Part 7.
A changing context forces a new worldview and a new form of society to emerge
Early-Modernity emerged, well before “the long voyages of discovery”. It emerged as a direct consequence of the crusades. The Frankish aristocrats who commanded the crusader armies had literally been blown away by the luxury of the goods carried on Arab markets.
“ Arriving in Palestine the knights and nobility, who directed the crusades, were taken aback by the material richness that they discovered in Arab markets as well as by the advanced knowledge that was taught in Muslim universities. This was a huge surprise for them and it caused much resentment that soon transformed in looting and other acts of barbarity.“ (1)
Western Europe discovers long distance trade
By way of plunder those goods then found their way to the castles of the Western aristocracy. Everyone was stirred by the beauty, the fine craft, and the functionality of the mirrors, tapestries, carpets, copper kitchen ware, silk cloth and other that magically transformed their abodes. Castles were cold humid places. Their walls were bare and the floors were cold. Tapestries brought them to life and carpets as if by magic cut the cold and the mirrors …
In sum these middle-Eastern goods dramatically increased the quality of life in European castles and from then on they became indispensable wares for the European aristocracy. While plunder and looting had been their method of introduction to Western Europe the need arose for a more stable and regular supply. After many trials and errors a system of long distance trade materialized that dispatched goods from afar to the ‘Champagne Fairs’.
Starting in the early 12th century the Champagne fairs attracted merchants from all over Europe. They were the European wholesale fairs of the Late-Middle ages and by the 13th century they had already peaked being gradually surpassed by the high quality wool cloth produced by Flemish merchants installed in Bruges and the triangular commerce between Flanders, Britain, and Bordeaux.
By way of plunder those goods then found their way to the castles of the Western aristocracy. Everyone was stirred by the beauty, the fine craft, and the functionality of the mirrors, tapestries, carpets, copper kitchen ware, silk cloth and other that magically transformed their abodes. Castles were cold humid places. Their walls were bare and the floors were cold. Tapestries brought them to life and carpets as if by magic cut the cold and the mirrors …
In sum these middle-Eastern goods dramatically increased the quality of life in European castles and from then on they became indispensable wares for the European aristocracy. While plunder and looting had been their method of introduction to Western Europe the need arose for a more stable and regular supply. After many trials and errors a system of long distance trade materialized that dispatched goods from afar to the ‘Champagne Fairs’.
Starting in the early 12th century the Champagne fairs attracted merchants from all over Europe. They were the European wholesale fairs of the Late-Middle ages and by the 13th century they had already peaked being gradually surpassed by the high quality wool cloth produced by Flemish merchants installed in Bruges and the triangular commerce between Flanders, Britain, and Bordeaux.
“The predominance of the Champagne fairs over those of other cities has been attributed to the personal role of the Counts in guaranteeing the security and property rights of merchants and trading organizations attending the fairs, and in ensuring that contracts signed at the fairs would be honored throughout Western Christendom”. (2)
Early-Modernity corresponds economically and financially to the era of “commercial capitalism” (3) which accumulated the capital base that 5 centuries later was invested in the launch of industrial capitalism in Britain and Walloonia. Commercial capital was primarily concerned with luxury goods. Initially, just after the start of the 1st crusade, they were imported from the Middle-East but they rapidly began to be substituted locally in the Italian city-states which shortly after were out-competed by Flemish weavers and the French Royal Manufactures.
This whole Western European luxury goods craze started thus as a by-product of the crusades and the transportation of these goods followed the “Via Francigena” :
This whole Western European luxury goods craze started thus as a by-product of the crusades and the transportation of these goods followed the “Via Francigena” :
“... an ancient road and pilgrim route running from France to Rome and Apulia, where there were the ports of embarkation for the Holy Land, though it is usually considered to have its starting point on the other side of the English Channel, in the cathedral city of Canterbury. As such, the route passes through England, France, Switzerland and Italy. The route was known in Italy as the "Via Francigena" ("the road that comes from France") “. (4)
The champagne fairs plunged Europe into commerce
Goods were shipped from middle-eastern ports to the Italian East-Coast and from there were dispatched to inland-port cities like Florence, genoa, etc… , from where they were carried further North to their rich customers and later to the “Champagne Fairs” (5) :
The late-Middle-ages were an age of great disorder and little security. So why were goods from the Middle-East and the whole of Europe flocking to the Champagne region ? In one word it was security :
Goods were shipped from middle-eastern ports to the Italian East-Coast and from there were dispatched to inland-port cities like Florence, genoa, etc… , from where they were carried further North to their rich customers and later to the “Champagne Fairs” (5) :
“ To cross the Alps, the caravans of pack mules made their way over the Mont Cenis Pass, a journey that took more than a month from Genoa to the fair cities, along one of the varied options of the Via Francigena.
Professional freight-handlers might make the trek, under contract to merchants. P. Huvelin documented the existence, by the second half of the thirteenth century, of a faster courier service facilitated the transfer of letters and market information between north and south, one organised for the particular advantage of the Arte di Calimala, the cloth-merchants' guild of Florence, others organised by cities of Siena and Genoa and by the mercantile houses.
In early February, 1290, it took a courier no more than twenty days to make the journey from Lagny to Florence, R. D. Face noted. Alternatively, north Italian goods were shipped to Aigues-Mortes then up or along the Rhone, Saône and Seine. “
The late-Middle-ages were an age of great disorder and little security. So why were goods from the Middle-East and the whole of Europe flocking to the Champagne region ? In one word it was security :
“The counts provided the fairs with a police force, the "Guards of the Fair", who heard complaints and enforced contracts, excluding defaulters from future participation; weights and measures were strictly regulated. Historian Jean Favier has written "the success of the Champagne fairs can be attributed solely to this intelligent policy of applying public order to business." (see note 184 about the Champagne fairs)
“The reason at work within capital” and technology
Supplying goods from far away was a very risky proposition for merchants. They had to carry gold as a means of payment in exchange for the goods they wanted to buy. But the roads were insecure. So the earliest Western European long distance merchants were thus constantly preoccupied by the protection of their means of payment which imprinted in their minds the notion that their gold was of “capital importance”. This was the origin of the concept of “capital” as we know it today. And so the long distance traders came to think that there is a “reason at work within capital” that governs the success of an investment :
Supplying goods from far away was a very risky proposition for merchants. They had to carry gold as a means of payment in exchange for the goods they wanted to buy. But the roads were insecure. So the earliest Western European long distance merchants were thus constantly preoccupied by the protection of their means of payment which imprinted in their minds the notion that their gold was of “capital importance”. This was the origin of the concept of “capital” as we know it today. And so the long distance traders came to think that there is a “reason at work within capital” that governs the success of an investment :
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the loss of one’s capital is one’s ultimate failure :
- This idea of ultimate failure served as an eminent incentive to find secure ways to transport their capital from their hometown to the seller’s hometown. The answer to that problem was the “letter of credit” which was a letter from a banker in the buyer’s hometown that guarantees a banker, in the sellers’ hometown, that it will pay, a given maximum amount, for the goods purchased by the buyer. This evidently implies that the bankers trust each other…
“ With the collapse of the Roman Empire the role of the banks as well as the great extent of commerce between trading nations diminished. It was not until the 12th and early 13th century that banks in Genoa, Venice, Florence and other European cities were re-established. At this time merchants had to face two major problems:
(a) traveling with gold was very dangerous
(b) commerce generated currency that was not sufficient to satisfy the needs of traders. The earliest devices with which merchants tried to solve these problems were with the bills of exchange and letters of credit. In their early history these payment instruments
"There are scholars who believe that their development in Europe was inspired by the discoveries made by Marco Polo in the 13th century who reported the use of currency and other negotiable documents in China, concluding that such a measure was one of the reasons for “the ways and means by which the Great Chan can have and indeed does have more treasures than all the kings in the world”. (6)- failure also meant that misjudging the value to be paid for the purchased goods comes at the price of losing part or all of one’s investment which may suggest that there is a “reason at work within capital”, or to put it otherwise that there is a rationality at work in capital, that imposes itself to the merchant which implies that not obeying that reason equals being unsuccessful at reproducing one’s capital base.
- A successful trade means that one’s capital grows :
If the capital is reproduced but not augmented then the situation would be the same after the trade than if one had done nothing. In other words trade without augmentation is futile. A successful trade implies thus augmentation or increase of the capital base. -
Hard lessons :
Early merchants learned the hard way to respect “the reason that is at work within capital” and this explains their unquestioning devotion for it. Over time with the spread of their practice merchants forgot about their devotion. In other words over time it had transformed into common knowledge.
It is at this juncture that the public took notice that merchants had big mansions, works of art, etc... And this fostered its desire and envy which ultimately after 6 centuries of commercial capitalism had spread to the whole of Western European society including to the priests teaching in the universities and even to the monks in the monasteries.
Viewed through this lens nobody should be surprised that the “the reason that is at work within capital” expanded into a system of thinking about everything which came to be known as rationalism.
From reason to rationalism and then to societal atomization
Modernity is a worldview that grew out of the cultivation of individualism by the Christian church :
Individualism was a mental pre-condition for merchants to possibly devote themselves to “the reason that is at work within capital”. And from its inception Modernity put in motion diverse processes that were built on top of this emerging and developing “reason”. These processes emerged slowly but their development was characterized by an ever increasing speed.
It took 6 centuries to go from “the reason that is at work within capital” in the minds of long distance merchants to rationality and science in the minds of establishment monk-intellectuals in the universities. And it took less than 2 centuries to go from rationality, science, and industrialization to the merchandization of everything, hyper-individualism, and the spread of Modernity to the whole world.
In our present era of Late-Modernity all the processes at work have gained such vertiginous speed that individual minds are spinning indeed. It should thus not come as a surprise that the individuals are in a state of shock and that the resulting malaise manifests itself in social loneliness and mental distress which separates the individuals not only from their society but also from the other individuals. This is the situation attained by Western societies today in Late-Modernity. It is called societal atomization.
The feeling of social loneliness is a symptom that originates in societies that have lost their compass. In other words Western societies have followed the path of Western art. And both came to forget what is their “raison d’être”. In such societies a prime minister could openly say that “society does not exist” (8) and journalists and intellectuals would not question her sanity, on the contrary, they defended her thesis ! I’m wondering what those same people are thinking in 2020 after the breakout of the pandemic ?
Me think that societies go through ideological cycles and Thatcher and Reagan were the cheerleaders of a propagandist mob that claimed the destruction of one of the polarities of humanity… What this mob did not realize was that they were propagandizing the neoliberal ideology of Western big capital holders who wanted to delocalize their production activities to China and other third-world countries while silencing the middle-class of working people in their home-countries.
To put their plan in application they needed to shut down all opposing voices and they thought that the best way to do just that was to suppress all state protection institutions while clamping down on trade-unions. Today the results are in. Over the last 40 years the wages of the middle-class have been stagnating and it has melted away. Inequality has reached historically unseen proportions. Discontent has transformed into rage and explosions of violence threaten to collapse Western societies at any moment.
Late-Modernity is an era of societal weakness in the West while the opposite is true in China where the citizens trust their government and trust that the their children’s life will be better than theirs…
Modernity is a worldview that grew out of the cultivation of individualism by the Christian church :
“Since its early days Roman Catholicism tried to differentiate itself from Paganism and Animism by encouraging its followers to enter into a personal communication with their god. This infused in the believers’ minds the illusion of a personal relation that slowly fostered a perception of self and after 7-800 years this perception had solidified into a generalized feeling that the individuals had gained some autonomy.
This was a great leap forward for individualism that had emerged, as a differentiation of the men of power from their subjects, after the stabilization of the first institutions of power some 3-4000 years earlier.” (7)
Individualism was a mental pre-condition for merchants to possibly devote themselves to “the reason that is at work within capital”. And from its inception Modernity put in motion diverse processes that were built on top of this emerging and developing “reason”. These processes emerged slowly but their development was characterized by an ever increasing speed.
It took 6 centuries to go from “the reason that is at work within capital” in the minds of long distance merchants to rationality and science in the minds of establishment monk-intellectuals in the universities. And it took less than 2 centuries to go from rationality, science, and industrialization to the merchandization of everything, hyper-individualism, and the spread of Modernity to the whole world.
In our present era of Late-Modernity all the processes at work have gained such vertiginous speed that individual minds are spinning indeed. It should thus not come as a surprise that the individuals are in a state of shock and that the resulting malaise manifests itself in social loneliness and mental distress which separates the individuals not only from their society but also from the other individuals. This is the situation attained by Western societies today in Late-Modernity. It is called societal atomization.
The feeling of social loneliness is a symptom that originates in societies that have lost their compass. In other words Western societies have followed the path of Western art. And both came to forget what is their “raison d’être”. In such societies a prime minister could openly say that “society does not exist” (8) and journalists and intellectuals would not question her sanity, on the contrary, they defended her thesis ! I’m wondering what those same people are thinking in 2020 after the breakout of the pandemic ?
Me think that societies go through ideological cycles and Thatcher and Reagan were the cheerleaders of a propagandist mob that claimed the destruction of one of the polarities of humanity… What this mob did not realize was that they were propagandizing the neoliberal ideology of Western big capital holders who wanted to delocalize their production activities to China and other third-world countries while silencing the middle-class of working people in their home-countries.
To put their plan in application they needed to shut down all opposing voices and they thought that the best way to do just that was to suppress all state protection institutions while clamping down on trade-unions. Today the results are in. Over the last 40 years the wages of the middle-class have been stagnating and it has melted away. Inequality has reached historically unseen proportions. Discontent has transformed into rage and explosions of violence threaten to collapse Western societies at any moment.
Late-Modernity is an era of societal weakness in the West while the opposite is true in China where the citizens trust their government and trust that the their children’s life will be better than theirs…
From societal atomization to societal breakdown
Societal atomization means that the individuals have been separated from one another which causes distress in their minds. The few of us who are concerned by this particular kind of mental distress understand that it is :
◦ the breakdown of societal cohesion which nullifies the societies’ capacity to reproduce further over the long haul which ultimately means the breakdown of societies themselves …
The Western approach of these symptoms is to put them to sleep, by forgetting about them, but this means that the root of what caused the breakdown of these serial processes are never being addressed. And in consequence the individuals fall sick and fail to regain their enthusiasm for life and they vegetate in a state of indifference that troubles the atmosphere of their social group.
We are all familiar enough with this pathogenic individual-group dynamic but are left powerless and this feeling of helplessness has now spread throughout Western societies. This is definitely one of those rare historical moments when we all feel that something has gone amiss while observing that our societies are without answers and we feel completely powerless individually. This feeling of helplessness turns us all into cynics who find fault in everything while no longer being able to feel awe for beauty, complexity, the vastness of the universe, and so on.
Societal atomization means that the individuals have been separated from one another which causes distress in their minds. The few of us who are concerned by this particular kind of mental distress understand that it is :
- a symptom manifesting the disconnectedness of the polarities of the human species (societies and the individuals) which results in :
- the separation of societies and individuals as well as the individuals from the other individuals
- separation leads to isolation and loneliness which results in mental distress which in turn sets the stage for :
◦ the breakdown of societal cohesion which nullifies the societies’ capacity to reproduce further over the long haul which ultimately means the breakdown of societies themselves …
The Western approach of these symptoms is to put them to sleep, by forgetting about them, but this means that the root of what caused the breakdown of these serial processes are never being addressed. And in consequence the individuals fall sick and fail to regain their enthusiasm for life and they vegetate in a state of indifference that troubles the atmosphere of their social group.
We are all familiar enough with this pathogenic individual-group dynamic but are left powerless and this feeling of helplessness has now spread throughout Western societies. This is definitely one of those rare historical moments when we all feel that something has gone amiss while observing that our societies are without answers and we feel completely powerless individually. This feeling of helplessness turns us all into cynics who find fault in everything while no longer being able to feel awe for beauty, complexity, the vastness of the universe, and so on.
What to do ?
Addressing the root of these symptoms requires that the West re-balances the priorities of its humanity. Asking for the individuals to get a grip on the contextual causes, that have set in motion the pathological processes leading to their distress, is simply putting the cart in front of the horse. This ain’t gonna work. What is needed in Western societies today is the re-discovery of what is foundational for humanity. By that I mean that Western societies have first to rediscover the nature of the “principle of life” and then they need to share these its lessons to all their citizens. This is how a community rebuilds its societal cohesion and this is what Western societies most urgently need today.
Navigating this whole process successfully is not an easy exercise. But what is clear enough is that the natural elements will eventually compel us to address it seriously and if we can’t address it our societies will collapse which will threaten the survival of the species. Yes Western societies have reached a point of no return. What should we as individuals do about it ? Is there a precedent on which we could lean ? I will now develop these questions in the following order :
Addressing the root of these symptoms requires that the West re-balances the priorities of its humanity. Asking for the individuals to get a grip on the contextual causes, that have set in motion the pathological processes leading to their distress, is simply putting the cart in front of the horse. This ain’t gonna work. What is needed in Western societies today is the re-discovery of what is foundational for humanity. By that I mean that Western societies have first to rediscover the nature of the “principle of life” and then they need to share these its lessons to all their citizens. This is how a community rebuilds its societal cohesion and this is what Western societies most urgently need today.
Navigating this whole process successfully is not an easy exercise. But what is clear enough is that the natural elements will eventually compel us to address it seriously and if we can’t address it our societies will collapse which will threaten the survival of the species. Yes Western societies have reached a point of no return. What should we as individuals do about it ? Is there a precedent on which we could lean ? I will now develop these questions in the following order :
7.1. precedents to our present predicament
We are in Late-Modernity which means that Modernity has reached old age and is approaching its death. In the meantime the first seeds of the historical era that will follow Modernity are starting to sprout. But we are still blind to them.
Are there historical precedents that could inspire us to envisage and imagine the way forward from Late-Modernity to what comes in After-Modernity ?
In matter of fact such precedents could inform our attitude in the present radical turning point in the evolution of our societies.
Are there historical precedents that could inspire us to envisage and imagine the way forward from Late-Modernity to what comes in After-Modernity ?
In matter of fact such precedents could inform our attitude in the present radical turning point in the evolution of our societies.
7.1.1. two known precedents
There were two precedents, that I know of, to the turning of Modernity along the historical path of societal evolution :
Modernity and the nation-state were a continuation of the societal age of “power societies” and so its emergence does not contain any material that could help us better understand the present turning point. The 2 preceding turnings in societal evolution that are of interest to us today are ‒ the turning from small bands to tribes ‒ the turning from tribes to power societies :
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the transition from “small bands” to “tribal societies” :
tribal societies emerged out of the process of knowledge formation that small bands had initiated as a means to reduce the suffering of its members. In short “small bands” of ten-fifty individuals had to toil non stop to survive.
According to the latest archaeological discoveries modern Sapiens’ had evolved a brain structure like the one of Modern humans sometime over 300,000 years ago giving the individuals the potential to think and to make reasoned abstractions.
This reasoning potential eventually induced an illumination of the mind about the capacity of knowledge to reduce suffering (for example : “if I stay put in the cave, when the clouds accumulate in the sky, I will stay dry and my risk of getting sick will be reduced”). Being in need to toil non stop to survive the band finally delegated the task of knowledge formation to the least able among them. Knowledge not only reduced individual suffering. It also allowed for the collection of higher volumes of food with a lower input of energy which rapidly resulted in the growth of the band’s population.
This set in motion a transition made of many thousands of years of trial and error that eventually resulted in a worldwide stabilization of the tribal model of society. The process leading to the turning from small bands to tribes should be considered, I think, as the real starting point of the more foundational process of human societal evolution which accelerated the evolution of the human species. - the transition from “tribal societies” to “power societies” :
the last societal turning started at the end of the “Younger Dryas” when the tribal model of society was destabilized by a warming of the climate that occurred abruptly 11,600 years ago approximately. This warming resulted in an abundance of food and the populations of tribes started to grow which broke the delicate golden rule that had governed the cohesion of tribal life over the past 100,000 years or more. This destabilization gave way to a transition away from tribal societies that lasted for some 6 to 7000 years before the institutions of power-societies finally stabilized launching civilizations. Very little is known about this transition but this did not refrain historians to affirm general principles regarding the emergence of civilization that have been savaged by recent archaeological and anthropological discoveries.
Our ancestors had an instinctive approach to the basics of the principles of life. It was not an analytical approach, as in Late-Modernity, so it was different than ours. But different does not mean better or worse. They just had a different reasoning that was well adapted to their particular context and so their reasoning worked well for them for proof the resilience of the model of tribal society that survived for at least 100,000 years.
The solution adopted by small bands was structural and elegant. Over a certain time-span each one of them mandated its less physically apt member to search for knowledge in order to reduce the suffering of the group and its members. The mandate was simple, concise, and open to whatever the (wo)men of knowledge, as we are calling them today in Modernity, would be thinking about. And the result was world-changing. The populations of small bands increased, in all likelihood, because the formation of knowledge allowed to collect more food with less energy.
Populations grew and stabilized. How do we know this ? Well we induce it from studies about “small groups” that were undertaken over the last decades by Robin Dunbar who gave us the “Dunbar Number” that predicts the social network size of a species through the volume, or the size, of the “orbital prefrontal cortex” of its individuals (9).
The population growth, of small bands, snowballed in a process of societal evolution that concluded with tribal societies (10) which eventually stabilized at the Dunbar number of approximately 150. Tribal societies inhabited the entirety of the earth and had similar traits ‒ wo(men) of knowledge were in charge of knowledge formation and at the service of the group ‒ rituals and feasts fostered a strong bond between the individuals which ensure high levels of trust ‒ what we call the arts nowadays were used as knowledge tools to share the worldview of the wo(men) of knowledge with their fellow tribesmen ‒ the wo(men) of knowledge socialized mostly with their counterparts of neighboring tribes which helped to manage peaceful inter-tribal relations ‒ and so on.
According to the present majority opinion of the anthropology profession tribal societies were thriving between approximately 100,000 years ago till sometime around 10,000 years ago. In the tail end of the “Younger Dryas” (11) the climate warmed abruptly which resulted in a process that concluded with a rapid population increase that destabilized the tribal model of society. This was then followed by a 5000 years long transition that concluded with the stabilization of the institutions of “power societies”, kingdoms and empires, sometime around 5000 years ago.
The solution adopted by small bands was structural and elegant. Over a certain time-span each one of them mandated its less physically apt member to search for knowledge in order to reduce the suffering of the group and its members. The mandate was simple, concise, and open to whatever the (wo)men of knowledge, as we are calling them today in Modernity, would be thinking about. And the result was world-changing. The populations of small bands increased, in all likelihood, because the formation of knowledge allowed to collect more food with less energy.
Populations grew and stabilized. How do we know this ? Well we induce it from studies about “small groups” that were undertaken over the last decades by Robin Dunbar who gave us the “Dunbar Number” that predicts the social network size of a species through the volume, or the size, of the “orbital prefrontal cortex” of its individuals (9).
The population growth, of small bands, snowballed in a process of societal evolution that concluded with tribal societies (10) which eventually stabilized at the Dunbar number of approximately 150. Tribal societies inhabited the entirety of the earth and had similar traits ‒ wo(men) of knowledge were in charge of knowledge formation and at the service of the group ‒ rituals and feasts fostered a strong bond between the individuals which ensure high levels of trust ‒ what we call the arts nowadays were used as knowledge tools to share the worldview of the wo(men) of knowledge with their fellow tribesmen ‒ the wo(men) of knowledge socialized mostly with their counterparts of neighboring tribes which helped to manage peaceful inter-tribal relations ‒ and so on.
According to the present majority opinion of the anthropology profession tribal societies were thriving between approximately 100,000 years ago till sometime around 10,000 years ago. In the tail end of the “Younger Dryas” (11) the climate warmed abruptly which resulted in a process that concluded with a rapid population increase that destabilized the tribal model of society. This was then followed by a 5000 years long transition that concluded with the stabilization of the institutions of “power societies”, kingdoms and empires, sometime around 5000 years ago.
7.1.2. Lessons from these precedents
The context of these 2 past societal turnings was undoubtedly vastly different than this time around. But some lessons can nevertheless be learned from them. In both cases knowledge formation played an out-sized role :
- In small bands knowledge allowed an increase of the gathered resources which started a process of population growth that eventually stabilized at the Dunbar number or the golden number of individuals in tribes.
- The context of the 2nd societal turning from tribes to power is better known. A warming climate at the tail of the Younger dryas acted as an abrupt acceleration of trends that were already active over the past millennia. This destabilized the tribal model of society and started a long process of transition that the animist wo(men) of knowledge helped to stabilize by helping the wo(men) of power to stabilize their institutions. By gluing the minds of the citizens of kingdoms and empires around a common narrative or worldview the wo(men) of knowledge succeeded to reproduce their institutions over the long haul which the wo(men) of power had always failed to attain by force alone.
Let’s now dig a little deeper in the contexts of these societal turnings :
7.1.2.1. A warming climate at the tail-end of the Younger-dryas
Abrupt climate change at the tail end of the Younger-Dryas, around 11,600 Years ago, increased the world temperature by an average of 6-7 °C. The seas had risen constantly over the last millennia and suddenly rose abruptly by another 20-25 meters around 11,600 years ago. Most tribes were living along river estuaries and had to flee. The wo(men) of knowledge would have been attuned to the long haul changes that were occurring and guided their fellow tribesmen to higher grounds. The Younger Dryas warming can be summarized by the following :
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the speed of global warming :
“In Greenland, temperatures rose 10°C (18°F) in a decade (Alley 2000)” and it is estimated that the average world temperature increased by as much 6-7 °C within the span of a few months to a few years : the speed of global warming:“ Around 15,000 years ago, the Earth started warming abruptly after ~ 100,000 years of an "ice age"; this is known as a glacial termination. The large ice sheets, which covered significant parts of North America and Europe, began melting as a result.
A climatic optimum known as the "Bölling-Allerød" was reached shortly thereafter, around 14,700 before present. However, starting at about 12,800 BP, the Earth returned very quickly into near glacial conditions (i.e. cold, dry and windy), and stayed there for about 1,200 years: this is known as the Younger Dryas (YD), since it is the most recent interval where a plant characteristic of cold climates, Dryas Octopetala, was found in Scandinavia.
The most spectacular aspect of the YD is that it ended extremely abruptly (around 11,600 years ago), and although the date cannot be known exactly, it is estimated from the annually-banded Greenland ice-core that the annual-mean temperature increased by as much as 10°C in 10 years.” (12) - the speed of sea level rise : The seas rose in a matter of months or years. Different climate experts give different estimates but all concur that the rise was abrupt. Moreover important variations have been observed from one location to another :This "meltwater pulse 1B" was the warming at the tail end of the Younger Dryas. The estimations of sea level rise, from one expert to the next, vary from 15 to 89 meters !
“ Global sea level has fluctuated widely in the recent geologic past. It stood 4-6 meters above the present during the last interglacial period, 125,000 years ago, but was 120 m lower at the peak of the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago. … After the ice sheets began to melt and retreat, sea level rose rapidly, with several periods of even faster spurts. The first such spurt may have started about 19,000 years ago, at which time ocean levels rose 10-15 m in less than 500 years.
… A more clearly-defined accelerated phase of sea level rise occurred between 14,600 to 13,500 years before present (termed "meltwater pulse 1A" or "MWP-1A" by Fairbanks in 1989), when sea level increased by some 16 to 24 m. … another surge, "meltwater pulse 1B", 11,500-11,000 years ago, when sea level may have jumped by 28 m according to Fairbanks.” (13) - great migrations towards higher grounds : I will use the example of Göbekli Tepe as illustration. The topography of the area around Göbekli Tepe, on the Anatolia plateau present day Turkey, attracted tribal migrants who were searching protection of higher altitudes against rising waters from the four seas in the vicinity :
“ The prehistoric site Göbekli Tepe features an artificial mound (höyük) comprised of archaeological deposits that accumulated upon a limestone plateau of the Germuş mountain range (c. 770 m above sea level) from the mid-10th to the late-9th millennium BCE (c. 11.5–10 ka BP). … 90% of charcoal samples from Göbekli Tepe have been identified as pistachio and almond.
In summary, botanical remains indicate that a steppe vegetation with stands of pistachio and almond trees was characteristic of the landscape at Göbekli Tepe at the time of its settlement.
This conclusion is further supported by archaeofaunal analyses which show high ratios of open grassland inhabitants (e.g., Ovis, Capra, Gazella and Equus) among recovered animal remains” (14)
Göbekli Tepe Map from UNESCO’s World Heritage
The importance of Gobekle Tepe can not be overstated. Its discovery disproved the traditionally accepted historical approach by establishment historians about tribal societies and about the transition to power societies :“Göbekli Tepe is regarded by some as an archaeological discovery of great importance since it could profoundly change the understanding of a crucial stage in the development of human society. Ian Hodder of Stanford University said, "Göbekli Tepe changes everything".
If indeed the site was built by hunter-gatherers as some researchers believe then it would mean that the ability to erect monumental complexes was within the capacities of these sorts of groups, which would overturn previous assumptions.
Some researchers believe that the construction of Göbekli Tepe may have contributed to the later development of urban civilization, or, as excavator Klaus Schmidt put it, "First came the temple, then the city."
… At present Göbekli Tepe appears to raise more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. It remains unknown how a population large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and compensated or fed in the conditions of pre-sedentary society.” (15)
Whatever the remaining uncertainties it is now established that Göbekli Tepe has been constructed by hunter-gatherers whose lived in tribal societies that shared animism as a worldview. This questions the academic narrative about the evolution of tribal societies and about the emergence of agriculture, religions, and power societies (16).
The conclusion that I draw here is that the climate was the determinant factor that caused the 2nd societal turning. It provoked the collapse of the tribal model of society. And this fostered the necessity to devise a new model which incidentally was the power-society. This is something that is unfortunately ignored today by most people. It has nevertheless huge implications for humanity's understanding and perception of the Anthropocene.
We now know and also understand that climate change is a natural phenomenon that acts as a determinant societal destabilizing factor :
“The Last Glacial Period (LGP) occurred from the end of the Eemian to the end of the Younger Dryas, encompassing the period c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago. This most recent glacial period is part of a larger pattern of glacial and interglacial periods known as the Quaternary glaciation extending from 2,588,000 years ago to present.” (17)
So there is no longer place for any doubt. The present round of climate change is part of a very long climate process that was on a trajectory, since the last 6000 years, towards a new glaciation era. But human activity causes the emission of CO2, and other gases, on a grand scale and as a result the atmosphere went from a PPM of 280 approximately in 1750, at the beginning of industrialization, to a PPM reaching somewhere over 410 in 2020.
In one word human activities are warming the atmosphere and destabilizing the climate. Its natural trajectory was towards a new glaciation. But its trajectory has been interrupted and the present warming is changing the program of nature. This is not a drama for the universe for sure. Humans are also part of nature. But our activities are destabilizing the contextual settings of our current prevailing model of society. This is our direct responsibility. These changing contextual settings are now bound to provoke the demise of our societies in the near future.
My personal understanding is that the quasi-worldview of Modernity (18) and the nation-state model of society are slipping towards collapse which could take place at any time now within the next decades. This evidently obliges humanity to search for a new paradigm in term of worldview and in term of model of society. But are we going to act ?
7.1.2.2. Knowledge formation
Knowledge formation in small bands initiated a gradual and long transition towards a new equilibrium and this resulted in a process of trial and errors that spread over millennia. We don’t know if, nor how, the climate might have impacted the societal turning from small bands to tribes.
It is possible that an ice age, or an increase of the earth average temperatures, participated in the destabilization of small bands. The climate could also have been the prime cause of their destabilization forcing them to experiment with new ways to manage larger groups. Whatever was the case knowledge formation filled the need to stabilize the larger societal groups that resulted from population growth.
Knowledge was the determinant factor in allowing these larger groups to stabilize at the golden number of 150 participants which forms an absolutely unique model of society that can self-manage without the power given by brute physical force nor the power derived from cunning a majority of individuals into submission. This idea of self-management is also the reason why this golden rule of a mean size of 150 is being used in groups that operate in various modern contexts like military companies, Amish parishes, online networks, and so on.
Knowledge was the determinant factor in allowing these larger groups to stabilize at the golden number of 150 participants which forms an absolutely unique model of society that can self-manage without the power given by brute physical force nor the power derived from cunning a majority of individuals into submission. This idea of self-management is also the reason why this golden rule of a mean size of 150 is being used in groups that operate in various modern contexts like military companies, Amish parishes, online networks, and so on.
Göbekli Tepe and the traditional views about tribes
Now jumping to the destabilization of tribes, at the tail end of the Younger dryas, the archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe is pointing to the reality that tribal societies were far more advanced than anything that was previously believed :
“Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey’s stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization.
Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant.
The surprising lack of evidence that people lived right there, researchers say, argues against its use as a settlement or even a place where, for instance, clan leaders gathered. Hodder is fascinated that Gobekli Tepe's pillar carvings are dominated not by edible prey like deer and cattle but by menacing creatures such as lions, spiders, snakes and scorpions. "It's a scary, fantastic world of nasty-looking beasts," he muses.
While later cultures were more concerned with farming and fertility, he suggests, perhaps these hunters were trying to master their fears by building this complex, which is a good distance from where they lived.”(19)
The builders of Göbekli Tepe were hunter-gatherer tribesmen who shared a common animistic worldview. The construction works were so gigantic that they would have required large teams of organized craftsmen who would have been selected among numerous tribal groups which would not have been possible without coordination. And the only coordination one can conceived of in that era must have been organized during the retreats of the wo(men) of knowledge.
Perhaps by building this complex “they were trying to master their fears” but it is more probable that they simply registered their understanding of what happened at the tail end of the Younger-Drys so that the coming generations could remember the knowledge written in the sky :
Perhaps by building this complex “they were trying to master their fears” but it is more probable that they simply registered their understanding of what happened at the tail end of the Younger-Drys so that the coming generations could remember the knowledge written in the sky :
“ A team of researchers with the University of Edinburgh has found what they describe as evidence of a comet striking the Earth at approximately the same time as the onset of the Younger Dryas in carvings on an ancient stone pillar in southern Turkey.
The pillar was created by the people of Gobekli Tepe and now appears to have served as a means of commemorating a devastating event—perhaps a comet breaking up and its remnants crashing into the Earth, causing an immediate environmental impact around the globe and possible loss of life (one of the characters on the pillar was of a headless human.)
We have interpreted much of the symbolism of Göbekli Tepe in terms of astronomical events. By matching low-relief carvings on some of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe to star asterisms we find compelling evidence that the famous 'Vulture Stone' is a date stamp for 10950 BC ± 250 yrs, which corresponds closely to the proposed Younger Dryas event, estimated at 10890 BC.
We also find evidence that a key function of Göbekli Tepe was to observe meteor showers and record cometary encounters. Indeed, the people of Göbekli Tepe appear to have had a special interest in the Taurid meteor stream, the same meteor stream that is proposed as responsible for the Younger-Dryas event. Is Göbekli Tepe the 'smoking gun' for the Younger-Dryas cometary encounter, and hence for coherent catastrophism? “ (20)
This question-suggestion emitted by Bob Yirka at Phys.org, about Göbekli Tepe as 'smoking gun' for the Younger-Dryas cometary encounter and hence for coherent catastrophism (21), is an apt suggestion indeed. The animist wo(men) of knowledge were known for their studies of the sky and their synchronization of events on earth with the position of the stars. And in matter of fact the Younger-Dryas had definitely a rather brutal impact on life on earth. It makes thus sense that after the migrations following the warming at its tail-end the wo(men) of knowledge would have wanted to register that event in stone at the attention of future generations.
The process of tribal cultural unification
The uniqueness of the tribal model of society must have been dawning on the wo(men) of knowledge since the very earliest tribal societies. This would explain why they ensured the reproduction of that golden number population size over tens of thousands of years by organizing the splitting of groups that became too large or the combination of groups that were too small (22). This implementation of population size, as well as the exchange of females to ensure the genetic diversity of the different groups, was made possible by the retreats of the wo(men) of knowledge in the underworld far away from their fellow-tribesmen.
It has long been considered, by the researchers specialized in animism, that the search of knowledge by the wo(men) of knowledge was a process of synchronization of their being with the being of an animal (animal spirit) or a consultation with the spirits of the earth or the spirits of human ancestors during their trips in the underworld.
Along the last decades this understanding has gained a more realistic, and dare I say a deeper, view from the ‘brain sciences’ which point to the notion that a majority of brain processes are unconscious to the mind. As a result we now start to understand that the practice of the traditional animist wo(men) of knowledge was to travel deep in the subconscious, into that activity of the brain that is not known by the mind, in search of applicable knowledge to solve the problems that their fellow-tribesmen submitted to them.
Their voyages in the field of the unconscious were facilitated by different techniques like the ingestion of psychoactive plants, fasting, meditation, dance, drumming, and so on which altered their normal states of consciousness. But taking part in the ceremonies, by their wo(men) of knowledge when they attained their altered states of consciousness, utterly scared their fellow tribesmen out of their wit. So, while praising them for their services, tribesmen did not socialize with them. They kept their distance. And so the wo(men) of knowledge adapted to this state of affairs by living on the margins of the tribe and by compensated for an absence of socializing inside the tribe by socializing outside of the tribe with her/his colleagues the wo(men) of knowledge of neighboring tribes.
Herein resides the origin of the retreats of the wo(men) of knowledge far away from their tribesmen somewhere in the underworld of caves, of forests, or of mountains. These retreats eventually grew as real opportunities ‒ to synchronize the visions and worldview of the wo(men) of knowledge ‒ to synchronize their actions in order to keep the demography of their tribes within an acceptable range ‒ to synchronize their actions in the exchange of females so as to guarantee the genetic diversity of their tribes ‒ and so on.
These retreats of the wo(men) of knowledge soon fostered a cultural unification of their tribes which means that a unified tribal culture was eventually shared by some 1500 to 2500 individuals living over a large territory and all this was realized without any power structure governing them. Such a ‘limited cultural unification’ was the general rule over the entire timespan of the tribal model of society everywhere on earth.
The Younger Dryas shook this model of knowledge formation and of cultural unification. An abrupt warming of the climate resulted in an exuberant growth of plants and animal species. Easier food gathering and hunting nourished more mouths. The population grew rapidly and destabilized the application of the demographic golden rule. Gradually tribes were no longer capable to self-govern.
Disorder called for order which was satisfied by an adaptation of the role of the wo(men) of knowledge. The demographic expansion somehow nullified the efficacy of the traditional tribal self-governance. Larger groups called for a more hierarchical mode of organization. The wo(men) of knowledge were becoming symbols of authority, within their tribes, by representing a cultural unification that was expanding over an enlarging territory.
It has long been considered, by the researchers specialized in animism, that the search of knowledge by the wo(men) of knowledge was a process of synchronization of their being with the being of an animal (animal spirit) or a consultation with the spirits of the earth or the spirits of human ancestors during their trips in the underworld.
Along the last decades this understanding has gained a more realistic, and dare I say a deeper, view from the ‘brain sciences’ which point to the notion that a majority of brain processes are unconscious to the mind. As a result we now start to understand that the practice of the traditional animist wo(men) of knowledge was to travel deep in the subconscious, into that activity of the brain that is not known by the mind, in search of applicable knowledge to solve the problems that their fellow-tribesmen submitted to them.
Their voyages in the field of the unconscious were facilitated by different techniques like the ingestion of psychoactive plants, fasting, meditation, dance, drumming, and so on which altered their normal states of consciousness. But taking part in the ceremonies, by their wo(men) of knowledge when they attained their altered states of consciousness, utterly scared their fellow tribesmen out of their wit. So, while praising them for their services, tribesmen did not socialize with them. They kept their distance. And so the wo(men) of knowledge adapted to this state of affairs by living on the margins of the tribe and by compensated for an absence of socializing inside the tribe by socializing outside of the tribe with her/his colleagues the wo(men) of knowledge of neighboring tribes.
Herein resides the origin of the retreats of the wo(men) of knowledge far away from their tribesmen somewhere in the underworld of caves, of forests, or of mountains. These retreats eventually grew as real opportunities ‒ to synchronize the visions and worldview of the wo(men) of knowledge ‒ to synchronize their actions in order to keep the demography of their tribes within an acceptable range ‒ to synchronize their actions in the exchange of females so as to guarantee the genetic diversity of their tribes ‒ and so on.
These retreats of the wo(men) of knowledge soon fostered a cultural unification of their tribes which means that a unified tribal culture was eventually shared by some 1500 to 2500 individuals living over a large territory and all this was realized without any power structure governing them. Such a ‘limited cultural unification’ was the general rule over the entire timespan of the tribal model of society everywhere on earth.
The Younger Dryas shook this model of knowledge formation and of cultural unification. An abrupt warming of the climate resulted in an exuberant growth of plants and animal species. Easier food gathering and hunting nourished more mouths. The population grew rapidly and destabilized the application of the demographic golden rule. Gradually tribes were no longer capable to self-govern.
Disorder called for order which was satisfied by an adaptation of the role of the wo(men) of knowledge. The demographic expansion somehow nullified the efficacy of the traditional tribal self-governance. Larger groups called for a more hierarchical mode of organization. The wo(men) of knowledge were becoming symbols of authority, within their tribes, by representing a cultural unification that was expanding over an enlarging territory.
The larger population size of traditional tribes eventually resulted in the questioning by some individuals of the process of cultural unification of multiple tribes over a large territory. And the growing disorder forced the retreating wo(men) of knowledge to find a stabilizing mechanism which eventually imposed itself in an organic manner.
Their ‘knowledge retreats’ assembled 10, then 20, and eventually even larger groups of their peers. Each one participating at the retreat was representing one tribal group. Over time the ability of some among them naturally generated the respect of the others and eventually the group came to recognize the exceptional wisdom of one among them. All this unfolded naturally, as an organic process, and did not involve any power relation.
Naturally the older sister, or brother, with the exceptional wisdom, got consulted regularly by the others for advice. And after their return to their tribe the wo(men) of knowledge eventually transmitted the content of the advice from the wisest one to their fellow tribesmen. Sometimes the advice of the wisest one touched a nerve among the community all over the territory ‒ or it fostered a betterment of the living conditions ‒ or his forecast of a coming calamity saved lives ‒ or his guidance helped to control the overflowing of the waters of a river ‒ or something else was gluing the minds of the individuals. And so gradually, organically, the wisest one became a symbol of the cultural unity of a group of tribes.
This symbolism of cultural unity, attached to the person of the wisest one, was also breeding a climate of peace between the groups and of trust between the individuals that ultimately fused 3 notions in the minds of all : ‒ symbolic representation by the wisest one of ‒ cultural unity ‒ over a large territory.
This symbolic representation by the wisest one eventually unleashed the transition to power societies. But each region on this earth witnessed a different kind of transition and a different form of power. Each region was indeed bestowed with its own particular contextual setting that consisted of a given geography, a given climate, a given physical character of the land, a given land mass, and so on and on. And so the different contextual settings, of each region on earth, have largely conditioned the particular form taken by their transition to power societies (23).
The conclusion that I draw here is that knowledge has definitely acted as a determinant factor in the 2 past societal turnings. And I think that, whatever we might think about science, knowledge in its holistic dimension (24) will once again be called upon to play a decisive role in making sense of the present predicament of humanity and in searching for evidence, in humanity’s present and future contextual settings, about a new paradigm to address the worldview and societal model of After-Modernity.
Their ‘knowledge retreats’ assembled 10, then 20, and eventually even larger groups of their peers. Each one participating at the retreat was representing one tribal group. Over time the ability of some among them naturally generated the respect of the others and eventually the group came to recognize the exceptional wisdom of one among them. All this unfolded naturally, as an organic process, and did not involve any power relation.
Naturally the older sister, or brother, with the exceptional wisdom, got consulted regularly by the others for advice. And after their return to their tribe the wo(men) of knowledge eventually transmitted the content of the advice from the wisest one to their fellow tribesmen. Sometimes the advice of the wisest one touched a nerve among the community all over the territory ‒ or it fostered a betterment of the living conditions ‒ or his forecast of a coming calamity saved lives ‒ or his guidance helped to control the overflowing of the waters of a river ‒ or something else was gluing the minds of the individuals. And so gradually, organically, the wisest one became a symbol of the cultural unity of a group of tribes.
This symbolism of cultural unity, attached to the person of the wisest one, was also breeding a climate of peace between the groups and of trust between the individuals that ultimately fused 3 notions in the minds of all : ‒ symbolic representation by the wisest one of ‒ cultural unity ‒ over a large territory.
This symbolic representation by the wisest one eventually unleashed the transition to power societies. But each region on this earth witnessed a different kind of transition and a different form of power. Each region was indeed bestowed with its own particular contextual setting that consisted of a given geography, a given climate, a given physical character of the land, a given land mass, and so on and on. And so the different contextual settings, of each region on earth, have largely conditioned the particular form taken by their transition to power societies (23).
The conclusion that I draw here is that knowledge has definitely acted as a determinant factor in the 2 past societal turnings. And I think that, whatever we might think about science, knowledge in its holistic dimension (24) will once again be called upon to play a decisive role in making sense of the present predicament of humanity and in searching for evidence, in humanity’s present and future contextual settings, about a new paradigm to address the worldview and societal model of After-Modernity.
____________
Notes
1. See the “Organic Art Manifesto. 2.3. Modernity emerged in a very backwards Western Europe".
2. See the “Champagne fairs” in Wikipedia
3. “Commercial capitalism” is the economic period, in the history of Western Europe, that started sometime around 1150 and lasted to approximately 1750. It concerned primarily the production and exchange of luxury goods at the attention of the aristocracy, the clergy and the new rich long distance merchants. It all started with the plunder, and then the trade, of Middle-Eastern goods which set in motion the process of capitalism. These goods were rapidly counterfeited in the Italian city-States (first center of gravity of capitalism) which were soon to be overtaken by the textile industry of Flanders that consecrated Bruges as the second center of gravity of capitalism.
4. The Via Francigena
5. This is how Wikipedia describes the Champagne fairs :
6. “History of Letter of Credit” in Business Blog. 2007-11-26.
7. “Organic Art Manifesto. 2.1. dark ages of localism and Western Christianity”
8. “Thatcher was right – there is no ‘society’ “ in The Financial Times by Samuel Brittan. 2013-04-19.
9. Professor Dunbar is a specialist in Anthropology, Archaeology-Anthropology, and Experimental Psychology at the Magdalen College of Oxford University. He has published numerous works. The following 3 address more particularly the subject that interests us here :
• Powell, J. et al. (2012). “Orbital prefrontal cortex volume predicts social network size: an imaging study of individual differences in humans.” Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 279B: 2157-2162.
• Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks. Harvard University Pressy R, Dunbar. 2010-22-01
• Do online social media cut through the constraints that limit the size of offline social networks? Royal Society Publishing. R. I. M. Dunbar. 2016-01-01.
Various articles :
• Dunbar's number: Why we can only maintain 150 relationships – BBC”
• The Limits of Friendship | The New Yorker
10. For more about tribal societies see the short presentation about tribal societies in my “Organic Art Manifesto. 1.2. What is a tribe ?”
11. See “What is going on ? 2.3.5. Climate change destabilizes tribal societies”
12. Abrupt Climate Change. The Younger Dryas. Lamont-Doherty earth observatory the earth institute at columbia university.
13. “Sea Level Rise, After the Ice Melted and Today” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Goddard Institute for Space Studies by Vivien Gornitz . 2007-01
14. “Göbekli Tepe: A Brief Description of the Environmental Development in the Surroundings” MDIP. Cross-disciplinary peer-reviewed open access journal “Land” by Daniel Knitter, Ricarda Braun , Lee Clare , Moritz Nykamp and Brigitta Schütt. 2019-03-15.
15. “Göbekli Tepe” in Wikipedia
16. See “From Modernity to After-Modernity” articles 12 to 19. Or check their book formatting.
17. The “Last Glacial Period” is also called the ice age. It is the last among many that occurred along the 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene. Many glacial period occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. These long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter inter-glacial periods.
18. the quasi-worldview of Modernity : see “What is going on ? 1.1. Worldviews are societally shared narratives” by laodan.
19. See “Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?” in Smithsonian Magazine by Andrew Curry. 2008-11.
20. “Ancient stone pillars offer clues of comet strike that changed human history” in Phys.org by Bob Yirka. 2017-04-24. The study documented in this article was realized by researcher at Edimburg Uni. And was published in the journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry (free pdf available). The idea had initially been proposed by author Graham Hancock in his book Magicians of the Gods.
21. “Coherent catastrophism” in Elsevier Vistas in Astronomy Volume 38, Part 1, 1994, Pages 1-27, by D.J.Asher∗S.V.M.Clube†W.M.Napier‡D.I.Steel
22. See “Governance and Societal Evolution. 4.7.2.2. The tribal societal context” by laodan.
23. I wrote about how the different contextual settings of the ‘Fertile Crescent’ in the Tri-Continental-Era resulted in an exceptional transition process that gave way to a very particular form of power society. And I compare this process with the radically different process that took place approximately at the same time in China. I show how this difference is inscribed in the subconscious of the actors who today are shaping our evolving geo-politics . If interested to read about this see articles 212 to 219 on my blog.
24. For the difference between science and holistic knowledge see “What is going on. 1.2. Science versus knowledge”.
2. See the “Champagne fairs” in Wikipedia
3. “Commercial capitalism” is the economic period, in the history of Western Europe, that started sometime around 1150 and lasted to approximately 1750. It concerned primarily the production and exchange of luxury goods at the attention of the aristocracy, the clergy and the new rich long distance merchants. It all started with the plunder, and then the trade, of Middle-Eastern goods which set in motion the process of capitalism. These goods were rapidly counterfeited in the Italian city-States (first center of gravity of capitalism) which were soon to be overtaken by the textile industry of Flanders that consecrated Bruges as the second center of gravity of capitalism.
4. The Via Francigena
5. This is how Wikipedia describes the Champagne fairs :
“… an annual cycle of trade fairs which flourished in different towns of the County of Champagne in northeastern France in the 12th and 13th centuries, originating in local agricultural and stock fairs. Each fair lasted about 2 to 3 weeks. The Champagne fairs, sited on ancient land routes and largely self-regulated through the development of the Lex mercatoria ("merchant law"), became an important engine in the reviving economic history of medieval Europe, "veritable nerve centers" serving as a premier market for textiles, leather, fur, and spices. At their height, in the late 12th and the 13th century, the fairs linked the cloth-producing cities of the Low Countries with the Italian dyeing and exporting centers, with Genoa in the lead, dominating the commercial and banking relations operating at the frontier region between the north and the Mediterranean. The Champagne fairs were one of the earliest manifestations of a linked European economy, a characteristic of the High Middle Ages.”
6. “History of Letter of Credit” in Business Blog. 2007-11-26.
7. “Organic Art Manifesto. 2.1. dark ages of localism and Western Christianity”
8. “Thatcher was right – there is no ‘society’ “ in The Financial Times by Samuel Brittan. 2013-04-19.
“I think we have been through a period when too many people have been given to understand that when they have a problem it is government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant. I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They are casting their problems on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no governments can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours. People have got their entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There is no such thing as an entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
9. Professor Dunbar is a specialist in Anthropology, Archaeology-Anthropology, and Experimental Psychology at the Magdalen College of Oxford University. He has published numerous works. The following 3 address more particularly the subject that interests us here :
• Powell, J. et al. (2012). “Orbital prefrontal cortex volume predicts social network size: an imaging study of individual differences in humans.” Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 279B: 2157-2162.
• Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks. Harvard University Pressy R, Dunbar. 2010-22-01
• Do online social media cut through the constraints that limit the size of offline social networks? Royal Society Publishing. R. I. M. Dunbar. 2016-01-01.
Various articles :
• Dunbar's number: Why we can only maintain 150 relationships – BBC”
• The Limits of Friendship | The New Yorker
10. For more about tribal societies see the short presentation about tribal societies in my “Organic Art Manifesto. 1.2. What is a tribe ?”
11. See “What is going on ? 2.3.5. Climate change destabilizes tribal societies”
12. Abrupt Climate Change. The Younger Dryas. Lamont-Doherty earth observatory the earth institute at columbia university.
13. “Sea Level Rise, After the Ice Melted and Today” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Goddard Institute for Space Studies by Vivien Gornitz . 2007-01
14. “Göbekli Tepe: A Brief Description of the Environmental Development in the Surroundings” MDIP. Cross-disciplinary peer-reviewed open access journal “Land” by Daniel Knitter, Ricarda Braun , Lee Clare , Moritz Nykamp and Brigitta Schütt. 2019-03-15.
15. “Göbekli Tepe” in Wikipedia
16. See “From Modernity to After-Modernity” articles 12 to 19. Or check their book formatting.
17. The “Last Glacial Period” is also called the ice age. It is the last among many that occurred along the 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene. Many glacial period occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. These long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter inter-glacial periods.
18. the quasi-worldview of Modernity : see “What is going on ? 1.1. Worldviews are societally shared narratives” by laodan.
19. See “Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?” in Smithsonian Magazine by Andrew Curry. 2008-11.
20. “Ancient stone pillars offer clues of comet strike that changed human history” in Phys.org by Bob Yirka. 2017-04-24. The study documented in this article was realized by researcher at Edimburg Uni. And was published in the journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry (free pdf available). The idea had initially been proposed by author Graham Hancock in his book Magicians of the Gods.
21. “Coherent catastrophism” in Elsevier Vistas in Astronomy Volume 38, Part 1, 1994, Pages 1-27, by D.J.Asher∗S.V.M.Clube†W.M.Napier‡D.I.Steel
22. See “Governance and Societal Evolution. 4.7.2.2. The tribal societal context” by laodan.
23. I wrote about how the different contextual settings of the ‘Fertile Crescent’ in the Tri-Continental-Era resulted in an exceptional transition process that gave way to a very particular form of power society. And I compare this process with the radically different process that took place approximately at the same time in China. I show how this difference is inscribed in the subconscious of the actors who today are shaping our evolving geo-politics . If interested to read about this see articles 212 to 219 on my blog.
24. For the difference between science and holistic knowledge see “What is going on. 1.2. Science versus knowledge”.
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