produced by each constituent element were pooled in his hands, and the whole unit benefited by efficiency in proportion. The head might well join the village leaders (a§alar ) or even become the most influential among them. At this point the marketing of grain would be both possible and worthwhile. Yet on his death, each son would inherit only approximately as much land as he himself had been ploughing. Every new household, born out of the splitting of a large one, would thus start with roughly the same amount of land, whether it sprang from a household with only one male heir, or one with ten. Each young household head would depend on his own procreative prowess, skill, hard work and luck to build for himself a position of prominence in his later years. Even in cases where the son of an eminent father himself became eminent, the son did not succeed to his father's position, but built up a new one for himself, after an interregnum filled by households of other village lineages. Few could succeed completely in the face of illness, premature deaths, infertility, crop failures, animal diseases and other hazards. If this model had ever functioned uncomplicated by other factors, then it would have corresponded to the ideal