Art. From tribal to power societies.

In the present stage of our understanding tribal art roughly emerged around 40,000  years ago while Chinese Xieyi painting, Chinese Buddhism and Christianity only started around 500 AD.

Calligraphy originates sometimes before 200 BC. It was revered as a fine art in line with poetry and music while painting was merely viewed as a craft applied in the field of decoration, remembrance of ancestors, or illustration of daily life. Xieyi appeared later as an extension of calligraphy and this is when painting finally acceded to the status of a fine art in China.

What is striking, in the juxtaposition of images here under, is how visually similar Chinese Xieyi painting is to tribal art. Chinese Buddhism still has some common traits with tribal art but with Christianity we enter into a whole new world.

Why is Xieyi so similar to tribal art?
Why is Christian art depicting such a totally different world than tribal and Xieyi art?

Animism = the tribal worldview

Cave paintings were an active part of the animistic practice of the tribal men of knowledge or shaman. As I indicate elsewhere the shaman was a highly respected figure but he lived nevertheless on the margin of his tribe. He lived alone, or with his apprentices, at a distance from his fellow-tribesmen. And so he socialized with like-minded people ...the shaman of the neighboring tribes. To escape the prying eyes of their fellow-tribesmen the shaman retreated in the ‘underworld’ deep down caves, forests, or mountains where they feasted among themselves immersed in knowledge formation.

Knowledge sharing was their sole obligation to the tribe so when together with other shaman they engaged primarily in knowledge formation which consists in confronting one’s conscious certainties with one’s subconscious visions. What this means is that during their retreats the shaman and their apprentices entered altered states of consciousness that gave them access to their subconscious. To reach such altered states of consciousness most animist men of knowledge ingested entheogenic plants or mushrooms; other techniques consisted in drumming, dancing, fasting, meditation, sex, and so on.

In my view the most important part of the animist practice consisted for the shaman to confront their subconscious visions with their conscious certainties which resulted in a reconciliation of the two that finally led to the integration of their reconciled visions within the scope of their conscious certainties. Practiced over tens of thousands of years the animist approach to knowledge formation resulted in a strictly coherent vision about what reality is all about that was shared all around the world during many ‘tens of thousands of years’ before the emergence of power societies. And that vision resulted in a pragmatic body of knowledge that acted like a guide to the people in producing their daily lives.

That reconciled vision was then represented visually to reinforce a common understanding among all shaman. And once back in their tribes they would reproduce the same visual symbols to share with their fellow-tribesmen. Over long periods of thousands of years this mechanism played a determinant role:

•  in unifying a common understand about the working of reality and this is how animism came to form a unified worldview that was shared over the whole world
• in unifying the local and regional particularities among tribes which gave way to regional spaces of cultural unity.

Chinese worldview / Christian worldview

The expansion of regional spaces of cultural unity followed the tribal model of demographic growth. Tribes were non-power societies that took decisions based on the knowledge supplied by the shaman. Over time it had been observed that there was a principle of efficiency at work in the size of tribal populations. And so the tribal demography was limited in a range of approximately 120 to 180 persons (Dunbar number= 150). Once the population surpassed 180 the tribe split and a new group was formed by associating its surplus people with the surplus people of another tribe. This demographic model worked ...as long as there was sufficient territory available for a new tribe.

A rapid climate change followed the Younger Dryas some 11,700 years ago which increased world average temperatures by nearly 5 degrees C. The period that followed was very stable by historical standards with temperature variations limited to plus or minus 0.5 degrees.

Rising temperatures and the melting of the ice sheets resulted in large river valley alluvial plains where the abundant vegetation attracted the animals. Human hunters followed and their tribes set up camp amid this new found abundance. This was a turning point in human history and we have still not come to appreciate how big an impact the Younger Dryas had on peoples’ daily lives. Food abundance resulted in more rapid population growth. It is at this point that geography became determinant in the path towards civilization.

When combining the tribal demographic model with geographic reality one starts to better understand why China and the Middle-East had such diverging civilizational paths:

•  the Middle-East has two alluvial plains: – the Tigris-Euphrates river valley plain with a size of approximately 15,000 square Km, – and the Nile valley plain with a size of approximately 30,000 square Km.
• China has 3 big alluvial plains: – the Northeast Plain covers 350,000 square kilometers in northeast China, – the North China Plain covers 300,000 square kilometers, the North China Plain is the second largest in China, – and the Middle-Lower Changjiang (Yangtze River) Plain covers an area of 200,000 square kilometers.

The total river valley plains in China reach some 850,000 Square Km which is in stark contrast with the Middle-East which totals only 45,000 Square Km. A proportion of 20 to 1 suggests a huge differential in potential population size. But a lot more important has been the impact of the combination between the tribal demographic model with the geographic reality of these 2 civilizational areas. Studies on the development of the Anatolia plateau show that the Younger Dryas was followed by some 4000 years at most of peaceful tribal demographic development. Once the whole territory was occupied, around 8000 ya, the fight for resources started imposing the development of agriculture in socially stratified villages. By contrast in China the tribal model of demographic growth went undisturbed till sometimes between 4 and 5,000 years ago.

As a result in the territory of the Middle-East the tribal men of knowledge got a maximum of 4000 years to integrate rapid demographic development with the unification of its regional spaces of cultural unity. In contrast in China the tribal men of knowledge got some 7 to 8000 years and this made all the difference. The stabilization of Chinese imperial institutions was realized by tribal men of knowledge who simply reproduced the tribal model of knowledge formation and the unification of the regional spaces of cultural unity. In the Middle-East the competition for resources provoked regional conflicts that resulted in the rupture with the tribal worldview and the need to imagine of a whole new narrative. The road was then further spiced by 2-3000 years of wars leading to the stabilization of the institutions of power.

This differentiation in the stabilization of imperial institutions resulted in different models of adaptation to change:

•  in the Middle-East change was sanctioned by rupture with animism and the later necessity to invent a new narrative from scratch
• in China continuity prevailed and cultural changes were merely recorded as add-ons to the body of knowledge of the animist worldview

Each time an empire was falling in the Middle-East its narrative had to be re-written. And after each rupture and rewriting the narrative got a little more estranged from animism and so the narratives became ever more detached from daily life pragmatism and their stories became ever more surreal.

Rupture in the West versus continuity in China. This is what differentiated our civilizations. Watching ‘cocktail Molotov Trump” breaking everything around him one is reminded that his attitude is nothing else than the unfolding of a new cycle in this pattern of rupture. Amazingly, stuck as they are in their pattern of continuity, the Chinese act now as the beacon of Western globalization...

After so many re-writings of the narrative Christianity has completely detached from pragmatism and imposed an ideological story… Christian painting is therefore more an ideological illustration craft than art per se. The craftsman had little social recognition but he mastered his craft. But a work well done is not the same as an artwork. There is indeed a huge difference between an artwork and a propaganda poster...

In China the authors of Xieyi were scholars and painting was one among many of their activities and what united all their activities was their knowledge of the Chinese traditional worldview, or animism+, which is a pragmatic body of knowledge that acts like a guide in the viewer’s production of his daily life.